The Nineteenth Byte

12:40 AM

Are early PythJamScript answers on questions really that bad that people might not want to answer in their less golfy language?

I guess being a J golfer, I'm just as bad, but usually even J is pretty outclassed by these languages. The fun isn't in being the best, but the best in your language.

(Spurred by comments on a recent question's early GS answer.)

Sparr

early winning(ish) answers definitely dissuade future answers

that applies even in one-language contests

but far more so in contests that allow multiple languages

I don't know pyth or cjam or golfscript or J. Most of my golf experience has been in environments where a) perl was the golfiest language and b) [almost] all participants knew perl

codegolf.com, when it was alive, scored each language separately for every challenge

algorithmshark

You could take the "it's pointless if <golflang> does it better" viewpoint even further, though, and just never bother golfing anything because <golflang> already exists and will win every time over <mylang> in a no-hold-barred cage match.

The judge-each-language-separate thing is the right way of going about it.

Sparr

1:19 AM

I really hope we see some judging/scoring frameworks soon

right now it's too much work for a single challenge poster to manager a leaderboard, etc

algorithmshark

That's unlikely with the SX site model: it's meant to be a Q&A site, and codegolf barely squeezes into that concept already.

Sparr

it could be third party

algorithmshark

And by the way, leaderboards can already be managed by anyone, via edits.

It seems to be an unspoken rule not to edit someone else's anything unless it's straight up bad.

Sparr

1:37 AM

one idea: a bot that makes a leaderboard automatically based on self-scores at the top of posts

we'd need to standardize how to report your own score

for the codebots challenges I made a python script that fetched the biggest code block from each post and saved it with the name of the first h1 in the post

Soham Chowdhury

5:23 AM

I'm thinking of posting a code-challenge involving organic nomenclature.

Conversion between SMILES and InChI would be interesting for a code-golf. However, I think the specialized nature of the challenge would make it very... niche?

And drawing a molecule given a text representation, without using libs that do it for you automagically, would be fun too.

International Chemical Identifier

The IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI /ˈɪntʃiː/ IN-chee or /ˈɪŋkiː/ ING-kee) is a textual identifier for chemical substances, designed to provide a standard and human-readable way to encode molecular information and to facilitate the search for such information in databases and on the web. Initially developed by IUPAC and NIST during 2000–2005, the format and algorithms are non-proprietary. The continuing development of the standard has been supported since 2010 by the not-for-profit InChI Trust, of which IUPAC is a member. The current version is 1.04 and was released in September...

Simplified molecular-input line-entry system

The simplified molecular-input line-entry system (SMILES) is a specification in form of a line notation for describing the structure of chemical molecules using short ASCII strings. SMILES strings can be imported by most molecule editors for conversion back into two-dimensional drawings or three-dimensional models of the molecules. The original SMILES specification was initiated by the author David Weininger at the USEPA Mid-Continent Ecology Division Laboratory in Duluth in the 1980s. Acknowledged for their parts in the early development were "Gilman Veith and Rose Russo (USEPA) and Albert Leo...

Thoughts?

Soham Chowdhury

6:15 AM

Damn, this place is lonely.

Soham Chowdhury

6:30 AM

This is pretty cool: lighttable.com

Sparr

6:49 AM

it gets quiet in here for hours at a time

then very lively for as long again

Peter Taylor

7:08 AM

@Wrzlprmft It's certainly hardware, and it's not obvious to me that it's excluded by the "basic assumptions" rule.

Wrzlprmft

8:24 AM

@PeterTaylor I explicitly mentioned the alignment of the hardware in the specifications (link). Apart from that, USB lava lamps are fine in my opinion.

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