The Nineteenth Byte

Geobits

10:04 PM

For those that can see deleted on SO, I just ran across this guy..... stackoverflow.com/questions/40222025/…

flawr

Screenshot please:)

trichoplax

I think the discussion of whether that is justification for closing is more important than the discussion of whether there should be a specific close reason allocated to it.

Do we have such a discussion?

Geobits

Good question

Nathan Merrill

@Geobits sheesh, what a negative profile

" I code no matter what position I have held because "programmers" are mostly lazy under-performers and I have to step in to get the job done. In my 35+ years in the business, I have literally met under five programmers worth their weight in salt. The rest, ineffective."

quartata

@Geobits Screenshot?

Geobits

10:06 PM

It's a bit big for a single screenshot, but here's a taste from the comment section:

> wow. hostile audience. Apparently, IDEs are favored for creating "page"-oriented network traffic. Too bad I offered some insights into coding GREAT APPLICATIONS and you think it constitutes "noise". Wow. Someone using an IDE is like a "chick" wanting an "automatic shift" car instead of a "stick shift" car. If you're not coding straight out of notepad, you're a rookie. My opinion. Now, can anyone answer my question?

Anonymous

@Geobits He seems pleasant

quartata

@Geobits Obvious troll.

Anonymous

@trichoplax Fair point. I should write up a discussion question.

flawr

@Geobits Honestly, I do agree. There is nothing better than coding in the notepad and drivin stick shift cars.

trichoplax

I see they have avoided offending anyone by protecting potentially offensive words with "quotes"

Nathan Merrill

10:08 PM

To those that prefer notepad to an IDE: Do you also prefer wget to a browser?

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

♫ For the first time in forever the US is exporting oil ♫

trichoplax

@Mego I do think that discussion is an important one. I know it's been mentioned before informally but I can't remember a meta discussion (or find one with a quick search)

Nathan Merrill

it belongs here, I think:

Geobits

@quartata It's hard to tell looking at the full thing. He seems to genuinely need an answer, but it's just so off-putting that nobody's going to help:

Nathan Merrill

48

Q: Things to avoid when writing challenges

If there is something that you find annoying / counterproductive / unfair / detrimental / no longer funny in challenges (question posts), describe it in an answer here, and propose a recommended response. Voting will indicate whether that response has the backing of the community. For example, y...

Geobits

10:09 PM

> Does anyone know the answer to this VB.NET/C# compatibility internals question or am I too advanced for this discussion group? Of course I can just "try it", but trying to save time and so many of you seem to be experts. Please advise. Thanks.

Nathan Merrill

didn't mean to ping you, sorry :)

Helka Homba

@Geobits that Dilbert strip might be a good answer

Geobits

That's the one I thought you meant, but it's always good to verify my psychic capabilities.

trichoplax

@NathanMerrill It's fine. Although I was aware of that one, funnily enough ;) I think that might be a good place for this, although I wonder if a separate discussion first would allow more input (people tend to just vote on an answer, so a new question might get more conversation going).

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill Though it may be mentioned in that post, that's just a list of things that one should avoid. There's no policy there, and so there's no teeth. I'm saying we should explicitly make those types of challenges off-topic, thus having a policy to cite when closing them.

Nathan Merrill

10:13 PM

Yeah, its my personal opinion that it shouldn't have teeth

trichoplax

@Mego That's a good point

(Sorry, I was speaking in favour of the teeth)

There isn't yet an answer on that meta question about this, so there isn't even a toothless version yet

Anonymous

Nathan Merrill

Helka Homba

What's better: KitKat or Peanut M&Ms

trichoplax

I think that a winning criterion should be fair, not just objective. The two seem to go together. So the score should be identical regardless of who posted the answer.

Geobits

10:15 PM

Anonymous

@trichoplax Exactly my reasoning.

Nathan Merrill

@trichoplax that's a good point.

Geobits

@HelkaHomba KitKat by almost any measure, but it's not like they're really in the same category of candies.

Nathan Merrill

which actually has more grip than "include your name". Aka, its why we don't allow for fastest-code on personal computers

trichoplax

(I know we've had several challenges based on username or avatar that did well, but I still think it would be better to ban this, so a challenge based on a name/avatar has to be the same for everyone)

Nathan Merrill

10:16 PM

fastest-code on a personal computer (while susceptible to cheating) is technically objective

but it isn't fair

trichoplax

I guess fairness is easy to assume, so we've never made a rule for it, but we need to assess whether the community requires it

Geobits

@HelkaHomba Also, if you word it as: CMC: Output which is better, KitKat or Peanut M&M's, you'll probably get more responses for some reason.

trichoplax

I don't see the point in peanut M&Ms. Peanut butter M&Ms, on the other hand...

Anonymous

Wow... After nearly a year, Signal Processing got their design. I guess we shouldn't complain too much.

trichoplax

Especially as it's objectively easier to make a design for Signal Processing than it is for whatever we are

Helka Homba

10:20 PM

@trichoplax Sorry. PPCG != PoetryPCG

trichoplax

That seems very apt

(...and I don't just say that because I'm proposing making some of your challenges off topic)

Helka Homba

@trichoplax You know. I seriously thought I was talking to Downgoat.

trichoplax

I still haven't got used to seeing Downgoat's halloween avatar. It's like catching sight of your reflection after a significant haircut, when you're not quite sure if it's yourself

Another week of confusion and then we can start the long process of getting used to things being back to normal

And a new design

Nathan Merrill

@trichoplax and you put yourself through this because...

