The Nineteenth Byte

btw some rule-bending I contemplated was A=x,y=min(s) followed by print A,w,h at the end. It saves a byte and changes the output format, but wasn't sure if that was okay :P

feersum

how is that supposed to be shorter?

Sp3000

6:47 AM

...

I need sleep

Lembik

8:49 AM

hi all

overactor

9:07 AM

hi

Though I'm sure I was not necessarily thought of when you said 'all' :)

Lembik

you are definitely in "all" :)

overactor

Cool, I'm included :)

How are you?

Lembik

not bad thanks

always thinking about my next challenge :)

how about you?

overactor

not too bad either

I'm wondering if SE could do with a Q&A site about open source in general

Lembik

what sort of Qs?

feersum

9:18 AM

Sounds like a good idea - a place for the self-proclaimed legal experts to debate the merits of the various software licenses!

overactor

That's the problem, I don't know all that much about open source development.

But I'd love to lurk that site if it existed

I guess stuff about hiearchies in open source project, legal issues, licenses

how to get people interested

how to keep them motivated

How to convince people to use your open source software

Probably about using open source solutions as well

I'm not sure but I feel like questions might run dry rather quickly though

On a more related topic, seems like PPCG is having a rough time generating questions

Martin Büttner

@overactor I could have sworn there is a proposal on Area51 already, but I can't find one.

Just open one yourself?

overactor

@MartinBüttner I don't quite feel qualified to do so

Though it can of course be improved upon by others

@MartinBüttner It's baffling, isn't it?

Martin Büttner

@overactor We're closer to 4 than 3 questions per day (not right now, but throughout most of the weekdays), which is better than a couple of month ago (but worse than over the summer).

overactor

Calvin is still easily pulling more than his weight :)

Martin Büttner

9:33 AM

he's pretty quiet at the moment

overactor

Of the last 5 non-closed questions, he posted 2

Martin Büttner

yeah, those were his first two in a month or so I think

overactor

I stand corrected.

I've noticed you've definitely done your part as well

I keep finding you over at HNQ

Martin Büttner

ah well, there were two more in early january (including his amazing Wall Paint challenge)... but before that he last posted in November

@overactor haha, yeah, I'm trying...

overactor

Open Source
For questions regarding motivation, marketing, organisation and coding pertaining specifically to open source projects.

?

Martin Büttner

9:41 AM

sounds good to me

overactor

Oh hell, why not try it.

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor @Doorknob remember that guy from the Free Binary Tree question who just couldn't cope with people asking for clarification? Looks like he changed his username network wide to "Crappy Experience Bye"... I'm guessing something else happened as well, but whatever did happen, that seems like quite an overreaction for someone with 125k rep on SO and 35k on CR.

overactor

@MartinBüttner wow

[area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/82234/… Source Proposal on Area51)

Well, f-ed that up quite skillfully

Open Source Proposal on Area51

Martin Büttner

I think if you don't post a referral link it'll onebox

overactor

2

Open Source

Proposed Q&A site for questions regarding motivation, marketing, organisation and coding pertaining specifically to open source projects.

Currently in definition.

@MartinBüttner That certainly was better

Martin Büttner

9:52 AM

you should probably put a couple of example questions in

overactor

I'm thinking of some

I only get 5 so I have to make the most of them

feersum

how do you upvote an area 51?

overactor

@feersum There's no upvoting I thgink, just following

feersum

The problem will be 70% of questions asking "how do i get (coders|artists|etc.) to do my project?"

Martin Büttner

@feersum you can follow proposals and vote on example questions

overactor

10:00 AM

Where following means, yes, I'd liek to see this site as a beta

And voting on questions allows you to get your say about the scope of the site if it were to be created

So just upvoting all questions because you like the proposal or downvoting them because you don't is not the way it should work.

feersum

can I put a deliberately bad question so that everyone can downvote it?

overactor

@feersum Not sure what the goal would be there, but I guess so

Peter Taylor

@MartinBüttner I'd noticed

@overactor The goal would be to get a consensus among the early committers on what the site scope is not.

overactor

@PeterTaylor But posting a deliberately bad answer?

