The Nineteenth Byte

Fatalize

12:02 PM

@zyabin101 Remove the algorithm, it is not needed and clutters the challenge

TùxCräftîñg

ioccc.org/2014/sinon/hint.html

O_o

zyabin101

Then how do people know how to make the tent?

I'm not sure if the examples are clear.

Fatalize

…by simply looking at the examples

zyabin101

Then I'm not sure if these are clear.

Fatalize

Just state that the top of the tent has 2*(first input) + 1 underscores

zyabin101

12:05 PM

Okay.

Fatalize

then the rest is fully determined

(the top of the tent being at the bottom, since it is upside-down)

@zyabin101 You should probably indicate that there should be no leading spaces, such that the first line directly starts with an underscore

and

zyabin101

and what?

Fatalize

Note that the top of the tent has… => Note that the top of the tent (i.e. the last line) has…

just to avoid confusion

XiKuuKy

Hello, I was wondering is the J code 1 b. a quine?

Fatalize

@zyabin101 Why differentiate between input 1 and 2? Can't you say that 3 is a tent of size 3 with the opening on the right and -3 one of size 3 with the opening on the left?

zyabin101

12:12 PM

Okay. :3

Fatalize

So that there is only one input, its sign being the side of the opening and its magnitude the size of the tent

trichoplax

Am I missing something obvious here?

@trichoplax How does it sum to n-1? It works fine for me. — Qwerp-Derp 3 hours ago

flawr

sauce

TùxCräftîñg

oh i have civic duty :3

zyabin101

@Fatalize applied your suggestions, draft with applied suggestions: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/2140/…

Fatalize

12:18 PM

@zyabin101 I think you can post it now

zyabin101

Okay, I will. :D

Here, submitted.

Fatalize

@zyabin101 Cool! You should add the link in your sandbox post and then delete it

New Main Posts

1

Q: Output an upside-down tent

Given an integer, output an upside-down tent. The input determines both the size of the tent (absolute value) and whether the entrance is on the left side (negative numbers) or the right side (positive numbers). If input = -1: ____ \/_/ If input = -2: ________ \ / / \/___/ If input = -3: ...

TùxCräftîñg

> under the conditions of Calvin's Hobbies Public License.

zyabin101

12:36 PM

Yup.

Mitch Schwartz

@MartinEnder it's typical to submit without any suffix in that case

zyabin101

Hmm, how do I create a deck of cards array in JS? :3

Like: ["AC", "2C", "3C", ..., "TC", "JC", "QC", "KC", "AD", ..., "AH", ..., "AS", ..., "KS"]

52 strings in all.

trichoplax

To the room: It's your right to delete your messages, but if you annoy people, by that or any other method, you may be kicked from the room.

4

Mitch Schwartz

i've seen someone submit a more general solution with (robust) after it

i've done (not relying on weak test data) but only twice i think, and it was for problems with a deadline

trichoplax

@zyabin101 Nested for loops? Or are you looking for something golfy?

zyabin101

12:46 PM

Whatever floats your goat. ;)

TùxCräftîñg

I disagree. STACK OVERFLOW IS HEREBY CANCELLED. — Jeff Atwood ♦ Dec 10 '10 at 10:41

wat

huh i just discovered a SD port on my laptop

Mitch Schwartz

it's known that some problems don't have the strongest test data possible; of course that's not ideal, but it's understood that users can take advantage of it if they notice it

for extreme cases people sometimes choose to write (embed) or (no embed)

Rainbolt

@TùxCräftîñg As I was laughing at this I was thinking "I have seen Mitch Schwartz before somewhere..." Then I came back to the chat and there he is!

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Does your code pass the mirror test? Write a program or function which, when given its source code as input, outputs a truthy value, and a falsy value for any other input. For example, if your program is abcd, then this program should output a truthy value for the input abcd, and a falsy value ...

zyabin101

1:04 PM

@trichoplax Nested for loops.

