The Nineteenth Byte

ChartZ Belatedly

12:23 AM

CMC: Given an integer n, output the number of even digits in n

0 -> 1, 1 -> 0, 24 -> 2, -43 -> 1, 1234567890 -> 5

ngn

@ChartZBelatedly +/~2!$:

Wezl

@ngn is $ format?

ngn

@Wezl yes

Wezl

oeis.org/A196563

Original Original Original VI

12:46 AM

@ChartZBelatedly Scala: _+""count(_%2<1)

Neil

@ChartZBelatedly Retina, 7 bytes: [02468]

Lyxal

1:28 AM

@ChartZBelatedly Vyxal, l flag, f"∺¬

flagless, f"∺¬;L

But if we can take input as a list of characters, Vyxal, "∺¬;L

ChartZ Belatedly

4:02 AM

Thoughts on a challenge idea: given a string and a dictionary, compress the string according to Jelly's string compression?

(I chose Jelly because I'm most familiar with how it works, and because it doesn't support "special" characters such as 05AB1E, Husk and Japt)

New Meta Posts

0

Q: The Validity of a Custom, General-Purpose Language

I am currently writing and maintaining a new general-purpose language, named CSASM. I seem to have forgotten the rules surrounding languages such as this one. Hence, it would be preferable to have this question answered beforehand, rather than submit an answer and be embarrassed. In short, is it ...

discussion

Lyxal

@NewMetaPosts well done for showing this an hour after posting

ChartZ Belatedly

@NewMetaPosts Ugh, of course OP posts at a time that HN can easily ninja my answer :P

Razetime

11:25 AM

@ChartZBelatedly lmao

New Sandboxed Posts

3:04 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Fortuitous Numbers Four is Magic is a very interesting math game. We start out with a number: 1 We spell it into English: “one” We find the sum of the letters: 3 Go back to step 2, until the game ends at “4” The reason “4” is Magic, is that “Four” has 4 letters, and no other number has this pro...

New Main Posts

3:16 PM

0

Q: Fortuitous Numbers

Four is Magic? Four is Magic is a very interesting math game. We start out with a number: 1 We spell it into English: “one” We find the sum of the letters: 3 Go back to step 2, until the game ends at “4” The reason “4” is Magic, is that “Four” has 4 letters, and no other number has this propert...

number-theory natural-language rosetta-stone search

New Main Posts

4:57 PM

-3

Q: How to solve this minimum cost matrix traversal problem

I tried putting this question on stackoverflow, but got no responses Suppose we are given an m x n matrix, with any of the elements being either one of the following : "L", "D", "U", "R". In this case, L D U R represents Left Down Up and Right respectively, and the direction in which the element ...

matrix python programming-puzzle

Redwolf Programs

@NewMainPosts I don't see why this challenge has so many downvotes, I think it could be good if it had a OWC

They tagged it programming-puzzle, so they might have been trying to make it a challenge, and even if they weren't it could probably be a cool fastest-algorithm

ChartZ Belatedly

@RedwolfPrograms I think its because it (as it stands) is off-topic, and people downvote off-topic posts

@RedwolfPrograms They also tagged it with brainfuck, I think programming-puzzle was added because it puzzled them?

pxeger

"I asked on StackOverflow but got no responses" - blatantly off-topic. I don't care if it's interesting; if they didn't take the 30 seconds to read what this site is about, they don't deserve any meaningless internet points

Redwolf Programs

@ChartZBelatedly Probably. I think that's definitely one of the tags we need a warning for.

ChartZ Belatedly

Honestly, I'd be happy to blacklist programming-puzzle

Redwolf Programs

5:07 PM

I think it's great, since it lets you know immediately it's either off-topic or bad

pxeger

blacklist how? Do you just mean ignore?

But what if someone posts a genuinely good programming puzzle?

ChartZ Belatedly

No, mods can "blacklist" certain tags and prevent them from being used

Redwolf Programs

@pxeger Then they'll tag it code-challenge

ChartZ Belatedly

@pxeger IMO such a thing doesn't exist. The entire premise is "here is a piece of code, figure out X from it", which isn't really a good fit for the site anyway

pxeger

I disagree. All the existing questions that haven't been closed look interesting

Redwolf Programs

5:09 PM

There are some that are good, but I'm sure most questions tagged with it are not actually programming puzzles.

They're just problems.

