The Nineteenth Byte - 2016-09-22 (page 4 of 6)

« first day (2063 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2781 days later) »

6:00 PM

well, the terminal does it, but I have no idea what its called

Tab completion?

yeah, not a bad name

I guess. To me, "completion" implies that you're completing the command, not inserting up to a certain point. Like in your example, it would show a list of possible commands until you reached one certainty, then insert that.

right, but in the terminal (at least mine), if there are multiple commands that all start with a series of letters, it'll autocomplete up the sequence, and then show you the options

Oh, I know about that. I'm just nitpicking terminology.

6:07 PM

Tab completion is the standard name for it IIRC.

wikipedia calls it "command line completion" or "tab completion"

tab completion is the more common name, but obviously it can be bound to a different button

@NathanMerrill Dangit, I was AFK or I would've stuck a "Batman" right here.

TùxCräftîñg

3 PPCG questions on the HNQ

0

Q: How should we handle Excel answers with drag-down formulas?

This is a very grey area, because while excel is fun to enter, and play around with, often times it's seen as a pseudo-programming language. In Excel, one can drag-down formulas to automatically match cell entries, and other minor patterns. Usually, these formulas are drug to the bottom of the in...

discussion code-golf

@TimmyD lol

6:16 PM

My first meta edit

prays to not get a roll back from Tuskiomi

Traceroute gives "communication administratively prohibited"

Wat iz my isp doin

Which site?

0

A: How should we handle Excel answers with drag-down formulas?

Just count the bytes This is a common question for oddball languages, from Scratch to Minecraft to Lego WeDo. The answer is usually (from what I've seen) to just count the bytes of the saved file. It's a simple method, easily understood by anyone. Will this make the score go up? Probably, but i...

^ i can't put the file in the post, also, this gives a HUGE DISADVANTAGE to oddball languages.

@zyabin101 every site

I'm on lte

ask the ISP

They won't answer the phone

6:25 PM

or search the unblock page for what to do.

@zyabin101 Huge disadvantage how? It's not like you're going to win a code golf using Scratch or Excel anyway. Using a language like that means you chose that disadvantage and are fine with it.

18

Q: How can we help users who are put off by the use of golfing languages?

Every other month someone expresses their (negative) feelings about golfing languages. Here is how this usually goes: they complain that they don't enjoy golfing in the languages they know because some language specifically built for golfing (which looks like gibberish and which they can't read)...

discussion code-golf site-health

^ I don't understand this. Ultimately, this site is not about winning, but solving a puzzle

@BetaDecay Most of us would agree, but that's a biased sample, since we're still here ;)

I've never had an accepted answer, but I still find PPCG extremely enjoyable

@Geobits Haha yeah, probably XD

@Geobits Okay.

Then even better, disallow langs that keep the source in binary files.

Like excel, which keeps the formulae with the sheet, in binary files.

6:32 PM

@BetaDecay I'm in the same boat here

Or scratch, which keeps the stage, costume, scenario,... in a binary file.

@Poke Maybe we should stop accepting answers for code golf

I'd score these langs by keystrokes or by some witty scoring scheme.

@BetaDecay I only got my second accepted answer the other day.

Like scratchblocks text format for scratch, or blytes for Minecraft.

6:35 PM

@BetaDecay I dunno. we definitely emphasize the competition nature. if it was just about puzzles, we wouldn't require objective scoring

In the comments to my answer to that meta question Martin and I discussed the removal of the accept button on ppcg among other things

@zyabin101 The problem with a "witty" scoring system is that it's just one more hurdle for new users to figure out. Having 30 separate scoring systems for 30 languages makes no sense at all to me.

Then score by keystrokes, like TimmyD.

In Scratch? Explain that one to me.

For some langs where the mouse is required, forcefully use and reference a witty scoring scheme.

6:37 PM

clearly we need to score languages by "time it takes you to write it"

@zyabin101 Right. I'm saying that's a problem when bytes is basically universal.

