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1:46 AM
This question has not had activity for almost a year:
1
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

IsziCountdown: Federal Holidays in the United States Inspired by this question: Christmas Countdown Write a program or script that will countdown to the nearest U.S. federal holiday, at any given time, and will switch the display to an appropriate greeting during each holiday. The following holid...

Would it be alright of I took over this question?
 
@hosch250 we have a process for that
meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/2057/8478, section What should we do with abandoned proposals?
 
@MartinBüttner Thanks.
Can you review this too:
1
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

hosch250Generate a Koch Snowflake A Koch snowflake is a triangle that for each n, another equilateral point is added in the middle of each side: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake#Properties We already had a kolmogrov-complexity Koch Snowflake challenge for n=4. The new challenge is to outpu...

I never got a response from Peter Taylor after I responded to his comment.
 
I'll keep it open in a tab and have a look tomorrow
 
OK, thanks.
Am commenting on the other challenge.
 
2:02 AM
I'm currently working on a Logisim diagram of my CPU.
I'm going to be spending quite a bit of time wiring stuff together.
 
Exciting!
About my rant yesterday, my professor told me that instead of one quiz covering the material discussed on the chapter, he has 30 quizzes per chapter and chooses one of them for the quiz.
I'm glad I only have about 6 weeks left this semester - then we can write our chess game :)
 
I think I already explained that I'm making a "MOV machine." That means I have to memory-map a bunch of registers (instead of accessing RAM, I have to divert the signal to access the registers.) I'll show you a picture in just a bit.
 
OK.
How did you create the AND/OR/NOT gates?
I wouldn't know how to create those from scratch.
I do know the others can be created with combinations of those basic three, though.
 
I'm using logisim, which has most of the basic components pre-implemented (like registers).
 
OK.
Oh, you meant digital wires?
 
2:10 AM
The most basic form of computer memory is the flip-flop
 
I thought you meant you were actually creating a physical CPU.
 
which is built from logic gates.
It's a simulation for now.
 
Are you going to be a hardware engineer when you are older?
 
No, I don't think so.
Building the CPU is always an option.
But not yet.
 
My favorite gate is the XNOR.
The XOR is cool too.
It seems as if there should be a NNOT gate, but it is too redundant.
 
2:20 AM
i'm also a fan of the XNOR
6
 
Obviously :)
I'm 66 posts away from getting the silver flagging badge.
On SO. I have flagged probably 10 posts out of the 40 I reviewed today (yesterday and today UTC time).
I also passed multiple tests.
Getting late here, and I have chores to do. Classes tomorrow, so may not be here then, but see you soon!
 
3:30 AM
@PhiNotPi When I made a "move machine" (also in Logisim), I made each instruction 2 words long, so each address is 1 word. This made the overall design more uniform.
 
 
5 hours later…
8:28 AM
@hosch250 I suspect that Skizz's answer can also be adapted, although I admit that I haven't tried to understand it. This is one of those awkward cases where an older question, by being too specific, leaves an interesting generalisation in a half-way house where it isn't a clear-cut duplicate or a clear-cut non-duplicate.
 
 
1 hour later…
9:39 AM
I have the feeling that very few people will actually look through all the answers in the RadioASCII-challenge.
 
 
2 hours later…
11:51 AM
guys, how do you install userscripts in chrome without it disabling them because they're "not from chrome store"?
 
12:08 PM
I guess I'll need tampermonkey
@Quincunx @Dennis @grc seriously? when did we stop giving people a chance to improve their posts? that user hasn't even been online since the post got closed.
 
 
1 hour later…
grc
1:15 PM
@MartinBüttner My bad. I (incorrectly) assumed 20 hours was long enough, not realising they hadn't been online. I've voted to undelete.
 
