@Calvin'sHobbies - Is this entry valid - codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/40794/31414 ?

the poster says that it is. I am unsure.

It uses some characters other than tab, newline and printable ASCII.

I (Dr. Rebmu on CodeGolf) believe that it's less in spirit of the evolutionary challenge to try and browbeat everyone to steer towards Java than it is to run a program that renders the ASCII code values in a system that doesn't have those characters available.

The program cannot use ASCII 0x5B for open brace, because there is no open brace, so it uses what 0x5B is if you were to literally write it into the string memory.

You are dragging the Java thing. That was my first post mentioning Java, I have 11 others.

You commented asking people not to move away from it, then posted with a "spoiler" that you're going toward it.

yes, 1 comment because I knew he wil be posting soon. It was not an order.

I don't think there is any point in discussing with you given your harsh comments on the answer already. I will just let @Calvin'sHobbies reply .

but as of now, any further answer to the question is not possible because your answer is in a speculation of correctness.

:(

Well, I perceived initially that you had gone on the offensive due to not abiding by the "get closer to java" rule. Because you were not explicit, and I had made an error in updating my posts, I thought you were suggesting the distance was measured as what you saw as "non-ascii" being deltas.

It turned out I had made a mistake in the copy/paste during the update, so that assumption was wrong. However I don't think it was that wrong...as I do believe there is part of your desire to steer the process; so your continued belief that there is a problem with it comes from not liking the 7 characters that "get in the way" of your vision of where to steer the evolution. Just a suspicion based on it. As in: if the answer got closer to your perceived endpoint you would be more tolerant.

You answer was no where moving away from Java, so your point is based on false accusations

Perhaps, but it doesn't get closer.

Anyway, the issue is more about the "spirit of the game". Do consider it from my point of view. I'd sat around tinkering in an emulator, found some surprising things (I didn't know it was even possible to write things like 2print("Hello World!"); in commodore BASIC, I guess I'd never tried to omit the space or throw in parentheses and semicolons back in the day.

I thought it would be illegal, that you'd have to write 1 print "Hello World". So I was surprised.

Even knowing that, I thought it would be impossible because 1REM to get a comment was 4 already, and 3REM would be 8. Game over.

But I remembered you could PRINT with a ?, so I went and looked around for other abbreviations. None for REM. But lo and behold, a completely corrupt data statement could be abbreviated as dA. Effectively a comment, as long as you don't read from it.

(And it would mess up any other legitimate data statement usages in your program happening after it)

Not remembering much C64 basic at this point, I didn't know if I could use the sT abbreviation for stop after print("Hello World!") or not. Answer is no.

Anyway, then I have to sort of finesse this question of what to do about the 5 characters unavailable to type in on the C64. So I read up a bit and learn a little.

In the "so crazy it just might work" department it worked. I didn't get any notification of new answers (apparently the "order by oldest" doesn't have a way of popping up a new answer at the tail, might be a good feature request). So your change got in ahead of mine.

I deleted my answer to look at it. And I updated it, making an error in copying the first line in the process that lost your void. My mistake.

But then, a quick -1 and order to delete from you. And I believe I'd seen you before edit someone else's post with a strikeout over the title when they didn't act within your margin of timing tolerance. I may be incorrect and it was someone else; you can correct me here if I'm wrong.

(It was just one case I noticed where something required user input, and if they didn't hit enter then it would print the string they entered instead of "Hello World")

Not feeding the troll. But I did not -1

Well, I didn't -1 you either, I almost never downvote.

And @Optimizer the anonymous, what makes you a non-troll, exactly?

What are you about?

not feeding the troll is a saying

I know, but presumably you were referring to me by it, and thus I assume you're establishing a class hierarchy of trolls and non-trolls by it. You presumably would not consider yourself one.

I sure did edited invalid answers in order for other users to skip those while basing their entries.

All right, and I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, but there is an issue of tone and what it means to play a game and how things sound.

@HostileFork Yes I understand that your post is "in the spirit" of the contest, but it it still technically invalid. Sorry.