ChartZ Belatedly

@pxeger Yeah, but very few of them are actually programming puzzles

29

Q: Match strings whose length is a fourth power

Within the scope of this question, let us consider only strings which consist of the character x repeated arbitrary number of times. For example: <empty> x xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Well, actually it doesn't have to be x - any character is fine as long as the whole string only has 1 type of charac...

regular-expression programming-puzzle

If that's a "programming puzzle", so is every challenge on the site

It's such a vague tag that most of the questions tagged with it don't follow the tag info:

> A programming puzzle includes a goal, a partially completed program, and rules outlining how the program can be modified. The program is specifically designed to make achieving the goal difficult. An answer to a programming puzzle takes the program and modifies it only in ways specified in the rules, so that the goal is achieved.

Redwolf Programs

Sounds like it also needs an OWC

pxeger

that one doesn't have an objective winning criterion. But I'm thinking of more deliberately-crafted puzzles like on puzzling.SE, but more code oriented

ChartZ Belatedly

@pxeger Good point, VTCed

@pxeger I don't think we've ever had a well-received question like that

Redwolf Programs

Would "first valid answer" be an OWC?

ChartZ Belatedly

5:13 PM

Maybe this, but even then it's not great, and doesn't have a winning criteria

@RedwolfPrograms Yes, but a really bad one

Redwolf Programs

I think more good programming puzzles would be neat, but it should be combined with code golf (or maybe one of the less common ones like fastest algorithm)

ChartZ Belatedly

Meta discussion

pxeger

Then again, there are already many code-golf challenges which are "find the way to do XX that's really short and nowhere near as complicated as the challenge makes it look", a.k.a. "wait for xnor to find the optimal algorithm and then port it to 200 different languages"

ChartZ Belatedly

Yeah, if a "programming puzzle" is "find a way to do X", then it 100% does not belong on the site IMO

Redwolf Programs

Might as well just be SO, find a way to do what the OP wants and win if you do it first

ChartZ Belatedly

5:18 PM

^ Aside from the OP already "knowing" the answer in programming puzzles, that's basically what SO is for

pxeger

but I'm thinking more Capture The Flag-type things, but more programming- and less security-specific

ChartZ Belatedly

cops-and-robbers

pxeger

but the idea is to have only one cop (the asker) and a load of robbers

Redwolf Programs

But if there's only one flag, how can there be a load of robbers?

You'd need an OWC to choose the best robber.

pxeger

well, first robber

ChartZ Belatedly

5:20 PM

That only works if a) there's more than one "answer" and b) there's an OWC that isn't "first post"

pxeger

or popcon?

ChartZ Belatedly

@pxeger Then no-one posts after the first one

pxeger

so what? posts on puzzling.SE don't ever last after they're solved

Redwolf Programs

You could do a CtF type thing with multiple flags somehow, like some sort of custom hash algorithm with multiple collisions (that's solvable), and the shortest/longest/whateverest one found wins

ChartZ Belatedly

@pxeger We're not puzzling.SE. Computer/code puzzles are on-topic on Puzzling

New Main Posts

5:22 PM

0

Q: Largest prime in a minute

The objective of the challenge is simple, find the largest prime, in running time of 60 seconds. That means your code has to print the largest prime it can calculate in 60 seconds. You can either choose to halt at 60 seconds and print the calculated prime number in any reasonable Output format or...

code-challenge primes fastest-code

pxeger

well that might just be the Guess My Password CnR

ChartZ Belatedly

@pxeger If we wanted to allow those kind of posts (which I'm not opposed to), they'd have to meet the same standards of quality as on Puzzling.SE, which makes the site scope much broader, and opens us up to a whole bunch of "I'm stuck doing X, how do I do it?" questions but now with a "legitimate" excuse of "It's a programming puzzle"

pxeger

but we already have those

ChartZ Belatedly

I hated the old site name (PPCG) because it felt to me as though "programming puzzle" suggested to new users that "If you're puzzled about something programming related, it's on topic here". Allowing programming-puzzle questions similar to Puzzling.SE feels like it'd make that much worse

pxeger

the current "coding challenges" is worse than "programming puzzles"

ChartZ Belatedly

5:31 PM

@pxeger Yeah, I'm not a fan of that either (would prefer "coding competitions"), but at least code-challenge is a proper type of challenge

@pxeger Yeah, but they don't have the excuse. Whenever someone posts an off-topic question, it's very quickly commented with "We don't do help here". If we allow Puzzling.SE style questions, we'll never have any good content, it'll all be buried under the "help vampire" questions that don't bother to read the tag info

pxeger

I think code-challenge should be renamed to something like unusual-scoring tbh

ChartZ Belatedly

Changing it's name would be good, but I'd worry that unusual-scoring runs close to being a meta tag

pxeger

If you think that's a meta tag, then so are all tags which describe the scoring critierion

Redwolf Programs

I mean math is practically a meta tag, right?