TùxCräftîñg

huh my straw answer is 4th codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/93027/53745

trichoplax

@zyabin101 Would something like this work:

var cards = []
var suits = "SHCD"
var ranks = "A23456789TJQK"
for(var i=0;i<4;i++)
{
	for(var j=0;j<13;j++)
	{
		cards[cards.length]=ranks[j].concat(suits[i])
	}
}

Sp3000

@MitchSchwartz I now regret posting challenges at 4am in the morning... btw is there a way to test a challenge before posting it? I'm sort of paranoid when posting that I might have mis-copied a line or something

zyabin101

@trichoplax yup

TùxCräftîñg

3

A: Showcase your language one vote at a time

Straw Straw is a 1D stack-based language I created. It mainly operate on strings. You can try it online here. Length 1 < Take one line of input and exit. Length 2 -> - take an item from the secondary stack, and > print it. Straw have 2 stacks: The first is initialized with an empty strin...

Mitch Schwartz

1:16 PM

@Sp3000 there's no feature for that exactly, but you can use golf.shinh.org/check.rb to test things on the server

Sp3000

Hmm k, I guess that's something :P

Mitch Schwartz

well, the performance checker doesn't help against mis-copying things, maybe i shouldn't have mentioned it :p

Sp3000

Well, I guess it's good for testing your reference implementation actually runs within the time limit? :P or something

btw I look forward to seeing what on earth you did for BF

Mitch Schwartz

haha, yeah originally i wrote a wrong 35 because i misunderstood the problem, then after that i thought sub 100 would be a good goal, then i noticed a new way of solving and had to rethink it completely, and was nicely surprised to see how short it was :)

Sp3000

:) nice

Mitch Schwartz

1:31 PM

in general it's nicer for some languages if the last line of input ends with a newline

(but dealing with lack of newline can be interesting too)

Sp3000

Did I have a trailing newline? I can't remember :/

Mitch Schwartz

for example if you use command line option -l in ruby, every line is chopped instead of chomped, idk why (perl uses chomp)

Almost alphabetical doesn't have them, but Square Ice does (also cc @MartinEnder)

Sp3000

Ah, darn - I remember checking before I posted Square Ice, but I forgot for alphabetical :/

Yeah... definitely not posting at 4am again :P

Mitch Schwartz

i'll admit that i don't know what kind of test data weakness you are referring to with Almost alphabetical

Sp3000

1:48 PM

It won't help with most languages I think, it's sort of specific (so it's not too bad)

It hurts me that I typoed two words though :P

Mitch Schwartz

achilles and beefiest?

Sp3000

Yeah :(

Martin Ender

@MitchSchwartz thanks, I'll submit then

Mitch Schwartz

it's funny, when i searched "define beffiest" in google, it just changed it to best, without the usual "did you mean x?" or "showing results for x instead of y"

Martin Ender

@MitchSchwartz I'm impressed by your Ruby 43 if you aren't aware of it :D

Mitch Schwartz

1:56 PM

thanks :) the alt 45 is completely different btw

Martin Ender

I really don't have a good algorithm for this one that works for all cases. without making use of that I'd have no clue how to beat tails's 21 (I had 28 I think). although I guess there's a chance their solution wouldn't work on all cases either

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Translate an SVG path An SVG path consists of a number of components. Each component begins with a letter, which may be upper case for an absolute position or lower case for a relative position. The component then has a variable number of parameters. Parameters may be separated by commas or spac...

Steven H.

Is Peter right, and this challenge is too similar to the one he linked? I thought they'd be different enough, but you guys are going to be more objective judges than I.

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Pitchers and Rivers Credit for the idea for this challenge goes to Dan Garcia of UC Berkeley. Many of you may have heard of any number of variations on the pitcher problem. For those who haven't, or need a refresher, the generalized form of the pitcher problem is as follows: Given a list o...

El'endia Starman

@Fatalize For what it's worth, I don't think that Alex's recent inactivity is really a big problem. That's one significant benefit of having multiple mods: the others can take up the slack if and when needed. Also, I'm literally the only mod of five in C.SE's main chat room, and with regards to handling flags, one mod (not me) has been doing the lion's share of work. No one is complaining though. I think Alex's inactivity is so pronounced because he was previously so active.