I can understand edge-case questions, but I hardly see the point in posting something you know will be down-voted.

Peter Taylor

10:17 AM

@overactor, I can understand why someone, having seen multiple sites pulled way off their original scope, would want to try to pre-empt that.

overactor

@PeterTaylor I suppose I see your point

Ask an example question, and comment that this is your idea of a bad question and ask to for downvotes

Optimizer

Does java (java.util.regex.Pattern) implement PCRE flavor of regex ?

Peter Taylor

No

Optimizer

(the lookahead and group syntax is similar, just want to confirm)

@PeterTaylor then is it very close to any specific flavor ?

Peter Taylor

I'm sure there used to be a table which compared tonnes of regex implementations / flavours on regular-expressions.info, but I can't find it now.

Optimizer

10:30 AM

me neither

from what I can find, Java uses perl like regex

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor there are two, one on wikipedia, one on regular-expressions.info

@Optimizer Java defintiely has its own flavour, but like most modern flavours it's perl-inspired

Comparison of regular expression engines

This is a comparison of regular expression engines. == Libraries == == Languages == == Language features == NOTE: An application using a library for regular expression support does not necessarily offer the full set of features of the library, e.g. GNU Grep which uses PCRE does not offer lookahead support, though PCRE does. === Part 1 === === Part 2 === == API features == == See also == List of regular expression software == References == == External links == Regular Expression Flavor Comparison — Detailed comparison of the most popular regular expression flavors Regexp Sy...

Optimizer

is PCRE perl inspired too ?

Peter Taylor

Aha: they've got rid of it, but archive.org still has it

@Optimizer The PC is short for "Perl compatible"

Optimizer

oh ok

Peter Taylor

@MartinBüttner Yeah, I found that, but it's really limited compared to the one which regular-expressions.info used to have.

Martin Büttner

10:33 AM

@PeterTaylor yeah that's true

I wonder why he dropped it

Optimizer

11:19 AM

Geobits has problem with everything . Now people posting sandbox posts for more than 30 minutes makes him sad.

overactor

I think it might be time for an intervention if that is true

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer just checking, is that JS controller for the rat race still coming?

Optimizer

its rat race now o.O

Martin Büttner

it's been a rat race since day 3 or so

Martin Büttner

12:21 PM

@Optimizer is that a "no"? (I don't mind, I'd just like to know.)

Nathan Merrill

I vote no on taking the log

Martin Büttner

wrong room

Nathan Merrill

oh whoops

Optimizer

12:42 PM

@MartinBüttner yes its a no

Martin Büttner

kk

Sp3000

Hmm does Calvin ever come into chat?

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 rarely, but yes

looks like he hasn't been for a while though so you might not be able to ping him

Doorknob could, though.

Sp3000

Hmm k, just reading the new question

Martin Büttner

new question? :D

Sp3000

12:48 PM

Calvin's experimental one

I'm concerned that some languages take more than a few chars before you can show anything interesting

Martin Büttner

haha, just saw it... that looks crazy

hm, I'm not sure how well this work out, but I guess we'll have to try

feersum

I know an interesting 1-char fact for Python

Sp3000

Oh?

Optimizer

I think starting a factoid with hate as a feature is not a good idea :D

Sp3000

Urgh, ><> starts with a > so I need to add a comment so it doesn't become a yellow block of text

Is there a better way?

overactor

1:03 PM

Marbelous is rather discriminated against in this challenge :(

Sp3000

I was going to do FRACTRAN but I'd need 3 to do anything useful :/

Martin Büttner

1:21 PM

I'm so glad I've got Select[Names["*"], StringLength@# == 4&] in Mathematica :D

Sp3000

:P

Martin Büttner

@overactor did you find something doable with a single character or are you waiting for two upvotes?

oh, there's the second :D

overactor

@MartinBüttner I have one character solution that both interpreters allow

Martin Büttner

awesome

on the next upvote I can finally start with mathematica's crazy built-ins :D

Sp3000

1:37 PM

I'm getting exclamation mark syndrome, this is pretty exciting (although unfair to people who are asleep right now)

overactor

1:53 PM

This question is going to eat quite a bit of my time it seems

Optimizer

I am gonna update only every 5 upvotes :P

Sp3000

Why every 5?

