The Nineteenth Byte

Martin Büttner

5:04 PM

is the leaper challenge too far removed from chess to use the chess tag?

quartata

@MartinBüttner I thought we already had a challenge about leapers?

Martin Büttner

just, "given a leaper, print an ASCII art representation of where it can go"

TimmyD

(－‸ლ) ... user can't understand why email address orders@ can't be used exclusively for their 12-person branch office (out of a 4500-user company)

FryAmTheEggman

@quartata That's... odd logic. Don't we hundreds of questions about numbers? :P

quartata

Well I don't know what this precise challenge is but I remember this:

12

Q: Fairy chess "leaper" movement patterns

A leaper is a category of fairy chess piece which moves by "jumping." A normal knight is a (1,2)-leaper, meaning each move involves moving a distance of 1 square in an orthogonal direction and 2 squares in the perpendicular direction. .o.o. o...o ..N.. o...o .o.o. There are many different lea...

Whoa, lots of close votes in the review queue.

Ah, it's an underhanded purge

Martin Büttner

5:06 PM

3

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Seeking Leapers code-golfgridgraphs I recently got a really weird irregular chess board. It's squares are all over the place and not even all connected. At least they're still laid out on a regular grid. I want to adapt the chess rules to be able to play on the board, but to start with, I need ...

TimmyD

@quartata The purge is underhanded, or underhanded is being purged?

quartata

@TimmyD The latter :P

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@Sp3000 Cool! I started making a regex lang a while ago, then I saw retina and gave up :P

I'm thinking of rebooting it

Martin Büttner

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ knowing you it'll probably be based on JS's regex flavour? if so, don't bother :P

(disclaimer: I hate the ECMAScript regex flavour)

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Ah. Why?

And only loosely :P

Martin Büttner

5:08 PM

it's extremely limited

Sp3000

The only thing ECMAScript has going for it is (?R), really

Martin Büttner

uh, what?

since when is that?

Sp3000

... that's PCRE isn't it

Martin Büttner

yes

Sp3000

I get the two mixed up :/

nvm nothing going for it!

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

5:09 PM

lel

R`<()>_`
E

That's balanced parens

Martin Büttner

that looks a bit like Lua's flavour, and I think that kind of balancing syntax is fairly limited

quartata

@MartinBüttner Interesting

Did you actually get a chess board like that? :P

Martin Büttner

the only thing the ES flavour has going for it is [] and [^] (where the former is only useful in golfing and the latter is only necessary because it doesn't even have a bloody s modifier)

@quartata plot twist: I didn't

the challenge was inspired by this mathematica post: mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/112745/2305

(which I didn't link to because it would be a bit misleading for this challenge)

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

brb restarting cpu

quartata

@MartinBüttner Ooh, I see.

zyabin101

5:11 PM

quartata now hates me Q_Q_____

This means the entire community has made up a plan against me ಥ_ಥ

Martin Büttner

so chess tag or not :D

Sp3000

Might as well, for searching

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

chess!

^^

Sp3000

I mean, if I were to write a leaper challenge and wanted to know what existed already...

(Of course, a fairy-chess tag would be better, but that's probably going too far)

FryAmTheEggman

Would everything tagged chess also be tagged board-game and game?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

5:13 PM

nope

this is not a game

Martin Büttner

^

if it's about actual chess rules or something related directly to the game, I'd use the tag even if it wasn't about playing the game

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

alright, I can die happy now that I've been caret'd by a mod :D

quartata

@MartinBüttner Yeah, definitely chess tag.

Martin Büttner

but this is really just taking a single concept from chess out of context

quartata

I know, but it's thematically related. I think that warrants it.

Nathan Merrill

5:14 PM

you know, if I were to redesign webscripting, I'd totally make it so that webpages had their own "assembly" language that you could compile to

poi830

yeah it doesnt really have to do with chess other than the idea of pieces moving on a board

quartata

@NathanMerrill asm.js

Nathan Merrill

that doesn't count. the base language is still js

everything just compiles to JS

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

the world is js -- accept it

Nathan Merrill

which is much too high level language

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

5:16 PM

JS is written in C# right?

