The Nineteenth Byte

There's scoring by entropy and scoring by character count. As code golf got "purer" (people stop caring about robustness, etc.; CJam and Pyth were invented) we've been moving a little more towards entropy.

Alex A.

12:21 AM

Entropy?

^

^

^

Oh no.

^

12:21 AM

^
^
^

Alex A.

caret

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Seriously though - what is entropy?

Alex A.

^

Thomas Kwa

Information content, basically.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

oh lol

Alex A.

12:22 AM

So we score by information content?

Thomas Kwa

No, we don't.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

pertinent bits of info, right?

Thomas Kwa

Otherwise we'd be compressing our code.

Alex A.

So... bytes?

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Speaking of byte count - Brainfuck only has 8 characters, yes?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

12:23 AM

ya

quartata

42

Q: How can I keep my cat off my keyboard?

This is a common scenario when typing: When the family assembled for Sunday dinner, With their minds made up that they wouldn't get thinner On Argentine joint, potato^DR&FTGYB`kuhadrggoy867rt98wouth4bfgdhjlkhdsfghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhf This happens beca...

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Well, symbols.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

So... why not express Brainfuck as 3 bits?

Thomas Kwa

The main issue is that code golf gets less fun once we have a couple of languages that are always best, but only if we insist on comparing between languages.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

^

Thomas Kwa

12:24 AM

People have @VTCAKAVSMoACE

Doorknob

@ThomasKwa nah. We definitely compare between languages (there's no "per-language" accept button). It's still fun to golf in Rust and get scores that are a hundred times longer than CJam.

Thomas Kwa

It's never caught on, though, because brainfuck can't really compete with most languages anyway.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

esolangs.org/wiki/Smallfuck

VTCAKAVSMoACE

If you count it as 3 bits, though, it vastly compresses.

Alex A.

I think @Geobits needs this for his dog.

Thomas Kwa

12:26 AM

@Doorknob I'd say that's an artifact of being a SE site, not the optimal way.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

That is the best name of a coding language ever.

Doorknob

@ThomasKwa Why isn't it optimal?

Thomas Kwa

Ideally scores of different languages would be separated.

Doorknob

Then there would be less of an incentive to create unique and interesting golfing languages

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

LOL Just remembered I was playing TF2. Didn't die :P

Alex A.

12:27 AM

I like the feeling of holy crap I came within 10 bytes of beating CJam using VerboseLanguage69.

Doorknob

and using a golfing language to get an incredibly short solution would be rewarded less

Thomas Kwa

As it is, I need to scroll through many answers to find the shortest, say, Python. Most of the time the shortest answer is on top, but I don't want to vote one up when it's not shortest or most creative

Alex A.

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ In TF3, if you die in the game, you die IRL.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@AlexA. Don't be ridiculous. You know Valve can't count to 3!

VTCAKAVSMoACE

@AlexA ^^ (second one up) Like AppleScript!

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

12:28 AM

XD

Alex A.

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ They've announced Left 4 Dead 3.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@AlexA. WAAAAAT

Alex A.

I heard it somewhere, I think through Funhaus.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

No. Effing. Way.

That's... dies

Alex A.

Eh. I'd take HL3 over anything else any day.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

12:30 AM

mt

Alex A.

mt?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

"me too"

Alex A.

Oh, gotcha.

It's speculated that Valve will release HL3 as the first game for its upcoming VR system.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

That would be cool

Alex A.

Yes. Unlikely though.

quartata

12:32 AM

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Why are you so surprised? L4D3 code was found in the Dota 2 Workshop tools ages ago

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

...

quartata

@AlexA. A B C is as easy as 1 2

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

oh.

quartata

I mean it's still great and all

But it's not really a surprise

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

it is to me :P

Alex A.

12:35 AM

I don't care much about Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress. (Blasphemy, I know.)

El'endia Starman

> Ig Nobel 2011 Peace Prize: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

Thomas Kwa

"solved"

Alex A.

But in the tired, tired genre of zombie shooting games, Left 4 Dead is good.

El'endia Starman

Didn't Left 4 Dead pretty much kickstart the genre?

Like, it certainly wasn't the first, but it probably inspired a lot of others.

Alex A.

I don't think so but I don't have any sources to back me up on that.

quartata

12:38 AM

@El'endiaStarman Well technically Doom kickstarted the series

Sp3000

Side question: Anyone got any opinions on meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/7137/21487 ?

Alex A.

> MATHEMATICS PRIZE: Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and
> Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical…

El'endia Starman

Bahahahaha.

Alex A.

@Sp3000 It makes no sense to me.

Sp3000

:/ I've been trying to help fix it but I'm not sure my comments have been helping

quartata

12:47 AM

Anyone have any concerns with my RTTTL challenge?

