The Nineteenth Byte

Kritixi Lithos

6:00 PM

brainflak has decimals?

DJMcMayhem

Yeah. Is that a surprise?

Kritixi Lithos

TIL, then why is the submission to the "reciprocal of a number" challenge so verbose?

Leaky Nun

@KritixiLithos because it only has integers

DJMcMayhem

^

Riley

The deleted answer that uses code points is 11 bytes.

Kritixi Lithos

6:01 PM

but you just said it has decimals

user165474

@LeakyNun Do you have another decently simple/short Jelly code challenge that I might be able to do?

DJMcMayhem

So it has to implement floating point in integers, then convert that to ASCII code-points

@KritixiLithos Yes, by that I mean in brainfuck, printing a "42" would print * but in brain-flak it would print "42"

Kritixi Lithos

nvm, I mixed up decimal and floating-point

Leaky Nun

@HyperNeutrino try to do this without scrolling down

(there's a Jelly answer below)

user165474

That looks rather scary. Okay, I'll try. For reference, how short is the Jelly answer?

Leaky Nun

6:04 PM

8 bytes

user165474

Alright. Thanks.

user165474

Let me try naming the critical components again. I find that helps.

user165474

Recursion/Iteration (probably the ¡ quick)

user165474

I don't like the look of the nested function; I'm not sure I know how to do that in Jelly.

user165474

@LeakyNun Is there something to call the main link?

Leaky Nun

6:09 PM

yes there is

ais523

you can call it by position using Ŀ and friends, but normally there's a shortcut

user165474

ß?

ais523

things like ß and Ñ don't always work, but they work in special cases

user165474

Okay, alright.

Leaky Nun

@HyperNeutrino yes

ais523

6:10 PM

depending on how many links you have and how they're arranged

user165474

Alright.

ais523

Ŀ always works but it's an extra byte to specify which link you mean

(or ŀ or £ depending on arity)

Leaky Nun

@HyperNeutrino if you only have one link, you can also call the last link (which is the only link which is the main link)

user165474

Alright. Thanks.

user165474

So if it's zero, I don't want to iterate.

user165474

6:16 PM

Sign function?

user165474

Ṡ for the sign function, but then that doesn't iterate n times.

user165474

Wait, but I don't need to iterate n times...

user165474

So I can't figure out how to run iff something is truthy, but I think I can iterate 1 or 0 times to do that.

user165474

(intentionally "iff")

user165474

<body>Ṡ¡

user165474

6:19 PM

For the nested part, I think I can do ßßß

user165474

But since I need to decrement it, ’ßßß

Leaky Nun

I'm starting to doubt if you haven't scrolled down

user165474

I didn't scroll down, but I think I may have seen this before, because the code I'm writing looks oddly familiar. I doubt this is my first time seeing this challenge.

Leaky Nun

alright

user165474

Or the answer in particular.

user165474

6:21 PM

So I want to try it myself, but I think I've already seen it, so I probably have an advantage already.

user165474

Question: Is the answer Dennis's?

Poke

yup

user165474

Hm. I probably saw it at some point in time. I don't recall ever seeing ßßß on any other answer, but I distinctly remember seeing this at some point in time. IIRC, this answer was what first got me thinking about learning Jelly, back when I first saw it a while ago.

user165474

Yeah, I think I've seen the answer before but I can't remember it, I just remember the two components. There are two more bytes; I think one of them starts a new chain.

user165474

I've definitely seen the answer before. I might try to finish it but it won't be much of a challenge because I've seen the solution already.

user165474

6:24 PM

’ßßß-µṠ¡ doesn't seem to work... I think it's subtracting the wrong way.

user165474

Oh well, I have to go now. Thanks, I might look for some more challenges on my own time and attempt them hoping that I haven't seen the answer yet. Thanks!

Leaky Nun

alright, bye

New Main Posts

6:50 PM

2

Q: Golf Dennis a thermometer

Dennis puts in a huge amount of effort for this community, including as moderator, language designer, and provider of TIO. Unfortunately, his daughter has caught a cold, so let us all help him keep track of her recovery (may it be speedy) by providing him with a thermometer: .-----------. | ...