2

Q: Implement tab completion

Tab completion is a useful feature that auto-completes partially written commands. You're going to be implementing it. For example, if the available commands were ['apply','apple','apple pie','eat'], then a would complete to appl, as all of the commands that start with a also start with appl. ...

code-golf string

@NathanMerrill brb learning malbolge

@Geobits I tried. It's hard

Exactly. Infinite points! :D

6:39 PM

haha

TùxCräftîñg

@Poke malbolge is not hard.

it's fuckin impossible

oh my mistake

@zyabin101 Err, Office Open XML isn't a binary file. It's a ZIP of pretty much plain-text XML documents.

everything is binary if you think about it

qed

unary isn't

2

6:40 PM

.

/part

@TimmyD then fitting all these files, along with human readable metadata, in thirty thousand bytes, is very hard.

TùxCräftîñg

gttggg

@zyabin101 By that logic, there should be no Unary answers on the site.

TùxCräftîñg

CMC: write a program to create a effect like ^^

^^

@TùxCräftîñg Clarify.

6:41 PM

@TùxCräftîñg I think that's on main, isn't it?

Assuming you mean abbcccdddd etc

I could be wrong.

alert("^^")

noice

The problem with using a binary file as source for scoring is that it's just one more hurdle for any user to figure out. Having 30 languages that have overly large scores just because some high-rep user suggested to use a scoring scheme for overly large files makes absolutely no sense at all to me.

@Geobits ^

@Geobits I know the source for marky isn't available, is the source for a chatbot similar to it available? (One that you can "train" on different sets of data)

@BaldBantha en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaHAL ?

@zyabin101 "How big is the file" is incredibly easier to explain (and is the same for all of them) and do than "count the bloxels in your main script, then add a few for these particular commands, etc", especially when that explanation is different for every language.

6:45 PM

Either explicitly disallow these langs at all, or score by keystrokes or a witty scoring scheme.

we need a "how to score my language" meta post that references all of the questions

^

Let me create that meta post.

@BaldBantha I just rammed tensorflow (translation rnn model) into SE-Chatbot, tbh. They're both in python (which I don't know well), so I did the bare minimum to get them to function together. There's no other source code to it.

Cool. Thanks.

user image

There are lots of questions that ask "How to score my language?"

Is anyone here sure that meta could benefit from a post to somehow combine these?

6:51 PM

I think so

make sure you include other "how to score X" where X isn't a language. (aka, how do we score compiler options)

Good!

^^

I'd also title it "How to score my code-golf answer?"

^

Good, now add an useful and interesting intro for the question text.

lol

you said you wanted to write it

Okay, I will ~_~

But someone else would review it for me.

6:56 PM

I'd definitely make it community wiki, as it has a high potential to be edited.

But how do I make my question community wiki?

I don't see the dangerous "Community Wiki" check box anywhere on the meta "Ask Question" form.

hmmm

it looks like that's only available on answers

@NathanMerrill really? I thought the only reasonable answer to it would be "do away with all those language-specific made-up rules and score everything by the byte count of a runnable source file" ;)

lol

@MartinEnder And I argued with Geobits against that.

7:01 PM

I wish it was that way. The only problem I really have with it is that the source file is often times impossible to obtain (online languages)

TùxCräftîñg

baaccckkkk

@zyabin101 Does "combine" mean "duplicate" here? If so, could we instead make the "How to score my answer" a FAQ so that it points to the right posts (and isn't redundant)?

wooo! I got site analytics

TùxCräftîñg

c0ngr475

Oh, I'm late to the discussion. I just suggested exactly what Nathan suggested already.

Had to scroll up further

7:06 PM

@Rainbolt We would make it one.

Some times, people tend to use oddball languages like Excel or Scratch, in code golf. The question is, how *exactly* to score these languages?

*Please make answers community wiki, as they have high potential to be edited in the future*. Thank you very much.

^ needs to be finished

You want the question to be independent of the language. We've got a lot of rules surrounding normal languages (like multiple files, compiler options, what about code pages), that all need to be included

But I also want to encourage answers for specific languages.

you'll get them :)

the more useful ones are the ones that give the general rules, however.

fun fact: 64 bit cmd.exe won't display 32 bit executables

or be able to use for that matter

confusing to debug

What should I write in the question description?