@Calvin'sHobbies As it's your contest, I'll abide by your rules, but I feel it should be left up.

I don't think it goes as far as "any 97 unique characters".

@Optimizer But consider the response from Calvin vs yours. He offers a compliment "Sorry but as clever as this may be" ... well, he has something positive to say about an effort (which I'm certain took more effort and time than many of the other entries). This makes a lot of difference in how one is "heard". He didn't tell me what to do. Consequently I did my own strikeout on the heading, removed the answer number, etc. It's no big deal.

I'd like to leave it up because I think it's interesting, else I'd not have done it.

But I have no stake in points or winning or anything like that. I'd just like it to be fun.

I'll also point out that I was actually advocating for making conspiracies and set-ups, or editing answers if someone had a good case for how to make the chain longer. So it's not that I have a problem with you having Java ambitions, but...

Compare:

To "I think you might have missed the additions I made in 125 (where's void :-/). But even if you include those, I wonder if such transformations are legal into systems that do not use ASCII. I think we should ask the OP if this is fair game or not..."

To which I'd have likely said something like "Oh, whoops! Hm, yes, it's rather complex because I can't copy paste in the emulator so there's a lot of manual typing going on every time, it's error prone. As for whether it's legal, I think it's in the spirit. I'd accept it if it were my contest. But I guess it's up to the powers that be."

The next question would be: what if all characters in the program could be entered on the Commodore keyboard, even though it's not using ASCII? None of the 5 characters that aren't available appear. Would it be valid then?

I'm tempted to pick some dumb languages with the sole goal of eliminating [, ], {, }, and `\` just to test that case. But it's distance 9 to get there.

Even still, you can't change the fact that lowercase a is 65 in shifted PETSCII; but is question "if you type these characters in on a keyboard" vs. "does your keyboard use ASCII"?

@Optimizer Anyway I am deleting my remark from when I thought you were attacking the usage of non-ASCII-appearance but ASCII-valued entities as being in the Levenshtein distance.

For the historical record, that remark was "No, it has distance 7. Your Java dream is a one-man crusade. Not everyone has the same idea of fun, and you're free to downvote if you like but ordering people to delete interesting things in favor of banality is not good sportsmanship. There are plenty of directions to go here and print("Hello World"); is still in tact. There are lots of languages and lots of tricks out there. Calm down."

I was incorrect, and deleting it does not invalidate your subsequent clarification, which ideally would have been in the first comment.

@Optimizer I often forget how much younger some people are. 23/24ish, hmmm...also cross-cultural. Perhaps there's a lot of projection of my expectations and wishes for the Internet to be the Internet I want it to be (vs. the Internet that it is). But I think it's good advice to remind you to keep the "fun" in mind. Becoming a self-appointed dictator of the rules, editing people's questions, demanding immediate deletions, directing to java in comments...is just not in the spirit.

There are all these sidebar things popping up about people talking about trying to strike balance in role playing games on the RPG stackexchange, and as comical as I find them sometimes, I've actually started to think those questions are about as relevant to life as any of the programming questions are.

Because we are playing a game on top of a game, and I guess just like with the RPG it's an important thing to ask "are we still having fun?" and "how do we keep everyone from quitting and throwing the board off the table".

I'm just going to have do disagree with you there. Sure -- enforcing the rules at the cost of nice is something you do when it's life or death, you don't make excuses for incorrectness when planes crash or bridges fall down. Tough love is necessary there.

You do realize that this is an open chatroom with other people too ?

@Optimizer All chat rooms are open, no one else is talking.

sure, but your chats are directed particularly towards me about your personal opinions. If you want, you could have sent these in a separate room.

I guess, but I am specifically discussing how to approach a collective process.

Also. You are taking things too far, and I am no longer arguing with your false accusations, so even if you do ping in a separate room, I don't think I can bring myself to reply to you.

FTR, there are other people who also want a java solution

even before i pointed it out.

and similar things were done to get to a C one too.

@Optimizer Instead of saying "false accusations" will you identify what exactly I have accused you of that is false?

and its called collaboration , not dictatorship.