Or some C deriv

"C(.*)"

Martin Büttner

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ ummm

Nathan Merrill

depends on who's implementing JS

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@MartinBüttner ?

oh

meh

Martin Büttner

Unless your browser runs on .NET, that seems unlikely (and even then...)

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Oh well

quartata

5:18 PM

@poi830 We have a electrical-engineering tag IIRC, and most of the challenges are just about the relating equations

New Main Posts

1

Q: Seeking Leapers

I recently got a really weird irregular chess board. It's squares are all over the place and not even all connected. At least they're still laid out on a regular grid. I want to adapt the chess rules to be able to play on the board, but to start with, I need a piece that can actually go anywhere ...

code-golf grid graphs chess

quartata

I don't think that we should be "minimalist" with tags on challenges

Nathan Merrill

neither should we be maximalists :)

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

use ALL the tags!

FryAmTheEggman

I have no idea how to tag things, I only ever retag basic stuff because I'm too likely to make a mistake with anything fancier than string or number :P

quartata

5:20 PM

heh

Nathan Merrill

but if 1 tag is a strict subset of another tag, then I'd argue it is a synonym

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill let's make everything a synonym of math then ;)

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

^ :D

quartata

:P

Nathan Merrill

they aren't tag subsets

Martin Büttner

5:21 PM

surely things like "number", "arithmetic", "number-theory", "graphs", "primes" etc are

Nathan Merrill

sure, they're conceptual subsets, but not tag subsets

Martin Büttner

they could be... I'd usually apply as many reasonably applicable tags as possible prioritising the more specific ones when I run out of slots

so if a challenge is about maths and there aren't a lot of good tags for it, then math is fine, although I'd omit it when all of [number], [sequence], [number-theory] and [primes] are applicable (even though [math] would still apply)

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

but if you don't have a fourth tag (like, no others apply), should one keep it on?

Nathan Merrill

so math simply says "there's math in this problem"?

isn't that a bit too broad for a tag?

Martin Büttner

possibly

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

5:24 PM

CAUTION! THIS PROBLEM HAS MATH! BEWARE!

Martin Büttner

it's just an example though, there will always be some hierarchical tags

Nathan Merrill

I guess technically, code-golf is a child of code-challenge, but since we disallow both tags, there isn't a problem

really good example: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/30292/knot-or-not

the challenge has nothing to do with math (in the specification)

Martin Büttner

yeah that could do with better tags

FryAmTheEggman

It should probably be tagged string, at least...

Martin Büttner

I was gonna say ascii-art

hm, we don't have a topology tag

Nathan Merrill

5:27 PM

aren't ascii-art challenges about generating ascii-art?

Martin Büttner

I also use them for if the input is an ASCII art representation

Nathan Merrill

hmmm, I'll edit the tag then

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

My challenge is a good example of math unrelated to most other tags.

Martin Büttner

[geometry] might be a good idea for that as well, as long as we don't have [topology]

Nathan Merrill

because it says: This challenge involves creating pictures using text characters as the paint

quartata

5:28 PM

@MartinBüttner Really?

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill then maybe that should be fixed :P

Nathan Merrill

I said I'd edit it :)

its in the queue

Martin Büttner

oh I overlooked that message

@NathanMerrill approved

Nathan Merrill

oooh, this is a good subset question

isn't every kolmogorov-complexity question an ascii-art question?

Sp3000

I wouldn't say Fizz Buzz is ASCII-art...

FryAmTheEggman

5:31 PM

Plenty are just about text, like the Rickroll one.

Nathan Merrill

oooh, you're right

I forgot about the "art" part

oh, the number tag is super broad too

Martin Büttner

definitely

Nathan Merrill

I think it has its place when dealing with stuff like constants

aka, generate pi

FryAmTheEggman

I'd say it often makes sense with generating something from a set of numbers (like primes), too, but I'm never sure with stuff like that :P

Nathan Merrill

I'd argue for sequence in that case

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

5:35 PM

What if the result is a number?