@MartinBüttner Honestly, I didn't think it would go that fast. Most of my delete votes don't have any effect for months...
The question is undeleted now.
 
even so, it's a valid question that's just lacking a specification for the code. it certainly seems fixable.
thanks guys
 
Doesn't seem like a real tips questions though.
-6
Q: How can i reduce the size of my program(source code)?

shikha Singhani#include<stdio.h> int main(){int n,m,i,p;scanf("%d %d",&n,&m);for(i=0;i<(n*n);i++){scanf("%d",&p);if(p==m){printf("YES");exit(0);}}printf("NO");exit(0);} Please help to reduce the size of source code Currently on my UNIX OS it is 154 bytes

Some relevant comments:
* Just want to make the source code of lesser size as possible ..I would welcome any programming language
* CAn you suggest me any programming language in which the following code will have the minimum size
@MartinBüttner To install user scripts and unsigned extensions, open chrome://extensions/ drag the file in the tab and confirm.
 
@Dennis that's what I did
after restarting chrome, it deactivated the extension and didn't allow me to enable it again
so I got Tampermonkey now
 
Strange. I've installed a user script yesterday. Works like a charm.
 
1:22 PM
oh and I'm on Windows
I think it's a Windows thing
and also I'm using the stable release, not the dev branch (which also doesn't have that "feature")
 
What version do you have right now?
 
38.0.something
 
Sweet. I'm still on 37, so they'll probably take my user script after the next update. First NPAPI, now this...
 
I don't think it's a new thing, actually
 
According to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Release_history Chrome 38 has been released in October.
 
1:29 PM
I was looking at that, but I feel like that's the date of this specific build
 
It's the first stable 38.x release.
 
oh okay
well in that case, this existed before 38
 
Then there's still hope the update I'm currently running won't break things. I'll know in five minutes.
User scripts still work in Chrome 38.0.2125.111. Weird.
 
1:50 PM
and you're also using the stable branch on Windows?
maybe the user script you're using happens to be on the chrome store, too?
 
No, I'm on the stable branch, but on Linux (Fedora).
But at least when I still used Windows, Chrome behaved identically on both OSs.
I wrote the user script myself, so it's definitely not from the store.
 
@Dennis See the link above, this policy applies only on Windows.
"We are only enforcing this policy on Windows beta/stable channels, since that is where the problems are."
sorry, the link above leads to the wrong page I think: productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/2yTVWdfC4Gg/BkbPOe08hWsJ
 
Ah, they enabled it to fight malware. Got it.
 
it's really annoying, that I can't manually override it though
 
It's a rather moronic decision. If some off-browser malware managed to install an extension, you have bigger problems than the extension...
 
2:00 PM
SE is soooooo sloooooow at the moment :(
and I just want to cast a close vote...
 
I live in South America. SE is always slow. So is everything else.
But it's a little slower right now, yes.
I suppose you're talking about the Hello TV! question.
 
2:14 PM
yes it's lagging for me as well
i'm near London
i can't closevote or downvote
and "site stats are unavailable" if you look in the sidebar
 
yeah same here
(although I'm more "in" than "near" London :D)
 
i think it's finally registered my downvote
afteer about 5 attempts
 
I'm glad that the chat almost always survives these outages ^^
 
ok it's closed now
 
grc
that user has had a few questions closed/deleted recently right?
 
2:19 PM
well he posted another this morning, that got closed quickly. then he deleted and reposted it, and it got closed again.
 
grc
oh okay
 
i'm burninating because it's only been used 3 times and every question on this site involves esolangs
so it doesn't actually mean anything
 
Well, it'd make sense for questions involving esolangs, like "interpret deadfish" or "generate short brainfuck numerals" or what have you
Though then again, perhaps it isn't meaningful to distinguish them with a separate tag
 
wouldn't that come under or though? when are we ever asked to make interpreters for non-esolangs anyway?
 
There are a couple of "emulate <architecture>", those are arguably about implementing non-esolangs :P
But yeah, I suppose you're right
 
2:43 PM
@professorfish I think you've retagged enough for now ;)
please don't do more than 2 or 3 at a time, since it just clutters up the front page
 
Stack Exchange is moving at a snails pace today. Or is it just me?
Err.. it might just be SO. PPCG is fine
 
It's been hitting me randomly across the network, even on PPCG.
 
it was really bad like an hour ago, but now it's better for me (at least on PPCG)
but the community bulleting and site stats are still down, so there is probably still an issue
I've had this vague challenge idea this morning, but I just can't seem to turn it into something solid...
basically: + battleship == ??
? ? just some sort of golf-like ?
 