I cited a comment, non-falsely, where you asked someone to please not make changes that didn't enable a Java solution. The false thing I retracted was thinking that you opposed my answer because it didn't get closer to Java, and I said we'll never really know if I could have squeezed it closer to Java if you'd not have complained about it. But that doesn't really matter. Are there any other false accusations if I drop that one?

So bear in mind, I'm not like, your mortal enemy or anything.

You did the Rebol and Red examples, and I work with those languages, and tinker in them a lot. So it's nice to see the attention.

I'm only suggesting that it's important to remember that it's a game, and this is fun, and to stay on that track in the framing and phrasing. When you are calling people trolls, ordering them to delete answers immediately, editing questions with strikeouts because people aren't reacting fast enough... the only thing I suggest is that could indicate you're taking it in a direction that's losing the good spirit.

To the extent it's a dictatorship, I do think that the OP is sort of the rulemaker for a challenge, and if they fail as the challenge maker they get overruled by having their challenge closed. That's the community leverage.

If the community overthrows an OP they make a new question and close the old one, but the question was their question.

I wonder if that assumption of mine has a meta post or not.

I'm not a native speaker and probably can't explain these ideas very well, but I was once a person who wishes for the Internet to be the Internet I want it to be, too, I think.

@HostileFork If you assume no one can order another at the beginning, there isn't so much problem. I'd always decide whether to enable a Java solution myself. It was not because someone seemed to be ordering me.

The fact is, someone could, and should order someone else, in the past, for good reasons. It was frustrating finding out things had been changed around me. But It is a worse idea to assume it had not.

@user23013 Well as much as it may seem I am making a big deal, I don't want a big deal, it's rather just asking the opposite... it is a vocal call for calm. If that makes any sense. War for peace, etc.

I tried to paint the picture of what it's like to have a weird idea, spend effort, and then get yelled at as if one's efforts are not sincere. And I petition a lot for benefit of the doubt on StackOverflow Q&A in general; the "nicer to new users" thing. And this isn't about new users necessarily, it's just about be nice.

Just a reminder that it's a game. Games don't need prison guards, they need "GM"s.

But indeed, the Internet is a rather freeform thing. It doesn't conform to any particular person's expectations. Unless you're a cable monopoly or the NSA, in which case, well, it says what you want and you look at what you want to.

And I do think the "out of band" guidance of evolution has a certain didactic nature, where people can experience the "oooh, almost!" but some other entry beats you to the punch on the timer. That's part of what I think makes this particular challenge interesting. Though it could be interesting also to take it on a set-up concept like what Optimizer was pushing for. I just don't think that's one person's decision either.

Sorry, as a non-native speaker, it takes me time to catch up.

In fact I have tried at least 7 languages that I didn't post an answer. 2 of them are posted later. And 3 of them are posted by someone else. That's probably why someone thinks this is more suitable for chatrooms.

@user23013 If you're not aware, ell.stackexchange.com is a rather friendly environment for English questions. At least at the moment. Many people there are refugees from English Language & Usage, which is kind of jerkish a lot of the time (but especially toward non-native questioners).

@HostileFork If I'm the dictator for the challenge then I'm the dictator here too. Please stop filling this chat with needless blocks of text.

@HostileFork We can move to somewhere else

@Calvin'sHobbies The favicon for your website is nothing but a black square, Mr. Stauffer. Whyzzat?

One must deliberately offer a black square icon as a favicon to get that. It doesn't happen by default.

I think the accusation "needless blocks of text" requires a greater attention to having veracity in one's own affairs.

And, moreover, living up to an idea of "intention".

@Calvin'sHobbies I'd think after holding you up as an example of diplomacy, you might have lived up to more with at least "I'd prefer to specifically discuss the evolutionary aspects of this question. Maybe if you want to talk to user X or Y you could make a channel for that" But apparently I assume again too much.

"The Internet I want" vs "The Internet I have"

"needless" is relative, again being the point. The whole idea of code golf and puzzles is considered needless by many, as if the whole pursuit is the work of misguided people who don't know what to do with themselves.

