The Nineteenth Byte

DJMcMayhem

3:00 PM

@Mego OK. I'm really curious to know what kind of projects they'll have you on

mınxomaτ

You really like JavaScript? You really use Wordpress? Damn...

Downgoat

@Mego ;___; y u sai dis

Sherlock9

@mınxomaτ Misping?

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem Me too!

DJMcMayhem

Keep us posted!

mınxomaτ

3:00 PM

@Sherlock9 Damn chat moving under my cursor...

Anonymous

Of course

Geobits

@DJMcMayhem s/me/us/ :P

Anonymous

The second thing I do after getting more info will be gush about it here lol

Downgoat

@mınxomaτ ;_; such ;____; rn

DJMcMayhem

@Geobits done. :P

Sherlock9

3:01 PM

@mınxomaτ It's the sign of an active chat, and I'm glad to have it, but only occasionally.

DJMcMayhem

@Mego Maybe if you're lucky, they'll put you on the super top secret "Google esoteric language"

Sherlock9

The sign only occasionally, that is. There are other much more pleasant signs of activity.

trichoplax

If it gets really bad you can get around it by replying from the transcript, but that's not practical

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem You mean Go?

Downgoat

@DJMcMayhem So when you google "Python"? :P

Sherlock9

3:03 PM

@Mego Maybe they'll get you on the super secret project to allow odd characters in Google search so that searches like & symbol don't just look for symbol.

quartata

@Mego Watch out

Anonymous

I would be surprised if I was on the Search team

quartata

they might take you down to the dungeon o' leeches and lawyers if you badmouth Go

DJMcMayhem

@Downgoat I know you're trying to bash snek, but I don't quite see how...

Anonymous

I don't have enough of a stats background for that

Downgoat

3:04 PM

@DJMcMayhem I am calling dangr noodle esoteric language

Anonymous

@quartata I'm not a huge fan of Go, but I'll probably have to learn to live with it and use it. Like JS.

DJMcMayhem

@Downgoat oic. That's so funny I forgot to laugh

Anonymous

@Downgoat The only esoteric language here is whatever language you're trying to communicate in

4

Downgoat

@DJMcMayhem @Mego ಠ_ಠ ;___;

DJMcMayhem

Actually, the guy who wrote python works at Google now. And the guy who wrote vim

Sherlock9

3:06 PM

Do we have an esolang named Esoteric so that Google searches for "Esoteric language" are confounded? :P

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem I'm fairly sure GvR doesn't work at Google, but I could be wrong

Nathan Merrill

@Mego all of the projects at my location didn't use Go, but I'm not sure about yours

it was pretty much all Java with some Python

Geobits

Caffeinated snake. Interesting combo.

Anonymous

GvR used to work at Google, but went to Dropbox a few years ago

Sp3000

@Mego Make sure you have fun with code golf there :)

Nathan Merrill

3:08 PM

@Geobits its mostly Java. So its venomous coffee

Anonymous

@Sp3000 I'm going to get in so much trouble for golfing my code unintentionally

DJMcMayhem

@Mego oh hey you're right. He did from 05-12, but now he's at Dropbox

Sherlock9

According to Google, GvR has been working at Dropbox since 2012 or 2013 depending on which part of the article you read

Downgoat

@Geobits or a very yucky cup of coffee

Geobits

@NathanMerrill Ah yes, that makes sense.

DJMcMayhem

3:08 PM

Bram moolenaar does though

Sp3000

@Mego Oh I don't mean golfing production code, as in recreational code golf contests

Anonymous

Java, Python, Go, and Javascript (for front end only) are the big languages at Google

Anonymous

@Sp3000 I don't know if they do those but I hope so

Downgoat

I feel like Conor works for googles JS team considering how obfuscated their JS is

DJMcMayhem

I thought they do

Sp3000

3:10 PM

@Mego Just poke around when you get there :) [/you didn't hear this from me]

Anonymous

@Downgoat They minify and uglify their JS hard

Downgoat

Does this mean I can get s Google job as a JS code golfer? :D

DJMcMayhem

@Mego blog.zmxv.com/2015/07/code-golf-at-google.html?m=1

Anonymous

@Sp3000 Why do I feel like I'm going to get initiated into some secret society of Google golfers?

Nathan Merrill

Researchers just found the gene responsible for mistakenly thinking we've found the gene for specific things. It's the region between the start and the end of every chromosome, plus a few segments in our mitochondria.

quartata

3:12 PM

Hmmm I got static_freeze to compile my executable

but now I'm getting Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: Unable to get the locale encoding

which is.... weird...