Anonymous

Gah... Just got a call from my recruiter. The meeting to decide whether or not I will have a job at Google is happening in an hour and a half. I don't know if it's better or worse now that I know the time.

trichoplax

10:25 PM

@NathanMerrill Last year there was no confusion as Downgoat's avatar hadn't been invented. I didn't realise how confusing it was going to get this year...

Nathan Merrill

@Mego go for a run

Anonymous

I have errands to run, actually. That's sort of the same.

Helka Homba

Orangey. Or not?

Dada

@Mego out of curiosity, what kind of job and what field is it?

trichoplax

@HelkaHomba Orangey

Slightly more chance of confusion with Rainbolt

Anonymous

10:29 PM

@Dada Software engineer

New Meta Posts

0

Q: Should challenges that give unfair advantages to certain users be off-topic?

Consider the following two challenges: This Sandboxed challenge gives an unfair advantage to users who have been around longer and contributed more towards collaborative golfing efforts. The original version of this challenge gave an unfair advantage to users with short usernames (and changing ...

discussion policy scope

Anonymous

@HelkaHomba Gah your avatar is frightening

Helka Homba

Thank you

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Permutation-Tolerant Hello World Inspired by Fault-Tolerant Hello World (a.k.a. the Interview). Task Write a program that prints Hello World. Sounds easy, right? Ok, lets challenge up a bit : your (real) task is to maximum the number of permutations of the characters of your code that produce ...

trichoplax

Is it just an inversion? It looks very halloweeny

Helka Homba

10:30 PM

@trichoplax + hue shift + white eyes

trichoplax

OK no longer as impressed :P

It works well though

Dada

@Mego no specific area? operational research, machine learning, framework testing, ... or just "software engineer" with no details? ^^

@Mego I'll apply to some jobs at google within the next days as well, so that's why I'm a bit curious too ;)

Nathan Merrill

I didn't have a specific area. I'm pretty sure that starts when you actually join a team

Anonymous

@Dada I'll specifically be working on development tools for the Google Cloud platform for PHP development

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

> PHP

okay then

Dada

10:36 PM

^^

PHP is fine, it looks like perl!

@Mego ok thanks!

Nathan Merrill

@Mego how do you know all that? Doesn't your location do multiple things?

trichoplax

Anything looks like perl if you golf it enough

Dada

@Mego and... break a leg I guess!

Jonathan Allan

@HelkaHomba Chunky peanut butter KitKat - if you are lucky enough to get them where you live.

Dada

Huhu @trichoplax (for the reccord, I feel like the dollar signs are an important part of perl's charm - and unreadability maybe-, and you won't have them with a lot of languages!)

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

10:40 PM

Oppurtunity: give me some fun cool thing to do that does not require paying

trichoplax

@Dada I know it's not really true - I realised it as soon as I said it...

Nathan Merrill

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC To Arms! for Android

Dada

@trichoplax made me laugh though ;)

trichoplax

:)

Nathan Merrill

its a deck-builder puzzle-ish game

Dmitry Kudriavtsev

10:43 PM

Ruby == Perl

quartata

@DmitryKudriavtsev It's really not.

Dmitry Kudriavtsev

When golfed**

quartata

10:59 PM

@DJMcMayhem Can you tell me the proper way to right justify a block of text in vim?

DJMcMayhem

Well, there is the :right command, but I'd have to see an example

quartata

I have a very long list of numbers that I need to right justify like this:

New Meta Posts

0

Q: How Long Should I keep an Indefinite bounty open?

I little while back I awarded Dennis a 500 rep bounty for his excellent answer to one of my indefinite bounties. Thinking that Dennis would want his well deserved rep as soon as possible, I awarded the bounty within minutes of the end of the 24 hour holding period, only to discover that this was...

discussion

quartata

Dammit markdown

DJMcMayhem

Are you familiar with vim ranges?

quartata

11:09 PM

Yes.

DJMcMayhem

OK. So just do :{range}right 4

quartata

Oh OK :P

DJMcMayhem

Obviously you can tweak "4"

quartata

That's easy enough

Helka Homba

This turnip-o'-lantern is way scarier than any pumpkin I've ever seen.

DJMcMayhem

11:11 PM

@HelkaHomba Hehe, I like the avatar

Dmitry Kudriavtsev

Does anyone want to minecraft?

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

@DmitryKudriavtsev @HelkaHomba does minecraft on youtube, ask him/her

DJMcMayhem

@quartata sometimes it gets hackier than that haha

Dmitry Kudriavtsev

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC I know, I play on his/her server

Helka Homba

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC He's talking about the new (temporary) MC server I set up the other day - helkahomba.mcserver.ws

Dmitry Kudriavtsev

11:16 PM

whup

Should i put the armor back?

@Helka

Helka Homba

idc

SE request: Make NewMainPosts faster

New Main Posts

2

Q: Draw an ASCII-O'-Lantern for Halloween

Halloween is almost here, the holiday after which most people need to wean themselves off a hollow diet of sugar. Write a program that takes in a positive integer. If the integer is less than 31 (1 through 30), output this ASCII-art jack-o'-lantern, looking to the right as if looking forward to ...

code-golf ascii-art kolmogorov-complexity integer

Dmitry Kudriavtsev

11:42 PM

Hey @Helka I answered your challenge

how tf do you do strike throughs in chat?

trichoplax

@DmitryKudriavtsev ---like this---

gives ~~like this~~

Dmitry Kudriavtsev

Oooooh

On reddit it's ~~~

trichoplax

Then we've both learned something...

Anonymous

11:58 PM

@NathanMerrill The location does do multiple things. That's the team I will be working on. All I'm waiting for now is the finalization of the job offer by the SVPs. That meeting is happening now.

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