El'endia Starman

7:17 PM

I would suggest breaking it into categories, like "Typical language", "Typical language with command line options", "Atypical language", and maybe one other category. Define "typical" as a language where you do one of the following: A) run it like language file.txt to run it, B) paste the code into a text field and click "Run", or C) compile the code and then run the executable. "Atypical" would just mean everything else, and should have a bulleted list pointing to other questions.

@zyabin101 "This isn't necessary since a more universal scoring method has been proposed, but here's a varied list of all our weird, oddball scoring rules to confuse you."

This makes this a rant question.

And makes it very UNHELPFUL.

Hey, I'm not the one proposing it as a question in the first place. If it's an unhelpful rant, I can't help that ;)

It's much better to not add this.

And add the universal scoring method as an answer.

Except that completely negates the point of having a more universal method, if it's surrounded by single-language oddities.

7:22 PM

-.- even if we have a universal method, it won't actually cover all of the possible cases

^

aka, "multifile" submissions has its own meta post

you don't want to include every "how do I score X" in a single meta post

(and I'm talking about where X is not a language)

What should I write in the question description? >_>

therefore, a FAQ for "how do I count the bytes" is still useful

^

7:23 PM

I agree, but it would still be useful to minimize those exceptions as much as possible.

I agree

@BetaDecay That's true, but I see answers in non-golfing languages tending to score less upvotes. To the user, that feels like nobody cares about or even sees their answers.

@zyabin101 do you just want me to write the meta post?

Okay, you do the question. I'll add the answers.

okai? :3

-_-

El'endia Starman

7:24 PM

I think the main pitfall of a universal scoring method based on the byte size of the file is that such a measure is, in some cases, disconnected from a reasonable sense of how much work it takes to solve a problem, so to speak. Or, to put it another way, we want to see who can input the least information to construct a solution. Scoring by tokens is the ideal solution, but that's hard, and byte count is a relatively good alternative. It's simply not possible in some cases, though.

For instance, one can create a solution in Minecraft (as has been done). The byte size of this "file" would be huge, but it doesn't accurately represent how much information has been contributed by the human creating the solution. That is how many blocks have been placed, what they are, their orientation, etc.

...isn't there a language for Minecraft that creates the blocks for you?

I'm pretty sure fewer blocks will generally correlate with a smaller file size.

so you don't actually score it by the world size?

TùxCräftîñg

;redcode-94b
;assert 1
;name wtf
;author tuxcrafting
;strategy 1) paralize the enemy
;strategy 2) kill the enemy
;date 2016-Sep-22
;version 1

start	mov payload, @ptr
	sub #2, ptr
	slt ptr, #secptr
	jmp start
sec	mov secptr, <secptr
	jmp sec
ptr	dat #start-1
payload	spl 0
secptr	dat #start-1

Ooops, TIO exploded

TùxCräftîñg

7:26 PM

^^ evil bot

Aaaand it's back

El'endia Starman

@NathanMerrill I don't know, I'm not the one coding in Minecraft. :P

neither do I, but I remember something like it on a meta post

@Lynn Ohai <3

I've actually never played Minecraft

El'endia Starman

7:27 PM

@MartinEnder So are you suggesting we look at the difference between an "empty" file and one with the solution?

10

A: Programming in Minecraft (Redstone) - how to measure program size?

There is now an MC Standard for bytecount. With the 1.10 update, they introduced a block called the "structure block", which creates a .nbt file representing a structure in its entirety that can be measured in bytes. As this is a Minecraft standard for converting builds into bytes, this should b...

TùxCräftîñg

@NathanMerrill you should

^^

@El'endiaStarman I believe there is a file format for redstone circuits.

There is a minecraft file structure that does this for you and can easily be scored in bytes.

7:27 PM

ninja'd

@NathanMerrill is the question ready yet? :3

oh, I missed your response

El'endia Starman

@Geobits Okay, regardless, it's still something that has to be explained.

I'm just going to make it all in one question

@NathanMerrill reminder: you do the question, I do the answers. Okai? :3

7:29 PM

aka, like this:

20

Q: Community FAQ for Programming Puzzles & Code Golf

Community FAQ For the Programming Puzzles & Code Golf site For official guidance from Stack Exchange, visit the Help Center. Posting Challenges/Solutions How can I incorporate good-looking mathematical exposition into my question/answer? Posting Challenges What details should always be ...

