The Nineteenth Byte

quartata

3:01 AM

@AlexA. Oh his question was worded a little weird at first

I thought he meant he had 137 but it only said 127

Alex A.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I want to open a bass guitar store just so I can use the slogan "All Your Bass Are Belong to Us"

Helka Homba

Then shouldn't it be for rentals only?

El'endia Starman

@AlexA. I'll bet that store exists already.

Alex A.

Probably :(

Well there go my hopes and dreams

Geobits

@AlexA. m.facebook.com/events/1622625617968374/?active_tab=highlights

El'endia Starman

3:07 AM

@QPaysTaxes I already suggested a few hundred ideas, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :P

Alex A.

@Geobits :(

El'endia Starman

@QPaysTaxes Well, you can at least take the concepts of the grouped ones.

Helka Homba

yourworldoftext.com/PPCG

3

Let's keep that clean

Alex A.

What do you mean by clean?

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

That's fun.

Alex A.

3:15 AM

If you want a clean wall of text, don't tell people about it so no one will write on it.

strawpoll.me/7375711

Nathan Merrill

Hey guys, I'd be interested to hear about bugs you've recently ran into

Quill

@NathanMerrill I had the flu last week... pretty shit

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill i was just sitting on my desk and there was this huge pincherbug... I squashed it pretty quickly though...

Nathan Merrill

the mantra of my new language is "The ideal language is the one you never write bugs in", so I'm hoping to include language patterns that (hopefully) mitigate them

-.-

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

@Downgoat You didn't eat it? I thought goats eat anything.

Downgoat

3:19 AM

@DrGreenEggsandHamDJ ಠ_ಠ

Nathan Merrill

squashing is like cooking for goats

Downgoat

only tin cans, grass, everything, and noodles

Nathan Merrill

it just prepares the meal

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill smh, we also roll it in mud...

Nathan Merrill

seasoning?

nevermind, misunderstood

Quill

3:21 AM

I hard deleted a row from a DB and then tried to look it up two lines later an hour ago

El'endia Starman

@NathanMerrill One that I recently squashed was that I forgot to define an attribute in a class and the problem showed up quite a bit later.

Nathan Merrill

@El'endiaStarman that's easy to catch with static typing (I'm guessing your language wasn't statically typed)

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill yeah

Quill

static typing and throwing exceptions on type mismatches kills most common bugs

El'endia Starman

No, static typing wouldn't have helped. Do you mean like making a variable always be one type?

Geobits

3:23 AM

@AlexA. Drink alone is catching up.

Nathan Merrill

well, static typing also means that you can't access an attribute on a class that didn't declare the attribute

it throws a runtime error

El'endia Starman

The attribute was defined by the super class and wasn't overridden by the child class.

Quill

You should drink alone while you try to learn C++

Nathan Merrill

oooh, that is a different issue

El'endia Starman

Basically, I forgot to override a default. Not sure there's anything you can do in terms of language design to fix that.

Geobits

3:25 AM

@Quill Turn off any ide checking, and take a shot for each syntax error.

3

Nathan Merrill

perhaps I can.

can you explain what the default was?

or is that too complicated?

Alex A.

@NathanMerrill I feel like you ask nice questions in here and expect good responses and usually the responses are jokes. :P (I can't think of a bug I've encountered recently tbh)

Quill

@Geobits Well, I know how to spend my next few weekends

Nathan Merrill

@AlexA. yeah, but I joke with them, so I can't point fingers

Quill

@AlexA. yeah, sorry @NathanMerrill :(

Alex A.

3:26 AM

@Quill I'm not accusing. I did the same thing last time he asked a question.

Geobits

@Quill In the hospital? :P

Alex A.

@NathanMerrill ;)

Quill

@Geobits :D

El'endia Starman

@NathanMerrill Well, my Pytek parser converts AST_node objects (like AST_number) into pObject ones (like pInteger), and the parser knows which pObject types to try and convert to by looking at the objType attribute that the AST_node has, which is an empty list by default.