Downgoat

Question : should dynamic classes be a thing

Nathan Merrill

expound

TimmyD

@NathanMerrill Good gravy, I just did a View Source on google.com ... How is it that complicated?

Downgoat

Like unnamed classes

Like a class literal

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem 1. That sounds like it got leveraged into Foobar. 2. That guy probably got sent to the basement of leeches and lawyers.

Nathan Merrill

3:16 PM

@Downgoat so a = class { }?

Downgoat

Yeah

Geobits

Anon classes are handy, but it depends on the type system. They're useful for implementing interfaces one-off in java, for instance.

Anonymous

Google also knows that I code golf - my resume had my stack exchange account URL on it

Nathan Merrill

which is the same as doing something like class A { }; a = A().class?

or a = A()?

aka, does the above a contain a class reference or a class instantiation?

Downgoat

@Mego and you still got job? O_o :P

Anonymous

3:18 PM

@Downgoat Yeah because I'm good at Python :P

Downgoat

If employer found my chat.SE profile I would never get job

Nathan Merrill

oh! in my interviews, I answered all of mine with Python, and they always asked me why I picked Python

Downgoat

"wtf you actually like JS and Wordpress"

Anonymous

@Downgoat Yeah most employers require typing skills

Geobits

@NathanMerrill Was your answer "I liek snek?" :P

Adnan

3:19 PM

Hahaha

Nathan Merrill

lol, its was "python is the easiest language to write on a whiteboard"

Anonymous

You're not wrong :P

Sherlock9

Fair play :D

Anonymous

Also the other choice is Java... It would take an hour just to write one method

Geobits

I dunno. If you don't get the spacing just right, the whiteboard throws a fit.

2

Java whiteboard is definitely a chore lol

Downgoat

3:21 PM

@Mego I can use speech to text and run it through gaot++

@NathanMerrill I find cheese pretty easy to draw

TimmyD

Writing PowerShell -- I hope your pipes don't look like your ells

Sherlock9

@NathanMerrill That's part of why I could write part of divisor tree answer on paper while on retreat and copy it in verbatim later :D

Downgoat

one parallelogram for the base and a simple triangle for the top

Nathan Merrill

the thing about whiteboard code is that there's a bunch of arrows pointing everywhere for inserts/replacements

Sherlock9

Same with paper code

quartata

3:22 PM

Yeah, Python is one of the few languages I can write on paper.

I'm not sure why

Sherlock9

I like to think that the (in?)famous whitespace requirements help you logically separate out your code and your thoughts.

TimmyD

Oh man ... writing BASIC and needing to manually erase and renumber lines ... shudder

Downgoat

@Geobits Java whiteboard = RSI

DJMcMayhem

My prof had us write C++ on paper...

quartata

Oof.

Better than Java on paper at least

Nathan Merrill

3:25 PM

@DJMcMayhem as did mine, but wasn't super strict on syntax

Downgoat

@DJMcMayhem Still better than public static void main(String[] arts)

Nathan Merrill

I can actually write better Java than C++ on paper

that said, I can write better Java than C++ anywhere

quartata

@NathanMerrill Yeah, at least mine let us drop semicolons and stuff

I wonder if any poor souls have gotten saddled with professors who wanted perfect paper code

DJMcMayhem

@Downgoat is it really though int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { ... }

Downgoat

@quartata <- this gaot ;_;

@DJMcMayhem you don't need Argc and argv most cases tho

TimmyD

3:28 PM

I don't remember any prof asking for paper code ... paper pseudocode, sure -- enough to show you understood the algorithm(s) -- but not actual code

trichoplax

@TimmyD Adding a line between 40 and 50 and choosing to call it 43 because you estimate you will be more likely to need more lines after it than before it

DJMcMayhem

@Downgoat yeah you do!

Most of the time at least

Downgoat

._.

is std::cin not liked anymore :(

DJMcMayhem

What makes you say that?

Downgoat

You can use cin instead of command line args

trichoplax

3:30 PM

It's a cin

3

Downgoat

.........

Geobits

@trichoplax How un-cout-h...

trichoplax

@Downgoat Oh I keep forgetting you don't like my appallingly bad puns

Downgoat

Worst puns are best puns

trichoplax

@Geobits Some things are so contrived they're funny again...

DJMcMayhem

3:32 PM

@Downgoat They're two completely different concepts

Geobits

@trichoplax It really is a terrible one :P

Downgoat

Yeah but for getting input to your app they both work

DJMcMayhem

Can you imagine if cd went "please enter the directory you'd like to change to: "

3

TimmyD

@trichoplax Oh yeah. I was self-taught programming via BASIC on the VIC-20, and later QBasic. I'm pretty sure that's part of the reason why I'm a terrible programmer.