VTCAKAVSMoACE

@quartata Do I have permission to steal your mail idea? c:

quartata

Go ahead.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Woohoo!

quartata

Post it in the sandbox first.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Yeah, that's what I was planning to do.

quartata

12:54 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

RTTTL Obfuscation RTTTL, or Ring Tone Text Transfer Language is a music format that was invented by Nokia in the dawn of time when dinosaurs roamed the land. It allows for fairly crude pieces of music (no chords or anything), and the format is pretty simple which is why I think it's pretty cool....

Last chance to let me know that this challenge is inherently flawed

Geobits

This challenge is inherently flawed because it uses ugly RTTL instead of BASIC's beautiful PLAY.

quartata

Other than that?

Geobits

Other than that I don't see much wrong (I'm not sure offhand too many languages that this would be very easy or possible in, but whatever). But the BASIC thing is pretty much a show-stopper :P

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Ooh, question: is there a way to do an equation like in math.stackexchange?

Geobits

We don't have MathJax enabled here; it messes with snippets too much IIRC.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

1:04 AM

Ah, dang. Looks like I'll have to describe it. :c

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

daarn

I loathe the lack of mathjax

quartata

We used to have it.

It broke a lot of junk.

Zgarb

A decent substitute is to use an online LaTeX editor like codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php and paste the image to your post.

quartata

0

Q: RTTTL Obfuscation

RTTTL Obfuscation RTTTL, or Ring Tone Text Transfer Language is a music format that was invented by Nokia in the dawn of time when dinosaurs roamed the land. It allows for fairly crude pieces of music (no chords or anything), and the format is pretty simple which is why I think it's pretty cool....

popularity-contest obfuscation

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

ik

VTCAKAVSMoACE

1:13 AM

So... how do I post tags into the content of an answer?

(very new to SE)

Doorknob

you don't

spaces are supreme

2

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Tags*

Sp3000

[tag:alex-is-wrong]

7

Doorknob

Oh. [tag:foo] -> foo

Geobits

Wow Doorknob. Hair-trigger much?

VTCAKAVSMoACE

1:14 AM

Thanks.

Doorknob

@Geobits I blame you and Calvin, for insisting on being wrong. :P

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

xD

Geobits

Huh? The tag clearly says Alex is wrong.

Doorknob

(Incidentally, Stack Exchange automatically converts tabs to spaces, so it would have been a valid question anyway.)

@Geobits the-tag-is-wrong

wait... paradox

Sp3000

*that-tag-is-wrong

Geobits

1:16 AM

One of these tags always lies, the other always tells the truth.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

all-tags-are-wrong

New Main Posts

0

Q: RTTTL Obfuscation

RTTTL, or Ring Tone Text Transfer Language is a music format that was invented by Nokia in the dawn of time when dinosaurs roamed the land. It allows for fairly crude pieces of music (no chords or anything), and the format is pretty simple which is why I think it's pretty cool. Take a look at thi...

popularity-contest obfuscation

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Can I get some comments? And tag suggestions? meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/7148/44713

Geobits

Sometimes I wish I could say this to people at work about their email:

> If your content is not English-y enough, I will tell you, and it will not be accepted as an answer unless it is fixed.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

XD

VTCAKAVSMoACE

1:21 AM

Heh. Didn't even think of that.

Oh, I know. "You must use proper grammar. This could be your grandmother, you know."

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

o__o

terrifying

Geobits

Oh, you don't know my grandmother. Facebook has taught her some awful habits.

Huh.

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Emailing, with a Scoring Twist code-golf Time to take a little time from your programming to visit some people - through email, of course. But, let's be honest, no one wants to stop programming. Who would? Therefore, your challenge is simple: write a program, in any* language, that will send an...

quartata

I'm not sure what to make of this.

I've posted my obfuscation challenge and people have looked at it

But no upvotes or comments or anything yet.

This worries me.

The silence is deafening.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

It is later than 12AM for most of the world.

Geobits

1:24 AM

I think we were having this discussion earlier, about impatience and all that :)

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Does the scoring system make sense?

quartata

For your e-mail challenge?

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Yeah.

Geobits

I'm not sure what to make of the scoring thing honestly. I'm not sure I see the point in the box-score.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

AppleScripters.

Not really.

Geobits

1:27 AM

Can AppleScript not put everything on one line like a "sane" language?

VTCAKAVSMoACE

It can indeed.

I've written that in advance, actually. XD

Geobits

Okay, so what's the advantage in doing it in multiple lines?

quartata

I like the part where Shebang makes a Stuck answer for the sum challenge that uses an undocumented feature

I tried to write an answer in Stuck too

VTCAKAVSMoACE

@Geobits There might be an advantage at moving it into a square pattern. For example, a 25-byte answer might be able to use more of the content as code in square format.

@quartata The one where I realized why AS was never, ever used in golfing?

quartata

Yes

VTCAKAVSMoACE

1:32 AM

Wow. That's... actually amazing. XD

Geobits

@VTCAKAVSMoACE Hmm, maybe. I foresee most answers being single lines, but maybe someone will come up with something nice to take advantage of it. Just wanted to ask, since it's quite different than the usual scoring here.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

I dislike normal scoring - if you change the scoring, you change the way people think about answering. Makes cleverer solutions.