Optimizer

to save time

overactor

@Optimizer Might be rough to get your first 5 with just a factoid

Martin Büttner

it's getting hard to decide...

Lembik

2:00 PM

I just posted a pure algorithms question

I hope it's ok

daringly I posted it straight without a sandbox.. sorry

Martin Büttner

@Lembik you'll want a tie breaker

Lembik

ah yes

my tie breaking rule is always the same :)

of course I don't know the total number of people here interested in pure algorithms questions

I hope many!

I love these brilliantly important questions and answers movies.stackexchange.com/questions/30092/…

@feersum are you there/here?

feersum

yes

Lembik

@feersum when you say boxes, do you mean the same way I did the time and cost?

or something cleverer?

feersum

right

Lembik

2:14 PM

how about now?

@feersum also.. does the question look interesting to you?

feersum

I'm not super clear on what it's asking so far

Lembik

@feersum oh dear.. please let me know anything I can clear up

@feersum I just made a small edit that might help

feersum

I can't attempt it right now

Lembik

@feersum :(

@feersum if you do get time and something is unclear, please ask

I wonder why it hasn't appeared here yet?

Martin Büttner

it doesn't

0

Q: A fastest algorithm scheduling challenge

This is my first experiment with an asymptotic complexity challenge although I am happy with answers entirely in code as long as they come with an explanation of their time complexity. I have the following problem. Consider tasks T_1, ... T_n and machines M_1, ... , M_m. Each task takes a cert...

@Lembik the bot only posts meta questions and sandbox answers

Lembik

2:25 PM

@MartinBüttner aha! Thanks

@MartinBüttner it might have made a good code-golf challenge if I had specified a maximum score... next time :)

@MartinBüttner I hope this new scoring scheme works

Peter Taylor

@Lembik If it had been a code-golf I would definitely have voted to close as a duplicate of various existing shortest-path questions. As it is, I'm debating it.

Lembik

@PeterTaylor oh.. you are brutal :)

@PeterTaylor when you say shortest path... do you mean you already know a good score?

Peter Taylor

How many shortest-path questions does the site need?

Lembik

@PeterTaylor I am sorry to be dumb.. but why is it a shortest path problem?

except in the sense that all optimisation problems are

Peter Taylor

How would you do it other than as shortest path?

Lembik

2:31 PM

@PeterTaylor without wanting to give anything away.. dynamic programming is the way I would do it

Peter Taylor

Your vertices are (number of tasks done, current machine, current time).

Lembik

I can see you could write it that way and that might be the best way. The way I thought about it was just as a dynamic programmign problem.. but then my score is only 300,000

no vertices in sight :)

maybe I wouldn't win my own challenge

@PeterTaylor how do you include time AND cost in the graph formulation?

Peter Taylor

Time is part of the vertex, as mentioned above. Cost is the weight of the edges.

Deadlines prune vertices.

Lembik

sorry I meant the switching time

@PeterTaylor there is a time to switch machines

Peter Taylor

So?

Lembik

2:36 PM

oh ok

Peter Taylor

Each vertex has a directed edge per machine (unless pruned for deadlines)

Lembik

seems you may be making a very nice solution!

what is the total number of vertices you need?

Peter Taylor

I'm not making anything: just pointing out what the question is.

Lembik

@PeterTaylor to be fair, you are seeing the question in a very nice way.

Peter Taylor

In the worst case the number of vertices would be (number of machines)^(number of tasks), but some of them may be pruned and some of them may be unvisited.