3:02 PM
You're right, that is a vague idea ;)
 
@MartinBüttner Yes I know, I'm leaving the rest for later
 
@Geobits yeah I know ^^... I've gone through several ideas.... the most interesting so far is a KotH where you can shoot out characters of the opponent's program, but I'm not comfortable with trying to run randomly modified programs on my machine
 
@MartinBüttner Survival Game Dominos - Sink Your Wolf
 
@MartinBüttner hmm battleships... hmm? so maybe something where

a. Your code has to simply produce an output. Same thing every time it is run.
b. Code must be square
c. Opponents have to locate <characters> in code by guessing based on output.

shooting out chars could be interesting but it might be too close to the question about hello world that works with chars removed
or maybe (regarding first idea) they provide input to the program, receive output, try to guess what the code is
 
I think Battleship itself would be an interesting challenge if you could reasonably weight code length vs score over X rounds.
I think you have to weight code length because otherwise everyone would play optimally
 
3:08 PM
maybe "best battleship ai in under X chars:?
 
But I honestly don't know the algorithms to play Battleship so maybe I'm talking out of my ass
 
that's what i was doing for my word game in the sandbox that i occasionally work on the control program for
shortest ai in under 8192 bytes
...including wordlist
 
I don't know about the "shooting out chars" thing. In how many languages would something even likely compile/run if you just start removing random characters? (assuming that you can't submit a program that's 98% comment)
 
HQ9+:

HH (2chars(
 
If you call that a language :P
 
3:12 PM
i wouldn't want it to be, but it's far too well-established now to do anything about it
37
Q: Fault-Tolerant Hello World (a.k.a. the Interview)

dan1111At the end of your interview, the Evil Interviewer tells you, "We make all of our applicants take a short coding test, to see if they really know what they are talking about. Don't worry; it's easy. And if you create a working program, I'll offer you the job immediately." He gestures for you t...

that's the one i mean
 
@professorfish Actually the community consensus seems to be that going forward we don't consider it a language: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/2073/194
 
@PeterTaylor I didn't see that. In any case, as you said, it has creative uses but they've mostly been exhausted - i.e. we're bored of it
i liked the one for "self-reproducing program" which was just 9
 
3:31 PM
I have been absorbed in XML for the past hour and suddenly the word "child" looks horribly misspelled to me.
 
@Geobits I'd probably replace them with spaces or something to keep it a square grid
 
Does anyone know where I can find a portable version of Scratch? Must be version 2.0, not 1.4. (for Windows)
Google has failed me :(
 
 
1 hour later…
4:42 PM
@Geobits How about this? scratch.mit.edu/scratch2download
Got it with Bing.
 
That's the not-portable version. I've tried installing on a thumb drive (along with AIR), doesn't seem to work.
It requires admin access and registry changes, from what I can tell.
 
OK.
@Geobits Here is a portable version from MIT: windows.teradown.com/portable-scratch
It's version is 1.3.1, but it may support Scratch 2.0.
It didn't say which version of Scratch it supported - just which version the editor was.
 
Hmm. All of them that I've seen match version numbers (editor vs language), but I'll give it a shot. I'm guessing from the screenshots that it's not going to work, though.
 
OK, never heard of Scratch before, so I don't know if I can be of much help.
 
I just started using it (for my son). It seems like a good way to learn the basics of coding.
 
4:56 PM
there is a thing called "BYOB" or something that is scratch but I believe it fixes some serious deficiencies
(I don't think scratch has arrays?)
 
You mean SNAP? I'll have to check it out.
At the moment, though, he's 7 and working through a "guided-projects" type of book, so sticking with Scratch is good for now.
 
as a programmer having Scratch/theOtherOne inflected on me it was a horrible experience, me and my arrogant self would just throw C# at someone learning, I'm not sure I get the appeal of graphics and stuff... but yeah, I'm not qualified to comment on this matter
 
The last half of the book goes into python, though, so if he groks that he may just skip that step altogether.
 
ah, OK, that sounds good, if it's designed to take you into a sensible language
 
Right. The Scratch part is really just an introduction to logic that skips over the "how to draw a sprite on the screen" type of stuff that just won't make sense yet.
 
5:00 PM
@Geobits have you heard of codemancer?
 