Ooh, that reminds me to mention that newlines aren't counted either...

Sp3000

That scoring method is pretty terrible :P

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Aw. :c Why is that?

Sp3000

Apart from Geobit's thing about single lines, the trimming leading whitespace rule can be exploited in golfing languages by doing a unary sort of thing with a string full of spaces

... assuming they can send emails/eval

VTCAKAVSMoACE

1:38 AM

Exactly. Lots of esolangs probably can't do this well.

quartata

Honestly when I had the challenge in mind I was going to make it so that you can't use builtins.

You have to use a socket.

Then I was going to post a Brainfuck++ answer <s>and get all the upvotes ever</s>

Oops.

Hmm.

Sp3000

Well Pyth can definitely do it for one thing

quartata

?

Sp3000

Just dunno about CJam

quartata

Oh yeah

VTCAKAVSMoACE

1:39 AM

@quartata And you might use it in the future - mine's just kinda out there, and not even posted yet.

quartata

No it's fine you can use it.

I just want you to keep that in mind.

That's how I thought the challenge would be the most interesting.

VTCAKAVSMoACE

Well... I don't know. I kinda like it as it is.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

IDEA Given an NxM grid of "X"s, set each empty cell to a number representing the number of "X"s within a kings move away.

Geobits

So... minesweeper?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Yeah!

Except in reverse.

Sp3000

1:44 AM

10

Q: Generating Minesweeper grids

Minesweeper is a logic game found on most OS's. The goal of the game is to determine where the mines are on a grid, given numbers indicating the number of mines around that spot. Given a grid size, and a set of mines, generate the Minesweeper grid for that set of mines. Input: Two integers indi...

code-golf minesweeper

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

ish

darn

XD

quartata

1:55 AM

I have cracked 700 rep

Meanwhile Dennis is still at 42k

I've got a ways to go

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

lol

quartata

BTW has anyone tried playing the sample RTTTL music I provided?

It's called Deja Vu for a reason ;)

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

I love it when this is valid in a programming language: 'AR5E

(Evaluates to 1160290625, in case you were curious ;) )

quartata

2:13 AM

? What language is this?

Dennis

2:25 AM

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? :P

Alex A.

I'm a bird

Chirp

quartata

I'm a plane

Vroom

Doorknob

I'm a doorknob

doorknob-turning sound

Sp3000

@quartata No, you're a plane (glider) on a plane :P

Doorknob

Your computer screen is technically a plane (kinda, theoretically).

So he's a plane on a plane on a plane.

Thomas Kwa

2:40 AM

@Doorknob You're clearly thinking on a higher plane.

Doorknob

Yes, that is very plain.

quartata

That's strange. I used my maximum forty votes today and yet Vox Populi says I only did 33/40.

Dennis

The maximum is 30 votes per day. You get an extra 10 for questions.

Which you can only use before you get warned.

quartata

Oh I see.

That's kind of strange.

mbomb007

I've made a code review post about my SMBF interpreter's bug if anyone wants to help out:

0

Q: My Python interpreter for Self-modifying Brainf*** has a bug

I wrote this Python interpreter for a language called Self-modifying Brainf*** (SMBF). Today I discovered a bug where if the program dynamically creates code at the initial cell or after on the tape, it will not be executed. I wrote this interpreter to look as close as possible to the Ruby interp...

python interpreter brainfuck

Doorknob

2:49 AM

Help out the evil nemesis site? No way! :P

(In all seriousness I think that's off topic there. CR only accepts working code.)

Alex A.

^

quartata

I'm trying to do something with Bubblegum. I passed it an LZMA file and the output was ASCII garbage...

Uncompressed file:

Alex A.

> ART PRIZE [ITALY]: Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea, for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.

quartata

pastebin.com/ycsbUbTH

Alex A.

I ninja'd your uncompressed file

quartata

2:53 AM

I compressed it with lzma -9

The ouput:

Alex A.

"HELLO WORLD"

quartata

%Gd(/~JFDD$mqdm5&\qe:7!;q
0$`=Q q|?<=?vnQJDk~DI
m;1GiS(MSh-TWxpNI3;eH2zE2<t\_A@h(<5SmO@1#p2~dWz"L`\cwb.~ZflC4G<pK7gt?

What did I do wrong?

Alex A.

Closed as unclear what you're asking.

Sp3000

@mbomb007 I just saw the comment, but yeah Code Review only takes working code

(otherwise it can be hard to tell whether edits preserve the original functionality)

Alex A.

Stack Overflow takes all kinds of crap code and then blasts you into oblivion for it.

New Main Posts

2:56 AM

0

Q: Standard loopholes only

So, you're browsing Programming Puzzles & Code Golf, and you see a new challenge. The author (gasp) forgot to say "No standard Loopholes". You decide to take advantage of this situation, and you read the answer from a file/network. However, you need to make sure that your answer is actually short...