Lembik

2:38 PM

ok so this is potentially much larger than my 300,000 right?

or err... let me redo that

ok my 300,000 is wrong :(

overactor

@MartinBüttner I see why you like Mathematica

Lembik

I actually get 10^9

which is still better than 100^100 :)

ok so if the most obvious formulation as a shortest path problem gives 100^100 at least and there is another method that gives 10^9 then this doesn't seem so bad, right?

Sp3000

Wait til Martin has enough upvotes to do GameOfLife[] or whatever it is...

Peter Taylor

CellularAutomaton IIRC

I am amazed that no-one else thinks a question which boils down to "Which is the most popular language?" is off-topic.

overactor

@PeterTaylor People do think it's off-topic though.

I'd bet.

Peter Taylor

2:46 PM

I'm the only one who's voted to close.

overactor

I suppose thinking something and acting upon it are two different things, you're the only consequent person on the entire site it would seem.

I'm not even being sracastic.

Lembik

@overactor consequent?

overactor

Is that not how one expresses that?

Lembik

do you mean conscientious ?

what do you mean by consequent?

overactor

@Lembik No, though that applies too

I mean that you actually stick by the rules you agreed upon.

A parent who punishes a child and but doesn't enforce teh punishment wouldn't be very [whatever word I am looking for].

Peter Taylor

2:53 PM

Self-consistent is about the closest word I can think of.

But it's not an exact translation. More a loose gloss.

overactor

Well, you get the idea

feersum

principled?

overactor

Seems like I just ported the word from dutch to German.

Lembik

talking of porting.. I see golf has made it to puzzling.se :)

Peter Taylor

@overactor I think it's used with a similar sense in Spanish and French too. English is probably just the odd one out because it's a weird hybrid.

Lembik

3:04 PM

@PeterTaylor are you happy with my question now?

overactor

In any case, teh question is now very firmly planted on the #1 spot over at the HNQ

Lembik

@PeterTaylor or at least not disgusted by it :)

overactor

@Lembik Be careful what you ask Peter

Lembik

@overactor oh!

@overactor was there something bad about my question?

overactor

I haven't had a proper look at it, but you know Peter...

Lembik

3:09 PM

@overactor I don't but I feel you are warning me ...

@overactor my only experience of peter is someone who has written amazing answers to some of my challenges

@overactor and I hope will write more in the future!

Peter Taylor

@Lembik I admit that it has enough structure that it's more interesting that my initial assessment.

Lembik

@PeterTaylor thanks!

@overactor and thank you!

Peter Taylor

But from the impression I've formed of what interests you, I suspect that you're not going to get the answer you're looking for...

Lembik

@PeterTaylor that's interesting. You mean I won't get a smart, well explained and surprisingly fast solution?

Peter Taylor

... in the sense that you seem to care about practical performance, and I suspect that the practically best performing solution will be too hard to analyse to get a tight performance bound.

Lembik

3:15 PM

@PeterTaylor oh I see.. no in this case I am really experimenting with not caring about practical performance

@PeterTaylor I am basically trying out different sorts of questions to see what fun there is to be had on codegolf.se :)

Optimizer

Finally back to 3 character score :D

Lembik

@PeterTaylor the only answers I don't like are golfed ones.. (sorry to all the golfers)

feersum

Funny, I had the impression Lembik didn't like practical performance - he disdains C++ answers :)

Lembik

@feersum I don't disdain them! :)

@feersum I just love things that are easy to read and ALSO fast

everything has to be in nimrod :)

english.stackexchange.com/questions/221937/… :)

Lembik

3:34 PM

I have just seen how often a fastest-algorithm challenge is posted!

(clue: not once a month)

Optimizer

of course, its code-golf, not code-race

;)

PPCG vs PPCR

Lembik

@Optimizer I think these days it was code-* :)

one SE to rule them all

Optimizer

the name of the SE is still PPCG

Lembik

yes... but then we also have a department of defense

...