Fatalize

It is indeed not much of a problem, but it somewhat raises the question of whether we really need 4 mods or not

Geobits

2:12 PM

Maybe we need four mods so that the others can take up the slack when one has a month or two of busy time that takes him away from the site.

4

New Main Posts

0

Q: Illuminati is Illuminati

This is a popularity contest inspired by a dedicated scratch programmer who made the program here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/117836320/. What the program does, is it takes in a string, and links the string to the Illuminati. This scratch program is especially popular because it demonstrate...

popularity-contest connected-figure

Geobits

> This is a popularity challenge. Your code isn't supposed to look great, or even execute well, so long as it has the most up votes.

Ugh

zyabin101

988 rep...

Rainbolt

@Geobits The sad part is, that's actually how pop contests work.

Geobits

@zyabin101 Does that mean you need a few downvotes? It's hard to tell what you mean by that.

zyabin101

2:18 PM

I have 988 rep, I'm close to my dream.

Geobits

Of having 980 rep?

zyabin101

Of having 1000 rep.

Rainbolt

You're talking to the man who only looks down.

betseg

i have 1128

zyabin101

Mini-challenge: comment the gif in the header of pillowpc2001.net/index.htm.

Rainbolt

2:20 PM

I think Zyabin is aiming for 987 because it's a sequence

betseg

@zyabin101 983?

Geobits

@Rainbolt Looking down is important. Otherwise you trip.

betseg

oh chat site shows 983 but ppcg shows 988

zyabin101

With onomatopœias.

blame-caching!

Mitch Schwartz

oh, i see a weakness in Almost alphabetical test data now

Sp3000

2:21 PM

:( I hope it's the same one at least

Mitch Schwartz

actually i didn't think about it enough

Steven H.

CMC: Get a new message on the starboard.

Sp3000

CMC: Please don't

4

Martin Ender

@Sp3000 you won

Sp3000

...

Can I take that star off or will that be abuse of power?

Martin Ender

2:26 PM

to be fair, you could have seen that coming ;)

Steven H.

^

Syxer

3

yay

zyabin101

Congratulations @Syxer for reaching six thousand rep!

Steven H.

Congrats

zyabin101

^^ starships, ship!

Undone.

Steven H.

2:34 PM

I cannot verify this solution.

zyabin101

Rep milestone messages are usually starred. ;)

Strange why this one lost a star a few mins after it gained one...

Ah wait, it's not my own message...

Steven H.

You tried, at least.

8/10 for effort

Downgoat

@zyabin101 usually those are major ones like 10K, 1K etc.

Geobits

Hopefully you were posting congrats as actual congratulations, not as a cheap way to get stars for yourself.

3

Downgoat

^

Steven H.

2:40 PM

I haven't seen any real use for stars so no need to get any myself. I just give them out sometimes.

Geobits

Oh, you don't know about the star shop?

Rainbolt

I constantly replay Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars just so I can get more stars.

Steven H.

I just play Super Mario Galaxy for those star bits.

Rainbolt

That's so much more efficient. I only get seven per run through :(

Geobits

You should try Secret of the Stars. There's like 100 or so to collect.

Steven H.

2:48 PM

I hear some Mario Maker levels are packed to the brim with stars.

zyabin101

Idea: make a roguelike where you get stars, stars anywhere: randomly in the dungeon, for defeating some monsters, at some milestones...

Rainbolt

Oh! My roommate just bought me Suikoden II on PS4 so I can collect 108 stars.

Steven H.

Why are all the games I can think of that have stars Mario games?

zyabin101

And at the very end, the "Amulet of Yendor" of that roguelike would be a large star.

Geobits

@Rainbolt I picked that up on Vita not long ago :)

Steven H.

2:50 PM

Wait, I got one: I built a skybridge in Terraria to catch all those falling stars. I can get 70 a night.

But in all seriousness, is there any use for stars other than having them appear on the RSS feed?

Geobits

Yes. Like I said, the star shop.

I have an SO mug and t-shirt (which I'm wearing atm).

