The Nineteenth Byte

12:08 AM

@MartinBüttner I mean each entrant submits a solution privately to each hole and each working solution is worth a point. One week per challenge and the person with most correct entries for the course wins. Ties broken by time of submission.

Afterwards all entries are publicly posted.

Alex A.

@NewMainPosts This is a nice first question!

Martin Büttner

@quintopia I don't see how that could possibly work on SE.

quintopia

@MartinBüttner It would obviously not run entirely on SE. (It's a nice Schelling point for coding enthusiasts, but so limiting

Fax Machine

Hello

Alex A.

@FaxMachine Hi! Welcome to chat!

Fax Machine

12:19 AM

Thank you :)

quintopia

You should send @FaxMachine longer messages. Its a wastevof paper to send such short ones.

Alex A.

haha

quartata

@quintopia I believe that is how Anarchy Golf works.

That the solutions are private

El'endia Starman

@mınxomaτ Watching it and just got to the point where Stefik mentions that it's not really that clear whether exceptions are all that useful in programming languages.

As a matter of fact, I hardly ever used exceptions in Python until earlier this year. Which would mean that I went without them for about six years.

mınxomaτ

Imho they are horrible, and should be avoided like the plague. But I still use them.

El'endia Starman

12:27 AM

Yeah, I use them mostly only when I have to.

Or where it's just a lot more convenient.

mınxomaτ

Chen talking about exceptions: blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040422-00/?p=39683, also: blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050114-00/?p=36693

El'endia Starman

Like converting a string to an int, float, or complex.

quintopia

@quartata but they are never made public so no one can learn

mınxomaτ

@quintopia If you want to test some central processing code for any challenge, I provide free resources and hosting in a reasonable scope for anything PPCG related at codegolf.xyz.

quartata

12:43 AM

@NewMainPosts It appears Mathematica doesn't have a built-in for this. I'm surprised.

Alex A.

@quartata Me too

quartata

Does have this

But not quite the same

Alex A.

Does pl have a builtin for it?

quartata

Why would it?

It has very few built-ins, actually.

One could say that it is almost completely useless currently.

Alex A.

Just like its implementation language :P

quartata

12:46 AM

You take that back

quintopia

@quartata pl is almost completely useless currently

quartata

ಠ_ಠ

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

What is pl?

quartata

@quintopia This is true.

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ A language that'll be good one day

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@quartata I've seen it once. Why the choice of weird sybols?

quartata

12:47 AM

4

A: Catalan Numbers

pl, 4 bytes ☼ç▲÷ Try it online. Explanation In pl, functions take their arguments off the stack and push the result back onto the stack. Normally when there are not enough arguments on the stack, the function simply fails silently. However, something special happens when the amount of argume...

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

that's where

☼_☼

quartata

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Well, it's just CP437.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

really?

I don't recall that symbol

quartata

Code point 0x0F

The reason why I use CP437 at all is so that I can save the ASCII chars for dumb stuff like this:

1

A: "Hello, World!"

pl, 13 bytes Hello, World! Yes, it works. Try it online. Explanation In pl, all printable ASCII chars (between 0x20 and 0x7E in CP437) are reserved for variable names. Normally, these chars push the contents of that variable onto the argument stack. BUT, if the variable doesn't actually exis...

I wish making a good golfing language wasn't so hard.

I have so much junk to implement

> quartata! Stay determined.

no

Alex A.

i no u can do it

quartata

12:51 AM

maybe

I guess the question I have to ask myself is do I really care about beating Pyth at everything

I can do that but it'll come at the cost of me becoming completely obsessed with PPCG

Alex A.

@quartata You aren't already?

quartata

I like to think that I'm about 80% there

Alex A.

I'm about 200% past obsession

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@Adnan Good job !

quartata

@AlexA. rly

Rumor has it that you have a life.

Good job, publishing medical articles, making lentil soup...

Alex A.

12:55 AM

@quartata Why told you this nonsense

quartata

That sounds like a life to me.

mınxomaτ

@AlexA. 100% for you, and 100% for your sock.

quartata

:26454060 !

El'endia Starman

> Why told you

Also, AlexA has mentioned his girlfriend numerous times...

quartata

@El'endiaStarman LIFE CONFIRMED

mınxomaτ

12:56 AM

@El'endiaStarman Which is probably also a sock. Ohhhhhhh

El'endia Starman

...wow

Alex A.

ಠ___ಠ

quartata

..

But seriously. Confess. You have a life.

Admit it.

Alex A.

I sort of do. But I spend way too much time on PPCG for it to constitute a healthy hobby. :P

quartata

Good enough.

Alex A.

12:58 AM

@El'endiaStarman WHY TOLD YOU THIS

quartata

@AlexA. WHEN TOLD YOU THIS

Alex A.

@quartata "Good" job. It's fine but I don't really like it. The article was started in 2011, and all of the writing and analysis I did for it was finished in 2012, long before I joined SE. (There are a couple of other articles, but all before SE.) The lentil soup was when I still lived in Seattle. So I used to have a life. It's since decayed into a hollow shell.

quartata

I see.

Alex A.

@quartata HOW TOLD YOU

Adnan

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Haha, thank you :)

quartata

1:00 AM

Well, welcome to ~~no-lifes anonymous~~ SE

7

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@Adnan My pleasure!

Alex A.

> lifes

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

I guess I have to crack your submission now ;P

quartata

@AlexA. It says no-lifes but you can't see the dash

Adnan

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Hahaha, if you succeed, I'll give you a 100 rep bounty

El'endia Starman

1:01 AM

--- - ---

Alex A.

@quartata Oh I get it now

El'endia Starman

Nope. Can't strike out a lone dash.

-

Alex A.

@El'endiaStarman Crossed out dash is still regular dash ;(

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@Adnan o_o

El'endia Starman

Wut. I think I just did it.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

1:02 AM

I know what I'm doing tonight

El'endia Starman

---_-_---

Adnan

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ I didn't even know that t was 10 haha

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Yeah, poor docs on my part :P

Adnan

I was messing around with *+91+91 to get 100

It was quite fun though

El'endia Starman

@mınxomaτ This talk is making me seriously consider using words like "loop" and "repeat" instead of "for" and "while", or something similar, in PyAcidic.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

1:13 AM

@Adnan :D

@AlexA. what is the  thing to make a code block it display in javascript?

El'endia Starman

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

thanks

0

A: Printing ascending ASCII, Cops

JavaScript ES6, 134 characters Huh boy, that was fun. Good luck! _=_=_____l____.______.________(___}__;___=______ru____"_____+_[________]______!____]__[_________e________.__U_________)__________\_____

Alex A.

1 min ago, by El'endia Starman

3

El'endia Starman

...

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@AlexA. Why, thank you, Alex sir!

I never knew. No thanks to that star fellow, of course :P

Alex A.

1:17 AM

It's my pleasure. Surely the star person is of no help at all in these matters.

El'endia Starman

...

-_-

_

Haha. Struck-out underscore.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

I thought it was an underlined em dash

:P

El'endia Starman

~~___~~

_

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

haha

mınxomaτ

God do I hate java. Is there a good transpiler to a more sensible language yet?

quartata

1:25 AM

@mınxomaτ Err... what's wrong with Java?

Alex A.

quartata

Like, what issue do you have with it?

Because there are other JVM based languages you can use

If you have a specific issue with syntax

mınxomaτ

@El'endiaStarman Watch this: - (upside-down dash!)

Alex A.

@quartata e.g. Scala and Groovy, as well as languages that have been ported to the JVM

quartata

@AlexA. Yeah that's my point

Alex A.

1:27 AM

I know

quartata

Clojure too.

If you like LISP

Alex A.

I replied to link with your post but it was intended for minxobro

quartata

minxobrah

2

Alex A.

minxomatthew

mınxomaτ

@quartata I don't actually hate Java, I just hate to download additional files to run something. Java is probably fine, I just don't use it.

I googled for lolz and got this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Java :D

quartata

1:29 AM

@mınxomaτ Windows doesn't come with Java by default?

Or give you an option to install it?

Alex A.

quartata

!

mınxomaτ

@quartata Why should it? It already has another quite powerful runtime. Also Oracle is a bitch about licensing.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Tau or Pi?

quartata

Pi... ಠ_ಠ

@mınxomaτ Ew .NET no

help

El'endia Starman

1:32 AM

Pi.

quartata

Do people actually legitimately use Tau in scholarly articles and stuff?

mınxomaτ

@quartata At least .NET has a permissive license (MIT & Apache dual). I like it. Mono need to improve though.

quartata

@mınxomaτ It does? I thought it had the "no fun allowed" license model

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@quartata I've seen it a few times.

mınxomaτ

@quartata It completely open-source.

github.com/dotnet

quartata

1:33 AM

@mınxomaτ So is Java though

I guess my main grudge against .NET is that it really only works on Windows.

It takes non cross-platform stuff to an extreme level

They make this beautiful architecture that could be ported

And then they don't port it

mınxomaτ

@quartata Well except for some ultra-specifi features everything works in Mono.

quartata

Right, but Mono shouldn't have to be around, nor should it have to be in constant fear of getting nuked by Microsoft

mınxomaτ

@quartata Microsoft did not invent the CLR, not even IL. It's an open standard. And both GNU and Mono have implementations.

Alex A.

Why would it be in fear of getting nuked?

mınxomaτ

@quartata nor should it have to be in constant fear of getting nuked by Microsoft why would they?

Alex A.

1:35 AM

Ninja'd

quartata

Because Mono reverese engineered some Windows API junk that's proprietary in order to work well

Or at least I'm under that impression

mınxomaτ

@quartata No, it didn't.

It's open-source for god's sake! And again, licensed under MIT.

Alex A.

> open.source

Last one

quartata

I thought ASP.NET and Windows Forms were not covered by the ECMA standard

Alex A.

Are those implemented by Mono?

quartata

1:38 AM

Yes.

mınxomaτ

@quartata Windows Forms is not open source. But then again, it is Windows Forms, not really made with linux in mind. Linux already has easier tools for that.

So it would be re-inventing the wheel.

quartata

Right but it needs it to run any .NET GUI applications

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

O_O THEY'VE ADDED NONLETHAL BACKSTABS TO TF2

quartata

In order for a .NET GUI application to be cross-platform it either has to require Windows users to install GTK or Linux/Mac users to use a shady part of Mono

Either way it's nasty.

With Java, you can just use Swing/JavaFX.

Alex A.

I thought Swing was considered old school

mınxomaτ

1:41 AM

@quartata Which is not available on Windows and has to be downloaded. There goes your crossplatform.

quartata

@mınxomaτ It comes with Java though.

mınxomaτ

@quartata Java doesn't come with Windows.

quartata

Swing at least.

@mınxomaτ Mono doesn't come with Linux.

So I guess we're at an impasse.

But, once the user does have Java it works fine

Plus there are ways to bundle Java into an executable

mınxomaτ

Exactly. So none of those languages are crossplatform. At least in C++ you can truly be crossplatform.

Alex A.

@mınxomaτ #ifdef WIN32 hmm

quartata

1:43 AM

If your definition of cross platform is "works on any platform without having to install anything else" then you are more or less limited to rudimentary C console applications that don't use anything POSIX-related

Alex A.

Dial-up sound 700% slower (Creepy)

►

quartata

@AlexA. oh god what is that

Alex A.

Nightmare fuel

3

quartata

I'm scared to click on it

Alex A.

I was enjoying it but my girlfriend made me turn it off.

quartata

1:44 AM

Sounds like she has common sense

mınxomaτ

On the topic of Java, ... wtf.

Alex A.

It's pretty catchy, actually

quartata

@mınxomaτ Oh god I've seen that

Bleh

Alex A.

@mınxomaτ Unsurprisingly, J++ and J# were pretty much dead on arrival AFAIK.

quartata

Oh also

A Sharp (.NET)

A# is a port of the Ada programming language to the Microsoft .NET platform. A# is freely distributed by the Department of Computer Science at the United States Air Force Academy as a service to the Ada community under the terms of the GNU General Public License. AdaCore has taken over this development, and announced "GNAT for .NET", which is a fully supported .NET product with all of the features of A# and more. == References == == External links == A# for .NET Ada Sharp .NET Programming environment...

P Sharp

P# is a Prolog interpreter written for the Common Language Infrastructure. Features: Languages extensions allow concurrency in Prolog. Prolog programs can create any .NET object. Compatible with Microsoft .NET Framework and Mono. == See also == List of CLI languages == External links == P# home page relationship to Prolog Cafe Prolog Cafe author P# manual PDF file...

mınxomaτ

1:47 AM

F# is still a thing though.

quartata

They really scraped the bottom of the barrel for languages here

Ada, Prolog, OCaml?

;_;

F# is pretty good though from what I've heard.

Alex A.

Yeah, I've heard decent things about F#. Personally I dislike its Haskell-like syntax though.

quartata

I like Haskell so I probably could tolerate it

mınxomaτ

Well, huge chunk of people use Haskell nowadays. So with F# they can join a bigger .NET project, even if it is a c# or vb codebase. Expands employ-ability I guess.

Which is always good.

Alex A.

No one should be using VB at all, much less in production.

ducks

quartata

1:51 AM

VB is the only .NET language I actually legitimately like

Alex A.

ಠ_ಠ

quartata

I wouldn't use C# unless I was forced to, and I only admire F# because it's really just OCaml

But VB... that's cool.

mınxomaτ

I don't care, as long as the dev teams give me working things. All .NET langs are interoperable (VB-C# can even be search-replace).

quartata

Yeah, it all compiles to one thingy anyways

JVM languages work like that too.

The selection isn't quite as diverse, but it means that people who like scripting languages better can write junk in Groovy and people who like Java better can write junk in Java

And people who like LISP can write junk in Clojure for about 5 seconds before being lynched by their coworkers

Alex A.

@quartata lel

@quartata Why only C# if you were forced to? I find nothing objectionable about it. I'm pretty neutral.

quartata

1:55 AM

I swear, I've seen it happen. LISP programmers are almost extinct in the wild because of this

Alex A.

Anymore you can only find Lisp progammmers in zoos

quartata

@AlexA. Because if I find myself writing something in C# I might as well just write it in Java

Plus I don't like Microsoft that much and I can't help but feel like they took Java and exposed it to radioactive material, turning it into this steaming C++/Java mutation thing

Alex A.

Unless you need to target Windows

quartata

I've written Java applications targeting Windows before

Alex A.

orly

quartata

1:57 AM

rly

awkward silence

Alex A.

What's your favorite kind of bread?

quartata

Squaw.

mınxomaτ

@AlexA. Potato Bread.

quartata

@mınxomaτ I love potato bread too

Alex A.

@quartata What is that

mınxomaτ

1:59 AM

Closely followed by olive baguette.

quartata

@AlexA. Pumpernickel/Whole Wheat hybrid

Alex A.

Sounds unholy

quartata

I don't know exactly how they make it but it tastes gudddddd

@mınxomaτ Also good

Challah is great too but it's not that good for you :/

Alex A.

@mınxomaτ Rosemary and olive A+++

quartata

I love olives

Alex A.

2:01 AM

@quartata Because every bite contains the equivalent of like 14 eggs?

quartata

@AlexA. Yes, sadly.

mınxomaτ

I love eggs (esp. poached).

quartata

I love poached eggs.

Alex A.

I used to like eggs when I was younger but I stopped eating them a long time ago.

quartata

Good idea.

Run while you can. My arteries are already forfeit.

Alex A.

2:02 AM

Have any of you ever made your own bread?

quartata

Banana bread count? :P

Alex A.

Not what I meant, but sure. :P Banana bread is boss.

quartata

Then yes I have made my own bread.

Doorknob 冰

I have made bread in science class. :P

Alex A.

I made Irish soda bread once. It was dense. Very dense.

mınxomaτ

2:03 AM

I didn't. Cause I live above a bakery and I'm lazy.

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Sounds like a delicious lesson

Doorknob 冰

It was indeed

quartata

@Doorknob冰 Are you sure that was a science class? Sometimes I used to misread "Home Economics" as "Science"

Alex A.

@mınxomaτ I'm both jealous and not jealous. I love bread so if I lived above a bakery I'd die.

@quartata ...are you dyslexic?

quartata

@AlexA. No. That was a joke.

Maltysen

2:05 AM

@AlexA. we burned Cheetos in chemistry a couple days ago

quartata

@Maltysen wat

Alex A.

^

Maltysen

and then we ate the leftovers

quartata

ew

mınxomaτ

That's ... not good?

Alex A.

2:05 AM

@Doorknob冰 What kind of bread and how good was it scale of 1-10

quartata

Oh sorry I thought you meant you ate the Cheeto ashes

Maltysen

lel

mınxomaτ

Our chem teacher used to eat the blackboard chalk.

Doorknob 冰

@quartata Haha, yes. This year, actually; Biology

quartata

@Doorknob冰 Ah. So it was a lesson on yeast?

Doorknob 冰

2:06 AM

@AlexA. We made them into breadsticks. It was bread/10.

Alex A.

No, weast

quartata

@mınxomaτ I thought I had some weird professors

Doorknob 冰

@quartata yup, and fermentation and stuff

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Oh shit

quartata

sticks/10 it's ok

Alex A.

2:06 AM

@Doorknob冰 Obviously you should have made beer to learn about fermentation

quartata

Dammit I was just about to make that joke but with scotch whiskey instead

Alex A.

It was no joke, son.

Doorknob 冰

> son

mınxomaτ

@AlexA. We had a course for wine making.

quartata

But they couldn't drink the beer afterwards which ruins it

Alex A.

2:07 AM

@mınxomaτ Jealous

quartata

@mınxomaτ Damn

That's cool

Alex A.

Homebrewing beer is an annoying process, especially since I have yet to make any that was actually good.

mınxomaτ

@AlexA. We also had our own wineyard.

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Using Symbols for Letters Input: A single word as a string (matches [a-zA-Z]+) Output: The NATO pronunciation of the word. Print out a space separated list of the NATO word that matches each letter of the input word. Trailing white space is acceptable. Restrictions: Your source code mus...

Alex A.

@mınxomaτ :O

I assume you mean vineyard?

mınxomaτ

2:09 AM

@AlexA. Big school.

@AlexA. Yes.

New Main Posts

6

Q: What song is playing?

Inspired by this xkcd You work for Shazam and they have a project for you. Some customers are complaining about their app taking up too much space on their phone, so they want you to code a lite version of the app. Unfortunately, your existing code can only understand the word "na", and you ha...

Doorknob 冰

+6 is the highest I've seen NMP post at

Alex A.

GJ, NMP

mınxomaτ

@AlexA. That was my school.

Alex A.

Looks fancy!

mınxomaτ

2:12 AM

You can tell we were nuts, because the website is available in latin.

Alex A.

._.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

^

Calvin's Hobbies

Can you only wear one hat at a time?

quartata

Yep

Calvin's Hobbies

2:28 AM

@quartata You and alex look the same now

Alex A.

u_u

Calvin's Hobbies

quartata = pixelated alex

Alex A.

alexelated

quartata

alexelated pixel

Alex A.

quartitilated

@Calvin'sHobbies Where are our challenges? We need challenges. ;-;

Doorknob 冰

2:38 AM

oh I still have those 12 challenges waiting to be posted

but I wanna decide on a "schedule" first

quartata

I still have that damn grocery store challenge

Calvin's Hobbies

@AlexA. They made large seasonal-cultural food items in your home state, where's your corrsponding challenge?