DJMcMayhem

7:17 PM

If you have a computer with no OS installed, how long could you leave it on with no CPU cooler before breaking the CPU to the point where it won't POST?

Jan Dvorak

most modern CPUs will underclock when they detect overheating

Phoenix

Also, the mobo's firmware will shut it off before damage can occur.

DJMcMayhem

What if was just powered on without getting to the BIOS? (for whatever reason)

Phoenix

How?

DJMcMayhem

IDK, it's all hypothetical

I'm fixing a homebuilt PC that someone else assembled, and right now it won't POST.

After closer inspection, the CPU cooler was barely attached

trichoplax

7:22 PM

Is the power also barely attached...?

DJMcMayhem

Which power?

Like the cable to the PSU? Or the cable from PSU to CPU?

Either way, I'm not sure anymore, since I've unplugged everything so I can get a closer look

Riley

@DJMcMayhem Unplugging everything and plugging it back in fixes a lot of problems.

betseg

7:47 PM

ಠ_ಠ

Kritixi Lithos

haha

Dennis

@DJMcMayhem Overheating occurs pretty much instantly, but both CPU and motherboards have fail-safes that should prevent the CPU from getting damaged.

DJMcMayhem

That's what I thought. After redoing everything, it gets to BIOS as expected

New Main Posts

8:05 PM

0

Q: Give me the Gray Code list of bit width n up - PHP

The Gray Code is a sequence of binary numbers of bitwidth n where successive numbers differ only in one bit (see example output). Reference Example input: 3 Example output: 000 001 011 010 110 111 101 100 The code has to be PHP.

php

3

Q: Translate numbers to French

The French spell out numbers in a peculiar way. 1-15 are "normal" 16-19 are spelled out 10+6, 10+7. 10+8, 10+9. 20-69 are "normal" 70-79 are 60+10, 60+11 ... 60+10+6, 60+10+7, 60+10+8, 60+10+9. 80-99 are 4*20, 4*20+1, 4*20+2 ... 4*20+15, 4*20+10+6, 4*20+10+7, 4*20+10+8, 4*20+10+9 Challenge...

code-golf number

Comrade SparklePony

What's the regexp notation for two alphabetic characters characters in a row? I looked online and could not find it, believe it or not. The regex should match az, za, and everything in between. It does not need to be case sensitive, but it should be able to do lowercase.

Business Cat

[A-Za-z][A-Za-z]

Or [A-Za-z]{2}

Comrade SparklePony

Thanks.

Phoenix

\w\w

Business Cat

That also matches digits and underscores though

ETHproductions

8:17 PM

@ATaco Dangit, NewMainPosts is blue :P

Poke

@quartata I think you swapped your AM and PM for noon and midnight in this challenge

quartata

Looks right to me

12 PM is noon

betseg

@KritixiLithos oh thanks

Poke

@quartata correct...

"For the morning (1 A.M to 12 A.M), you say du matin"

quartata

Oh that. All right

Poke

8:26 PM

you have it correct in your test case

quartata

I thought you meant in the examples sorry

Didn't check the rest of the text

Poke

No problem. I like reading through challenges sometimes even if I don't answer and I figured I'd let you know

quartata

Man that challenge sucks though.

Proof I had no idea what I was doing when I first joined

"retrieve current time" instead of taking in a UNIX time stamp or hours/minutes, arbitrary pretty printing of the output, poor explanation of moins

DJMcMayhem

An interesting article for everyone here (Spoiler, it's about Java): The kindgom of nouns

Poke

eh not too bad. it got the point across enough

anyone confused would have had an easy time looking up additional material if they needed it

quartata

8:35 PM

I mean though

Anonymous classes provide all of the benefits of first class functions

So the point is more about syntax really

Which is valid but different from what they're trying to present

Geobits

You can tell that was written by someone staring at a large corporate Java codebase full of buzzwordy patterns.

quartata

I think the problem people have with Java has mostly to do with the fact that it doesn't really try all that hard to be multi-paradigm

Geobits

You don't have to write Java that way.

quartata

People going into it trying to write C or Haskell will be disappointed

Geobits

Yeah. But if they want to write Haskell they should write Haskell.