El'endia Starman

@StevenH. They're intended to help ensure that other people see interesting and/or important stuff.

Which I've been trying to do lately.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@Syxer any particular reason you want me to fix the userscript?

Steven H.

That makes sense.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

Other than the fact the goat is really lazy.

trichoplax

2:54 PM

Yes that's exactly why I star things. So people who aren't here right now can see them.

El'endia Starman

Maybe we should start a campaign. Restoring Stars to their Rightful Purpose or something. Needs a better title...

Geobits

Make Stars Great Again?

quartata

Bring Stars Back to the Stars

zyabin101

What is the campaign?

Put stars off messages which shouldn't have them? :d

El'endia Starman

7 mins ago, by El'endia Starman

@StevenH. They're intended to help ensure that other people see interesting and/or important stuff.

zyabin101

3:00 PM

So basically, put stars off messages which don't have interesting and important stuff?

El'endia Starman

This campaign wouldn't be retroactive.

zyabin101

Then what would this campaign be?

Geobits

The Fault in Our Stars

El'endia Starman

Stop starring stuff that isn't interesting and/or important.

3

@Geobits YES.

quartata

@Geobits nailed it

zyabin101

3:02 PM

Sign me up for that :3

Steven H.

Salient Terribly Awesome Reading, or STAR for short.

(I can't make an acronym for the life of me.)

(At least I've put the concept out there.)

El'endia Starman

Now you've got me trying to construct a recursive acronym.

Steven H.

Good luck.

El'endia Starman

Star Them Always Reasonably

Steven H.

(I tried the recursive angle too, but... Have I mentioned I can't make acronyms well?)

zyabin101

3:05 PM

Oh, good name!

Steven H.

I like that though

Geobits

Stars: The Acronyms Really Suck

Conor O'Brien

Do we have a challenge that transforms a string "abcd" => "abbcccdddd"?

Steven H.

The Fault in Our Star-Them-Always-Reasonablys.

Perfect.

@ConorO'Brien yes, it was one of the first I responded to ever

Conor O'Brien

link?

zyabin101

3:06 PM

@Geobits Nope, Overly Perfect Effect.

Mitch Schwartz

is the number of repetitions determined by the position in the alphabet or the position in the string?

zyabin101

wat

Sp3000

^^ Was wondering the same thing as Mitch (there's a lot of similar challenges, each with slight nuances)

zyabin101

(I was joking, it's obviously the anagol challenge)

Patrick Roberts

Found an interesting repo today

github.com/gfredericks/quinedb

Geobits

3:12 PM

> If your data and the database code are not stored in the same place, you risk losing track of one, making the other useless.

Patrick Roberts

Well, clearly it's a joke. I just found it rather amusing.

Steven H.

@ConorO'Brien Found it: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/83377/…

Geobits

Oh sure. I was just highlighting that part because it needs repeating. Too many people like to separate their data and code for some reason.

Patrick Roberts

Well, they are separate...

Steven H.

It turns out that I hadn't posted my solution, which I've probably lost by now.

But that sort of thing happens, you know?

mınxomaτ

3:16 PM

I was wondering where all the stars on my GH repo came from. It was 4chan of all places ಠ_ಠ.

Geobits

Oooh a YT stream API...

flawr

@El'endiaStarman But it has the word star in it =..(

trichoplax

The idea of stars is to highlight things that can't be highlighted automatically :P

quartata

@Downgoat OK I am reluctantly giving Laffy the ability the star things

Geobits

Well, so much for that campaign.

quartata

3:23 PM

It's an RNN though so it probably won't be ready for a while

Geobits

@quartata Oh? What's it working with now?

quartata

Oh, it's still the same old. I'm just making a separate thing for stars

Mitch Schwartz

@zyabin101 ?

El'endia Starman

@quartata Reverse ~~Nordic~~ Neural Network?

quartata

Recurrent Neural Network

Steven H.

3:26 PM

Github?

Patrick Roberts

@mınxomaτ the first line in your justcontext.js file kinda made me cringe ^^;

quartata

My first foray into TensorFlow

mınxomaτ

@PatrickRoberts That's it's purpose :P

quartata

?