^

However, this must be a faq-proposed yet.

El'endia Starman

What about Excel? An "empty" file is still many bytes. Should we score solutions by the difference between an empty sheet and one with the solution? What if mouse interaction is part of the solution?

^

oh, @El'endiaStarman I don't know if you missed it, but I did a bunch of analysis on word-length to number of messages, and outside of 1-word messages, there's no correlation

If the program doesn't run on its own, it's not a valid solution.

7:31 PM

Maybe I'm not seeing it, but how would mouse interaction be a part of it?

@El'endiaStarman which is why I think mouse interaction shouldn't be part of the solution

@Fatalize Unfortunately I've been very busy with other things and PPCG has been more or less put on the back burner for now. (cc @Mego)

Holy carp it's Alex!

TùxCräftîñg

:O:O:O

El'endia Starman

For different code pages, the basic idea is that characters are being reassigned to code points, so simply scoring by UTF-8 is going to inflate the byte count beyond what it would be if an extended ASCII encoding was used. So you have to specify that too.

7:32 PM

Congratulations @AlexA. on returning back to PPCG!

Haha thanks

Hello Alex A; how were other things?

@El'endiaStarman This still boils down to "what's the smallest file size you can actually run that solves teh problem"

El'endia Starman

@Geobits You can click-drag to copy formulas to other cells.

^

7:33 PM

(e.g. you can't score in extended ASCII if your interpreter can't handle that)

@El'endiaStarman I know people don't agree, but I've always felt it would be simpler to just score by straight up bytes for basically everything.

Someone should star my congrats.

:3

@Geobits well, I agree :)

Someone should not beg for stars.

3

Thanks :3

El'endia Starman

7:33 PM

@Geobits Simpler, yes, but not accurate, I think.

@zyabin101 Other things were fine, though they aren't over ;)

@El'endiaStarman I don't see why it's less accurate.

Well, considering we just had a recent conversation about making things more welcoming on meta, simpler might be a good answer to that. The learning curve here is just ridiculous.

removing the bytes of an empty excel file is like removing all of the cruft around Java programs to make them work

nice

7:35 PM

A 20 KB empty file is the price you pay for using a bloated proprietary language.

@NathanMerrill I don't have a problem with that. Scoring used to be on full programs here, so the "cruft" was counted when I started anyway. Only when the community moved to functions did that change.

right, but we still require the def a() on python functions

@NathanMerrill is the question ready yet?

@zyabin101 working, be patient.

@NathanMerrill I don't see the problem

yes you do pay the price of the empty file

so what

7:36 PM

right, I agree

Everyone should just golf in the same language; then we could go by character count. gg ez

I was saying we shouldn't remove the bytes of an empty file because we don't allow to remove the bytes of "def"

@Poke That would be the simplest solution :P

javagolf.stackexchange.com

I'm glad no one disagrees. It's settled!

Oh, a separate stack for each language. I like it.

7:39 PM

nono just java

Just like Portugese SO or Russian SO ;)

lol

> intercalgolf.stackexchange.com

El'endia Starman

Like, Claude Shannon's insight that started information theory was that information is intrinsically linked to randomness and prediction. That is, the more you can cut out from a given text and still reconstruct the original, the lower its information content. I'm trying to draw an analogy between this and code in various languages. To do tasks in any given programming language, you have to string together various concepts, to put it abstractly. I think we should try to count those concepts.

So you're saying answers should just be snippets from now on

7:42 PM

Hmm, is code golf on Vi and Vim on? :3

Probably not.

I'm not sure that's possible. "Atomic" golf has been tried before, but it always seems to have serious problems.

@El'endiaStarman this goes all the way back to adjusting the score by the number of valid characters and stuff (e.g. counting each BF character as 3 bits). I don't think this is really simplifying anything or helping anyone.

El'endia Starman

But that's why we have so many adjustments to the base rules.

Defining what counts as a concept across varying languages would be far harder, and would end up with even more complicated rules.

