The Nineteenth Byte

trichoplax

2:02 PM

If n==3

L3viathan

that's what I mean, sorry

Leaky Nun

@L3viathan yes

trichoplax

I guessed but just making sure :)

Olivier Dulac

Hello world. I'm just discovering the chat features : is there some kind of "list of good chat rooms to start with" (for codegolf, or even more generally) ?

Mayube

for codegolf this is the only active one afaik

trichoplax

2:05 PM

Site rooms shows the recently active rooms for Programming Puzzles & Code Golf. Which are more interesting you will have to decide for yourself though...

Olivier Dulac

thanks

Mayube

there are some programming language-specific golfing one

but most general ppcg discussion happens here

programmer5000

@OlivierDulac and some sand

trichoplax

There appear to be 18 PPCG rooms active in the past 24 hours

programmer5000

Let's Remove all old, abandoned, low-score posts to clean up the sandbox!

Olivier Dulac

2:07 PM

I just wanted to find a way to thanks @Dennis ^^ I've been looking at ppcg for a while, but am incredibly frustrated with the amount of boring 'this is done by a builtin' answers (and the very few bash/awk/lisp/everyday langages answers), but Dennis in meta said he is browsing ppcg by "activity" instead of 'rank' : this simple advice help me enjoying ppcg tremendously :)

6

Shaggy

3

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

In The Jailhouse Now code-golf ascii-art Challenge Given an integer n (where 4<=n<=10**6) as input create an ASCII art "prison door" measuring n-1 characters wide and n characters high. Example ╔╦╗ ╠╬╣ ╠╬╣ ╚╩╝ The characters used are as follows: ┌───────────────┬─────────┬────────┬─────...

^ Last call for feedback.

Mayube

@OlivierDulac most of us browse by activity to be fair :P

Dennis

@OlivierDulac :)

Olivier Dulac

:)

Mayube

also protip, learn an esoteric language

doesn't have to be a golfing one, just any esoteric language

makes golfing way more fun

L3viathan

2:09 PM

Or make one

3

Dada

I don't agree at all with @Mayube

Olivier Dulac

I may one day, but I'l right now looking at lisp and python on top of my "todo" list ^^ (I'm a bit lagging in the langage department... even tough i did a bit of lisp 20 years back)

programmer5000

@Shaggy Go ahead and post.

Olivier Dulac

I prefer a beautiful trick over a short one.... I'm looking for those in ppcg (ie, I'm not interessted in the number of bytes of a solution, but in he cleverness in it)

Mayube

@Dada not saying you should only golf in esolangs, or that you have to learn an esolang to have fun

but even just learning one lets you see things from a different perspective

Olivier Dulac

2:10 PM

and Dennis seems unbeatable ^^

Dada

@Shaggy "last call for feedback" after 22h in the sandbox seems a bit early....

2

Mayube

@OlivierDulac that's because dennis made Jelly, which is one of 4 "unbeatable" golfing languages (the others being O5AB1E, CJam and Japt, all made by PPCG regulars)

Shaggy

@Dada I plan to give it another 2 hours before posting, at least - "last call" is my cheap ploy for inviting more feedback! ;)

Mayube

@L3viathan yes, or make one

trichoplax

Several days in the sandbox (at least some weekdays and some weekend days) gives more chance people will have had a chance to give feedback

Dada

2:13 PM

@Mayube I think it really depends on the language you are using to golf... If you are golfing with a language with enough possibilities (Perl, Haskell, Python, JS, ...), then you don't need to learn a golfing language to enjoy golfing (imo)

L3viathan

It's not a fair competition to speak of "beating" when different languages are involved. Even a badly golfed Jelly answer will almost always "beat" even the most sophisticated Java answer.

Mayube

@Dada I never said anything about golfing languages, nor did I say you had to learn one to enjoy golfing

mınxomaτ

Oct 28 '16 at 1:31, by mınxomaτ

7

Mayube

accurate

L3viathan

I made my first useless programming language before I knew about PPCG

Mayube

2:14 PM

I've created 2-3 useless languages since joining PPCG :D

Olivier Dulac

is there a "clever algorithm" subsection of ppcg ?

