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10:11 AM
now that I have made two challenges that don't involve binary matrices/vectors.....
 
you are tainted now?
 
@Optimizer I have to go back to my old favourite!
although I am loving the answers I have got so far for my graphical challenges
just waiting for someone to show me how to blit in about 20 languages :)
it must be easy in java I assume??
any Java people here?
 
@Geobits
and Rainbolt
 
thanks!
hi @Rainbolt
I am impressed that Java is officially the second worst golfing language for my challenge :)
after Objective-C++
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Christian IrwanBF-ize your output. meta-golfcode-golf Your task is: Read input until EOF. Convert your input into BF program that print that input Output it. Your program may be full program, function, but not snippet. In case of function: Given a string argument Convert your input into BF program that ...

 
10:27 AM
@Optimizer posted challenge to the sandbox.. should appear here soon
 
Oh, it's Boole's 200th birthday. Any ideas for an interesting non-duplicate challenge about anything related to Boole?
 
err.. solving SAT in poly time? :)
actually we haven't had any SAT solving challenges that I know of
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

LembikAn optimization challenge with strange coins You have 40 coins which each weigh either -1 or 1. Each is labelled from 0 to 39 so you can tell the coins apart. You have one (magic) weighing device as well. At the first turn you can put as many coins as you like on the weighing device which is a...

 
it's a nice area and Knuth has written alot about it recently
maybe one of his exercises :)
 
10:31 AM
that's nice!
there are lots of variants of 2-sat
 
@Lembik Is your challenge missing an input parameter?
 
@MartinBüttner hmm.. I think the only parameter is 40 which is hard coded isn't it?
did I miss something out?
 
@Lembik I feel like if it's hardcoded this becomes a) a maths challenge instead of a programming challenge and b) a challenge of who has most patience for letting their search tool run longer. In addition, if someone like Peter happens to find an optimal solution, the challenge is over. Instead you could make 40 a parameter, and ask for the largest N for which anoptimal solution can be found in 10 minutes, say.
 
@MartinBüttner I take your point however... let me make some counter points :)
a) know that it has no nice mathematical solution
b) Smart search heuristics will be the key
c) Peter won't find an optimal solution :)
so one sensible approach is to first write fast code to check if a guessed solution works
and then devise a smart way to search through possible solutions
it's essentially impossible to prove a solution is optimal unless we reduce 40 to about 16
 
b) still has the problem that it becomes a computer-aided maths challenge... you write some sort of search to explore the space, let it run for a while... then use the knowledge from that search to write a better search with doesn't need to traverse the entire state space and so on. in the end there's nothing stopping people from hardcoding information they've already found in earlier runs.
 
10:40 AM
@MartinBüttner that's a fair criticism
but we have lots of computer aided maths challenges don't we?
the "extend the OEIS " ones for example
really all the optimizaton challenges have something of this form
 
@Lembik afaik there is only one of those, and it was a plain fastest-code which asked for a single correct answer and scored by "largest N you can solve in M minutes"
 
@MartinBüttner Something to do with Karnaugh maps?
 
I could change it to make 40 a variable but I just think it makes the challenge harder
 
without really changing the nature of it
and it's hard enough already!
 
10:43 AM
... damnit
 
I could set a time limit but that doesn't really help does it?
I mean as you say you can run it for 3 days, hard code in the result, then run it for 10 minutes :)
 
yeah, I don't know... I'm trying to think of an optimisation challenge we had which didn't have a battery of test cases, but where the input was just a single number.
 
that was really a computer aided maths challenge too
 
I'll let you know when I come up with something
 
ok :)
the challenge I just pasted is really similar to my sandbox'ed one
which could be another criticism :)
of course nimrod no longer exists
 
10:47 AM
@mınxomaτ I suppose it would be fairer to compare mean to the mean of printable ASCII characters which would be 79 (and it's actually pretty close to that)
A similar rescaling would be interesting for the monte-carlo pi approximation I suppose.
 
11:32 AM
I've tried to improve the clarity of my sandbox post. Any further feedback is welcome:
4
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

trichoplaxBiplex: an important useless operator code-golf Input and output may be in any base (including binary), provided they are both in the same base. Input A list of between 1 and 255 positive integers (inclusive), each in the range 1 to 232 - 1 (inclusive). Input without leading zeroes is requir...

