The Nineteenth Byte

@NathanMerrill I actually can't immediately come up with a way to protect all of my lines in CB2, since there's no way to save the results of Modified

Nathan Merrill

@Sparr the goal here is not to protect all of your lines

especially considered that insta-attacks are not possible

Sparr

6:07 PM

it was a useful strategy in CB1 :(

Nathan Merrill

well, depending on the bot, they aren't possible

yes. This is a different competition. These bots are fundamentally different, so you need different strategies

Sparr

a bot can only escape instant attacks if there's no bot in front of it, right?

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill are there literals for line and condition types? or can I just compare them with each other?

Sparr

when I detect a neighbor, I want to move, but if I can't move then I need to turn first, and I'll get attacked between the turn and the move

Nathan Merrill

There are no literals Martin

Martin Büttner

6:08 PM

so all I can do is keep them around in my own code to check against, if I need a specific type?

Nathan Merrill

@Sparr correct, but you can detect if C gets changed

or if a line gets changed

correct Martin

Sparr

can I detect if C was changed by someone else? if that triggers on my own changes, it's not very useful for defense

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill sounds good!

Sparr

and detecting line changes is only useful if I have something to do about it

Nathan Merrill

You shouldn't be using C very much

Martin Büttner

6:10 PM

also, conditional lines are executed even if the condition isn't met, in case C points at them?

Nathan Merrill

yes

Sparr

@NathanMerrill what are you using to compile/run the controller?

Nathan Merrill

Java

Sparr

can you be more specific?

Nathan Merrill

IntelliJ on Java 8

Martin Büttner

6:12 PM

There's no way to determine the owner of a flag, is there?

Nathan Merrill

Sparr, its fairly easy to jump to a line. Just set up an Equals(A,15), and set A to 15

nope

and that doesn't trigger the modified C event

Sparr

@NathanMerrill huh? I have no idea how what you just said about A/15 is relevant

Nathan Merrill

Using C to jump to a line may not be your best option

using an event is a much better usage

you can trigger that event by changing a variable to a specific value, and then having a line's condition tied to that value

Martin Büttner

I'd totally join on in on the fun if I could be bothered to set up the Java controller on my machine

Nathan Merrill

would giving you a jar help?

or do you not have java installed at all?

Martin Büttner

6:22 PM

I do have Java

if you push a jar to the repo I might give it a try

Nathan Merrill

Ok...give me a second

Martin Büttner

some documentation on how to run it with all the bots would be nice, too, I guess

Sparr

@NathanMerrill what's the "main" class in codebots2java?

I'm trying to run it without installing intellij

Nathan Merrill

its in CodeBots.java

Sparr

have I mentioned that I hate java?

5

not the language, just the environment

I got all the classes compiled, I think

now I'm stuck on how to get the damn thing to run

Nathan Merrill

6:27 PM

heh

this is why I use an IDE

Sparr

if you hadn't used an IDE, I'd just do whatever you did

Nathan Merrill

true.

Sparr

you just offloaded the effort from yourself to every other person who ever needs to run the code

Nathan Merrill

well, everybody has to go through that effort, even if I did it myself

I just need to create a .jar

Geobits

Can't IntelliJ create a makefile that would help out here?

Sparr

6:29 PM

@Geobits yes, or a maven project, or a bunch of other build scripts

Martin Büttner

There seems to be a lot of negative energy channelled towards Java in this chat room.

I like that.

Geobits

I don't use intellij, but I assumed it could.

@MartinBüttner I use Java more than anything else on a daily basis, and even I starred that one :D

Nathan Merrill

Java is fast. Much, much faster than Python.

Sparr

no

Martin Büttner

Just because you use it doesn't mean you don't hate it. :D

Sparr

6:31 PM

Java is not much much faster than Python

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill And not as fast as C(++). :P

Nathan Merrill

...when I converted CodeBots1, it ran in under a minute

Geobits

I don't exactly hate it, but there are definitely some things...