It's fine for what it is and does.

Poke

8:42 PM

fine like a cafe babe

Geobits

I like dead beef better

Poke

well way to steer us into cowpun territory

Geobits

Perish the thought

quartata

@Geobits Exactly. But nowadays there seems to be an unwritten expectation that languages should have language-level support for as many conflicting paradigms as possible

Which is how you end up with JavaScript: it tries to be OO, procedural, functional and concurrent and it's mediocre at all

ais523

I don't think JS wanted to be concurrent, it was just forced into it by the realities of how the Web works

quartata

8:49 PM

Even though Lua's STDLIB is shit, I respect that it offers simple language level concepts that are primarily procedural in nature but can be used for other paradigms on the user-level

Geobits

That reminds me of an article I read the other day praising some college for dropping Java as its intro language. Which is fine and all, until I read they replaced it with JavaScript.

quartata

@ais523 Well then it really failed since it's single threaded

Erlang was already around so they don't have much excuse for not knowing how to concurrency

Geobits

Except that nobody knows erlang :P

Poke

@ais523 for sure. it was supposed to compliment html way back in netscape or something

now we use it for ajax and all sorts of stuff

quartata

Which is how we ended up in callback hell

ATaco

8:53 PM

I hope you like promises!

Poke

i actually do like promises

compared to what they encapsulate

ATaco

Oh, that's good then.

quartata

Promises are very well suited for the browser but don't fix the root cause of callback hell merely obscure it

ais523

@Geobits I used to teach Java for a university; AFAICT the only reason we use it is to ensure that all our students will be able to get a job, rather than because it's a good intro language

Poke

it also doesn't help that the best javascript has for concurrency is the event machine iirc

quartata

8:55 PM

The root cause being that it makes the control flow of this poor single thread like a pinball machine

Poke

@ais523 i think java is a pretty good intro language... it's easy to learn basics and syntax

quartata

Like give me some actual threads and message passing please

ais523

@Poke I don't think you've seen the number of ways beginner programmers can mangle the syntax :-D

Poke

@ais523 I have :\ I used to teach Java to kids at a summer camp

C++ wasn't easier to teach

although that's the first language that was taught to me

in like 9th grade

ais523

another problem with Java is that it's so IDE-dependent, which is not ideal for learning (either you try to learn without and have to do a painful amount manually, or learn with and get students not understanding what they're doing)

C++ is probably an even worse choice for a beginner language than Java, though

Poke

8:57 PM

i'll agree with both of those statements

when I learned c++ I was confused about a lot of what I was doing until I started learning java

then everything clicked

ATaco

I'm rather glad I don't teach...

ais523

what C++ specialises in (zero-cost abstractions over a low level virtual machine that has lots of undefined behaviour to allow it to be a zero-cost abstraction over a real processor) is basically the opposite of what you want in a beginner language

(I guess one way you could think of it is that C++ is a language that makes assembler programmers more productive)

quartata

I think Go might make a decent beginners language in time

Poke

The reason it was the "intro" language for me was that it forced you to think about things at a lower level. We weren't allowed to use the string library for most of the course

quartata

I don't like it personally but it's relatively simple (very procedural) but has automatic memory management unlike C

Poke

8:59 PM

yeah

C would have been awful, haha

ATaco

Clearly, you should start people on learning Brainfuck.

ais523

@ATaco apparently there's a course that starts with COW

Poke

>.>

really?

ais523

to make the point that a) computers are very simple at the low level, and b) syntax is really unimportant

quartata

Huh

See I like that

Poke

9:01 PM

and ignore the point that readability and maintainability is important..

basically throw all nonfunctional requirements out the window

ais523

@Poke arguably, it makes the point even better; if you don't comment and indent your COW programs you'll likely never be able to edit them

quartata

The thing with C is that it's very simple to understand that basically everything is some sort of number and its control flow is simple

