Woo fanatic

@grc @xnor @Jakube and anyone else: Got any itertools tips for Python? I'm trying to compile a list

@sp3000 honestly, my tip is: don't use itertools unless your code is really long

every single time i thought i could save chars with combinations or product or anything, i found it shorter to do directly than importing and calling it

but then i tend not to go for problems that have really long golfs

@sp3000 @jakube in the sum power to n problem, have you tried recursively doing the sum of products checking?

(passing in a list of already used numbers to be excluded)

:P yeah, but just in case you actually needed it for something

I didn't try recursively this time because I needed permutations of subsets, which I think is too long to do by hand?

do you actually need them?

my thought is to just say, a number is the sum of k power terms if you can get it as something of for a^b + [sum of k-1 power terms], adding a and b to the respective excluded lists

so, rather than explicitly generating the permutations, having it be part of the recursion

Hmm I wonder...

i'm gonna try it

i don't actually know if this works, but the itertools import makes me suspicious

Well the rule of thumb "You probably don't actually need itertools" is usually accurate... (Except maybe groupby?)

Oh 124, nice

124 on what?

xnor's Sum the powers

@PeterTaylor Congrats on getting 20k!

@ProgramFOX Thank you

is SE (apart from chat) down?

@MartinBüttner yep

ah k

hypothetical Java question: if you created an instance method in an enum class with zero elements, would it be a valid function answer?

@feersum honestly, I'd probably accept a Java function without being wrapped in any class or function at all.

@MartinBüttner It's hypothetical for a reason :P

yay, Dominion just arrived... too bad no one's here to play :/

@MartinBüttner I'd be up for a game :D

:P

speaking of which...

Seriously though, the online version's an option any time :)

what's your progress on BBT?

I got up to the puzzle blocks (stage 3) and haven't progressed much since

Been playing Valkyria Chronicles instead

@Sp3000 I might take you up on it some time, but I'm currently working on the Ruby controller for the lab rat race :D

Ahaha k :)

@Sp3000 ah, that's a shame

In python, can I take multiple slices in one go ?

s[2:6, 10:] to create s[2:6]+s[10:]

no

too bad.

Speaking of that I wish x[:,0], which I just learnt about the other day, was valid for Python lists and not just numpy lists

Would be a nice way to take the first elements of a list of lists

you could zip(*x)[0] (I think)

Oh, yeah that works nicely. Few bytes longer though :P

@MartinBüttner Think it'd be useful to have a Stack Snippet meta topic? We have a few floating around (e.g. Lev dist, leaderboard) but one I'd like to also see is an input converter between space-sep, comma-sep, CJam list, Python list

And if I end up writing it I'd have nowhere to post it

@Sp3000 I suggested this at some point, but Rainbolt made a good point that it will probably be more useful if we just have one meta post per purpose, along the lines of "Do we have an existing stack snippet to generate code golf leaderboards?"

would navigating to some page and finding a snippet for that really be more convenient than regexing in your text editor?

alternatively, we could post separate questions like this, StackApps style... the question contains the snippet and answers will contain a changelog and feature requests

Well one way it could work is by allowing the OP to enter the input into the snippet, and you select which one. Regex wouldn't be much harder though, true

Oh... hm that's interesting...

That might be an interesting way it could work, and I guess rather than a single post linking to all the snippets we could just tag the question accordingly

you know what... I'll just make a meta post...

done

20 minutes... I really need to increase my meta-post-writing-efficiency

I like the StackApps idea

Hmm, shame Kingdom Builder's not getting much attention

yeah

the post is just too damn long

It's not that long, and I'm lazy... D:

@Sp3000 That sounds to me like something which belongs on github.io rather than anywhere in the SE network.

@PeterTaylor done

@PeterTaylor it would be nice if you could actually copy out the test cases straight from challenge without having to go through some other converter

and it's not like it takes up any space on the challenge

Ah, I read too much into the context and thought it was about porting code between languages.

@Peter thanks for the answer... I kinda like that idea, although I still think a single question with all snippets could turn in to a massive clusterf*ck.

It might - but then whatever we choose might need rethinking when we get to say 25 snippets.

yeah, true

Perhaps an idea for a math challenge: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-complex_number

Or this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicomplex_number

interesting

while you're here, can I ask you again to close the Unscrambling challenge? :) ... I'm convinced that most of the answer that go safe now, do so because no one is checking any more.

in particular, the current winner, probably wouldn't have won with that if he had posted it while the challenge was active.

@MartinBüttner How would I close it?

like this: codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/39829/8478

or like this: codegolf.stackexchange.com/revisions/39829/50

Done

awesome, thanks

I haven't really been around here for a while.

Also, what exactly is the weekly challenge thing going on right now?

@PhiNotPi basically what I suggested here

How many weekly challenges have already happened?

we're currently working on the third

we're keeping track of them here

@Doorknob thoughts on fortnightly challenges?