Alex A.

@Geobits Challenge mode: Write the code in Microsoft Word with size 8 Times New Roman font and 4" margins.

Nathan Merrill

3:28 AM

@El'endiaStarman does an empty list ever make sense, or would each subclass feasibly override that attribute?

Quill

@AlexA. comic sans

quartata

by "I forgot to override" he really means "quartata forgot to override and I had to fix it"

Alex A.

@Quill I should have said Arial. Have you ever tried to write code in Arial? It's literally the worst.

quartata

Forgot to specify the pDirective

El'endia Starman

@NathanMerrill Maybe I don't want an AST_node to be converted because it won't be included in the object tree.

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

3:29 AM

Hey @AlexA. I just noticed that the underhanded tag is still around. Should we start closing/locking the questions with it and edit the wiki to reflect the status of the tag?

El'endia Starman

@quartata Hahaha, but I have encountered that problem before, I think.

Alex A.

@Geobits And drink alone is now the leader. I guess I'll get some whiskey then.

3

Nathan Merrill

so, I think I know how I'd solve that problem

El'endia Starman

Something like Java's abstract?

Geobits

@AlexA. TIL sometimes strawpoll.me lets me vote three or four times if I'm on mobile.

Nathan Merrill

3:30 AM

kind of

Kotlin has a great language design: only things classes define as "overridable"can be overridden

because subclassing is an API, and you need to be able to define that API

Alex A.

@DrGreenEggsandHamDJ Haha that's been on my "I'll do this eventually" list for a while. I'd say don't worry about it for now but thanks for reminding me. I'll confer with the mods because we might do a historical lock for some of them.

Quill

@Geobits ;)

Alex A.

@NathanMerrill Kotlin looks really neat. I haven't played with it much yet though.

@Geobits ಠ_ಠ

spits out whiskey that's full of lies and deceit

Nathan Merrill

so, taking inspiration, I'd say that if a class has an overridable attribute, and a subclass doesn't override it (or mark it as use default or whatever), then its an error (warning?)

Quill

I voted once, so there's two at least

El'endia Starman

3:33 AM

@NathanMerrill That could work.

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

@AlexA. "Don't worry about it" I want to worry about it. I want to moderate without the diamond.

Nathan Merrill

@QPaysTaxes hence the "use default" part

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

That's why I'm bringing it up.

Alex A.

@DrGreenEggsandHamDJ The thing with that is we're going to take pretty individualized actions for most of them. Some might get retagged, some closed, some locked, some deleted.

So it's hard to say "yes let's take action asap" when the right action depends on the post

Nathan Merrill

@QPaysTaxes nah, you would be able to define the defaults either in the super class or the sub class

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

3:35 AM

Well, some of them I can help with.

Geobits

@AlexA. Poor whiskey... It's not its fault. Blame me if you want, but don't abuse the whiskey.

Downgoat

should I use def, function, func, or something else to define a function?

Alex A.

funk

Nathan Merrill

@QPaysTaxes by default it would. I would likely use "optional overrideable" or something else to not require the subclass to override

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

Like, this is a pretty obvious "delete"

El'endia Starman

3:36 AM

@Downgoat I think either def or func for brevity.

Nathan Merrill

@Downgoat I'd stick with "shred", keeping with the language theme

Alex A.

@DrGreenEggsandHamDJ It's already gone. ;)

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

Wow, that was fast.

Downgoat

@El'endiaStarman s/brevity/code golf/

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

I just voted on two more.

Nathan Merrill

3:37 AM

@Downgoat that said, I thought you were using the () => syntax?

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill I'm doing to add both

=>/-> are labdas

El'endia Starman

@Downgoat Haha. Seriously though, it takes a bit longer to type function compared to func and there's more chance of misspelling it.

Alex A.