 
12:08 PM
@Mego You realize that if there are any 99 bottles challenges that they'll define it as "no builtin functions", right?
 
@trichoplax having a look now
@trichoplax is unary included in "any base"? might be worth mentioning explicitly.
 
If it's a catalogue, I'm not so sure about the builtin functions thing
But in any case there's already gs2, so...
@Lembik For pixel circle can how accurate do I have to be, e.g. can I use 3.14 instead of pi?
 
@Sp3000 I haven't been too fussy.. you can see someone used 9.55
 
Yeah, I was going to use 9.55 actually :P
That's good then :)
 
@Sp3000 which language?
 
12:18 PM
@MartinBüttner I had intended to include it unless there are any obvious problems with that - I'll add it in.
 
@trichoplax sounds good
 
Now we just need a python+turtle solution too. — Lembik yesterday
@Lembik
 
@Sp3000 perfect :)
I hoping people will get into blitting too soon :)
 
I'm trying to do it without importing math/using the 9.55, but I'm having trouble skipping out the movement animation
blitting?
 
@trichoplax what about leading zeroes in the output?
 
12:33 PM
@MartinBüttner Good point - I forgot to mention that. I was going to rule them out. Do you think that sounds reasonable?
 
yeah, sounds good to me
 
0
A: 99 Bottles Of Beer

VoteToCloseVitsy, 273 Bytes This is a bit complex. Method is in the code block. &".reeb fo selttob "?9b*D1-\[DN?l1-\[DO{]{?" ,llaw eht no "l1-\ODN?l\[DO{]?aO" ,dnuora ti ssap dna nwod eno ekaT"l1-\ODN?l\[DO{]?1-aO]DN?7\[DO{]{8\[DO{]{?" ,llaw eht no "l1-\ODN?7\[DO{]{9\[DO{]?aO"99 ,erom emos yub dna erots eht ot oG"l1-\O?l1-\[DO{]{?".llaw eht no "l1-\O & Instantiate a new stack. ".reeb fo selttob " Push " bottles of beer." to the current stack. ? Rotate to the next stack. 9b* Push 99 to the stack. D1-\[...] Do everything in the top set of brackets 98 times. DN Duplicate the top item of the stack and output it as a number. ? Rotate a stack - this contains " bottles of beer." l1-\[DO{] Print it out (except for the period), but don't remove any items. { Rotate the current stack - this skips the period. ? Rotate back to the original stack. " ,llaw eht no "l1-\O Push " on the wall, " to the stack, then print it out. DN Print out the top item of the stack as a number. ? Rotate to the next stack. l\[DO{] Print it all out, but don't remove any items. ? Rotate to the next stack (top stack again). aO Print a newline. " ,dnuora ti ssap dna nwod eno ekaT"l1-\ODN Push "Take one down and pass it around, " to the stack and print it out. ? Rotate to the next stack. l\[DO{] Print out everything in the stack, but don't remove anything. ? Rotate to the next stack. 1- Subtract one from the top item of the stack. aO Print a newline. ] End the main loop. DN Duplicate the top item of the stack and print it out. ?7\[DO{]{8\[DO{]{? Print out the next stack over (the one holding " bottles of beer.", but skip the period and the "s". " ,llaw eht no "l1-\O Push " on the wall, " to the stack and print it out. DN Duplicate the top item of the stack and print it out as a number. ?7\[DO{]{9\[DO{]? Print out everything in the next stack except the period. aO Print a newline. "99 ,erom emos yub dna erots eht ot oG"l1-\O Push "Go to the store and buy some more, 99" to the stack and print it out. ?l1-\[DO{]{? Move over a stack, print everything out but the ".". ".llaw eht no "l1-\O Push " on the wall." to the stack, then print it out.

c:
 
Onebox needs a length limit
3
 
^ Agreed. I didn't know it was going to be that long.
...well that didn't work.
 
@MartinBüttner Thanks. Done...
 
12:45 PM
So about the bounty on the language showcase... does anyone else think that Martin has an unfair advantage? :P
 
lol wtf
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Christian IrwanKaprekar Transformation Kaprekar Transformation is an transformation a number by following that instruction: Take n-digit integer. Sort it anscending and descending. Subtract the largest number and smallest number. Your program have to solve two task in one program Task 1: Take two number...