When I was teaching my brother FORTRAN, he would draw flowcharts of everything
 
it's not coming out for another 9 months, but...
 
@MartinBüttner I have now :P
 
it got worse when we were just having fun with Turing machines, but in the end those flowcharts ended up in a friend's A2 Computing Coursework
 
@VisualMelon Bring your own bottle?
 
5:02 PM
@MartinBüttner It looks a bit similar to LightBot. He liked that, but it's a bit limiting in that it's just puzzle-solving, and you can't create with it.
 
@PeterTaylor no, it's Build Your Own Blocks (I think) (I assume it adds 'functions' to Scratch)
 
@Geobits yeah, good point
 
There's Manufactoria, which is like LightBot but has been turned into a programming language which doesn't restrict you to predefined puzzles.
 
I had a non-programmer friend at school who liked SmallBasic, but I don't really know anything about it
 
This Manufactoria? Do you know of a graphical editor for it? The sample code listings on that page will turn away my kid, I'm sure of that.
 
5:07 PM
Have you heard of Invent with Python? inventwithpython.com/chapters
It basically has copy-from-the-model games.
Then explains the different parts and how they work.
 
Yea, so does the book he's got. Let me find a link...
 
I started with this, but didn't pay a lot of attention, so I was lost at the end.
 
@Geobits (in fact, there's a link right at the beginning of that Esolangs page)
 
Then, I did Bjarne Stroustrup's C++ book.
I understood that plenty.
 
5:09 PM
@MartinBüttner I know, but that page kept giving me a timeout ;) (and still is)
 
that's odd, loads for me in an instant
 
This is it:
It's not perfect, but it's a structure to work from, and I can fill in details as needed.
 
clearly it's intended for case-insensitive languages
 
You'd think so. There's actually a big warning about that once it gets to the python part :D
 
@Geobits No, I don't.
 
5:46 PM
Is it okay to choose your own submission as the answer of the question you asked ?
if it satisfies the winning criterions
 
Anyone here use ReSharper?
 
1
Q: What to do when your own answer wins your competition?

QuincunxIn my popularity contest Approximate a Bell Curve, the answer that I posted has the most votes. In general on Stack Exchange sites, I avoid accepting my own answer and instead accept another answer that is right (when there are multiple right answers). On this site, accepting means that the ac...

 
I see
 
6:01 PM
@Optimizer Which question is it that you need to do this with?
@Geobits How far in depth does the book go into Python? Although I already know the language, I'm being forced to do a codeacademy course on Python for CS, and would recommend it for learners.
 
I haven't finished reading through it yet, so I'm not sure. The book as a whole is definitely geared to "I've never touched programming before", and specifically to kids 10 and under.
(or people who think like kids 10 and under)
 
Ahh. Maybe not codeacademy then.
It won't be as effective as your book
Off topic: Does anyone know the market value of this book?:
I want to know if I got it for a bargain or not
 
6:20 PM
@BetaDecay Not me, someone else did
 
You can get it on Amazon Canada for a pretty low price, but I don't know what version/printing/run it is: amazon.ca/Crash-Course-FORTRAN-Donald-Monro/dp/0340561459
Wait, that probably isn't the same book...
 
It's ISBN 0713127945 if that helps
 
Yea, the second link matches that.
 
Ahh for a new one, I've saved around £7 :D
Oh wow, accounting for inflation (based on the price tag), brand new it would've cost £30...
 
6:30 PM
@Geobits Written by you, or used by you?
 
It was written before I was born :P It's the book that got me into programming.
 
Ahh nice. I started on the tutorials of BBC BASIC for Windows and then moved on to this: amazon.co.uk/dp/1435455002/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_bO8vub1543ZRZ
 
Ah. I started just a bit before Windows was a thing ;)
It existed and all, but it wasn't the thing, I should say.
 
Ahh yeah.
I would've loved to have a BBC Micro or a ZX Spectrum... Alas, I was/am too young...
 
The first one we had at home that I used was a Tandy 1000. I'd used Apple IIs also, but only at school.
I love the caption Wiki has for that: "Tandy 1000 EX's size was little bigger than that of a cat."
 