@DrGreenEggsandHamDJ ~~One is~~ both are gone

Nathan Merrill

@QPaysTaxes word choice is coming later

because naming is super important

I want to spend much more than 3 seconds

"optional overridding" sounds great to me

Geobits

Wow, do mobiles switch IP addresses that fast? I've voted on this strawpoll five times now, just by waiting a minute or few between votes. Is something else going on?

Nathan Merrill

3:39 AM

I'm not even defining the syntax yet

@Geobits are you on wifi or network?

Geobits

Wifi

Alex A.

@Geobits So that's why "drink alone" has 6 votes?

Nathan Merrill

I'd guess something else then

Geobits

I'd think it wouldn't work.

@AlexA. >_>

El'endia Starman

Bad Geobits, trying to get AlexA. drunk!

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

3:40 AM

Oh no, this is bad. Alex is drunkenly deleting questions.

El'endia Starman

What are you trying to weasel out of him?

Geobits

He's seen me drunk in chat, so it's only fair.

El'endia Starman

Did he get you drunk? o.O

Alex A.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Geobits

I'd rather not talk about it...

:P

Alex A.

3:42 AM

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

El'endia Starman

O.o

mınxomaτ

Windows Bash can now also run linux GUI applications, something that wasn't intended by MS, but is awesome anyway: pcworld.com/article/3055403/windows/…

Quill

@El'endiaStarman drinking != drunk

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

Wow, italic lenny!

Geobits

Italic Lenny looks great in Android chrome.

Alex A.

3:43 AM

As in OS X Safari

El'endia Starman

@mınxomaτ Wow, that's cool.

Nathan Merrill

ok, another question: On a hashmap, if I put an object where one already exists, should it throw an error?

and introduce another method replace

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill yes

Quill

@mınxomaτ the comments lol

Nathan Merrill

or, even better, have put have an option allowReplacements=False

Downgoat

3:45 AM

@mınxomaτ there was a pizza ad on that page and now I'm hungry ;_;

Nathan Merrill

@QPaysTaxes on what?

oh, I'm definitely doing options

options are actually separate from parameters

and you can set an option on a class, and each time you call a method, it'll use the option you set

Quill

options just sound like constructor parameters

Nathan Merrill

kind of

@QPaysTaxes on methods, the syntax will likely be similar to func(param, param; option1=4, option2=3)

oh yeah, the other thing is that options have to be named

El'endia Starman

@NathanMerrill That's how Python does it. Except the ; is just a ,.

Geobits

What. The. Hell.

Nathan Merrill

3:51 AM

python is a bit different, because it doesn't make a distinction between named parameters and options

but yes, it is definitely similar to python

options actually have to have defaults

anybody else have any cool bugs?

or not cool

I'm not really picky

and the cause?

Quill

async issues are a pain in javascript

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill oh, yes.

Nathan Merrill

@Quill I'm actually a fan of how Javascript deals with async.

Downgoat

I was trying to debug some PHP code... turns out I spelt verify wrong

I spent TWO weeks debugging that...

Quill

@NathanMerrill depends what you're doing

Downgoat

3:57 AM

;_;

Nathan Merrill

@Downgoat IDE?

Downgoat

no, just text editor

there is no godod PHP IDE for mac (sorry for the bad enlgish)

mınxomaτ

> godod

Nathan Merrill

@Downgoat PHPStorm

@Quill I like the deferred objects, but it can easily lead to massive pyramids of doom

Quill

ES7 has the await keyword now anyway

Downgoat

3:59 AM

@Quill it's ES7

El'endia Starman

Err, ES7 == ES2015?

Quill

Err, maybe?

Nathan Merrill

@El'endiaStarman in 6 to 8 weeks, actually

El'endia Starman

What's gonna happen in 2000 years when ES2015 comes out? :P

Quill

@QPaysTaxes yes and no, they're still implementing the features in the major browsers

Downgoat

4:02 AM

@QPaysTaxes yes

Nathan Merrill

@El'endiaStarman lets hope we aren't using Javascript in 2000 years. So much wasted time working with JS

Downgoat

@El'endiaStarman it'll be like windows 9, it won't

El'endia Starman

@NathanMerrill Well, y'know, Fortran is still around...

mınxomaτ

There's no reason Fortran shouldn't be used anymore. There is no other scientific language with better compilers available.