 
@NewSandboxedPosts Surely a dupe?
First half at least
 
Wow, back from '11. 495 and 6174 look like they might be considered dupes nowadays
 
1:20 PM
those terrifying words
 
1:49 PM
@MartinBüttner In you J answer for Imitate an Ordering, you can swap the order of the arguments and do ({/:~)~/:@/:
Saves a byte.
 
Erm.
0
A: Proto space invaders (can you blit it?)

SomebodyWhat, something like this? $.getScript('//code.jquery.com/ui/1.11.4/jquery-ui.js', function(){$('body img').draggable()})

This doesn't follow the specs, does it?
 
@Zgarb Thanks. I think I have a shorter approach that doesn't need 3 /: though ... let me see.
oh wait it still does
 
It's the shortest way I know to apply different monadic verbs to the arguments and combine the results with a dyadic verb.
 
2:07 PM
@Zgarb I noticed that instead of sorting s with /:~ I can also get its ordering with /:, apply the pattern's permutation to that with { and then extract the source order with another {. (So basically, I have a ~ less and a { more.) But I haven't been able to figure out how to chain them together. On the off-chance that it can be done without parentheses, this would save two more bytes.
 
2:23 PM
@MartinBüttner {~(({/:@/:)~/:) works, but is much too long...
 
yeah :/
 
@MartinBüttner {~({/:)&/: should work, and it's only 10 bytes!
 
oh, nice, you got rid of one of the /:
what exactly does the & do?
 
Wait, that's not correct, but ({/:)&/:{[ works.
x u&v y is (v x) u (v y)
 
oh, okay
some day I will actually figure out all the ways you can compose verbs in J (as well as its precedence rules...)
 
2:38 PM
What should a RegExp matching punctuation match? I've got this so far: .,-\/#!$%\^&\*;:{}=\-_~()`
 
|
?
 
@MartinBüttner There's still something wrong with my solution... I swear it worked a minute ago.
 
+
 
@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ [\W_]
wait that matches spaces
[^\w\s]|_
 
@MartinBüttner And it matches foreign alphabets
 
2:40 PM
@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ that depends on the regex flavour
 
[]
<>
 
Idk about JavaScript's flavour, lemme check
 
yeah no that one would
I was going to suggest using Unicode properties, but JavaScript...
well in that case, list them, I suppose
what about punctuation outside of ASCII?
 
"Ü".replace(/[^\w\s]|_/,"") => ""
 
yeah that's what I meant
 
2:42 PM
@MartinBüttner is that a thing?
 
do you think Unicode beyond ASCII contains only letters? ;)
 
Oh, oc
My scope atm is the 256 first char codes
(i.e. single-byte)
 
then your best bet might actually be simply listing them
 
ok thanks @MartinBüttner
Are you the resident RegExp expert here? :)
 
yes
RegExp stands for "RegExp Expert" for him
 
2:48 PM
No pressure ;)
 
@MartinBüttner Working version at 11 bytes: ({~/:)&/:{[
 
@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ I think at least jimmy23013 is better than me, but he hasn't been in chat much. ;)
 
@MartinBüttner So you're the best here in chat? XD
 
Also apart from quirky features of .NET's regex flavour, my regex fu has been getting a bit rusty since I stopped answering stuff on SO. :P
 
@Calvin'sHobbies Delayed reply, but the day that comes where I manage to help Alex golf something will be a very interesting day indeed
 
3:04 PM
lol money
money lol
 
What's the symbol for popping an item off the stack in ><>? I'm mind blanking.
 
~
 
Thanks.
 
> But if someone really flamethrower trying to light a cigarette, is himself to blame
I love Google translate
 
3:15 PM
Google Translate translates to Awesome in Android
 
Hello my people.
 
StainRebel has left the building.
 
It was a fun APRIL FOOL'S EVENT into madness.
 
Sssssh, don't say raid. People get chat-banned for that.
 
> is himself to flame
5
Ugh. I want to change my name again. ;C
5Ff-f-f-8-5Ff-f-6-5F4F-a-Z Is what I want it to be.
 