@Calvin'sHobbies I do not think, that there is a lot of value in chat-kicking to make symbolic gestures. I think it's better to lay out a clear definition as to what you consider topical or not.

@HostileFork The whole point of this chatroom is to discuss the question, not have philosophical conversations with yourself.

one man's "needless blocks of text" is another's "I think this might be important"

Well, I will also point out, that this had already drifted into the generic code golf chat channel prior

I'd say that discussing a bit of process fallout experienced in the question on topic is more relevant than leaking that.

@HostileFork You're just having a discussion with yourself which no one seems to be taking much notice of...

Exactly

@BetaDecay Well, you just replied. I got a one minute chat-timeout. That seems like being noticed.

I do think there's a relevant point, which might be important, else I wouldn't bother saying anything.

But I feel that way with StackOverflow in general, which is a bit of an...er...well everyone on every side of the political spectrum says there are problems.

I just don't like seeing those problems spread even into the "fun" sites.

@HostileFork There's a difference between being noticed and someone wanting you to stop discussing whatever the hell you're talking about.

Sorry to be abrupt but I couldn't put it any other way

Well, I suppose not being understood is a big problem worth stopping and paying attention to.

You know the scene in Blade Runner, with the Voight Kampff test, where Leon is being tested and there's the machinery and such?

Never seen Blade Runner...

I watched it recently, and had a different observation on the scene than I'd had before.

It's sort of famous, but the idea is that it's a test to determine if you're a "real person" or a "replicant". They have a machine to determine it.

Ah okay

As a movie it has generally been considered to have stood the test of time, although, it's 30 years now... but for its day, it was the highest production design budget

What was your observation on the scene?

Anyway, the whole movie is about these artificial humans who aren't supposed to be on Earth, and if they're caught they can be tested with this device. And to try and stay as on topic in the sanitary "chat" room as I can, I'll just say that it was considered paramount to determine if the party to the conversation was either "real" or "replicant". You might categorize as "real mail" or "spam".

My modified observation, which I hadn't had before, was about Leon's question.

"Do you make up these questions Mr. Holden, or do they write them down for you?" Some more things happen, and then he says "In answer to your question, they're written down for me..."

I hadn't noticed prior that response as coming right before Leon's decision to shoot him.

So Leon was actually the tester. Once he knew that the test was a script, he was the hunter of the fake auditors.

Hm. Interesting idea... Anyone else think it's correct?

I don't know. I also have had a hard time getting people to back me up that Radioheads "OK Computer" is actually "0K" (as in zero-kilobyte, memoryless) computer, which would fit with Amnesiac as another record title.

They don't say so, and you won't find a record of it.

In any case, I am only speaking somewhat pleadingly about the nature of someone walking up to a system. Perhaps it is chat, or StackOverflow, or wherever you go to give your offerings.

What I asked of Optimizer was to be kinder. I didn't particularly ask anything of Calvin'sHobbies but he seems to think there's a need to protect the chat channel because it's so much more important than anything else. And I pointed out he wasn't really defending it before. It was generic chat up until something annoyed him. Me taking him to task on if he really had complete purpose on his website and favicon probably didn't help that.

Anyway, there's lots to talk about in general chat, and I agree it's good to not wander too far afield.

Because you could wind up talking about anything after a few steps.

I wrote lines of text and I felt unsuitable to post them now

@user23013 Made a new room if you have things to say

Really, the only things I'll point out about an evolutionary challenge such as this, is that due to the dependency it runs a risk. The risk is that someone might sit around for a while hacking on an odd solution, another solution comes in underneath them, it's frustrating... in this case I accounted for it but due to the emulator process and lack of cut and paste ability my mechanical attempt at rapid update failed

I found Optimizer to take an antagonistic police tone about it when a friendlier one would have helped me correct my error and we could all have warm fuzzies. Which is why I think at the end of the day the warm fuzzies question is important enough; because what a sad world it would be if the heat death of every StackExchange site--no matter how ostensibly fun the purpose--becomes pedants and policemen yelling and downvoting. Keeping every game, evolution or otherwise, fun is the point.