2

Also, there's still the point that languages shouldn't be compared anyway. So who cares if Excel submissions are huge, as long as two Excel submissions are comparable (and beating an Excel submission in Excel is meaningful)

6

7:43 PM

^ this

It's that time of day where star becomes "I agree" instead of "This is interesting"

4

Well, that had to happen :)

blows tip of finger

hi

<Monumental statement that at least 5 people agree with here>

/me crosses fingers

hi @Yodle

7:45 PM

@Poke check this out codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/94224/59170

TùxCräftîñg

Poke crosses fingers

Does Mathematica have a SimulateUniverse built-in function? — Digital Trauma Nov 4 '15 at 21:32

3x longer than all the other answers, but I tried

@Rainbolt Happens every day around 12:45 PM Pacific time

@Yodle you have the best c# answer for that question. you've won!

TùxCräftîñg

user image

7:47 PM

Yayyy

TùxCräftîñg

;_;

Great. Now I have to submit a Java answer. Can't be letting C# get away with that ;)

El'endia Starman

@MartinEnder We do still have languages being compared. Why else do people do golfing races? :P

@Geobits I may have beaten Yodle's C# answer with java in this question

El'endia Starman

Also, belated welcome-back @AlexA.. Will you continue popping in and out, or are you "back for good", so to speak?

7:49 PM

so it IS possible

@Poke I always enjoy a good C#-thrashing :D

I'll likely still be in and out, unfortunately

But thanks :)

@Poke Oh, I know. I've battled it out a few times with them.

@Geobits See, this is the problem with not comparing across languages. You miss out on the Java/C# rivalry.

I prefer Java too, I'm just using C# since my work currently deals with it and I figured might as well golf in the same language

7:51 PM

I don't compare across languages to win, though. I only do it because it's fun to talk trash ;)

El'endia Starman

Maybe we should revisit our previous attempts to group languages, like this Meta answer by Alex.

I don't see many c# answers so keep it up, yodle

Well there's my excuse for losing to java, @El'endiaStarman's post has Java in a lower group than C#.

TùxCräftîñg

haha

Maybe that's referencing Java8

confusedandamused

7:54 PM

If I am just joining this community is there a decent way to go about getting 50+ rep so I can comment on others posts?

@confusedandamused I posted a question

@confusedandamused Post questions and answers :)

(use the sandbox first)

TùxCräftîñg

@confusedandamused get more rep on SO and use the assoc bonus

confusedandamused

Oh so you came up with a question you mean?

I'm sorry, but what is ths assoc bonus?

The*

7:55 PM

@El'endiaStarman being encouraged to improve yourself by the score of another language is great. Being discouraged by not possibly being able to beat another language is pointless.

That is what I found to be the easiest way to be able to comment/upvote.

TùxCräftîñg

when you get >200 rep on a site, you automagically get 100 rep on any other site when you sign up (or on site where you were already)

@confusedandamused

confusedandamused

Ah I see - @TùxCräftîñg didn't know that I'm just starting to become active on SO and SE in general. I try not to post too many questions and flood the queue with duplicates, so gaining 200 rep might take a little bit of time

TùxCräftîñg

answers

Especially here, it's often easier to get the initial rep with answers. There are a lot of pitfalls questions can fall into.

7:57 PM

@Nathan is the question ready yet?

still writing it

I've got 13 questions so far

TùxCräftîñg

i have 6 questions and 81 answers

confusedandamused

@TùxCräftîñg Is there a specific amount of rep rewarded per answer or is it per upvotes?

Per upvote

+10 for each upvote on an answer

TùxCräftîñg

1 upvote = +10 for answers/+5 on questions, 1 downvote = -2, and accepted/accepting answer = +2

7:58 PM

+5 for each on a question

@Geobits A lot.

Sorry, my italicizer is lazier when I'm on mobile ;)

confusedandamused

@Geobits Yeah for ~me~ getting an answer here would be challenging since I'm not super well versed just yet o.O but I really enjoy reading and following this community

« first day (2063 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2781 days later) »

Transcript for

Sep '1622

The Nineteenth Byte

The Nineteenth Byte: General discussion for codegolf.stackexc...

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile