The Nineteenth Byte

Dennis

04:00

@AlexA. I guess. Still, BE was the first English I learned. The internet came a lot later.

Chris Jester-Young

@Dennis See, I moved to the US 6 years ago, and I made a personal commitment to keep my language. :-)

Alex A.

@Dennis (Also I meant that surprises me, not that it surprises you. :P)

Sp3000

... Except every time you're programming and you need to call the color function :P

Chris Jester-Young

@Sp3000 That's only in CSS. Outside of CSS, that's a nonissue. :-P

Alex A.

Hadley Wickham is a dude who makes lots of awesome R packages. He's from New Zealand and uses BE. The functions in his packages use BE, e.g. summarise and colour, and in a later package update he added synonyms for the functions to use American English. :P

@ChrisJester-Young See above ^

Chris Jester-Young

04:04

@AlexA. Yeah, but that's function names, not language keywords.

Alex A.

Function keywords too, if that counts.

Chris Jester-Young

If I were to write an API, I'd name everything using NZ English.

(for my personal projects, I mean, not work ones.)

Alex A.

:P

Chris Jester-Young

Though if I started my own company, I'd adopt NZ English as the official dialect.

Alex A.

Does SE make you use AE?

Dennis

04:05

@ChrisJester-Young It's not really my language, so I'm a lot more impressionable. As far as my teachers were concerned, I was pretty bad at English (and languages in general) anyway.

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. You know, I don't know. I just follow what's in the code, I guess.

Sp3000

Is there anything specific to just NZ English?

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. Note that we have a UK office too, and I'm sure people who work there use British English.

@Sp3000 Loan words from Maori come to mind. :-)

Alex A.

@ChrisJester-Young Cool! Example?

Chris Jester-Young

There are some words with NZ-peculiar pronunciations, though. For example, British English pronounces "data" as dayta, and NZ English pronounces it as dahta.

Reto Koradi

04:07

@AlexA. There were threads on MSO before when people starting editing posts to "correct" the spelling of posts that were using British spelling. The answer was consistently that this should not be done.

Chris Jester-Young

@RetoKoradi Right, it's seriously frowned-on.

Alex A.

@RetoKoradi I'm very glad!

Chris Jester-Young

@RetoKoradi (I was going to edit your post to use a reply marker, but I don't even know which message you were replying to. :-P)

Alex A.

You weren't going to edit his post to correct his English to NZ?

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. No.

Alex A.

04:08

:P

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. "Kia ora" is a very well-known greeting in New Zealand, for example.

Reto Koradi

Some things just look weird in british English. I could deal with colour. But dialogue (or however that is spelt) is just awful.

Sp3000

I feel like I pronounce dahta... but daytum. Hard to say just thinking about it though

Chris Jester-Young

@RetoKoradi Hahaha, I use dialogue, catalogue, etc.

Sp3000

@RetoKoradi Gotta get with the programme ;D

Chris Jester-Young

04:10

@Sp3000 "Sweet as" is a uniquely New Zealand expression.

Sp3000

Oh? As in "awesome", I'm guessing?

Chris Jester-Young

Someone who uses "sweet as" in the correct way would be identified as a Kiwi automatically.

TheNumberOne

Who likes knock knock jokes ?

Chris Jester-Young

@Sp3000 Yep.

Alex A.

My aunt married a British fellow. When I and the rest of my family met him and his kids, nobody could understand anybody.

Reto Koradi

04:11

The funniest thing is just really bad spelling. I worked on a project where somebody wanted to call an entity "primitive". But they spelled it "primative". For consistency, people started adopting it, and we had primatives all over the code.

Chris Jester-Young

@RetoKoradi :'( :'( :'( Reminds me of "referer".

Alex A.

@RetoKoradi Nooooooooooo

Chris Jester-Young

At my last job, "surety" was misspelt as "surity" in the code, and it stuck around for a surprisingly long time.

Dennis

@RetoKoradi I do hope that most of these corrections are because of ignorance, not to impose the One True Spelling. For example, my spell checker marks misspelt as misspelt. If it looks weird and the spell checker says it's wrong...

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. Do not want.

Alex A.

04:12

@ChrisJester-Young :D

Reto Koradi

@ChrisJester-Young You also have to be careful with short forms. For example, there's really no good way to use a short form for "assign".

Chris Jester-Young

@RetoKoradi I'm a Scheme programmer, and we don't hesitate to use "ass".

2

Dennis

Out of context quote of the day.

Chris Jester-Young

(In Scheme, there's a function called assoc that looks up an association-list entry using equal?. There are analogues, named assv and assq, that compare using eqv? and eq?, respectively, instead of equal?.)

Alex A.

@Dennis "Quite frankly, that doesn't look like beef." is a good one too. ;)

Chris Jester-Young

04:16

8

A: Reverse Polish notation

Scheme, 162 chars (Line breaks added for clarity—all are optional.) (let l((s'()))(let((t(read)))(cond((number? t)(l`(,t,@s)))((assq t `((+,+)(-,-)(*,*)(/,/)))=>(lambda(a)(l`(,((cadr a)(cadr s)(car s)) ,@(cddr s)))))(else(car s))))) Fully-formatted (ungolfed) version: (let loop ((stack '()))...

^ uses assq

Sp3000

Trying to look up what's in Australian English because I've never really thought about it. Apparently the abbreviations (arvo, avo, barbie...)

Alex A.

@ChrisJester-Young (+,+)(-,-)(*,*)(/,/)

Chris Jester-Young

(equal? is deep comparison, like .equals() in Java. eqv? is shallow comparison, like == in Java. eq? is pointer comparison, which is...something else, but even shallower than eqv?.)

@AlexA. I know, it's my favourite part of the program. :-) (Yes, "program" not "programme" when referring to software code.)

(but television programme, event programme, show programme, etc.)

Sp3000

What do you guys say for capsicum/bell pepper/green or red pepper?

Chris Jester-Young

@Sp3000 In New Zealand, it's just capsicum, you might label the colour too.

Of course, I know that capsicum is a massive family, of which bell peppers is just one member.

orlp

04:21

I'm in the process of writing my own Scheme interpeter

Chris Jester-Young

but if you say capsicum in New Zealand, people will think of bell peppers and not other members of the capsicum family.

orlp

but I have no idea how to get any sort of meaningful error messages

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Scheme interpreters are so last century; try writing a Scheme-to-LLVM compiler instead. :-P

orlp

and when I look at mainstream implementations, it seems they don't either, lol

Alex A.

@orlp ERROR: Add more parentheses. There are never enough.

Sp3000

04:22

Wiki says green/red pepper is UK, but I've never heard anybody call it just that (without any indication of bell or capsicum)

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp What do you mean?

@AlexA. Not true. You have to get the number of parens correct.

Alex A.

@ChrisJester-Young Just a joke :)

Chris Jester-Young

Too many is also an error (and a common one that newbies fall into).

(In fact, many [scheme] questions on SO are of that variety.)

Alex A.

@Sp3000 I've never even heard the word "capsicum."

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young how can there ever be a correct finite number of parens, when n + 2 will always be better than n

Sp3000

04:23

@AlexA. May I introduce you to the esolang Paren... cut off

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Well, remember that (foo) treats foo as a procedure and calls it with zero arguments.

Sp3000

(but yeah, capsicum here too)

Chris Jester-Young

So ((foo)) takes the return value of (foo) and calls it with zero arguments.

orlp

I'm joking

Chris Jester-Young

;-)

orlp

04:24

@ChrisJester-Young in other languages code is code, and stays code, so errors can easily be associated with a function, file and line number

Alex A.

@ChrisJester-Young This needs a hat or else you'll have unbalanced parentheses!

Chris Jester-Young

@TheNumberOne Someone marked this message as offensive; if you weren't trying to be, this is your chance to clear it up.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young or perhaps the people who took offense should explain their point of view?

offense is always taken, not given

Alex A.

@orlp I give offense to this statement.

orlp

@AlexA. thy giveth and taketh

Chris Jester-Young

04:26

@AlexA. Smileys are exempt. :-)

Reto Koradi

People used to say that Lisp stands for "Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses"

Alex A.

@RetoKoradi They're only irritating if they're unbalanced. :D

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Some implementations, like Racket, have excellent source tracking and can give precise locations for erroneous syntax too.

Reto Koradi

Isn't there some kind of shortcut where you can use a square closing bracket to close all open parentheses?

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young writing that in my own implementation however... :P

Chris Jester-Young

04:27

@RetoKoradi Some readers support that, but I deem such a "feature" unuseful.

@orlp Solve macro hygiene first. Whatever you use to track syntactic lexical scope will have the facilities you need to track everything else.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young what macros? :D

it's rather unfinished

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp A Scheme implementation with no macros is less than useless. :-P

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young it's simply lambda calculus :P

with bells and whistles

Chris Jester-Young

@RetoKoradi I say it's unuseful because it's only useful in contexts where you frequently drop all the way out to top-level, and well-structured code tend not to go to top-level very frequently.

@orlp And macros are an essential part of those bells and whistles. :-P

Reto Koradi

@ChrisJester-Young Yes. And if you can't keep track of the parentheses, you probably have other problems.

Chris Jester-Young

04:30

@RetoKoradi Exactly.

orlp

another problem I have with lisps is that everything is so fragmented

and every dialect has its own arcane workflow

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp True, though if you stick to one implementation, you're fine.

I tend to write code for Racket or Guile or Chibi, for example.

Sp3000

Need a "Tips for golfing in Racket" :P

Chris Jester-Young

@Sp3000 Sure. #lang gs ;-)

(not implemented yet, but I mean to one day)

Sp3000

D:

Alex A.

04:33

Though the meta consensus IIRC is that #lang racket isn't necessary

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. I actually disagreed (as you well know), but whatever. Non-racket languages still require #lang, of course.

Alex A.

4

Q: Should the "#lang racket" line be included in code golfs?

There has been discussion whether the #lang racket line should be included in code golf submissions. So really the question is two-fold: The technical aspect: Is it possible to run Racket code without the #lang racket line? Poll: If it isn't possible to run Racket code without the #lang racket...

orlp

I'm still not certain about lisps in general

I can appreciate their minimalism and elegance

but I have a lot of gripes with them as well

also, I'm not convinced that homoiconity and lack of syntax is a good thing

Alex A.

@orlp Lack of syntax?

orlp

@AlexA. lisp is totally devoid of syntax constructs

Alex A.

04:36

... that sounds like chaos

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. There is no hard-wired syntax in Lisps. Macros shape the syntax.

That means macros can completely reshape the language. This is by design.

orlp

that's the thing I have a gripe with

I believe those same macros could be implemented in a language with syntax

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Sure, though the degree that undermines the macro system depends on the language.

I have a friend who loves Nemerle, for example.

It has syntax, but macros too.

orlp

never heard of it

Alex A.

^

Chris Jester-Young

04:38

sweet.js is interesting too (JS with hygienic macros).

orlp

I'm still considering trying to build a statically typed compiled language that has full compile-time metaprogramming

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp You mean Nemerle? ;-)

orlp

if you're familiar with C++11, think of having constexpr wherever possible, but being able to do actual useful stuff with it :P

Alex A.

Nemerle

Nemerle is a general-purpose high-level statically typed programming language designed for platforms using the Common Language Infrastructure (.NET/Mono). It offers functional, object-oriented and imperative features. It has a simple C#-like syntax and a powerful metaprogramming system. In June 2012, the core developers of Nemerle were hired by the Czech software development company JetBrains. The team is focusing on the development of Nitra; a framework for implementing new and existing programming languages. This framework will likely be used to create future versions of Nemerle. The language...

orlp

.net

ugh

Chris Jester-Young

04:40

@orlp I guess you don't want to work for SE? ;-)

orlp

I don't like vendor lock in

.NET, JVM, etc

Chris Jester-Young

It's funny, because most .NET and JVM developers don't consider those platforms as lockins.

But perhaps I'm biased, because I currently work in a .NET job and I've worked with JVM for over half of my programming career.

orlp

my view is that they're both under the sole whims of a single large for-profit company, add another layer of virtualisation that's unnecessary, and do not actually solve any real portability issue

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Actually, they both solve very real portability issues, but the same issues as can be solved by Ruby, Python, etc.

orlp

maybe it's a tad different for embedded devices

Chris Jester-Young

04:47

@orlp Actually, there are ARM CPUs that have direct JVM execution capability, now that you mention it.

orlp

in my book there's a couple of different things you want that are crammed into one solution

Chris Jester-Young

Jazelle

Jazelle DBX (Direct Bytecode eXecution) allows some ARM processors to execute Java bytecode in hardware as a third execution state alongside the existing ARM and Thumb modes. Jazelle functionality was specified in the ARMv5TEJ architecture and the first processor with Jazelle technology was the ARM926EJ-S. Jazelle is denoted by a 'J' appended to the CPU name, except for post-v5 cores where it is required (albeit only in trivial form) for architecture conformance. Jazelle RCT (Runtime Compilation Target) is a different technology and is based on ThumbEE mode and supports ahead-of-time (AOT) and...

orlp

we want a good, useful portable sort of assembly standard that can be expected to run fast on any machine

and my god do I curse the people that think ASM.js is a good idea for even a single second

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Lol. asm.js actually serves a very important function: 1. compatible with existing JS engines, and 2. easy to generate via compiler backends.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young the first is a non-requirement, the second is a non-issue

Alex A.

04:50

@orlp What is it?

Chris Jester-Young

and since the syntax of asm.js is restricted, it's easy to translate asm.js code directly into a "bytecode" system.

orlp

then a separate issue is that every platform has it's own APIs for file opening, windowing, etc

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. It's a restricted subset of JS that translates easily into assembly code.

orlp

but I believe those should be solved by libraries, not platforms

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp It's very separate.

orlp

04:51

@ChrisJester-Young it's a restricted subset of JS that translates in in an even tinier subset of assembly code in a convoluted way

Chris Jester-Young

You can have interfaces between standard JS code and asm.js code.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young yet JVM for example tries to solve both

Chris Jester-Young

You use asm.js for performance-critical code.

@orlp The convoluted way is to ensure full semantic compatibility with all JS implementations.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young javascript is such a terrible language that I believe we're doing ourselves a massive disservice by building upon it

4

it doesn't even have integers!

downright insane

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Yes, but so much of our computing world is built upon it, it's not easy to sidestep.

@orlp asm.js has integers. Non-asm.js-supporting JS implementations will just treat them as doubles, of course.

orlp

04:53

@ChrisJester-Young so we should be pulling out all the plugs to reverse it - it's only going to get worse

@ChrisJester-Young so they're not equivalent...

in 20 years the technical debt from building upon JS will waste billions

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp It's a nice goal, but I have no idea how one might implement that. JS is used everywhere now, not just the web.

@orlp They're not bit-level equivalent, but semantically equivalent.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young no they're not

anything above a certain value will give semantic differences

because the double can't represent the values anymore

but the integer can

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Correct, which is why asm.js constrains integers to 32 bits only.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young and that's insane

Chris Jester-Young

And all asm.js integer operators auto-wrap.

orlp

04:56

> it's a restricted subset of JS that translates into an even tinier subset of assembly code in a convoluted way

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp asm.js code isn't for human reading. It's for use as the backend output of a compiler.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young that's not the point

the point is that you can't express a lot of modern CPU features in asm.js

you're effectively downgrading your intel haswell to a 1980's mips processor, hell, even that had 64 bits

Alex A.

R has no base support for 64-bit anything.

That's the only thing I know that's even remotely relevant to what you guys are talking about.

slinks back quietly into the shadows to avoid further disruption

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Think of it as an abstract instruction set.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young I'm not stupid - of course I realize that

Chris Jester-Young

05:01

that can be JIT-compiled into whatever your native platform supports.

orlp

but the instruction set is extremely limited

Chris Jester-Young

Yes, but you don't have to naively translate into assembly. It can be JIT-compiled into something much smarter.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young ah, the 'sufficiently smart compiler' fallacy

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp It's one I happen to believe in.

coming from the JVM world and knowing what JITs there (and in .NET) can do.

orlp

it doesn't work on assembly level

Chris Jester-Young

05:02

JITs don't work on assembly level?

orlp

for example, if you have a 64x64bit -> 128bit multiplication routine

no compiler can reverse engineer that into a mulq on intel haswell

however, it's trivial to go from a mulq to a 64x64->128 bit routine on platforms that do not have such an instruction

thus, making an instruction set as handicapped as asm.js is very unwise

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp "No" compiler? Have you heard of FLIRT?

(FLIRT is the library-recognition technology in IDA.)

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young no

Chris Jester-Young

It can detect library code, even in statically linked libraries.

orlp

either way, every modern browser now supports asm.js

they could've put that same effort into something that isn't handicapped from the start by being javascript based

you could have a transition period where people ship both a portable assembly output, and a javascript output

and then when everyone has a modern enough browser, you can only ship the assembly

Chris Jester-Young

05:07

@orlp So, how will you sandbox the assembly?

The same way as PNaCl? Then, surely, just use PNaCl?

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young how is this any different than asm.js

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp PNaCl is based on LLVM bitcode, not a JS subset.

so the instruction set is bigger.

orlp

with 'portable assembly output' I mean a safe subset of instructions that's platform agnostic

Chris Jester-Young

Yes, that's what PNaCl is.

orlp

ok

I wouldn't be surprised if some day we're going to see sandboxed co-processors in all desktop devices

well, mobile phones too

Chris Jester-Young

05:11

Hardware Type 1 hypervisors? :-)

orlp

is there a term for 'computer that has human interaction'?

as opposed to servers, embedded, etc

Chris Jester-Young

I'm sure there's such a term but it's not coming to me at the moment.

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young the reason why I'm so fanatic about making the assembly subset bigger than what asm.js can support, and making everything fast is a simple one, btw

the CPU clock speed increase that people have come to expect from Moore's law is dead

but everyone is still designing like it's alive

adding more virtualization, more abstraction and layers upon layers

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Yeah, in that case, PNaCl (if sandboxing is needed) or LLVM (if sandboxing is not needed) would be your cup of tea.

orlp

and people are generally way too rash with this sort of stuff

one guy hacks some javascript -> assembly thing together

next thing you know, everyone thinks it's cool and all the browsers start implementing it

Chris Jester-Young

05:15

Well, one size doesn't fit all. Browsers that support asm.js can also support PNaCl.

orlp

20 years later so many man years are lost on the technical debt accrued from such decisions

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp Job security amirite?

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young heh

I wonder if people will properly crack parallelism to continue on improving performance

Chris Jester-Young

With message-passing concurrency, I believe it can be done. But many programmers don't know how to code in that style.

orlp

I have doubts - going from n possible states to 2^n seems very hard

and then there's amdahl's law

Alex A.

05:24

@ChrisJester-Young Like MPI?

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. If it's what I think MPI is, yes.

@AlexA. but what I actually had in mind were things like Erlang or Racket place channels.

Alex A.