Nathan Merrill

and that's including the GUI

@MartinBüttner I'm not very good at C++

and I've never even used C

VisualMelon

my reason for hating Java is that it's the reason that C# arrays are broken (and definitely not the language designers)

Geobits

6:32 PM

@Sparr In my experience it is definitely faster than python for most things.

Martin Büttner

@Geobits I think Sparr's focus was on the "much much"

(or at least one of them)

sick, I've got the trilinear coordinates working now... that should allow me to implement isogonal and isotomic conjugates, so I can finally move on to adding the next centre definitions

Geobits

It really depends on what you're doing, but most math-heavy benchmarks I've seen show python getting killed.

Even most of the ardent python fans I know will say something like "sure it's slow to run, but it's fast to code".

Martin Büttner

do those use NumPy or plain python?

I've seen x200 speedups within python by vectorising stuff with numpy. so if those benchmarks don't use, they don't use python right for maths

Geobits

I don't know, but I'd imagine they're using plain Java either way.

(it looks like they're not using numpy, based on the source of a few randomly chosen ones)

Nathan Merrill

Ok. I got the .jar working

Rainbolt

6:40 PM

Any interpreted language is bound to be slow. But you can run it outside of an IDE without ever compiling it, so it's kind of lightweight in that sense.

Sparr

CodeBots2Java/src# java -cp . codebots.CodeBots
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
	at codebots.CodeBots.initBots(CodeBots.java:74)
	at codebots.CodeBotsGUI.StartGUI.<init>(StartGUI.java:8)
	at codebots.CodeBots.main(CodeBots.java:67)

progress!

Martin Büttner

@Geobits In that case, I can agree that python is much much slower. But if you want fast code, there are ways to get much (much?) faster within python.

Nathan Merrill

Sparr, you need one more modification

Sparr

I'm guessing it wants me to have some bots :)

Nathan Merrill

add a src/codebots/bots folder

Sparr

6:41 PM

I have that

Nathan Merrill

then add bots

Sparr

I have three bots, from the repo

Nathan Merrill

however, I'm about to upload a jar that does that

Rainbolt

Mmmm Freebirds.

Do they have Freebirds in London?

Martin Büttner

I don't think so.

Sparr

6:43 PM

@NathanMerrill figured it out. your code wants me to be above the src folder when I run it

Nathan Merrill

yes

I need to change it

I think that that is bad design

Geobits

@MartinBüttner I don't know. I haven't played much with specialized Java math libraries (such as JScience), but they claim some substantial speedups. Unless you benchmark languages with every combination of available libraries, it seems fairest to judge them based on what they do out of the box.

Sparr

anyway, I got it working

first, I used find to make a list of the .java files

then javac @thatlistfile.txt

then I moved up two levels and did java -cp src codebots.CodeBots

Martin Büttner

crap... isogonal and isotomic conjugates aren't as simple as I thought, because I the values I need to modify are right in the middle of my function calls...

Nathan Merrill

@Sparr @MartinBüttner .jar is added

Martin Büttner

6:48 PM

thanks

Sparr

@NathanMerrill comments in CB2?

Nathan Merrill

Yes. They work

Sparr

requiring a Start line is annoying

Sparr

7:02 PM

Any(Not(BotAt(0),BotAt(1),BotAt(2),BotAt(3)),All(Any(Equals(E,0),BotAt(Add(D,1))‌,BotAt(Add(D,2)),BotAt(Add(D,3))),Not(BotAt(D)))):Move

I'm going to have to turn off word wrap in my editor...

make that... Any(Not(Any(BotAt(0),BotAt(1),BotAt(2),BotAt(3))),All(Any(Equals(E,0),BotAt(Add(‌D,1)),BotAt(Add(D,2)),BotAt(Add(D,3))),Not(BotAt(D)))):Move

ok, well, I've got a bot that performs about as well as Attacker, in more lines :(

will work on a good bot later :)

Rainbolt

So I just realized that the computer on which our interviews are done on is NOT remotely monitored nor is the user's web history tracked in any special way

The guy who just came in to do an interview could easily have posted the problem online and gotten feedback

One of them was something like "Speed this query up by 30% or more."

