The Nineteenth Byte

12:00 AM

x x y, then

I think existing langs make a distinction between identifiers and operators for a good reason

Having them be clearly separate visually makes sense given they're parsed, both for a machine and for a human, entirely differently

Adám

@DLosc Sure, but it isn't that bad.

Seggan

^^^

Adám

@RydwolfPrograms I don't argue with that. APL takes it even further and reserve all Latin names for the programmer.

DLosc

@RydwolfPrograms IIRC, there's at least one historical language where any keyword could also be used as a variable name, leading to valid syntax like if if == then then then else if

Adám

12:03 AM

ah yes, I remember that.

Ginger

@user ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Jo King

you could have sigils to distinguish variables, e.g. $x x $y

user

@DLosc Agda even lets you define your own if _ then _ else _ construct, which, frankly, is ridiculous

(although if, then, and else aren't Agda keywords so it's not the same thing)

Seggan

@Adám remember its name?

@JoKing aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa no

DLosc

@Adám I don't mind using x for a variable and X for an operator or vice versa, but I do think having an operator that can also be used as a variable is a bad idea. It adds confusion, and it increases the odds that a typo will become a runtime error rather than being caught earlier as a syntax error.

@JoKing Ah, that's right. I was trying to remember how Perl and PHP do it.

Adám

12:07 AM

@Seggan I think it was a BASIC flavour.

DLosc

Wikipedia suggests that FORTRAN had (has?) no reserved words, allowing keywords to be used as variable names

emanresu A

12:37 AM

→ 53 messages moved to Off-Topic TNB

Seggan

ty

OldSandboxPosts

1:00 AM

Sandbox posts last active a week ago: Optimize your score on a biased multiple choice test

Neil

1:29 AM

@DLosc and then there's DO5I=1,10 which is completely different to DO5I=1.10 in Fortran

user

4:42 AM

github.com/xxh/xxh <- might be interesting if any of you have ever needed to ssh into someplace and wanted to bring your favorite shell along

Stewie Griffin

7:01 AM

@mousetail I ask because I wonder if encouraging even mediocre challenges would be good for the site. I don't mean that the mediocre challenges themselves will be good for the site. But, receiving recognition for your effort makes you want to write more challenges.

Unrelated String

@RydwolfPrograms nice

Stewie Griffin

Not all challenges are great, even the best challenge writers, for instance Calvin, have written qute a few mediocre challenges. But they also write many great challenges.

I believe that being more generous with the upvotes on questions, and also not downvoting questions that are mediocre will lead to more users trying to write challenges. This will in turn result in more mediocre challenges, but also a more good and great challenges.

It's not like the site is swamped with challenges/questions like SO.

lyxal

I would have thought people were already generous with question upvotes. The majority of questions asked get at least 8 or so net score

plus a lot get on to the HNQ, which brings in more upvotes

Stewie Griffin

And for the record; these are the ramblings of a grumpy old timer who wishes the site had more activity, as in the good old days.

lyxal

Note that there has been an unusual lack of activity lately. There's been periods where I've been really itching for a new code golf challenge but found there's been nothing new posted

It wasn't like that a few months ago

and obviously today's activity levels don't compare to say, 2016, but they're relatively quiet even for post 2020 standards

Stewie Griffin

7:09 AM

@lyxal you are likely right, but as a (mainly) challenge writer, I've always considered a challenge with a score less than 20 to be a waste of effort.

lyxal

my expectations are clearly lower :p

man I'd love to figure out how to consistently get 20+ score on questions

mousetail

@StewieGriffin I really think we are already quite generous, even highly simple challenges that weren't sand-boxed usually get a lot of votes. The only time they get downvoted is when they are either very unclear or do things from "things to avoid when writing challenges"

Stewie Griffin

The reason is "everyone" wants challenges. If only 20 users find it OK, that means the vast majority think it's not worth the effort I put in.

Unrelated String

@StewieGriffin yeah i haven't downvoted but the formatting and requirement to generate multiple does feel a bit sideways from what makes the challenge interesting

Stewie Griffin

@UnrelatedString I know it's a bit sideways. The reason why it is that way is because that was the part that made it hard to make short (in MATLAB). The part about random numbers was the easy one.

Also, I don't really care about this particular challenge. I realize that it's not great. :)

lyxal

7:17 AM

ngl, the formatting kinda made it interesting

if it was just the numbers, it would have been a trivial fgitw I wouldn't have spent some time looking to golf

the formatting is what made me spend a little more time playing with the byte count.

not to say that strict formatting is generally a good idea, but it somehow works here

Unrelated String

huh, neat

lyxal

I wonder if the person who vtc'd will retract their vote

Stewie Griffin

By the way, I hope this doesn't come off as me begging for votes on my challenge. I just wonder what will be best for the site in general. I don't have time to contribute much anymore. So even if my challenge got >100 it would not lead to many more challenges on the site.

lyxal

It doesn't come off like that at all - this is simply a discussion about general voting patterns