Of course you had Racket in mind. ;)

Chris Jester-Young

Of course. It's my universe. :-)

Peter Taylor

@ChrisJester-Young Really? I'm sure I've heard it in the UK.

Chris Jester-Young

@PeterTaylor Used in the context of "sweet as, bro"?

orlp

05:30

I think people across the world say "sweet ass"

Chris Jester-Young

@orlp "sweet ass" is very different from "sweet as".

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young (define as ass)

now anymore!

Peter Taylor

@Sp3000 I have, many times. And I have at least one cookbook which just calls them "peppers".

@ChrisJester-Young Possibly not with a "bro".

Sp3000

Oh? Interesting...

Peter Taylor

Anyway, got to run. I'll finish catching up later.

Chris Jester-Young

05:33

@PeterTaylor \o

orlp

@ChrisJester-Young eww show your other hand

Alex A.

?

orlp

\o

Alex A.

:(

aditsu

06:11

@orlp there's webassembly

@ChrisJester-Young I heard it from an aussie

Chris Jester-Young

@aditsu Nice to know. :-)

Optimizer

@orlp asm is not meant to be readable or have rich feature set. Its meant to be fast and comparable to native languages (read C). So its completely fair if it has a limited feature set comparable to a fast language like C

Sp3000

@Dennis No explanation of yours any time soon? :P

aditsu

07:14

Tim Minchin - Dark Side (Awesome Version)

►

deep as, bro ^

isaacg

09:55

Every Pyth golfing tip just got 2 upvotes - I wonder why.

Lembik

10:34

hi

the rare event where someone gets a better answer than Peter Taylor has happened!

New Main Posts

11:36

0

Q: Golf Wars Episode I: The Phantom Lightsabers

Background theme Introduction Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul are about to fight! However, they've all forgotten to bring their respective lightsabers. Write a program or function which, given the string Jedi as input, generates an image similar to this*: and given the string S...

code-golf graphical-output

New Meta Posts

11:51

0

Q: Stack Snippets Reference

Stack snippets are a relatively new feature, but hugely appreciated on PPCG for keeping track of various challenges, so for that reason we need a central reference point for all of the snippets that people have written. Below this question add an answer, with the code for your Stack snippet and ...

discussion stack-snippets

Optimizer

@BetaDecay too big and should be in red, with a line on top (to have the effect)

Beta Decay

Ohh I see that's what you meant

Sp3000

I feel like @MartinBüttner's brought this point up before and mentioned something about doing it like StackApps (pinging to get some commentary in)

Lembik

12:08

hi @Sp3000 et al.

Sp3000

Hey

Optimizer

Hi et al.

Lembik

:)

how things?

Optimizer

@Sp3000 doing what?

Sp3000

The all-useful-Stack-Snippets-in-a-meta-question thing

Optimizer

12:12

ಠ_h

Martin Büttner

Hm yeah let me have a look

7

Q: Do we want to share our Stack Snippets on meta? If so, using which format?

We've had Stack Snippets for a few months now, and a few nice snippets have been written, which will probably come in handy time and time again. It's been brought up a few times in chat, that it might be nice to collect these on meta, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel for each new challenge....

discussion meta stack-snippets

There wasn't really a consensus but we've started doing one question per snippet

I'm not sure a reference makes sense, because it needs to be maintained where you could simply filter a tag instead

Left a comment...

Sp3000

Upvoted a comment...

I feel like some combination of Peter and Martin's answers would work. Some snippets are probably easier to make one-off, and could go in a question. But if we ever have more complex snippets that take a while to make or need constant updating, then a repository might be useful.

TreFox

Does anyone in this chat ever sleep?

Sp3000

I'm sleepchatting, but shhh don't let my conscious self know

(in all seriousness it's only 10pm here)

Optimizer

12:31

That's like half a day too early to sleep

aditsu

I sleep sometimes

Optimizer

12:46

Its okay, we all do.. sometimes.

