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12:00 AM
it doesnt require to be bloody genuis , to figure it out
yes , its my other Gmail account
 
@MartinBüttner ^
Just in case there was any confusion
I like that one better
 
@AlexA. there wasn't, but thanks for the amazing illustration :D
 
@AbdouAbdou It's probably better to avoid speaking condescendingly of the people you want to complete your challenges...
6
@PhiNotPi: There's some sort of s-creep or whatever. What is it?
 
12:16 AM
@AlexA. Screeps is a KOTH game.
 
Has it already been posted?
@MartinBüttner: Have you noticed that your language seems to be growing in popularity? :D
 
I have. :D Feels nice. :)
 
Here's the twist: it's a professionally made, independent KOTH.
Basically, capitalism detected a demand for KOTHs.
 
Whoa. What a twist. Game changer.
 
Here's their site: screeps.com
 
12:20 AM
Did somebody from PPCG make this? It seems eerily like something that might show up in the sandbox. (Or be posted by Calvin, foregoing the sandbox.)
 
As far as I know, there's no direct connection to PPCG.
A bunch of PPCG members have taken interest in it recently because, well, that's what we do.
 
Hah yep, sounds like something the folks here would be interested in.
 
The MMO part isn't public yet, so we've mainly been playing the single-player "survival" mode.
 
Is that what happens when you click "Simulation," or is that just a tutorial?
 
There are a few main sections of the site.
"Simulation" is for "practice" like a tutorial and a place to test out stuff and do trial runs.
The "game" tab is where the scored stuff happens.
 
12:27 AM
I've reached my attention limit for the day, so I wasn't able to retain any information I read on the site. Or anywhere. Ever.
Thanks for explaining.
 
The "docs" tab has the incomplete documentation.
 
@PhiNotPi: Has anyone told you recently that you're cool?
 
^ Does that count?
 
@PhiNotPi You're cool.
 
That does ^
(Mine does too)
 
12:33 AM
Thanks. :)
 
I need to study for my exams, but I keep ending up here instead...
 
@BrainSteel: Literally the story of my life. "I should be doing X but I'm on PPCG."
 
@BrainSteel this sums up my past year really well.
@AlexA. that was an amazing gif.
 
@AlexA. I was so confused...
 
12:35 AM
@MartinBüttner: Wasn't it though?
@BrainSteel: Nothing to be confused about. Everything's normal here.
 
If I could just spend an hour or two on my various maths homework instead of wondering why you posted what seems to be a black and white gif of a dancing animated cat with... something, my life would probably improve...
Twice.
 
I think your life would improve if you embraced your country and became a true patriot by removing the "s" on "math" and ceasing all extraneous uses of the letter "u".
'murica
(I'm not actually a flag waving, bald eagle riding American. It just amuses me.)
 
But... The word "Mathematics" is so obviously plural... And "Favourite" has a distinct 'u'-y sound in the middle of it.
And writing it like "favoorite" is just ridiculous.
 
I pronounce it "fayv'rit"
 
But it's not the same 'o' as in, say, "orange."
Now, on the "tyre" vs. "tire" debate I'm distinctly American. What a useless 'y'.
 
12:43 AM
Seriously.
Hah, ourange.
Flour.
Oh wait...
 
There's also the "t" past-tense ending, instead of the typical "ed" ending.
 
That drives me nuts.
 
Like dreamed versus dreamt and spelled versus spelt.
 
Spelt != spelled! Spelt is a grain!
 
Well, spelt is a legitimate past-tense form, even if there's already another word like that.
 
12:47 AM
Legitimate for some people.
Not for True Americans™
 
Dreamt is a perfect word. Dreamed sounds awful.
 
Okay, I agree with you on that one.
 
I shall now continue to force my worthless word opinions on you.
 
They're not worthless! No one's opinion is worthless.
Especially not yours, since you're extra cool.
B)
 
:D My opinion may be worth something, but I meant it in the sense that I care so little about how to spell the word favorite that my opinion is entirely arbitrary.
 
12:53 AM
Haha
I actually don't really care either, I just thoroughly enjoy being silly. And pretending to be hyper-American amuses me to no end.
 
I like to think my speech patterns aren't very American, but it flies out the window when I visit the ol' relatives in Texas.
 
It's like reddit's /r/murica
 
My speech patterns are pretty American. I have relatives in the UK and they can't understand a lot of what I say, probably because I use too many colloquialisms that don't translate. My cousin Kurt in the UK is just completely unintelligible--way too many British colloqualisms. No idea what he's talking about and I can barely understand him through the accent.
The most fun is talking to my grandpa. English is his third language.
 