Business Cat

I think Mayube is referring to stuff like brainfuck, Befunge, ><>, etc, which aren't designed for golfing but work very differently from normal languages

trichoplax

@OlivierDulac Of the main site, or of chat?

Mayube

@BusinessCat exactly

L3viathan

I've updated my latest sandbox question with what I hope is better description, I'd be thankful for comments

1

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Print all matching leaves code-golf natural-language parsing In Natural Language Processing, we sometimes interpret sentences as being context-free languages, and therefore as having a certain tree structure, also called constituency trees, or parse trees. These trees are sometimes written down ...

Olivier Dulac

2:15 PM

main or chat, I'd enjoy it

@trichoplax

L3viathan

I don't think that exists, @OlivierDulac. Try searching the comments for "clever" :D

Shaggy

@trichoplax I'll give it 'til Monday so, and hope it doesn't disappear into the ether like my first sandbox! :D

Olivier Dulac

tags for clever, and elegant too, would be nice ^^ I'll have a look

Leaky Nun

@mınxomaτ how did you even find that message?

trichoplax

@Shaggy Definitely worth mentioning in here again when you're about to post - lots more people will see it that way

Shaggy

2:17 PM

@LeakyNun I'm gonna guess bookmarked!

Dada

@Shaggy You can make edits to your sandbox post to make them come back on top of the first page (don't do that too much though; like once per post should usually be enough)

unless you meant one of your post in the sandbox got deleted due to a bug?

programmer5000

I've made an awful language that only uses ASCII 0x0b and 0x0c.

trichoplax

@OlivierDulac On main there are other competitions besides code-golf, such as fastest-code, king-of-the-hill, code-challenge, and on chat there are chatrooms specifically about golfing, and also chatrooms specifically about interesting things other than golfing, so having a browse around should show up something that matches what you're looking for

Stephen S

@programmer5000 isn't that binary, just with different chars?

programmer5000

Exactly.

Only useful in polyglots with languages that ignore VT and FF, like JS.

Olivier Dulac

2:22 PM

@trichoplax: thanks a lot

trichoplax

:)

L3viathan

@programmer5000 Now make a Whitespace-VTFF polyglot quine

Stephen S

@L3viathan you can output unprintables in Whitespace?

L3viathan

@StephenS Why not? (But no idea)

Stephen S

@L3viathan it's not a quine if you can't output the VTFF stuff

L3viathan

2:26 PM

@StephenS Right, but why wouldn't whitespace be able to print VT and FF?

Stephen S

@L3viathan I don't know Whitespace, that's why I asked if it could print unprintables :)

programmer5000

I am bad a quines :(

Shaggy

@Dada I'm not a fan of editing just to bump, so that's OK.

And, while I'm trawling for feedback...!

2

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Alphabet Aerobics code-golf kolmogorov-complexity Ready? Begin. Given a single letter (a-z) as input, output the 2 lines of Blackalicious' Alphabet Aerobics that correspond to that letter, ignoring the intro & outro. Rules You may take input by any reasonable, convenient means as long as ...

Won't be posting that one until at least the middle of the week.

Olivier Dulac

@Shaggy: maybe a link to that 2-line alphabet definition?

oh, in the title... (youtube, can't see it right now)

maybe a text link somewhere in the text?

Shaggy

@OlivierDulac They're all covered in the test cases but the link in the title will be moved into the body when posting to main.

Is the "Vox Populi" badge bugged? I used all my votes yesterday but I just noticed I never got the badge.

Stephen S

2:35 PM

@Shaggy no, you have to use a lot of votes on questions

@Shaggy if you vote on answers you get less votes, if you vote on questions you get more total (30 if only answers, up to 40 if only questions or a combination)

Shaggy

@StephenS Ah, that might be it, the majority of votes I cast were on answers to the challenge I posted yesterday.