Lembik

13:09

@TreFox No

Sp3000

14:52

@Vioz- Working on a new esolang?

Vioz-

Yep!

Sp3000

Nice :)

Vioz-

Not quite ready to compete in other challenges, but works OK for this :P

It's also a mess, I don't exactly know how to design a language or anything :P

Sp3000

I don't think new golfing languages should compare to CJam/Pyth that quickly, baby steps are fine

Vioz-

In some cases it does compete, pretty well actually. Just that I don't have more complicated features implemented such as variable storage

TheNumberOne

15:23

@ChrisJester-Young Sorry, I went to bed right before you posted that. I wasn't trying to be offensive.

Chris Jester-Young

Alas, enough people flagged your post that it got auto nuked.

user4067565

So that's why your comment didn't link to anything...

I was thirsty for drama, but received none.

Rainbolt

16:57

I'm still getting upvotes for this lol

1

Q: Player with the Stinkiest Armpits

I bought a used copy of Munchkin (bundled with several expansions) to play with my family while we are on summer vacation. While reading the instructions of the game to the other players, we noticed that someone scratched out this rule... Decide who goes first by rolling the dice and arguing ...

house-rules munchkin

The worst part is that I can't delete it because it has an upvoted answer

So I have to live with the reputation I gained from that experiment

New Main Posts

17:08

1

Q: Encrypting Text

The goal of this challenge is the write the shortest function/program to take input text, encrypt it using the method below, and return the result. As an example, I will use the string hello world. First, get the input text. hello world Second, convert the string into ternary (base 3). Use t...

code-golf cryptography

Alex A.

18:19

@BrainSteel How did your student do on her test?

Also @BrainSteel, your kind words on my mod nomination mean more to me than you can imagine. :')

Would anybody here be interested in a PPCG meetup akin to the SO meetups?

Vioz-

18:34

I'd be amazed if we had enough people close enough to meet up :P

Alex A.

I'm sure we don't. I don't know how many people would be willing to travel, but I would.

Vioz-

I'd be willing to, being able to afford to is a different story

Alex A.

Yes, that's probably the biggest barrier to getting folks together in person since we're so spread out. Are you in the US?

TreFox

I would be willing to travel nationally, but once you go international the rates skyrocket.

TimWolla

^ this.

Alex A.

18:39

It depends on where you are in the world, but if you're speaking from a US standpoint, that's very true.

Peter Taylor

I might make it along to a meetup in the UK near Christmas, but otherwise probably not. And I rather doubt there's going to be one in Spain: I only know of one other PPCGer here.

Alex A.

It seems that aside from the US, the UK has our largest concentration of users.

@PeterTaylor Is the other user from Spain steveverrill?

Vioz-

I'm in Southern Ontario, Canada.

Alex A.

I'm in Washington state in the US.

TreFox

I'm in South Carolina in the US

Alex A.

18:43

Geobits is in Florida, Dennis is in Paraguay, Martin is in Germany, Doorknob and Rainbolt are in Texas, BrainSteel is in Kansas, CJY is in North Carolina, aditsu is in China, Sp is in Australia...

Vioz-

At this point the most viable meetup is a video chat on Google+

Alex A.

Yeah.

TimWolla

Another Germany here.

TreFox

I mean, a google hangout would be pretty fun even if it isn't in person

Alex A.

I don't really understand what a Google hangout is, but I've heard of it. That may not even be that viable given the range of timezones.

TreFox

18:46

Do you know what skype is?

Alex A.

Yes

TreFox

Its basically a skype call but easier for more public things

Alex A.

Oh, okay.

TreFox

plus.google.com/hangouts?hl=en

Alex A.

Seems like that would be chaos with a large group.

aditsu

18:52

@AlexA. correction: Hong Kong

Alex A.