(We don't have a database guy or girl, so we ask database question in a very unscientific fashion)

Geobits

If he did, good on him. Knowing where to find answers is basically as good as knowing them.

Not quite as good, but better than being stumped.

Rainbolt

My reputation is somewhat evil

Sparr

at my linkedin interview they encouraged me to use every resource at my disposal, including a live internet connection

I got on IRC to ask a question at one point

Rainbolt

If I were at an interview where that was encouraged, the first thing I would do is dump them onto Stack Exchange verbatim.

Assuming the goal is to answer the question I mean. If the goal was to know the answer to the question, then that's a different story.

Geobits

7:18 PM

At a good interview, how you figure it out is pretty important (the answer isn't the only goal). If your immediate reaction was to text-dump it on SE, I doubt that would look good.

Rainbolt

That was my original point. Our interviewees aren't monitored.

Martin Büttner

Found another quite nice cycle of centres: {circumcentre, incentre, nine-point-centre}

Geobits

As in, sit in this dark room with a computer?

Martin Büttner

Geobits

That feels like some sort of all-seeing-eye symbol to me.

Rainbolt

7:20 PM

@Geobits They have a few little tests, then a face to face interview, and then a task that they have 3-4 hours to get as much done as they can, with generally no hope of completing it.

Martin Büttner

@Geobits maybe I should have removed the triangle :D

Rainbolt

But with the help of Code Review, I think you could actually optimize the crap out of some SQL in 3-4 hours and blow away the interviewers.

You could even start with "I was given this question in an interview" and ironically NOT be lying.

Geobits

Maybe. But if you generally have no hope of completing it, what would you do? Paste snippets here and there on CR and paste them all together? If you can't code the basic thing in 3-4 hours, I'm not sure how you'd get something working to put on CR in the first place.

Rainbolt

The query is already written. It's massive. The task is to speed it up by 30%

Geobits

Oh. Well yea, that seems odd.

Rainbolt

7:24 PM

My task was different. I had to build a form that visualized a treeview with rectangles that were colored with blue, red, and green gradiants. You should be able to add things to the tree, validate the new additions, and remove things from the tree.

I thought it was a fun exercise, but I spent way too long learning validation in ASP.net in the middle of the interview.

Geobits

That sounds better than "Here's a massive query. Make it faster."

Rainbolt

Haha like I said, it takes a database guy to ask a smart database guy question, and we don't have one.

user2179021

hi @Geobits

Rainbolt

We know we need stuff to be faster

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Balda AI in under 2048 bytes [WIP] king-of-the-hill game word-puzzle Balda is a Russian word game which bears some similarities to Scrabble. Your task is to write an AI for an English version of it. However, because you can place any letters, the game would be easy if you knew all the words in t...

Rainbolt

7:28 PM

I think I'll use my interview question as a challenge

Geobits

@Rainbolt It shouldn't just be faster, it should also be more innovative and forward thinking :D

Rainbolt

If innovation can be written in terms of Speed, Security, Availability, etc., then sure

I could innovate your head into a brick wall and it would really decrease the value.

Martin Büttner

@user2179021 patience! ;)

Last week I posted a challenge, that didn't get any attention for 36 hours, and then I got 5 answers within 60 minutes. And that was "just" a code-golf. (a rather lengthy one though)

Rainbolt

My latest one got a single answer

user2179021

@MartinBüttner :) I hope so!

Martin Büttner

7:33 PM

@Rainbolt oh yeah that's how it works for me when I mention dominoes :D

Rainbolt

Your dominoes falling was pretty popular

The circuits one was complicated

Martin Büttner

Pretty popular? ^^ ... it's my only question for which I didn't get a badge :D

oh, it had two answers though

totally forgot about the second one

Rainbolt

Should have one now

Martin Büttner

:D

Rainbolt

I could have sworn I upvoted that

Martin Büttner

7:35 PM

thanks

Rainbolt

Nobody has spotted the easter egg I planted in my challenge

Perhaps I'll start leaving a trail, and then make one huge riddle that requires users to follow backwards.