3:51 PM
0
A: Shortest code that return SIGSEGV

quartataLOLCODE, 4 bytes OBTW Does not work online, only in the C interpreter.

Can't believe no one did this one yet
So fancy
It's kind of dumb that works
 
I used LOLCODE once... a long time ago...
In a galaxy far, far away...
 
hehe
 
@BrainSteel AHHHHHH YOU'RE BACK I MISSED YOU
3
 
I missed me too! How is everybody?
 
4:01 PM
> rather with an objective than being pointless
I would argue that LOLCODE is the single most useful language of our time.
 
6
A: The Many Memes of PPCG

VoteToCloseMeme: Failing to Outgolf Dennis Origin: Dennis and anyone who tries to outgolf him. Cultural Height: Until PPCG is no more (forever) Background: Dennis always wins. or, alternatively, Seriously. Almost no one has beaten Dennis, ever. If they have, he's just golfed it down more.

 
I want to see the standard introductory college programming course conducted in LOLCODE.
 
@BrainSteel Good here. Peter died briefly while you were away but he got better.
 
nnnnice, another checkmark for Retina :)
 
:D
 
4:02 PM
"died briefly"
 
It was a whole big thing. But he's fine now.
How are you doing? How's school been?
 
17
Q: Find our missing dead

Beta DecayChallenge Peter has risen again to save us from the duplicate challenges! Peter Taylor is dead, and there's no doubt about it (well, apart from the huge amount of doubt we have... but just ignore that). In his memory, you must write a program which determines whether a given user is alive or de...

 
School is fun! Also, stressful.
 
I imagine.
 
Last time we spoke Circuits was killing me. Now it's Geometry. Nothing much else has changed :P
 
4:06 PM
Oh I thought it was quantum computing that was killing you.
(Or was that Phi...)
 
That course has been surprisingly pleasant all around, actually.
 
Do we have a challenge about packing strings in memory? I.e. given a set of strings, find the shortest string which has all of them as substrings? I'm pretty sure we do, but I don't recall what challenge it was.
 
Hey guys, why am I getting loads of upvotes on this answer all of a sudden:
2
A: Hello World 0.0!

Beta DecayUnary - A Very Big Number of Bytes I'm surprised that no one's done this yet... It's too long to post here, but it's just 13535503538371847821168981543026077035759321834429394200062398452058381600686963102865994785181665389912787094328402580245456313313563089215416025841786737950640593595814449...

 
loads? I see 2.
maybe 3.
 
That sounds like a backwards find-longest-substring challenge
seems really familiar
 
4:08 PM
Yeah but for something that, when it got posted only got a downvote, it's weird that today I've had three upvotes
 
Hm. Shouldn't it be at -15?
 
@BetaDecay well, the challenge was bumped to the front page. that essentially causes undefined behaviour for old challenges. ;)
 
@VoteToClose
 
0
A: The shortest code to invert a binary string

ConfusedMr_CPyth, 8 bytes VwpCxCN1 Vw for every char in input CN compute char code of char x 1 xor with 1 C convert from int to char p print

This got flagged as low quality why?
 
4:10 PM
 
Cause it is Pyth?
 
@quartata Community auto-flags as low quality if it's short
 
Wait, wasn't yesterday our graduation date? DID I MISS IT?
 
If carrot is wrong, then .
 
4:11 PM
@AlexA. lmao
 
@Zgarb thank you
 
@quartata It makes sense on sites like Stack Overflow where an answer it probably utter crap if it's that short. But it's just a reality here. (Though it would be nice to see more posts with explanations, which would increase the length and avoid Community auto-flags.)
 
@AlexA. ಠ_ಠ
 
@VoteToClose
 
I put the wrong link in the comment. :D
 
Dammit. Did it again. Fixed it now.
 
I'm surprised tag syntax hasn't made it into the memes list yet.
 
Adding it now.
 
Why hasn't my idiot message been added to the list of starred stuff
 
4:15 PM
You can't predict stars. They have a mind of their own.
 
Sentient chat stars
 
They crop up at random intervals, and then all at once when someone complains about stars, you see...
 
Oh, @Doorknob!
3
 
@VoteToClose Are you going to follow that up with anything...?
 