Downgoat

Hello @Mego!

Anonymous

4:06 AM

@QPaysTaxes In its defense, it should've come out in 200x. The committee spent way too much time arguing over concepts

Alex A.

@mınxomaτ And modern Fortran is actually a pretty nice language.

Anonymous

Tbh I really wish concepts had made it into C++11

Nathan Merrill

@Mego they look like interfaces

(just looked them up)

Downgoat

Nov 8 '15 at 22:03, by Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

alex-is-wrong javascript-is-wrong alex-is-javascript

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ ಠ_ಠ

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill Yeah, formal interfaces are really the only thing C++ is lacking in the OOP side of things

Nathan Merrill

4:17 AM

yeah. I actually really like how C++ automatically identifies interfaces

Anonymous

You can just do a pure virtual class with all public methods and no instance vars and use multiple inheritance, but that's messy

Nathan Merrill

but, that said, enforcing certain requirements would help for future compatability

Anonymous

Really anything involving multiple inheritance is messy

Anonymous

I would love to have better reflection abilities in C++

Anonymous

Like being able to inspect the members of a class

Nathan Merrill

4:19 AM

really? I really am not a fan of reflection in static languages

Anonymous

But as it is, with name mangling, you have to go through the ABI for that

Anonymous

And GCC is the only compiler I know of that has a decent ABI library

Anonymous

Yeah GCC does, but I don't think MSVC does

Anonymous

Clang might

Anonymous

Ideally that would be in the stdlib, with compilers providing their own implementations

Anonymous

4:22 AM

Ooh Nathan wanted to hear about bugs

Anonymous

I can tell you plenty about bugs

Nathan Merrill

awesome!

Anonymous

Anything in specific?

Nathan Merrill

I'm looking for the reason they existed

El'endia Starman

Yeah, Nathan is trying to design a language where you don't write bugs (or, at least, you find them immediately).

Anonymous

4:24 AM

Well one in particular bites me in the ass all the time

Nathan Merrill

@El'endiaStarman that's the ideal. I don't actually think its possible

El'endia Starman

@NathanMerrill Well yeah, but you're trying to get as close as possible.

Nathan Merrill

yeah :)

Anonymous

In Python, there's this handy little feature with list/tuple indexing, where a[-i] refers to the ith item from the end, starting with -1. I constantly forget that it doesn't keep looping, so [1, 2, 3][-4] doesn't work.

Nathan Merrill

heh

well, if I do support negative indexing, then I'll definitely mod the number

Anonymous

4:27 AM

Though I'm not sure if implementing it as def __getitem___(self, index): return self._list[index % len(self) would be better

Anonymous

Would you also do that with positive indexing? As in, [1, 2, 3][4] == 2?

El'endia Starman

There's a problem with modding the index: you never get an index out of bounds error.

Nathan Merrill

oooh

yeah

El'endia Starman

And you can't really do it for negative but not positive.

Nathan Merrill

actually, I don't think I'll support negative indexes

Anonymous

4:28 AM

Basically you'd be turning all lists into circular lists

Anonymous

But maintaining the idea of a head and a tail to be able to prepend and append

Anonymous

Which I'm not sure would be better

Nathan Merrill

I'll definitely include a way to access elements from the end

but I don't think that negative indexing is the way to do it

El'endia Starman

I think the way that Python does it is best. It is super convenient to be able to get the last element easily.

Anonymous

If you don't support negative indices, then you get the fun bug where you don't realize the index you're passing in is negative

Nathan Merrill

4:30 AM

@El'endiaStarman right but if you have a.last(), or even a.last(2), then things are easy again

sure

I'll come up with a better name

Anonymous

Maybe item and ritem?