Patrick Roberts

arguments.callee.name+'('+f+')' should just be function(){onDOMReady(f);}. That one fix would make it so much more tolerable.

mınxomaτ

3:27 PM

I don't really understand why that shitty JS plugin is so popular, it's one of the simplest and easiest things I've ever written.

quartata

Simpler than Leftpad?

mınxomaτ

I didn't write leftpad

Patrick Roberts

@mınxomaτ I see you have some experience with GLSL, you ever worked with CUDA?

mınxomaτ

Yes.

quartata

No, I know. It was a weak joke

mınxomaτ

3:31 PM

@PatrickRoberts I'm actually developing a GPGPU library as an alternative to OCL/CUDA for smaller workloads. That's what caused this rant.

Patrick Roberts

Do you have any advice for CUDA? I'm taking a general purpose GPU programming class right now, and for my final project I basically want to write a 2D fractal generating program which I want to be able to accept a string for an iteration expression and be able to compile it just-in-time for device execution.

mınxomaτ

Lol, that's actually one of the included examples for the NanoCL library. But anyway, what kind of advice are you looking for? The fractal generation is a pretty trivial GPGPU "Hello, World".

trichoplax

@tuskiomi I am often struck by how friendly this community is, with so many people happily helping others with no thought of reputation or reciprocation. I find it uplifting.

5

Patrick Roberts

I suppose, but I asked my professor about the just-in-time compiling. I was initially thinking of having the iteration expression compile to a fragment shader, but he told me that CUDA doesn't use shaders, just the kernels that we've been covering.

mınxomaτ

The point of CUDA is to abstract shaders into more traditional code.

tuskiomi

3:36 PM

@trichoplax I do not disagree, the community is pretty swell in attitude and communication, effort is where I think it lacks.

Patrick Roberts

Is there a standard method for runtime compilation of device code?

mınxomaτ

I don't know.

El'endia Starman

@trichoplax Why isn't this a direct reply? ;_;

mınxomaτ

I mean, you'd have to invoke the CUDA toolchain somehow. So why not have the iteration as a constant (input) in your code.

Patrick Roberts

That's too bad. I suppose I'll have to come up with a different spin for my final project then. My other idea was to run the naive linear conway's game of life algorithm by treating it as a convolution function on the GPU

El'endia Starman

3:38 PM

In other news, sometimes I amuse myself with the code I write. for squitem in squitems:

Patrick Roberts

What's a squitem?

mınxomaτ

@PatrickRoberts Do you have to use CUDA?

Geobits

@tuskiomi Trivial challenges do get a lot of upvotes in many cases. However, not all of them come from regulars here. They simply attract more answer (quickly) due to less effort involved, so they hit the Hot Network Question List and attract more eyeballs.

El'endia Starman

@PatrickRoberts A "square item".

trichoplax

@tuskiomi I guess the discrepancy in votes between easier challenges and harder challenges is because we're providing for several different needs - sometimes people have 15 minutes free over a lunch break, other times people have a day free. It seems natural that the need for a 15 minute challenge would arise more often, so they see more attention. I love the fact that we also have much more difficult challenges too, and many of them are well received.

PhiNotPi

3:39 PM

@El'endiaStarman Called it.

Geobits

Challenges that require more effort are often very well received by the more regular users here.

tuskiomi

@Geobits Are you saying it's pure coincidence?

Geobits

Is what coincidence?

Patrick Roberts

@mınxomaτ no, I don't, but our class is remoting into a Linux cluster that doesn't have anything else installed and my professor is not guaranteeing that installation of any other non-approved libraries will work.

tuskiomi

That easier challenges hit the top

Geobits

3:40 PM

No, not coincidence at all. I just gave at least one reason they do.

trichoplax

@El'endiaStarman partly because I don't want it to be - I want to start a fresh conversation. Also the previous conversation wasn't in chat.

Geobits

trichoplax gave another.

El'endia Starman

@trichoplax Oh, okay. I was just lost by the lack of context. (I found the context though.)

tuskiomi

@trichoplax bow often do we see these?