+ a discussion on site health too

Stewie Griffin

I'm writing this for every other challenge writer that might be discouraged when their effort feels wasted.

lyxal

7:21 AM

@lyxal which doesn't hurt to have

Stewie Griffin

@lyxal for the record, only about half of my challenges has >20.

lyxal

that's better than my 31%

Stewie Griffin

:)

lyxal

:p

Stewie Griffin

Write 100 more and you'll get there ;)

lyxal

7:28 AM

I wish

challenge inspiration is really hard for me

which is probably why I stick primarily to golflang design :p

Stewie Griffin

I'm curious... Would more upvotes (thus positive recognition) on your challenges make you more eager to try and come up with new challenge ideas?

lyxal

maybe

but it's more "challenge ideas are hard to think of" then "eh no point trying to think of a challenge idea"

mousetail

More answers, and especially interesting answers, is also a big factor for me to judge the quality of mmy challenges

Stewie Griffin

I know! :)

mousetail

@StewieGriffin Honestly the main factor that would encourage me to post more challenges (though I already post a lot) is more sandbox feedback. It's really discouraging to have no activity after several days in the sandbox

Most of my ideas die there

Stewie Griffin

7:34 AM

And that's why if I make an actual effort to go "Hmm, ok, I'll try to make a challenge. What should it be about...?" and use quite some time on writing it, it feels wasted if I don't get the praise I want :P

@mousetail I've never used the Sandbox for that very reason.

Keep in mind that I've written loads of challenges and have been an active user for years, so I seldom forget to provide proper explanations and test cases. The challenges might not be great, or even good, but they are usually well-specified and explained.

mousetail

It's really hard to find duplicates on this site though, that's the main reason I use it. It's basically impossible to "search" for similar challenges often

You just have to hope some person who has been on the site longer has seen it before

Stewie Griffin

Why? Honestly, why? If a similar challenge has been written before and no one remembers it, what's the harm?

mousetail

Once it's on the main site everyone will remember immediatly

Stewie Griffin

I think this is the only challenge I have thought of and went: This has to go through the Sandbox. I ended up giving it to another user who was better than me :)

46

Q: Build an aesthetically pleasing divisor tree

An aesthetically pleasing divisor tree is a tree of divisors of input n that, for any composite number m, has two children nodes that are the pair of divisors that are closest to the square root of m. The left node should be the smaller divisor of m and the right node should be the larger divisor...

@mousetail valid point

I have to go back to real-life... I hope you (all of you) find ways to get more challenges, if that's something you want. My suggestion is: Make challenge writers feel it's worth the effort.

And skip the Sandbox if you don't like it. Go through the challenge a few times and check if it's well explained and if you've thought of all edge cases in the examples, and hope for the best.

If it's a duplicate then it will get closed (or the other way around, it happens). There's no harm in getting a challenge closed as a duplicate.

Simd

7:50 AM

Why does *t,=range(10) make t into a list?

mousetail

@Simd Becuase the unpacking operator always makes a list, try *t,=1,

mousetail

8:17 AM

What should be done about this question? codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2035/91213

Unrelated String

there's something darkly poetic about the answer about not accepting answers being at the bottom because another one with half the votes was accepted :P

4

l4m2

9:00 AM

Is it good to convert code into median code to allow precise and realistic timing? To do so, what's suggested caching model?

And is it better to write every instruction in 16 byte or jump list?

mousetail

9:18 AM

Gotta love some 7 year old chat drama

Olle Härstedt

11:18 AM

Is this something you guys would appreciate?
http://olleharstedt.github.io/programming/2022/12/12/nbody-benchmark-in-php-c-polyglot-pholyglot.html

"The nbody benchmark in PHP+C polyglot code (as compiled by Pholyglot 0.0.-1-alphacow)"

lyxal

11:38 AM

CMQ: Which is more precise: Stirling's approximation or Lanczos' approximation for the gamma function?

I've tried searching comparisons, but nothing is coming up

New Posts

11:58 AM

0

Q: Gimme some sums

Gimme some sums In this challenge we are going to have a little fun with lists. Your output should contain exactly the following (down to the 14 dashes). Leading and trailing characters are permitted, although no numbers should immediately follow the last digit of the last part of the answer as '...

code-golf string sequence array

lyxal

the funny thing is that in the loophole linked, it says

> If the question doesn't require input and so a solution which just prints the answer would seem to meet the spec, downvote the question rather than post a protest answer consisting of the literal output.