My first girlfriend's father was from a quite small town in England. I was terrified of him because I couldn't understand a word he said.
What are the other two (or more)?
 
English is my first language. #TheFewTheProud
 
1:03 AM
Hahaha
 
Not exactly few :P
 
According to Wikipedia, only 5.43% of the world's population are native English speakers.
 
5.43% of 7 billion is a lot of people, haha.
 
My grandpa's first language is Tatar. Second is Japanese because he grew up in Japan after his parents ended up there fleeing unrest in Russia. Third is English. Those are what he's fluent in, but he also knows some Korean, Chinese, Turkish, and Thai.
He's a badass, in case you couldn't tell.
 
That's amazing. You know, I'm pretty cool too. I know a couple german words.
 
1:06 AM
I wish I knew a couple German words. :/
 
One of my chat messages from a few days ago just about summed up my "world language skills"
 
That was a good one. :D
I'm sad it didn't stay on the star board longer
 
I have a few German translations that will come in handy: "der" -> "the", "die" -> "the", "das" -> "the", "den" -> "the", "dem" -> "the" ...
 
Hahaha
Oh good. All clear now.
 
1:09 AM
Probably the hardest part of learning rudimentary German was what "the" goes where, haha.
 
I can imagine. That's certainly a lot more "the"s than I'm used to.
 
I'm sure @MartinBüttner can correct my list. I don't think it's complete.
 
I'm really thankful for English's lack of noun genders.
 
German (I believe) has "der" -> masculine, "die" -> feminine/plural, and "das" -> neuter. The other articles come from being in different cases (nominative, dative, genetive...) and there are charts you can find for what should be used in different situations. I believe "denen" is a "the", too... but it's been a while for me.
(All information comes from high school memory--my brain was considerably addled all the time back then, please don't shoot me for mistakes)
 
1:30 AM
@BrainSteel "des"
 
Ah, indeed, I forgot another one. That's... Genetive case?
 
"denen" is more like "whom"
@BrainSteel yep
 
Yeah, I probably confused it with "des". Or something along those lines.
It happens with "a", too, huh? "ein, eine, einen, einer, eines, einem"
 
Wat
 
As briefly as I can explain it, the way you end articles and adjectives can vary with where you put the noun they describe. "The pencil is big" and "I write with the pencil" use two different "the" forms because "pencil" is the subject in the former and an indirect object in the latter.
 
1:42 AM
Hmm.
 
I'm suddenly curious how hard it would be to write code to output the correct article for a noun in a German sentence... Worthwhile challenge?
 
Sounds difficult. How do you reliably determine the part of speech of a word?
 
You would have to put some strict limitations on what range of inputs you worry about. No compound sentences, a small list of nouns, etc.
 
I still think it sounds really difficult but I do think it has potential. Just needs to have a very clear spec.
 
Writing a good spec would be very difficult. I'd probably have ~9-12 nouns, ~5 verbs, and use nominative/accusative/dative case in simple sentences. Still probably subject to odd cases and crazy loopholes, though.
 
1:57 AM
I think all natural languages are just an exercise in edge cases.
 
2:23 AM
Sigh. The only APL tutorials I can find are on how to make it do useful things. I just want to make tiny code.
8
Wow, three stars on that and I didn't even mention fake Internet points.
 
It's a slow night, had to star something ;)
 
Are you a professional programmer, @Geobits?
 
Yea, for the last couple years. Hobbyist for many before that.
 
What language do you use most often professionally?
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

DJ McMayhem Lets play a game of Meta tic-tac-toe! This is a king-of-the-hill tournament of Meta tic-tac-toe. The rules of Meta tic-tac-toe are as follows: All of the regular rules of tic-tac-toe apply. There are nine boards arranged to make one master board. Like so: 0|1|2 || 0|1|2 || 0|1|2 ----- ||...

 
2:37 AM
I mainly work on this monstrous Java thing. It's hibernate/spring corporate junk, so throw some js in along with some basic html/css. It's nasty and not fun at all :P
 
Hello
 
I do some work with Android also (still Java), but it's sooooo much nicer.
 
Sorry to hear it isn't fun. :/
@DJMcMayhem Hello!
 
@DJMcMayhem Howdy!
 
Welcome to Nightmare City!
 
2:39 AM
@DJMcMayhem Hmm, I swear I've seen this challenge before, but I don't know if it was here or not.
 
The one I just sandboxed?
 
Yep
 
I'm pretty sure it's not on here. I've looked all over for it.
 
I know I've played it as an app, maybe I'm just getting old ;)
 
Haha
What do you think of the challenge?
 