Geobits

Not as often, but that makes sense. It's easier to make an easy challenge as well as answer it, so it's natural that there will be more of them.

tuskiomi

3:42 PM

@Geobits In that case, would it be safe to say that stack exchange encourages pandering to easier challenges?

Geobits

I'd say rather that human behavior encourages that.

trichoplax

@tuskiomi There are fewer difficult challenges, because they are also more difficult to write, and there's also less reward in rep in many cases. For many challenge writers it isn't about the rep though, and they still write substantial challenges rather than quick and easy ones. There are some difficult challenges that gather a lot of rep though...

101

Q: Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life

Here is a theoretical question - one that doesn't afford an easy answer in any case, not even the trivial one. In Conway's Game of Life, there exist constructs such as the metapixel which allow the Game of Life to simulate any other Game-of-Life rule system as well. In addition, it is known that...

game cellular-automata game-of-life tetris

TimmyD

As a counterpoint, Hyperprogramming certainly isn't an "easy" challenge, but was still well-received and also skyrocketed on HNQ.

tuskiomi

SE does mediate it pretty well, no? in the real world, professionals and scholars are set out to answer hard questions, it's strange to see easy questions to be so popular on a site meant for those people.

Patrick Roberts

@tuskiomi I think it's just a way for professionals to blow off steam. I enjoy answering questions on this site that are easier rather than harder because it's something I relax with in my free time.

trichoplax

3:45 PM

Since we're not a Q&A site, there's demand for a wide range of challenges to suit different abilities and different amounts of free time. We still see occasional brand new knowledge being discovered, even though we're only intended as a challenge site...

Patrick Roberts

I need to get to my next class, bye

Geobits

@tuskiomi The site is meant for (per the tour) "programming puzzle enthusiasts and code golfers", which may include professionals and scholars, but it's by no means exclusive to them.

tuskiomi

@trichoplax which is why I was attracted to code golf at first. It still seemed like what was 'popular' here may not be as hostile or prejudiced as other stacks. Though I was wrong, to an extent.

quartata

Without easy challenges you don't get new users. Without hard challenges they won't stick around for long.

trichoplax

Of my own challenges, the ones I am most pleased with are not the highest scoring in rep, but they do have more stars than my higher rep ones. The high rep can come from attracting lots of attention by hitting HNQ, so I don't value it. The stars mean people want to be informed of future activity on the challenge, which I value much more.

quartata

3:51 PM

Having a balance is good

zyabin101

@quartata We need both balanced.

Too much easy challenges is (obviously) too much new users, and hard challenges and regulars can't keep up with traffic.

tuskiomi

@quartata I think that the hostility and prejudice heavier than the challenges themselves as to weather someone sticks around. While it's necessary to have for QA, the amount here is unnecessary.

zyabin101

Too much hard challenges is (obviously) too much regulars, and there is less traffic.

quartata

@trichoplax This. Florets and Grocery Store I consider to be my personal favorites and they have almost as many stars as TM but a quarter of the upvotes

El'endia Starman

My most popular challenges are all pretty much moderate difficulty. As far as I can tell, the only thing they have in common is that they are amusing or interesting. On the other hand, three of my top five have significant visual components.

trichoplax

3:55 PM

@tuskiomi It's worth seeing two separate points: 1. Voting is skewed by HNQ, so some challenges get disproportionately high scores. 2. Close voting is independent of HNQ, and if people disagree they can vote to reopen. (1) is a problem I can live with. (2) means that challenges getting closed is a separate issue and not a problem

quartata

@tuskiomi I just got here so I'm obviously missing something in this conversation. Where is this hostility?

tuskiomi

@trichoplax Yes, and I would be too, and getting featured/top the top/etc. Is not relevant, so long as the answers (solutions) are good enough to understand.

zyabin101

Unrelated:

tuskiomi

@quartata hostility from new users being completely dejected because the do not know why people do not like their challenges, or solutions.

zyabin101

I didn't notice that before but I reached 1000 rep! \o/

quartata

3:58 PM

Ah.

zyabin101

Back to discourse.

El'endia Starman