Martin Büttner

I use [number][sequence] to find OEIS-style challenges all the time

but maybe introducing [integer] or even [integer-sequence] for that would be better

Nathan Merrill

finding a particular element of a sequence is still a sequence challenge IMO

FryAmTheEggman

But what if they aren't necessarily most logically a sequence? Sure, numbers can always be ordered in some way, but IMO sequence makes more sense for something like Fibonacci numbers rather than, say, palindromic numbers, which aren't constructively related to each other.

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill yeah but I think [sequence] is also used for some challenges about dealing with sequences as input, which might be a misuse of the tag and could do with [array-manipulation] instead

FryAmTheEggman

Also I guess "check if a number has property X" style questions is more what I mean.

Nathan Merrill

5:38 PM

@FryAmTheEggman then yeah, that'd be a number challenge

Martin Büttner

I've also got a few more retagging projects on my list

I guess now that I'm done with [balanced-string] I could start on the next one

zyabin101

@MartinBüttner Which projects?

Nathan Merrill

so, going back, what if we removed math, and for each of them, either pick the particular field its in, and for problems related to equations, add a equation tag?

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill or [algebra]?

Nathan Merrill

do we have a differentiation tag?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

5:42 PM

I got a great idea! things ;P

2

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill do we have [calculus]?

Sp3000

If we did, calculus would be better

Nathan Merrill

yep

only 13 challenges

Martin Büttner

@zyabin101 a few ones I want to add ([color(s)], [polyomino], [compiler]/[transpiler], [interactive]) ... a few I want to reorganise, e.g. I'd like to split [subsequence] into [substring] and [subsequence]. go through music/audio and make sure they're used correctly, maybe introduce specific tags for input or output like we have for graphics. also get rid of some obsolete tags.

Nathan Merrill

so, algebra then calculus

well, I'm going to go on a tagging spree with math, unless you think I should meta post it

Martin Büttner

5:44 PM

you definitely should

it's our most-used non-challenge type tag

also, when you say "tagging spree" I hope you mean "3 at a time and then wait for 12 hours"

it might be easier to ask SE to burninate the tag and then go through untagged challenges

Nathan Merrill

@MartinBüttner no, faster than that, but asking what to do on less-obvious scenarios

zyabin101

math is a very question-heavy tag. One does not simply want to burninate it.

I think.

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill faster than that would just flood the entire front page

Nathan Merrill

@MartinBüttner we'd miss some that way (if it has other tags, but not the actual field of math it belongs to)

oh, I didn't think about the front page

Rainbolt

@zyabin101 one != SE

Nathan Merrill

5:49 PM

should I make the post along the lines of "lets burninate the tag with these steps", or have the answers give the steps?

Martin Büttner

maybe make the question something like "that [math] tag is way too broad, should we get rid of it, and if so how can we tag some of the [math] challenges more appropriately?" then put your own opinion and suggested course of action in an answer

quartata

You know, I hate to say this, but if it ain't broke don't fix it. I really don't see anything wrong with the tag system as is

math seems fine to me.

Martin Büttner

it just seems like a fairly useless tag

Nathan Merrill

ooooh, we've got an arithmetic.

quartata

If we're gonna burninate anything it should be number

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

5:54 PM

^

HEY DEES CHALENJ HAZ NUMAHS

quartata

WARNING: NUMBERS

FryAmTheEggman

I do think number has a place, but it's current wording is rather bad, I agree. I think if your challenge has to do with properties of numbers it makes sense, and I don't know what other tag to use (except math... :P )

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@MartinBüttner For a simple test case for the leaper challenge, add some two-square boards on which there is only one solution.

Martin Büttner

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ I've got two of those, but I can add more if you want.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Oh, I didn't see those :P

Ah, under misc.

Higher-leaper boards would be nice

quartata

5:57 PM

I feel like we already have three general tags to cover most instances of number: sequence, number-theory and arithmetic

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

15

Q: The Ideal Question

What makes the ideal question? Perhaps it is merely the abstraction of a profound thought and the initialization of a dream, a hope, a thought, a (… 5,024.2 characters omitted). Therefore, I propose that we find such a factor to quantify questions. I propose also that this factor be called QF, or...

code-golf math number

----------------------------^

what would this be?

Nathan Merrill

arithmetic

quartata

arithmetic

ninja'd

Nathan Merrill

unless we rename that to algebra

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

ok cool

Transcript for