6:40 PM
Haha that was the first thing that caught my eye
 
@BetaDecay I may have one (a BBC Micro)
 
@VisualMelon Is that one you've had all along or have bought it recently?
 
@BetaDecay probably had it 5years
my friend has a lot of old computing equipment, and talked me into buying a Micro for myself ;)
great fun
 
Cool! Where'd you get it from?
 
EBay - my friend arranged everything
 
6:45 PM
Ah yeah. It's surprising how many Micros are on eBay...
 
@professorfish why are you getting rid of the pattern matching tag? it was perfectly valid at least on Good vs Evil.
(why are you so keen to get rid of loads of tags anyway?)
 
@BetaDecay I believe I got mine for a sensible price, but the first it did was explode, and we had to send it off to have some capacitors rejigged
 
@VisualMelon Wait, what do you mean by explode?
 
at some point we mounted a tiny 5v fan inside, computers aren't meant to be silent!
2
@BetaDecay BANG! followed by capacitors spewing acrid smoke into my room
2
 
@VisualMelon Woah! So have you done anything spectacular with it or just standard programming?
 
6:53 PM
@BetaDecay just messing around, making simple games, getting annoyed at cassette players, that sort of thing
I think that was before I learned C#, or it may have been when I'd just discovered that C# was a thing (used to use VB.NET)
I certainly wasn't a reliable programmer back then, so I never did anything adventurous, but I believe my friend wrote a fairly serious "typewritter", whereby you'd type a document, and every time it wrapped or you hit return it would print the next row on an attached dot-matrix printer, that sort of thing
 
7:31 PM
@hosch250 followed by @xnor in the chatroom makes a pretty combination of avatar pictures.
 
@Rainbolt What do you mean?
 
@hosch250 On second thought, when you are side by side, your avatar looks like a mess of pubes
 
I like my avatar. How dare you insult it!
 
Hahahah XD Maybe it's time to get a new avatar @hosch250
 
Nope.
Go get a new one yourself.
 
7:42 PM
I can't... It's the only non-SVG Feynman diagram of Beta Decay...
 
I wasn't really serious :)
Have to do a Biology experiment now, sorry to leave you.
Bye.
 
Goodbye! :)
 
8:02 PM
Ever had a situation when you post an innocent question and you are asked to clarify it but you don't know how?
 
8:32 PM
@MartinBüttner It's only two tags. I'll stop now.

[tag:pattern-matching] was used in six, maybe more total places, and meant different things in different places - so to eliminate the confusion I decided to replace it with [tag:regular-expression] where that was suitable and leave people to find a better, less ambiguous name for the other usecases, if one was necessary (something along the lines of [tag:prediction] would have been suitable for Good Vs Evil).
i'm wondering whether there could be more interesting challenges purely about predicting other bots' actions
 
@professorfish hm, I actually think that the regex tag isn't appropriate on at least two of the challenges. but in general, I'd prefer if we actually replaced ambiguous tags instead of just removing them. I think we're already not tagging enough anyway.
 
if I knew how to use data.SE, I'd see how many questions with only one tag there were
since we have a minimum of one tag (winning criterion), having one tag is very undescriptive
maybe we could ask the SE team to change the minimum number of tags to 2? that will probably create more trouble than it solves though
 
No thanks. Even on meta sites where there's an obligatory tag set, there's no minimum of two.
 
yeah, I don't think we should force it, but I think we could shift our retagging efforts from removing tags to adding tags
regarding Rainbolt's challenge, I suppose might be an option, that fits well, is unlikely to be misused, and is not as vague as
than again most KotHs are probably about pattern recognition.
 
8:47 PM
It only ended up becoming a pattern recognition because of the submissions. I agree with the removal of the tag from my challenge.
 
@Rainbolt I thought you intended it to be about pattern recognition from the beginning?
 
I did, but it took a at least one person to upset the perfect balance that the challenge started with.
There was no pattern when it was just Angel, Demon, and Petyr Baelish
 
@Rainbolt Wait, what was the challenge actually meant to be about?
 
I was hoping that by trying to find a pattern, submissions would accidentally create one.
It worked, and the players accidentally created patterns.
 
so it was purely about detecting patterns of others while trying not to create any yourself?
 