It's just that memory management sucks

And anything higher level to have better memory management loses that low level advantage

ATaco

Also; the Blues pretty consistently have a higher Star count than us reds.

quartata

But a toy language like that doesn't need manual memory management but still shows that simple low level type system

Hmmm

Poke

@ais523 i don't buy it... learning an esolang first isn't super practical

quartata

9:05 PM

@Poke but it doesn't need to be

Poke

learning a language like python or java allows you to take the fundamentals from those languages and apply them to new ones... what major fundamentals do you get from esolangs?

quartata

After using something like that for sufficient time eventually people will start to observe patterns like for loops or proper arrays. That's when you show a practical language that does that for you

Poke

not if your esolang only has like 6 commands...

quartata

I mean that eventually they'll find themselves reusing those patterns even if the implementation of the pattern in an esolang is more complex

It's basically like teaching a friendlier assembly. Everything else can build upon that

Poke

assembly would honestly be a better starting point than an esolang

you should start with a lower level language; not a higher one

don't abstract everything away

that just makes it harder to learn better practices in the future

quartata

9:10 PM

But you are. It's just a kind of assembly that handles some form of memory model for you

Poke

trying to think of a parallel to something else other than programming

i don't have one

quartata

It may not be low level hardware wise but it is low level

Poke

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree

for now, anyway

ooo it's after 5... i should go home

Geobits

I guess I learned the right way. At home with good ol GW-BASIC :D

ATaco

I learnt with GML so not the right way

mınxomaτ

9:32 PM

@LeakyNun It's me what now

ETHproductions

9:55 PM

Hmm, Google Fonts' Inconsolata is acting weird. I'm trying to display "aḃc" (the Combining Dot Above should be above the b) in a textarea; in Firefox, the dot appears above the c, and in Chrome, it displays above the b, but all the text before the combining dot is bold.

It works just fine in both browsers on Google's preview page, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong...

Ironically, it looks perfect in IE8...

...aside from the fact that the combining mark is counted as its own character

Downgoat

@ETHproductions real solution is to use Menlo, DejaVu Sans, then monospace

ETHproductions

10:11 PM

@Downgoat Is Menlo available as a webfont or is this just hoping the user has it installed on their computer?

Oh, it's shipped with OS X, I see

Better include Consolas too for poor Windows users like me

Downgoat

Menlo ships with OS X déjà-vu with windows. Linux users probably have their own set

ais523

dejavu is commonly used on Linux, although most distributions also have their own standard font

ETHproductions

@Downgoat oh really? The wikipedia page on the DejaVu family says it ships with many Linux builds, but doesn't mention Windows

Downgoat

Huh, OK I might be wrong

Phoenix

ETHproductions

10:21 PM

anyway, the combining mark seems to work fine in all of my browsers with Consolas, so I'll include that in my list

TuxCopter

Why do this video nearly have a 1:2 like-dislike ration

Downgoat

@Phoenix you have taken AP CS A test right?

Phoenix

Practice test, you mean?

Ye

Downgoat

@TuxCopter pls add warning, now traumatized after seeing spider D:

TuxCopter

@TuxCopter lol when the vacuum pump is on the YTB subtitles think it's music

flawr

10:29 PM

@Downgoat you should overcome your trauma using /r/spiderbro

ETHproductions

11:42 PM

Wow... just got an upvote less than a second after posting the answer

Dennis

@Downgoat DejaVu is uncommon on Windows and Android, unfortunately.

Phoenix

What's a font that they have on everything?

They all seem different.

ATaco

11:57 PM

As per Mego/Eric's suggestion last night, I've updated TeamSpirit to prepend a little star to the names of each team member, rather than changing their name colour.

But right now only team red seems to be chatting.

Phoenix

That's better

It's pushed?

ATaco

Yeah.

Phoenix

^-^

ASCII-only

@ETHproductions *Lucida Console

Transcript for