Stephen S

79

Q: Cannot vote on question although 40 votes limit not reached

I've hit the 40 daily vote limit wall and yet can see on my profile I have 7 votes yet to give to actually reach that ceiling. The votes remain and I am unable to cast them. According to a recent blog posting: The daily vote limit used to be 30 votes per day; we’ve increased that to 40 votes...

Quote from meta post: "If 1 in 3 of your votes are on questions, you will get 40 votes.

If you vote on fewer questions than that you will get fewer votes (lowest is 30)"

Nathan Merrill

@MartinEnder is it possible for a mod to remove an obligatory tag?

Shaggy

@StephenS , thanks for the info :)

Martin Ender

@NathanMerrill no, at least not that I'm aware of. I believe SE's internal issue tracker is based on the mandatory meta tags, so it wouldn't make sense for mods to be allowed to remove them completely.

Nathan Merrill

2:47 PM

ok. I had an idea (probably a terrible one), where we would post sandboxed posts to main, and make the sandbox tag obligatory. But that would only work if a subset of people could remove that sandbox tag :)

Olivier Dulac

@NathanMerrill: in other words, you propose we bypass the sandbox, or post in main while it still is "sandboxy" ? ^^ (not sure what you're trying to achieve with this idea?)

Nathan Merrill

oh, we've had several ideas to make the Sandbox more visible

a common one is to post it to Main

Adám

4

A: We need to talk about the Sandbox

Replace the sandbox with a Main site tag I think this suggestion is doable without any changes to SE. Introduce a special sandbox tag on the Main site which has a description along the lines of: A proposed challenge. This tag indicates that the challenge is not ready to receive answers, but...

Nathan Merrill

yep, that one :)

caird coinheringaahing

@NathanMerrill Personally, I agree with @Adám's post (that one) out of all the posts there. The highest voted doesn't actually offer a solution to the problem.

Nathan Merrill

2:56 PM

I've actually had another idea rolling around in my head

It might be useful if all sandbox posts had a "This challenge is ready" comment that people would upvote if they thought it was ready

caird coinheringaahing

@NathanMerrill post that as an answer

Nathan Merrill

it doesn't solve your visibility problem

L3viathan

Awesome, the guy who found the counterexample to one of John Conways $1000 problems 5 days ago posted an answer on the related challenge :D

Nathan Merrill

@L3viathan are you sure its the same guy?

when did he post it? If it was after the numberphile video, I doubt its him

caird coinheringaahing

@NathanMerrill its better than "Lets just leave it as it is"

L3viathan

3:00 PM

@NathanMerrill I want to believe! He also has an old profile on the Physics SE; James Davis is a physicist.

Nathan Merrill

@L3viathan that is a bit more promising :)

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Color the Grayscale code-golf image-processing Given an image containing only grayscale colors (for RGB, R==G==B), and a RGB value (that is not grayscale), color the image with your given color. //Is there a formula that does this? If so this can definitely have objective input and output. Sh...

programmer5000

If anyone wants a challenge to post, there are three here

Stephen S

RE Sandbox, I was thinking of adding a comment along the lines of "Someone was here" that people would upvote if they saw the post, so that you know how many people have at least glanced at it

Nathan Merrill

@cairdcoinheringaahing there are still some details I'm not sure about, and I think I'd make it its own meta post (since it would be a change in rules): Do we include a "this challenge is not ready" comment? SE isn't very friendly to changing comment votes, so how do we deal with that?

programmer5000

3:10 PM

Has something like this already been posted?

New Main Posts

0

Q: Minimal Fresh Substrings

Thanks @NathanMerrill for allowing me to post this! The following is entirely his wording from this sandbox post (deleted): We define a "Fresh" substring is a substring that cannot be found earlier in the string. For example, if I take the string "abababc" and split it: ["ab","ab","a","bc"], ...

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