(the don't do a lot of defending in the normal sense of the word)

Doorknob

@MartinBüttner Yeah, well aware. All of the drama around that happened about a week ago. :P

Lembik

3:44 PM

codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/44680/… doesn't python have a common that opens an xkcd comic?

hsl

@Lembik Is import antigravity what you're thinking about?

Lembik

@hsl yes! Thank you

you even translated common to command :)

Lembik

4:38 PM

hmm.. no answer at all yet

I wonder if I should put one in with a terrible score

Martin Büttner

5:03 PM

@Sp3000 coming up... (at some point)

Martin Büttner

5:14 PM

13, 15 and 18 missing... then I've got snippets up to 22

Martin Büttner

5:36 PM

finally up-to-date...

Optimizer

@MartinBüttner you actually added 1 extra

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer huh?

Optimizer

your votes at that time were 18 and you added till 19

Martin Büttner

no they weren't

I got that upvote about 10 or 15 minutes ago

and no it's at 20

Optimizer

oh.

maybe my page was not updated.

Martin Büttner

5:48 PM

CH's challenge is close to 500 hotness points o.O

Optimizer

how do you know ?

Martin Büttner

hover over the question on the HNQ site

Optimizer

ah

second one has 130 :D

feersum

#1 on HNQ - sure sign of a low-quality question =D

3

Optimizer

our recent super popular questions have been very low quality only :D

"cough" "stroupsoup" "cough"

Martin Büttner

5:53 PM

@feersum for popcons that's often true

if a code golf gets there, not necessarily... it usually just means it's not particularly hard

Optimizer

@MartinBüttner can you reverse your order ? for every update , we have to scroll down so much.

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer I went with Sp3000's order, because I think it makes more sense this way

Optimizer

updates are more important imo

and mostly all timelines have recent on top :)

Martin Büttner

kk

feersum

this reminds me - is there a way to cast an anti-close or anti-reopen vote?

Optimizer

5:57 PM

nope

feersum

seems stupid.. if 5 people wanted one way and 800 people wanted the other, then the 5 can win

Optimizer

other 800 can reopen , you know

feersum

well, a situation of ongoing toggling is clearly stupid

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer done

Optimizer

@feersum in the review mode, there is an option of "let it be open", but no idea if that does anthing

Martin Büttner

6:01 PM

@feersum in the review queues there's "Leave Closed" and "Leave Open". if enough of these come in, then I think the existing votes get annulled

Optimizer

@Doorknob ^ true ?

Martin Büttner

56

A: What exactly happens with the button "Leave Open" (previously "Do Not Close")?

Normally, a question must hit 100 views before close votes age away, so as to give enough folks time to see and review it. Questions with close votes stay in the review queue until they are closed or the votes expire. But if enough people (currently 3) select "Do Not Close" within the review que...

okay they don't get annulled right away

but they speed up the aging process of the votes and remove the question from the queue

Optimizer

:D

Mathematica totally owned this one!

Martin's getting rich. specially considering that a lots of views are gonna flow in for the next day

Martin Büttner

I think if Sp3000 was up to his votes he'd probably outrace me... 2D languages are pretty fun

Optimizer

6:20 PM

"`_~"`_~ if I am not wrong, this is the smallest possible quine in CJam, right ?

Martin Büttner

I prefer {"_~"}_~

Optimizer

that does not look symmetric though :)

Martin Büttner

it looks a bit like an ASCII Kirby though

Optimizer

yours or mine ?

Martin Büttner

mine

Optimizer

6:25 PM

no way

Martin Büttner

sure: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/21831/…

Lembik

maybe I should promise to give a bounty to the first answer :)

as I hate the wait between posting a question and getting an answer

Optimizer

dude, your question is tough

Martin Büttner

@Lembik it's not clear whether your switching tables are given for switching from or to the machine in that column.

Optimizer

and for setting bounty, you will have to wait 2 days anyways

Martin Büttner

6:31 PM

@Optimizer he could promise it in the post

Optimizer

oh . yeah.

Lembik

@MartinBüttner oh thanks... would it help if I added column headers?