No.
 
4:20 PM
Ah, @Doorknob!
 
Just summoning Scooby @Doo for chortles and guffahs?
 
:D Quartata wants it to be publicly known that he's an idiot, @Doorknob, please add it to the star meme list.
 
@VoteToClose yass
 
You know, all of those answers are community wiki, so you could just as easily do it.
 
It always says I can't edit meta posts. o-o
 
4:21 PM
...Really?
Even CW ones?
Do you have insufficient rep to have edits apply automatically?
 
I can check again, it might have something to do with rep.
Yes.
What are some fake tags that we use a lot?
 
@VoteToClose How is that the correct byte count for the unary answer?
 
I used the number he specified *8.
 
That's bits.
 
...
You're absolutely right. XD Okay, lemme fix that.
This scared the shit out of me. O>O
 
4:26 PM
@VoteToClose Happy Halloween!
 
Lol. Okie den.
So... popular fake tags we use in chat, anyone?
 
1
A: Imitate an ordering

DennisJ, 9 bytes /:^:2~/:~ This is a dyadic fork that takes p and s as left and right arguments. Test run 7 _4 1 _8 4 _3 12 (/:^:2~/:~) _5 9 4 13 11 _6 0 11 _5 4 _6 9 0 13

:D
 
0
Q: How do we treat default output formats such as "ans = ...." etc.?

Stewie GriffinIn MATLAB and Octave, the default output looks like this (I guess this is relevant for other languages as well): 'This is a string' ans = This is a string x = 'This is a string' x = This is a string Using disp will give: disp('This is a string') This is a string There are, as far as I ...

 
0
A: The Many Memes of PPCG

VoteToClosetag-abuse origin : all-chat-posts-ever cultural-height : infinity background : In cases needing to express an end-all statement or a fact, tags are totally misused in order to show finality. popular-tags : alex-is-wrong(or variations thereof)carrotstatus-approvedstatus-declinedstatus-status

There we go. :D
 
4:31 PM
Are you telling me to add it or are you telling me that's your opinion? O.o
 
@VoteToClose Oh you didn't know? We deleted your profile for funsies.
2
 
@AlexA. :I
 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
That's me going "we've already got overhanded and such listed - so it feels weird seeing a meta (tag entry)"
 
Yeah, actually I think we have all the tag bases covered already: overhanded, carrot, and alex-is-wrong.
 
4:33 PM
Oh. Okay then. :D
I remove.
 
@BrainSteel You also crop up in random intervals! I hope this interval lasts a while because:
34 mins ago, by Alex A.
@BrainSteel AHHHHHH YOU'RE BACK I MISSED YOU
 
I didn't realize that using zero width spaces made the character count go up. o-o
 
Yeah
 
I mean, it makes sense, but you think they would've counteracted stuff like that.
 
That's how I was able to use "World Big Dosa" as a post title. It's one character too short for SE's title length.
 
4:35 PM
Oh!
 
I don't recommend that.
 
So, "Golf you a quine for great good" could be "Quine​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​"?
 
No
 
Oh.
 
Titles have a minimum length for a reason.
 
4:35 PM
Well then.
Fair enough. :D
 
This interval will probably last a bit. You guys keep me sane by reminding me I'm not the only crazy one.
 
We're craaaaaaaaaazy?
 
@BrainSteel o-o This is an illogical thought process.
 
@trichoplax "is there a better way to list the test cases?" Zgarb-style: each test case on its own line, e.g. [1, 10, 101] => 111
 
We're programmers. What is logic?
 
4:37 PM
...what we do?
 
We do logic?
Logickers
2
@MartinBüttner Zgarb-style is best style
3
Just as green curry is best curry.
Anyway, I should have left for work like an hour ago.
 
@AlexA. truth.
 
@AlexA. I just assume if you're here, you're at work.
 
Anonymous
@VoteToClose Probably. Oh well, it's barely a byte wasted, since it only does that on an empty tack.
 
> empty tack.
 
4:49 PM
> empty tack toe
 
Why is it that the number of answers and scores on my tag badge aren't updating
 
Anonymous
Because Alex?
 
> empty toe
 
@quartata it's only updated once a day I believe
 
@MartinBüttner It's been like this for two days
 

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