+ in the comments

Often, this vulnerability is an indicator of a dumb question... — boothby Mar 7, 2014 at 19:37

lyxal

12:27 PM

cannot help but feel like I probably shouldn't modify files that are being compiled while they are being compiled

feel like that might screw some things up

Ginger

I'm sure it's fine

lyxal

yeah I'm sure too

~~not that it matters now anyway. that was like 2 compiles ago~~

l4m2

Can I do

#define LEN 100
int x[LEN] = {-1,-1,-1,...,-1} (LEN -1s)

in C?

lyxal

12:58 PM

I sure love floats

mousetail

This is why I need hex floats

I genuinly don't understand why they are so rare

Ginger

1:22 PM

@lyxal just had that happen to me lol:

TypeError: MediaWiki\Extension\SEAuth\SEAuthHooks::onApiModuleManager(): Argument #1 ($moduleManager) must be of type MediaWiki\Extension\SEAuth\ApiModuleManager, ApiModuleManager given

lyxal

Type comparisons are hard

Ginger

I am such an idiot

I spent an hour trying to figure out why my API module wasn't being loaded and I just realised I forgot the namespace statement

Sandbox Posts

1:45 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Reverse the polyglot, change the language. Write a polyglot in two languages that when run, outputs the language it is run in. Additionally, this program must also output the other language's name if the source code is reversed Example: Program ABC in language foo outputs foo. ABC in language bar...

New Posts

2:12 PM

0

Q: OpenMDAO v/s modeFrontier comparisons for optimization capabilities

I realize that this might not be the best platform to ask this, but I think this would be best unbiased one to put my question in. How would you compare OpenMDAO v/s modeFrontier with regards to there optimization capabilities and application scaling and overall software development? Which one wo...

optimization

caird coinheringaahing

@StewieGriffin I have a number of my challenges which I personally believe are better, more interesting, more clearly specified, all-around-better challenges that have gotten 10-20 votes than my highest scoring challenges

Like, of my top 10 challenges by score, this and this one are the only ones I'm really proud of. The others are either kinda trivial that just got a lot of upvotes, or have issues with them that people overlooked cause they were fun

New Posts

3:53 PM

0

Q: Help me sell old donuts

You work at a bakery, and every day you make pastries. You make 100 of each of several different types. However customers are less predictable. Some days they order all of one kind of pastry and you run out, some days they order hardly any and you have some left over. So your boss has made up a c...

code-golf

Seggan

4:15 PM

i thought NP bork

Rydwolf Programs

?

Was it at some point?

Seggan

nah just the challenge is very similar to the bagel one

Seggan

5:20 PM

@RydwolfPrograms are you gonna reveal your lang?

~~im excited to steal some algorithms~~

Rydwolf Programs

I probably should yeah

I just really don't feel like having to type up explanations and stuff

mousetail

5:40 PM

Only Kansas Shuffle needs one more nomination

Oh and Sandbox commented but I doubt that will happen

DLosc

6:30 PM

@NewPosts Huh, interesting. This was previously posted on StackOverflow, and recently (after the question here got closed) self-answered there with an answer explicitly labeled as "Generated using ChatGPT."

DLosc

6:45 PM

@cairdcoinheringaahing I've been lucky, I guess. Only one of my challenges has less than 19 score (and it's not one I put a lot of effort into).

Simd

7:44 PM

Is there a name for the product of the primes less than n?

CMQ what is the largest n such the product of primes less than n fits in a 64 bit integer

Sandbox Posts

8:14 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Sum numbers which are string Your function must accept 2 strings which are "numbers", summarize them as normal numbers and return a result as string without leading zeros in integer part and trailing zeros in decimal part Correct number is a string which can start with leading minus, contains onl...

Simd

9:11 PM

No one in?

Clearly not :)

Is it 52?

user

Would a naive program for finding this take a really long time to run?

Because if not, it shouldn't be too hard to just write a little Python program for that

Seggan

> Unanimously elected chairman of the secret convention of demi-gods

what on earth is this doing in my history homework (its an answer for a matching question)

Simd

9:27 PM

@user I was hoping for some golfed code of course. It should be fast

@user that should be fine

Rydwolf Programs

@Simd primorial

Simd

@RydwolfPrograms that's very slightly different

That is the product of the first n primes

Rydwolf Programs

Sure but it's trivial to map from one to another

Seggan

> Fifty-five demi-gods meet secretly in Philadelphia to draft a new charter of government.

please tell me who wrote my homework assignment

Simd

sympy has primorial built in I think

Seggan

9:29 PM

(btw the answer to the above quote is apparently George Washington)

Simd

@RydwolfPrograms well not so trivial. You need to find the index for the largest prime less than n

And then use that to call primorial

Unless you can do that in a very golfy way

DLosc

@Seggan Rick Riordan, apparently. IIRC, in the Percy Jackson series, George Washington is said to be a demigod.

AndrovT

Here's a very golfy and fast (and polyglot) code that computes it: 53

Simd

@AndrovT excellently coded

@AndrovT how about 32 bit ints?

AndrovT

@Simd 29

Simd

9:38 PM

@AndrovT how are you computing this?

And thank you

AndrovT

vyxal.pythonanywhere.com/…

Seggan

@DLosc hmm apparently Jefferson called it "an assembly of demigods"

DLosc

10:18 PM

@Seggan Huh

Well, Washington did have an apotheosis...

Seggan

10:34 PM

@DLosc the constitutional convention

> Observing events in the summer of 1787 from his diplomatic post at Paris, Thomas Jefferson referred to the sitting Constitutional Convention in America as “an assembly of demigods” likely to reach “good and wise” decisions.

source

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