Martin Büttner

no

it's clear what the columns represent

feersum

haha

I was just coming here to ask what the columns are

Martin Büttner

but it's not clear whether it's switching "from row to column", or "from column to row"

feersum

6:32 PM

for switching time

and cost

I guess it must be machine x machine since that's the only thing there's 2 of

Lembik

@MartinBüttner is it clear now?

Martin Büttner

@feersum yeah I'm pretty sure that's it, but I don't know which way around...

Lembik

@MartinBüttner it costs nothing to switch to the same machine

Martin Büttner

@Lembik yes much better

Lembik

great!

please do ask things like this... I can't always tell what is unclear

I wouldn't mind some upvotes either ;)

Martin Büttner

6:36 PM

you've had mine for a couple of hours

Lembik

thanks :)

Martin Büttner

hm, I wish I could post a prelude answer to CH's challenge... it's a fun language

feersum

I'll make a prelude answer..if you can give me a good 1-byte program

Optimizer

Hmm, I can only get 10 bytes for the smallest negative quine (prints opp of source code) ..

Martin Büttner

@feersum you can print a 0.

it's not that impressive but it serves to show the wonders of starting with an infinite stack.

feersum

6:46 PM

I suppose

of course, this is our challenge-specific Prelude variant

Martin Büttner

no, the Python interpreter already had NUMERICAL_OUTPUT set

feersum

oh, right..chars was for input

now, I've gotta dig up interesting facts on the history of Prelude..

Martin Büttner

as the factoid you can mention Fugue

Martin Büttner

7:52 PM

interesting... someone downvoted the leading suggestion for the file system tag, but afaict didn't vote on anything else, either up or down.

Optimizer

8:26 PM

1 thing for sure, CH's answer is helping everyone in getting EPIC and beyond :D

Martin Büttner

lol yeah

Optimizer

I am still not 200 though :(

but 10K F'Yeah!

as far as I can see there is no 9 byte reverse quine in CJam..

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer oh nice, congrats!

Sp3000

9:42 PM

@MartinBüttner Just woke up, got some catching up to do. Coming up with good snippets takes thinking though :P

Although, close votes

Lembik

hmm... I was thinking about a cops and robbers game with the halting problem :)

but I may not have understood the cops and robbers set up

Optimizer

can't seem to imagine getting 7 more upvotes in 2.5 hrs .. :(

Lembik

the idea is that one party gives code and the other has to say if it halts or not.

the party that offers code gets points inversely proportional to its length according to some as yet set function

in fact both parties do

so very short code gets lots of points

err... no.. well I suppose the robbers get more points if the code is long

oh damn this isn't going to work I just realised.. someone will just post the equivalent of an open conjecture about primes

oh well :)

@Optimizer I managed one upvote in a day!! :(

(maybe it could be code-golf... the shortest code that no one can prove if it halts or not)

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 tell me about it...

Doorknob

10:44 PM

@Optimizer See meta.stackexchange.com/q/139834/180276 (/cc @MartinBüttner)

Martin Büttner

@Doorknob yep :)

it is done

0

Q: Lab Rat Race: an exercise in genetic algorithms

This is Weekly Challenge #3. Theme: Genetic Algorithms This challenge is a bit of an experiment. We wanted to see what we could do, challenge-wise, with genetic algorithms. Not everything may be optimal, but we tried our best to make it accessible. If this works out, who knows what we might see ...

code-challenge path-finding genetic-algorithms

4

Doorknob

Oh, and also...

Congrats on reaching 10k @Optimizer!

Sp3000

11:07 PM

+26/-2 hmm

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 I feel like people are downvoting if you get too far behind your vote count.

Sp3000

Not my fault Calvin posted when it was 1am over here :P

Martin Büttner

I had a downvote earlier today when was some 10 snippets behind, and after I added them, the downvote got removed (and maybe turned into an upvote, I can't tell).

Martin Büttner

11:25 PM

@Doorknob if you don't mind I can just post the meta post about our weekly challenges myself

Transcript for