DJMcMayhem

@Downgoat but in drastically different ways. Think of command line flags and what not. Or vim filename

Geobits

3:34 PM

Ah, BASIC then QBasic. The path of righteousness :D

trichoplax

Survived it. Wouldn't recommend it

DJMcMayhem

How different are BASIC and vb?

Geobits

Quite

Nathan Merrill

we really need a language with decimal point line numbers

trichoplax

As a punishment for something?

Geobits

3:37 PM

"Need"? That word... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Nathan Merrill

nah, its the only reason basic isn't used today. We'll all recognize the errors of our was and convert back to DecimalBASIC

get back to DBASICs

Geobits

You could fake decimalbasic anyway. Just add a zero to all line numbers :P

TimmyD

From there I progressed to scripting in Doom and Quake, self-taught HTML, learned a bit of Pascal in high school, and went to college where I learned MIPS and Java, and a little bit of Python.

Nathan Merrill

@Geobits you'd need like 10 or so zeroes

Wheat Wizard

@DJMcMayhem Did you award Dennis with your portion of the bounty?

trichoplax

3:38 PM

@Geobits The time I could have avoided wasting if I'd thought of that...

Nathan Merrill

which is quite unwieldly

Geobits

@NathanMerrill Sure, sure. Just add as required :P

TimmyD

Out of college were BATCH files and VBscript, then PowerShell.

Nathan Merrill

also, you all missed my pun

either that, or it was really bad

Geobits

@NathanMerrill Didn't miss it ;)

trichoplax

3:41 PM

Actually I recall a version of BASIC that had a maximum line number. So if your program got too long you'd have to use consecutive line numbers and changing anything was horrific

Geobits

I think BBC was just under 0xFFFF at least.

Not sure about others.

TimmyD

What about y'all? When did you get started in programming?

Sherlock9

@NathanMerrill Well done :D

TimmyD

Chat Mini Survey

Adnan

@TimmyD You mean at what age?

TimmyD

3:43 PM

Sure.

What was your first introduction?

How old were you?

Things like that.

Adnan

I started with C#, when I was 9 haha

it was terrible

Sherlock9

I'd done programming in Scratch and TurtleArt during high school, but just out of high school, I took an online course called "Introduction to Programming" on Coursera, and fell in love with Python. I was, I want to say 17 or 18

TimmyD

I was five or six, my parents got a VIC-20 used at a garage sale, and I distinctly remember patiently reading and typing through a book that came with it to make a bird fly around the screen.

Adnan

Oh cool!

Geobits

@TimmyD Right around 10, with GW-BASIC and this book.

Sherlock9

3:46 PM

I wrote a program in Turtle Art that printed the Collatz sequence of a given input. Got the turtle to print numbers like they were on 7-segment display (but not quite)

Nathan Merrill

In Junior high, students used to type huge numbers that would fill many lines, and when they pressed "enter", the stream of numbers would fly up making a "screensaver" of sorts. I started programming on my TI-83 to make better screensavers

trichoplax

@Sherlock9 Wow. That's like the opposite of ASCII art...

TimmyD

@Sherlock9 Oh yeah, I remember doing a class in Turtle Graphics somewhere around 7th or 8th grade, now that you mention it.

@NathanMerrill Yep, I made a simple blackjack game on my TI-83 in high school

Geobits

The only class I ever had that was remotely-programming-related was using HyperCard :/

And I got kicked out of that class for "hacking". Idiots.

DJMcMayhem

@WheatWizard no, I haven't yet

Sherlock9

3:49 PM

@Geobits Did you ever get your revenge on your school for not understanding what programming is?

Nathan Merrill

lol, I remember my first Java classes...I got bored, so I figured out how to turn the robot we were programming with different colors

Geobits

@Sherlock9 Uh, well, that depends on what you mean. The reason I got kicked out was for adding a lil basic program that blanked the screen and rang like a telephone into the autoexec.bat.

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Folding numbers Given a number determine if it is a folding number. A folding number is a number such that if you take it binary representation and "fold" it in half, That is take the result of XNOR multiplication of the first half of the number and the second half with it digits in reverse, y...

TimmyD

@Geobits Oh jeez, I had totally forgotten that. I had made up a simple choose-your-own-adventure game in HyperCard. I think that was the same class that I learned Pascal.

Geobits

It's not really my fault they didn't try hitting ESC to stop it. I was at least that nice.