2:40 AM
Oh, I like the game itself. Haven't gone through the spec thoroughly for loopholes or anything yet.
 
^ that
 
Unfortunately, it's probably still a solved game.
Which would make it a bad fit for king of the hill.
I don't know that for sure, though.
 
According to some quick googling, it was solved, but then they added the rule about a free move when you get sent to a board that has already been won.
 
    O

    ^
   \ ^
  ^ ^ \
 \ ^ / ^
U U U U U
1 2 3 4 5

(^ = 50-50, / = left, \ = right)
 
@Calvin'sHobbies What?
 
2:46 AM
^ Has something like this been asked before? Drop the O in the triangular plinko board and what's the probability it will end up in each U trough?
 
I think so, let me do a search... I think they called it something besides plinko.
 
No, but they have something like that at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. :)
 
If it hasn't that would be a fun one.
 
This is similar
 
Hah, dup of your own challenge?
 
2:49 AM
It's not that similar. That one is way messier though. I was still a novice asker then.
 
I might have been thinking of this one.
But it's not really the same.
 
You need Peter for better dupe-finding ;)
Okay, this is more related.
 
Ahh, I remember that one, still fairly different
 
More similar to this?
I'm probably the worst at dup-finding, fyi
@Doorknob: o/
 
2:53 AM
lol, there seem to be a few almost-kinda-sorta dupes, but nothing quite right.
 
@AlexA. hello!
 
@DJMcMayhem If you want more participants, it's a good idea to make it as simple to enter something as possible. For example, keeping track of the board state in a separate file might put some people off. It's not that cumbersome, but you'd be surprised how lazy people can be sometimes. Since the controller is going to have the state each turn anyway, why not pass it as an argument?
 
@Geobits That jaggedness bothers me
 
Mm, me to.
@Geobits You should change your icon to appease us.
 
It bothers me too. I have a limited quality/time threshold in the graphics department, though.
There's a reason I don't design UIs, for example.
 
2:58 AM
Haha
 
I had thought of that. I guess when I started writing the controller, I didn't know where to start, and I thought it would be easier to write the controller in it
's current state.
 
I'm willing to accept "fixed" versions from third parties if it bothers you more than it should :D
 
Eh, it bothers me within tolerable thresholds.
 
Pass something like this
 
I was hoping to find that SE had huge vector versions of their graphics, but alas... only small pngs to be found.
 
2:59 AM
****X***
***O*****
etc.
?
 
As long as it's clearly laid out in the spec, any sensible format would work IMO.
 
^ agree
 
Mmmmmmmmm
Satisfying.
 
The lack of shading bothers me far more than the jaggies :P
 
3:02 AM
Yeah, I noticed that. I guess the shading is an old style
 
Yea, that's weird... I wonder when they switched graphics on me.
I only did this a month or two ago, and took my baseline straight from the spritesheet.
 
Well that's why I put it in the sandbox. Thanks for the feedback.
@Alex A. like this?
 
Hopefully it doesn't end up being trivially solvable. I'll look into it when I have more time. If not, I'll play :D
 
@DJMcMayhem You can edit recent chat posts by clicking the arrow on the left side when mousing over (see: edit)
 
@DJMcMayhem: You can do up arrow to go to edit mode on your previous posts.
 
3:04 AM
You can edit previous posts by pressing up or clicking edit.
:D
 
You can edit edits by re-editing by pressing up or clicking edit
@DJMcMayhem YES!
 
haha
@Geobits I hope so too. It's hard writing a controller in C++.
 
Nice work on the bowling challenge, btw. Half-assedly working on it now.
 
@DJMcMayhem Your icon led me to believe it wouldn't be in C++ ;)
 
Thanks. I was actually in that exact scenario in real life the other day. There were 5 of us and 4 chairs so we kept moving. I thought to myself "Where will I be sitting in 5 rounds? Is there a formula?"
Then I thought "Ooh this would be a great code-golf!"
 
 
2 hours later…
5:35 AM
Sweet! I'll answer that one after I figure out how to beat @Sp3000 on the Identicon challenge...
 
 
3 hours later…
8:56 AM
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

user23013Print strings using different sets of characters You will write n programs. The kth program should output the number k in standard English. So the first program should output one, the second should output two, etc. But no two programs in your submission can share characters. For example, if you...

 
9:10 AM
@Calvin'sHobbies Tiebreaker is earliest post. How would you feel about earliest posted finished code instead? So if I post something 100 bytes long and then reduce it to 50 bytes later, I would be beaten by someone who posted a 50 byte solution after my 100 byte solution but before I reduced mine to 50.
Or more succinctly: First to reach the winning number of bytes
 
10:02 AM
wait, what
I didn't know I could do decimal[]k={1} in C#, why did I do that
more importantly, why didn't I know
 
10:27 AM
@trichoplax I thought that's how this normally works
 
So "earliest post" can be used as shorthand for that?
 