El'endia Starman

@Mego This would be good. Forward indexing and reverse indexing should be analogous.

(I.e., don't do L[2] and L.last(2) instead of L[-2].)

Anonymous

@AlexA. Why did you give "shitpost in TNB" as an option? You imply that you ever don't shitpost :P

Alex A.

>_>

Anonymous

If I ever made a mainstream language, I'd go for "don't confuse the newbies" as my primary design consideration

Anonymous

4:32 AM

Along with The Zen of Python

Anonymous

Meanwhile in Seriously I'm basically breaking every rule of The Zen of Python

Nathan Merrill

any other bugs Mego?

El'endia Starman

@Mego That's why I want to do \repeat and \loop instead of \for and \while, respectively, but I just know that if I do that, there will be lots of people going to Stack Overflow asking "How do I do a for loop in Pytek?"...

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman I like how you're optimistic and think people will use it enough to ask about it on SO :P

Downgoat

@El'endiaStarman I reccomend using for and while as they are more golfy and people who aleady know programming will understand it faster

Nathan Merrill

4:34 AM

@Mego I think I remember that Guido designed python to be the language he'd want to use

Anonymous

Yeah, and that's a good way to look at it

Anonymous

But I'd also want to not confuse new users, because that's the surest way for people to not use your language (see: Seriously)

Anonymous

I'm working on a major overhaul for v2 so that I won't be the only one who understands how it works

Nathan Merrill

oooh, integer division.

mınxomaτ

I love how GTK apologizes when it crashes.

Anonymous

4:37 AM

Oh that reminds me of the exorbitant amount of bugs that I've had to deal with as a result of IEEE 754

Downgoat

@Mego JavaScript uses IEEE 754 too!

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

I'm getting my wisdom teeth pulled in 9 hours. -_-

Downgoat

@DrGreenEggsandHamDJ >_>

Nathan Merrill

what should 1/2 do?

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

Don't let me post any delirious challenges.

Anonymous

4:39 AM

The best way to make math functions newbie-friendly is to either use symbolic math (CAS) or arbitrary-precision arithmetic and rationals

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill 0.5

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill Is it a strictly typed language?

Nathan Merrill

@Downgoat yes

but I can define the operator Int/Int to be Double

Downgoat

are there seperate integer and float types or are they together in a number class?

@NathanMerrill I don't think operators should output a different type

what if I were to do:

El'endia Starman

@NathanMerrill Yeah, Paul Graham has said that good programming languages are often those that are designed by their creators for themselves, whereas those languages designed for others are usually poor.

Nathan Merrill

4:40 AM

integer and float are definitely different

Downgoat

int a = 1
a /= 2
print a

would a become a double? throw an error?

Nathan Merrill

definitely not become a double

Downgoat

so the output should be 0

Nathan Merrill

either syntax error or int

yeah

Anonymous

90% of people on the planet will expect 1/2 == 0.5

Nathan Merrill

4:42 AM

the problem with making Int/Int = Double is that it makes 4/2 -> 2.0

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill I highly do not recommend erroring because if I were to divide 50 by a user input, would I have to check if the user input is a factor of 50 before dividing?

Nathan Merrill

@Downgoat it would be a syntax error if int/int-> double

Anonymous

I think his idea would be something like: 1/2 == 0.5, but 0.5 gets rounded down to 0 when stored in an int. So, double b = a/2; would work and make b == 0.5, and int c = a/2; would also work, but c == 0.

Nathan Merrill

because you can't assign a double into an int

Downgoat

$ python
>>> 1/2
0

@Mego ^

Dr Green Eggs and Ham DJ

4:44 AM

Silly python.