DJMcMayhem

3:51 PM

@TimmyD I was 14-15 (don't remember exactly) and khan academy had a series in python. I did that for a little while, but didn't really like it. Then I found a library called pygame, and I became obsessed

Sherlock9

@Geobits Oh. I was thinking along the lines of "Look at me now, suckers!", but I don't think you get a lot high school reunion bragging rights from being a famous esolang creator and golfer :P

Geobits

Oh, well I'm clearly not a famous esolang writer or golfer anyway :P

DJMcMayhem

Then I took a year of CS classes (C++ mostly), interviewed at a local engineering company, and now I've been interning there for about a year and a half

Geobits

My relationship with my high school is more of a partially-blocked string of memories than anything else. No revenge motivation at all for me.

Sherlock9

Fair enough

TimmyD

4:00 PM

The only vaguely blackhat thing I've ever done was one time in college. A group of us were sitting around my computer, browsing network shares (as you do), when we found one guy who had shared his entire C: drive with full read\write permissions. We copied down his desktop background picture, modified it in Paint with something like "haha, you've been h4xx0r3d" and re-saved it to his machine.

Nathan Merrill

how did you identify which picture was his background picture?

isn't that stored in the registry (which isn't the easiest thing to navigate from the filesystem, I imagine)

Sherlock9

Question: What would be the golfiest way to check if a string only consists of digits and runs of 2 or more spaces in Python?

DJMcMayhem

Regex?

Sp3000

2 or more spaces is awfully specific o_O

TimmyD

@NathanMerrill IIRC, Windows 98 and the like actually re-saved the image to like c:\windows\desktopbackground.bmp or something like that.

trichoplax

4:05 PM

@Geobits I once got kicked out of the computer class for having QBasic open. It was end of term and we were only meant to be using the computers for playing games.

Geobits

Yep, that sounds about like computer classes in the 90s :(

Sherlock9

@Sp3000 It's related to my divisor tree challenge

@DJMcMayhem Do you have an example I can start with?

re.match('\d+ +'," 23 45 ") does not appear to be working

Nathan Merrill

I had a typing class where you would type fast to make a runner run, and if you typed the wrong character, he'd trip. However, you could still win by typing the wrong character over and over really fast

I got called out on doing it by the teacher

trichoplax

Good lesson to learn for a coding career later. Get it right or do it really fast.

Sp3000

1 or more would be easier, but 2 or more probably regex yeah :/ Something like re.match('(\d| +)*$', ...)

TimmyD

4:08 PM

@NathanMerrill If you can't do it right, do it quickly?

Geobits

TWSS?

Sherlock9

@Sp3000 Thanks a bunch :D

TimmyD

@Geobits Uhh...

Sp3000

(Please wait while the room acknowledges Geobit's apt use of TWSS while trying to avoid vocalising that acknowledgement)

Sherlock9

Okay, because the divisor tree is a pain in the butt, the middle has to have only runs of 2 or more spaces, but the outside does not. There could be any number of spaces on the outside.

re.match(' *(\d| +)* *$', ...) Is that golfy enough? Can I improve here?

Oop, never mind. I can't think of a single test case where the outside doesn't have 0 or 2+ spaces. Carry on.

PhiNotPi

4:18 PM

@NathanMerrill reminds me of a great bug I found while doing some elementary school typing program/game.

There was a textbox for your typing, and the goal was to type the sentence written above the box. The way the textbox worked, was that each time you typed a letter, it would check if the nth letter in the textbox matched the nth letter of the text.

So... I copy and pasted the target string into the textbox, and then held down a single key to type a lot of letters at the end until it validated the string.

3

TimmyD

ahahaha, that's awesome

Nathan Merrill

lol

TimmyD

"Suspiciously, your typing speed is the same as the 'keyboard - repeat speed' configured in Control Panel ..."

betseg

4:41 PM

My most upvoted answer has 100000 upvotes

PhiNotPi

32 upvotes?

betseg

What are those "3" and "2"?

Sherlock9

I think the argument inherent in that joke is baseless

betseg

Lol

Nathan Merrill

I wrote up a quick answer on programmers earlier today...and its my top upvoted answer of all time

40

A: Syntax Design - Why use parentheses when no argument is passed?

For languages that use first-class functions, its quite common that the syntax of referring to a function is: a = object.functionName while the act of calling that function is: b = object.functionName() a in the above example would be reference to the above function (and you could call it b...

I mean, its not even that good of an answer, and took like 5 minutes

Sherlock9

4:50 PM

Well, I just upvoted both of those answers. So that's 100001 and 101001 upvotes, respectively.

My all time upvoted answer has 10011 upvotes.