8:53 PM
I'm struggling to think of anything (besides pure random Petyr) that wouldn't classify as some kind of pattern.
 
@professorfish Does "it" include the challenge, or the challenge plus it's submissions?
The challenge by itself was absolutely pointless. The challenge plus the submissions was about finding a pattern.
I feel like I missed the point of your question despite answering both branches of it.
 
my mind is blown picking up pieces of brain from walls
 
9:07 PM
I saw Babadook last night and today it's freaking me out
And I'm not a superstitious guy
 
Are you sure?
Sounds superstitious to me.
 
Has there ever been a guess-the-source-code challenge?
 
How would that work?
 
Isn't that what programming is all about?
Calculating the source code required to do something?
 
Like maybe in a cops-and-robbers format: I have source code (X characters long in language Y) which prints a given output. The other person must then guess the contents of the program knowing the length/language/output. The person receives points based on how many characters they guess correctly.
 
9:13 PM
I don't think its been done.
Who wins, the first person to guess correctly?
 
I think to eliminate some of the pure guesswork, instead of just telling them the length you could give the entire program as an anagram (sorted ASCII-wise, etc).
 
That wouldn't be exactly fair because they could base their code off the previous answerer
 
There would have to be some way to award points based on how accurate the guess was, taking into account the length (and thus difficulty) of the guess.
 
Yeah.
Sum of the percentages of accuracy?
 
How do variable names and the like work in this? If I name a variable q and you guess the entire program except you used a b, I'd call that a win.
 
9:18 PM
+1
 
That's why I was thinking anagrams. More like "Given exactly this string of characters, write a program in lang X that does Y".
 
That seems like it could be a good way to do it.
That way, any functional program could be a valid solution.
 
The down side is that you might end up with the same issue that faced the Tetromino Code challenge. It's just too damn hard for the robbers once you get past a certain size :P
 
The longer the program, the more points the robber should get and the fewer the cop should get. There should be some formula, somewhere, that would be helpful in this.
 
@Geobits But that gives you an easy score right? The shorter the better. The challenge is trying to figure out how short you can make it without anyone being able to crack it.
 
9:31 PM
Maybe the cop's score should be the shortest program he's written that hasn't been cracked. The robber's score would be the sum of the lengths of the programs he's cracked.
 
yeah I think that's the usual way to do it... although for the robbers I'd do number of cracked submissions, ties broken by total size
otherwise there might be one really long submission that is easy to crack for some reason (think auto-generated brainfuck), which would allow someone to win the robbers' challenge without much effort
 
Number of programs would work.
 
What is the typical "immunity" period for cops-and-robbers?
 
After 48 hours, I think.
 
9:39 PM
3 days so far
Peter suggested that a week would be more appropriate
 
10:09 PM
I threw together a sandbox post about Unscramble the Source Code
 
Can you post the link?
 
It should auto-post, but I guess not.
 
It takes a few minutes.
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

PhiNotPiUnscramble the Source Code cops-and-robbers (No introduction yet) In this game of cops-and-robbers, each cop will write a simple program to give a single output. They will then make public four things about their program: 1) The language 2) The program length 4) The desired output 3) A scram...

 
Ok, looks good.
I have a question about the value of pi.
 
10:21 PM
@MartinBüttner Sure, I wasn't saying it'd be hard to score. I was just noting that the tetromino one didn't have much robber activity (presumably because it's frigging hard), and this is probably going to turn out similarly (since the robber's task is similar for both).
 
@PhiNotPi My experience with the first one was that a nominal 72 hours means that if you have people who only have time to seriously tackle the challenge in the evening and you post just after they go to bed, you effectively get 16 hours "free". If the crack time depends purely on thinking time that's not an issue, but if it depends on time to run an intensive program, it makes a big difference.
 
10:47 PM
How to determine the number of days my computer has been on: Count the number of times "To add contacts, drag from another group or add from search." appears in Lync under the "Colleagues" group.
It appears to add one line each day. I have no idea why.
Oh man. This guy has even bigger problems. His entire Lync contact list is just "To add contacts, drag from another group or add from search."
I know I said this yesterday, but this one cracks me up too:
 
11:10 PM
@Calvin'sHobbies lol, lovely edit
 

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