Nathan Merrill

@Mego I'm never going to autocast

Anonymous

implicit narrowing is bad

Anonymous

@Downgoat That's Python 2, which has many, many problems

Nathan Merrill

there would have to be an explicit typecast to integer to get that to work

Anonymous

$ python3
Python 3.4.3 (default, May  5 2015, 17:04:32)
[GCC 4.9.2] on cygwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 1/2
0.5

Nathan Merrill

4:45 AM

yeah, integer division is the way to go

Downgoat

I'm never going to use python 3 because I'm too lazy to move my ~~finger~~ hoof all the way to shift and then to 3

Anonymous

Why do you need shift?

Alex A.

@DrGreenEggsandHamDJ Thanks for your help with some of the underhanded stuff. I've closed a couple, locked a couple, deleted a couple. Waiting for input from the other mods on a lot of them.

Anonymous

Also 3 should be the default everywhere but code golf :P

Nathan Merrill

that said, I'm going to bed :)

thanks for all of your input

El'endia Starman

4:46 AM

Pretty much all IDEs, even IDLE, have a way to comment/uncomment lines automatically.

Downgoat

@Mego because I have my numbers swapped. pressing the "3" key is #

Anonymous

The only use case where 3 doesn't always perform better than 2 is code golf, and even then 3 sometimes does better

Anonymous

@Downgoat I don't think I want to know why

Downgoat

@Mego blame-hooves >_>

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman IDLE annoys me because shift+tab isn't unindent

Downgoat

4:48 AM

@El'endiaStarman I dont't thinnk vim does

El'endia Starman

@Mego Haha, yes! I've gotten into the habit of using Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] though.

@Downgoat @Doorknob probably knows a way.

Alex A.

@Mego IDLE's keyboard shortcuts are infuriating.

@Downgoat Yes it does

github.com/tpope/vim-commentary

Downgoat

@Doorknob how indent line in vim?

Alex A.

gcc

Nathan Merrill

nevermind. 4/3 can lead to unexpected bugs

Alex A.

4:49 AM

@Downgoat > indent < unindent

Anonymous

@AlexA. IDLE is infuriating in general

Nathan Merrill

but if you are forced to cast it to an int, then you know what works

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman Do those actually work? Why the hell isn't IDLE using the most widely-used shortcuts for indent and unindent?

El'endia Starman

@Mego They really didn't put as much work into IDLE as they did into the language.

Especially the interactive debugger. Ugh.

Alex A.

When I'm Windows I still prefer writing Python in IDLE to Notepad++ though.

Anonymous

4:52 AM

People are silly. This answer has 2 upvotes despite only producing valid output for 3 of the test cases: codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/77755/45941

Anonymous

Notepad++ or Atom, depending on how big the project is

El'endia Starman

@AlexA. Is it because of the super-convenient F5 shortcut?

Alex A.

@El'endiaStarman That, and autocompletion.

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman No, because Notepad++ uses F5 for run also

Anonymous

@QPaysTaxes chew

El'endia Starman

4:53 AM

For some reason, "masticate" came to mind. :P

Alex A.

@QPaysTaxes Nosh

Anonymous

Welcomee

El'endia Starman

@Mego I don't think I've ever actually used Notepad's F5.

Anonymous

@QPaysTaxes sleep(1000*60*60*8);

El'endia Starman

@AlexA. Oh yeah, the tab completion is nice.

Anonymous

4:53 AM

@El'endiaStarman Me neither, but it's still there

Anonymous

@QPaysTaxes Bitte

Anonymous

I don't think I've actually ever used tab completion in an IDE. I type very fast and concentrate a lot while typing, so by the time I mentally acknowledge that the tab-completion dialog has popped up, I'm already done with the token.

El'endia Starman

I normally use tab completion for longish variable/function names.

Anonymous

I try to be succinct with my var/fn names, so that's never an issue

El'endia Starman

Well, me too, but sometimes...

Anonymous

4:59 AM

matrix_determinant is fine and all, but det is a very common shorthand

Anonymous

And if a function/variable name gets really long, that's probably a sign that I need to do some refactoring

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