Martin Büttner

the irritating notation using r-hat? :P

Rainbolt

After all, what is programming puzzles and code golf without puzzles?

I can't give hints except that the Adam's constant is not the easter egg.

That one is too obvious :P

Geobits

@MartinBüttner Welcome to the 100% Nice Question club :D

Nathan Merrill

just passed the 500 rep limit ^^

now I can cast those close votes

Geobits

7:37 PM

Cast early, cast often.

Rainbolt

Pixel Forces may make it there one day. Council Majority is probably just doomed because Peter Taylor answered it in 6 minutes.

Who likes terrible jokes?

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt that got 17 answers, that's pretty good!

Rainbolt

Got a vote for every three answers lol

Geobits

Note to self: markdown doesn't work in email.

or random text fields on the internet, for that matter

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt Peter's solution is amazing though

Rainbolt

7:45 PM

I originally thought the problem was more difficult because I hadn't thought of using sorting to make the problem easier.

So in that sense, yea it's a nice answer

I hate when challenges use rules like "No built in libraries that solve the task I gave you."

Nathan Merrill

@Sparr also, I made CodeBots 2 case-insensitive

Martin Büttner

oh

Rainbolt

7:58 PM

Anyone here intimately familiar with agile software development practices?

Geobits

like stretching and reflexes? (so... no)

Nathan Merrill

lol

Geobits

Still applicable after your edit

Rainbolt

Geobits I'm going to innovate you very soon.

Nathan Merrill

I was taught the theory of agile quite a few times at a company I used to work for

Rainbolt

8:00 PM

We recently started practicing "Bug Previews", but I can't find anything about it online

Basically, when we start on a bug, we ask someone else to preview it with us and make recommendations for how to tackle it

Geobits

I've read about it a little, but it just seemed to me like another buzzword-filled term for "things you should probably already be doing anyway".

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill I just tried your suggestion for Popeye's submission:

Exception in thread "main" codebots.exceptions.BadFormatException: Could not parse line 0 in Popey.
        at codebots.Bot.<init>(Bot.java:49)
        at codebots.CodeBots.initBots(CodeBots.java:83)
        at codebots.CodeBotsGUI.StartGUI.<init>(StartGUI.java:8)
        at codebots.CodeBots.main(CodeBots.java:67)
Caused by: codebots.exceptions.BadFormatException: First argument on If must be a line
        at codebots.actions.IfAction.<init>(IfAction.java:19)
        at codebots.actions.Action.createAction(Action.java:70)

Rainbolt

We aren't sure exactly when we are supposed to call people over for a preview. Some of these bugs are super vague, and the preview sounds like "I think you should investigate."

Nathan Merrill

oooh...there's a bug in my code

thanks for that

Martin Büttner

how do comments work?

#?

Rainbolt

8:02 PM

So we tried investigating, and now we're almost to the point where by the time we call people over for a preview, we're basically already done fixing the bug

Nathan Merrill

Martin, //

Rainbolt

/*
*/

Geobits

Obviously you aren't doing Agile right, or you'd have no bugs :p

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill using Move //something gives me

Exception in thread "main" codebots.exceptions.BadFormatException: Could not parse line 0 in Popey.
        at codebots.Bot.<init>(Bot.java:49)
        at codebots.CodeBots.initBots(CodeBots.java:83)
        at codebots.CodeBotsGUI.StartGUI.<init>(StartGUI.java:8)
        at codebots.CodeBots.main(CodeBots.java:67)
Caused by: codebots.exceptions.BadFormatException: move is not a valid condition
        at codebots.conditions.Condition.createCondition(Condition.java:88)
        at codebots.conditions.Condition.parseCondition(Condition.java:25)

Rainbolt

When the Javadoc is generated for Java classes, comments with /* */ are treated differently.

Nathan Merrill

8:03 PM

let me see, @MartinBüttner

Rainbolt

So like /* @author Rainbolt*/ would tell the parser that I created the class. // @author Rainbolt would do nothing

Martin Büttner

we're talking about the CodeBots koth ^^

Rainbolt

You were also talking about comments in Java no?