@aditsu Is Hong Kong not in China?

aditsu

not exactly.. it's a bit complicated :p

BrainSteel

@AlexA. She said the first half went really well, she's finishing on Friday. And you're very welcome, it's all completely true!

user4067565

Hangouts has multiplayer Sporcle and Panoramio!

aditsu

I need a visa if I want to go to China

user4067565

18:54

who wouldn't have fun playing sporcle.com/games/robv/java_keywords

Vioz-

Yeah, Hong Kong and Macau (?) I believe are in a weird situation

aditsu

also, Chris tends to use "cky" rather than "cjy", but I probably forgot the reason

Alex A.

@user4067565 @Doorknob. He only plays NetHack.

@aditsu Weird.

@aditsu Good to know, thanks.

aditsu

@user4067565 damn, I only got 27

too tired :p

Alex A.

19:21

8/50 :|

24 now.

Vioz-

I'm at 19/50 with 3 minutes left :P I'm guessing at this point

Alex A.

What, Java has gotos?

Vioz-

Yep

Every proper language has gotos :P

I just gave up, dissapointed in myself :( I should have been able to at least remember 5+ more

Alex A.

I've never used Java.

Vioz-

I used it in high school for Grade 11 and Grade 12 AP, since that was the language the AP exam was in

Chris Jester-Young

19:35

@AlexA. Java does not have a goto keyword.

@aditsu cky was my initials back when I started using that as my username (back in 1998). Chris Jester-Young is my married name (married at the end of 2006); I do use the username ckjy on some sites when cky is already taken or otherwise unavailable (e.g., 4-char minimum). /cc @AlexA.

All this is mentioned at the bottom of my Careers profile for people who've read it. ;-)

> Before 2007, I was known by my unmarried name, Chris K. Young. My username was just my initials, and I suppose you could say that real names change more readily than usernames. :-P

@AlexA. Hong Kongers hate being lumped in with mainland Chinese in general.

I would know, I was born in Hong Kong.

(I would never say I was born in "China".)

Vioz-

How long were you in Hong Kong before you/your family left?

Chris Jester-Young

@Vioz- 8 years.

Vioz-

Nice :) I've been to Hong Kong several times, usually because of the Singapore -> Hong Kong -> Toronto flight path

Chris Jester-Young

@Vioz- You're Singaporean then?

Vioz-

Not quite ;) Born in Canada, moved to Singapore for Dad's job at 8, came back to Canada at 13

Chris Jester-Young

19:44

Got it.

Vioz-

My extent of actually being in Hong Kong is that massive mall with the rink on the 5th floor, and HK Disney :P

Chris Jester-Young

I've never been to either place; those places didn't exist back when I lived there, and the last time I visited Hong Kong was 12 years ago.

Vioz-

Right, yeah, didn't think about that

Alex A.

@ChrisJester-Young goto is in the Java keyword quiz

@ChrisJester-Young Oh, then I sincerely apologize to you and @aditsu, I didn't know that HK was distinct from China.

Vioz-

It's got an asterisk next to it in the docs: goto* .. * - not used

So it exists, but not used

Alex A.

19:47

I'm glad it isn't used

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. Oh, that's a very political subject. Basically, prior to 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony. Ethnically, most people who lived in Hong Kong were Chinese, but culturally, Hong Kong was very westernised.

Back when Britain and China were discussing handing Hong Kong back to China, back in the 80s, a lot of people got really jittery about the prospect of Hong Kong being under Communist control.

So part of the arrangement would be that Hong Kong (and Macau) would become "Special Administrative Regions" (SAR) of China, where China would still have sovereignty but different rules would apply to Hong Kong and Macau than the rest of China.

For example, there is still border control between China and Hong Kong (and Macau), and the political systems are (supposed to be) distinct. (The fact that there's actually too much bleedover has been the subject of protests in Hong Kong.)

Alex A.

That's really interesting.

Rainbolt

Haha. I just declined a meeting invite that read "Open discussion for process improvement. No whining. It's not whining if there is a feasible solution."

The stack overflow in me said that you can't judge a problem by its solutions.

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