TimmyD

I got a rock.

Geobits

Mine is 111011

Sherlock9

@NathanMerrill I think it mostly goes to show how many more users there are over at Programmers.SE than at PPCG.SE unfortunately.

Nathan Merrill

well, and the fact that I rarely answer in the first place

I used to answer pretty regularly on SE, but it was Webdriver questions which has a limited audience

and I write a code golf answer like once a year

DJMcMayhem

My highest is 11100

Sherlock9

4:55 PM

Man, I need to post more often. I am definitely missing some secret "get upvotes" guideline here :P

TimmyD

Answer quickly and answer stupidly short. Don't put any effort into it.

mınxomaτ

@TimmyD Or put way to much effort in it.

TimmyD

Yeah, that's true.

Geobits

@Sherlock9 Step one is "post more often", so I'm not sure you're missing it :P

Dennis

@TimmyD No need to be short. HTML and Unary answers get a ridiculous amount of love.

Nathan Merrill

4:58 PM

if you really want upvotes, find the language that matches the task the worst

betseg

How to calculate unary

TimmyD

Or be xnor and answer in Python

betseg

Remember my rubik question? A guy did it in 350 bytes but has 2 updoots ;_;

Sherlock9

I think I'm a little too picky in what I want to answer. If I can't immediately think of a possible solution while reading the spec, I either put off answering the question or drop it entirely.

Dennis

On an unrelated note: Every time somebody writes updoot, I die a little.

9

betseg

5:03 PM

Is upgaot ok ;_;

DJMcMayhem

That's marginally better

TimmyD

Petition to change "updoot" to "Anti-Geobits" ... "Hey, I've got 12 Anti-Geobits on this answer, I'm close to mortarboarding!"

Dennis

@betseg No, that's worse. Upgoat would be better, but still no match for upvote.

TimmyD

Did you see that question with 23 Conors in like 10 minutes? It hit HNQ at rocket speed.

4

DJMcMayhem

Oh I didn't see the typo. Yeah, that's much worse

@TimmyD haha

Dennis

5:07 PM

Fun fact: If you write a Brain-Flak program and don't look at it for 10 hours, you wind up having no idea what it's doing.

21

Geobits

@TimmyD I'm truly torn. Do I +1 or -1 this?

DJMcMayhem

@Dennis XD hahaha

Yodle

@Dennis That happens to me with brainf**k too.

DJMcMayhem

I can never understand bflack, so, I can relate

betseg

brainfuck is easy. Brain-flak isn't.

Sherlock9

5:16 PM

I feel like trying to write this divisor tree answer is drilling holes into my head. Swiss cheese brains FTW

DJMcMayhem

@betseg I think the opposite

Although they're very similar

Sherlock9

@Geobits It should be noted that timing is a factor as well as frequencey. Last weekend I wrote something like 7 answers in a day and got 4 upvotes total because it was a Saturday and few people were on.

Geobits

Oh, definitely. Weekday afternoon/evening is best IME.

Except Friday

betseg

How do i calculate unary of my Brainfuck program

Jonathan Allan

@betseg esolangs.org/wiki/Unary

betseg

5:28 PM

Oh i didn't know it existed

Thx

Jonathan Allan

np

New Main Posts

5:42 PM

1

Q: Tips for Programming, Understanding and Golfing in Brain-Flak

Some users (myself, DJMcMayhem, and 1000000000) are very experienced in the mysterious ways of Brain-Flak. So I thought it a good idea to set up this question as a way to share our knowledge with the community and lower the bar of entry to this language "designed to be painful to use". And perha...

DJMcMayhem

That opening sentence cracks me up, haha

I'm really bad at my own language

PhiNotPi

I think it's interesting how quickly brain-flack is rising through the ranks of notorious esolangs.

mınxomaτ

Anyone here know something about the way Java handles SSL. I have a weird edge case here: github.com/turbo/alwsl/issues/22

TimmyD

Oh, forgot to mention a story. I was at the local Microcenter the other night (kinda like a Fry's or similar, or how Radio Shack used to be like 15 years ago) to pick up a mini-displayport-to-displayport cable for my new laptop. At the checkout counter, they had a box of Raspberry Pi Zero computers for $0.99 each. Ninety-nine-cents each. Stupidly cheap.

mınxomaτ

Nice.

TimmyD

5:50 PM

Yeah. I don't even know what I'm going to do with it, but c'mon, when it's cheaper than a bottle of soda ...

DJMcMayhem

@PhiNotPi Yeah, it was very sudden and recent to. A week ago there was 4 users, now there are... uh 8?