None of the tags here work on their own, other than OWCs. Meta tags don't really apply.

pxeger

no, I think the best definition of meta tags would be "tags that are about the context of the question"

rak1507

5:43 PM

@NewMainPosts CMC: this

I think I have a 91 in APL but it's hard to verify

ChartZ Belatedly

It's more that I can look at a question with code-golf or string and know roughly what it's about. unusual-scoring just tells me that it's not an existing OWC (which I suppose code-challenge does as well)

Redwolf Programs

I think xkcd.com/2435 would be cool if it used the three pythagorean means (so harmonic mean instead of median)

rak1507

the original variant is in the sandbox somewhere but that could be interesting too

nice, harmonic mean is mean under reciprocal

ChartZ Belatedly

@RedwolfPrograms TBH it'd be interesting to see if the "Geothmetic Meandian" of a data set actually has any statistical meaning

Redwolf Programs

It's somewhere in the middle :p

pxeger

5:51 PM

@RedwolfPrograms that might be too sensible :P

Maybe the "Geothmetic Median" could be a good code-golf

bagsies on the post if it is

ChartZ Belatedly

@pxeger Its in the Sandbox :P

Redwolf Programs

I call the pythagorean means one I proposed

pxeger

Dammit

rak1507

I have a 26 in APL

Redwolf Programs

The arithgeomarmonic mean of [1, 1, 2, 3, 5] is about 1.98412985724918

rak1507

5:56 PM

yay I get the same thing

time to FGITW it

pxeger

are you telling me

Randall Munroe

was wrong?

Redwolf Programs

No, we're doing something different

rak1507

no, this is different

Redwolf Programs

Arithmetic, Geometric, and Harmonic

ChartZ Belatedly

8 mins ago, by Redwolf Programs

I think https://xkcd.com/2435/ would be cool if it used the three pythagorean means (so harmonic mean instead of median)

rak1507

5:58 PM

24 in extended

Redwolf Programs

The arithgeomarmonic mean of [1, 2, 3, 100] is only around 6.814, interestingly

Only works with positive numbers unfortunately, since harmonic doesn't work with 0 and geometric doesn't work with negative numbers

pxeger

just have a complex result and return the modulus? (still wouldn't work with 0 though)

rak1507

well geometric mean of -3 and -12 can be 6...

Redwolf Programs

Yeah, you only get imaginary results with even numbers of numbers and an odd number of them being negative, as long as none are zero

And it's not a thursday

pxeger

lol

Redwolf Programs

9:20 PM

A bird just collided with a squirrel outside my window

They're both ok

I'm not really sure how that happens

Lyxal

10:37 PM

Hi heck and howdy everyone. What's new?

@RedwolfPrograms and you wonder why I have a mild dislike towards birds

Stupid idiot birds colliding with squirrels. And sometimes birds just sit there looking stupidly at you until you tell them to move along.

Wezl

11:04 PM

@Lyxal It's getting rid of squirrels, which are worse

@Lyxal are you sure? Did you stare at it the whole time, or did it just only look away when you did? ::P

Lyxal

@Wezl birds are just objectively bad

You do not question the facts

Neil

ugh, I spent far too long minimally making change

I mean, yes, I was able to save a boatload of bytes, but I had other things to do

Wezl

@Lyxal please present the facts, I would like to change them

rak1507

@Neil so relatable

Lyxal

@Wezl exhibit a) birds have no concept of code golf. exhibit b) birds cannot rickroll other people. Exhibit c) birds disrupt people with loud noise intentionally. Must I go on?

Wezl

11:14 PM

@Lyxal um, I think you're describing me

Lyxal

@Wezl I'm really not

Unless you somehow live in my neighbourhood, then it isn't you

Original Original Original VI

@Lyxal Exhibits a and b demonstrate that birds are better than us, and although exhibit c may help prove your point, it's not strong enough evidence.

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