Nathan Merrill

@MartinBüttner comments work just fine for me

Geobits

Martin Büttner

8:04 PM

odd

[------[ ]------]

Rainbolt

@Geobits Whoever created that crap needs to be shot. Typing  is simply frustrating.

2

Geobits

Agreed

Martin Büttner

8:20 PM

@NathanMerrill events are haaaard

Nathan Merrill

how so?

Martin Büttner

it's hard to get away from them. I know you have that trick with using A and B as guard variables in Defender, but that means you only get a useful action every 3rd turn. in the meantime Attacker just spams you with flags

Nathan Merrill

There's a better way to do it than my defender

I intentionally made it bad

Martin Büttner

k

Nathan Merrill

Rather than copying C

always use events to jump to a location

that will not trigger the modification of C event

Martin Büttner

8:25 PM

not sure what you mean by that... what I mean is I'd like to execute a 2- or 3-action sequence when I see an opponent

Nathan Merrill

executing 2 actions at once won't happen

it still isn't possible

Martin Büttner

well not at once

in two consecutive turns

but I can't figure out a way to do it without adding two more actions just in order not to always execute the first of the two actions

Nathan Merrill

well, if an event is triggered, then the line after the event line will be executed the next line

Martin Büttner

unless that event is always fired because everyone stops moving after a handful of turns ^^

Nathan Merrill

Very true. An If statement would be useful at that point then

that way, if you delay a single turn, you can do whatever you want with

Martin Büttner

8:30 PM

yeah, I thought about that

but I haven't found a better If condition than Equal(Mod(E,2),1)

Nathan Merrill

well, if you accept a delay, then the first turn, you set a variable. the next couple of turns, you then have some peace...but that's still a similar solution

also, if your first action is to copy a line to your opponent

you could also do an if to see if that line has been copied

and base it off of that

Martin Büttner

ah that's nifty!

actually no

I'm copying to a random line

Nathan Merrill

lol

then you are out of luck :P

you could set A initially to a random variable, and then perform your actions on A

Martin Büttner

that doesn't sound too bad

but I just remembered that I wanted to port my chain-divisibility answer to Ruby, which just became much more urgent, now that I'm beaten :D

Nathan Merrill

lol

Rainbolt

9:29 PM

Oh dear... codegolf.stackexchange.com/users/31362/sandbox

Doorknob

stuff happened

:P

Rainbolt

Lol

Stuff happens a lot on this site :-/

Doorknob

okay, now brace yourselves for lots of feed posts...

Stack Exchange

Doorknob has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

Rainbolt

Hey guys I'm a bot and I need enough reputation to become a trusted user.

help plx

I'll basically be an automated user who does and says everything Rainbolt would say or do.

Doorknob

9:34 PM

So this is an interesting situation:

New Sandboxed Posts

1

Q: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

How does the sandbox work, and how do I use it? The sandbox works best if you sort the posts by "active". See the sandbox FAQ for more information on how to use this sandbox. Submission Directory This is a community-maintained list of the most active submissions in the Sandbox. If you add a ...

Doorknob

... huh, it didn't dump all the things from the last hour into chat? Okay, that's nice

@professorfish Done ^

Rainbolt

Joan Rivers died :-(

Martin Büttner

9:58 PM

@Doorknob interesting... favourites were merged, but upvotes weren't

Sparr

10:33 PM

Can someone confirm this does what I want? I want to move forward if I have no neighbors, or move forward if I have a neighbor but no one in front of me, or move forward 1/24 of the time that there's no one in front of me.

Any(Not(Any(BotAt(0),BotAt(1),BotAt(2),BotAt(3))),All(Any(Equals(E,0),BotAt(Add(D,1)),BotAt(Add(D,2)),BotAt(Add(D,3))),Not(BotAt(D)))):Move

@NathanMerrill what do the colors in the bot inspector mean? green seems to be all the conditions that are currently true. what's cyan?

grey is overwritten lines?