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Schedule(challenges) = Post one now + Schedule(challenges[-1])

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. ... so post all 12 right now? -_-

Alex A.

Uh

no

Post 1 now, figure out the other 11 later

@Calvin'sHobbies wtaf

Maltysen

2:42 AM

or write all 12 of them up and post them with a script to post them at the exact same time

Doorknob 冰

I've already written all 12

I have them in a file called stuff.md :P

Calvin's Hobbies

Post one every day. Get's you closer to socratic

Doorknob 冰

But I don't think I'll be able to consistently do 1 challenge/day

Alex A.

s/'//

@Doorknob冰 y

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. z

Alex A.

2:44 AM

oic

Maltysen

@Doorknob冰 write a cronjob and run it on some server

quartata

^

Doorknob 冰

@Maltysen No, I mean once I run out of these 12 I can't write 1/day

quartata

Then write 12 more before you run out

Doorknob 冰

ugh I want to do a challenge based on recent news but all news.google.com has is shootings and natural disasters and stuff :/

Calvin's Hobbies

2:46 AM

@AlexA. Teeny-challenge: x*(x+1) in base x+2, x = 0 to 8

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Do local news in some podunk town

@Calvin'sHobbies Julia, 27 bytes: [base(x+2,(x+1)x)for x=0:8]

quartata

@Calvin'sHobbies Like for a given input?

Or just range between 0:8?

Calvin's Hobbies

@quartata either. Print all 9 outputs space/newline separated or take in x and give one output

Doorknob 冰

I just passed a review audit... on Puzzling.SE...

quartata

ri:TT)*T2+b 11 bytes CJam

Alex A.

2:49 AM

@Doorknob冰 Congratulations...?

quartata

Takes in x

Doorknob 冰

I fail to see the need to audit moderators

Alex A.

Julia, 19 bytes: x->base(x+2,(x+1)x), takes input

@Doorknob冰 Oh, yes. You could ask on Meta.SE if it isn't status-bydesign

quartata

Just you wait until pl gets base conversion

Alex A.

@quartata I can't wait

Doorknob 冰

2:51 AM

I found a meta question. Hilariously, I have a downvote on it for some reason. I do not recall this.

quartata

_▲•▲_■

That's it in pl assuming ■ is base convert

6 bytes

mınxomaτ

▲_■

That reversed the character heights for me o.O

quartata

_ input var ▲ increment last used var • multiply ▲increment _ input var ■ base convert

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 What's the vote breakdown on Shog's answer?

Doorknob 冰

+7/-9

Alex A.

2:54 AM

And Emil's?

Yannis'?

The question?

Doorknob 冰

+9/-16, +19/-0, +42/-11

Do yourself a favor and go find the "show vote counts everywhere" userscript on Stack Apps :P

Alex A.

Why would I do that when I have you? :P

quartata

Wait there is a userscript for that?

Calvin's Hobbies

@quartata pl = pumpkin looks?

quartata

@Calvin'sHobbies pl = Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Perl

Doorknob 冰

2:55 AM

@quartata yes

quartata

That's the official motto now

Alex A.

@Calvin'sHobbies pomp & lircumstance

Doorknob 冰

@quartata Share & Enjoy

quartata

Tell your friends

Alex A.

Stranger danger

FlagAsSpam

2:56 AM

6

A: Choose your own swag - the craziest contest idea ever! What were we thinking?

All I Want for Swagmas is to be Non-Beta So, I attend the wonderful site called PPCG: Programming Puzzles and Code Golf, although, to be fair, we're much more than that. We're a community that supports clever uses (and exploitations) of programming languages. Some of us have even MADE programmin...