I think, but might be worth clarifying it, or just removing it, since it's the standard anyway
 
If I use it myself, I'll link the text to the answer on meta
@Calvin'sHobbies you can ignore my previous chat post now...
 
 
2 hours later…
12:01 PM
@AlexA. @BrainSteel I just thought I'd contribute this to yesterday's discussion about German
 
12:35 PM
Bitte.. Bitte ?
 
Was ist das?
 
How do I set the language back to English?
 
Man kann nicht
 
shiranai...
 
global set language='English';
select "Did it work?";
select count(*) from the_nineteenth_byte where language='English';
 
12:44 PM
5123
 
select count(*) from the_nineteenth_byte where language='English' and id > 21467403 ;
 
0
 
show variable like '%language%'
;
 
日本語
Deutsch
English
 
select password from ppcg.users where name='Geobits';
 
12:48 PM
OptimizerIsNeverGoingToGuessThis1
 
update ppcg.users set password='IDidNotNeedToGuess3' where name='Geobits';
 
access denied
 
exit; mysql -uroot;
update ppcg.users set password='IDidNotNeedToGuess3' where name='Geobits';
 
enter password for root:
 
*********
 
12:50 PM
enter password for root:
 
********
 
incorrect password. drones have been sent to eliminate unauthorized user.
 
0
Q: You call it Centering, I call it Code Golf

Joshpbarron"Let's face it, aligned images are like little gifts from Heaven. Welcome, but unexpected." - geobits +10000 reputation to whoever wins this challenge. Rules: 1) You are to generate a program. 2) All languages are allowed. 3) Input will be an image, however whether it is passed as a file or ...

Question posted!
 
kill -9 mysql_pid
 
process terminating... drone recall attempt unsuccessful... shutting down.
 
1:13 PM
bluthgoragiuregre
why did i start writing this presentation this morning
 
Anything interesting?
 
15min talk about my research for the whole dept
at noon
(current time: 9:15am)
 
"I have researched code golf, you should too"
 
lol nope
i wish
then my developing obsession w/ golfing would be justified
 
"I didn't do the presentation, but i did shave off 2 bytes"
 
1:16 PM
i came up with a solution in a golf last night that i'm really proud of
 
Hello all
 
I've got two maths assignments due in a couple hours, and I'm here. I can only start when there is sufficient panic.
 
too bad i can't talk about it
hi compass
 
Why can't you talk about it?
 
So... apparently... someone's been cheating on a final exam =.=
 
1:17 PM
@BrainSteel wanna trade? i'll do math
 
Oh, you mean your presentation.
 
@BrainSteel doesn't really relate to wolf-rayet stars
 
Im sat infront of an electrical panel, trying to get this frickin plc to do what i want...but im golfing...
 
@sirpercival I'm slow this morning :P I'd really rather not trade. I don't really understand this material, so I should really actually try. Right now I'm hoping for some pity points...
 
is anyone familiar with "CourseHero"
 
1:18 PM
make sure your assignments are tear-stained
 
o
^ thats a circle @BrainSteel
:D
 
thats definitely not a circle
its taller than wide
I demand a refund.
 
@BrainSteel i'll happily talk about my golf in here, though! lol
 
Refund issued
°
 
Oh, that was pretty quick.
And that is arguably significantly more circular and acceptable
 
1:19 PM
^
^
Thats a circle
 
It's alright, I've got circles pretty well. Right now, we're doing solutions to 2nd order differential equations near a singular point. I'm getting there, but it's kinda confusing.
 
Unfortunatly, twice the price
 
Breaking my budget on circles.
 
I feel like I should be getting angry, but your customer service turned out to be good. How disappointing...
 
1:22 PM
Oooh, nice! ~150 bytes less than mine! Man, when I wrote that there was 0 competition.
 
@sirpercival
 
haha yeah
 
It'd be boring as hell code golf if the best answer was the first answer presented
 
I dont know python, but can you substitute "not" with !?
 
the problem was "how to handle invalid input"; my solution was to wrap it in try/except and let anything that would throw an error get handled
then i had to figure out the shortest way to throw an error in the case of valid input that doesn't follow the rules
 
1:23 PM
Divide by zero.
 
yep - 1/all([y==p[s],{v}<{r(p).rfind(b,0,s),r(p).find(b,s)},v-s])
 
I'm still pretty sure I don't handle every invalid input. I don't like having to deal with bad inputs in code golf... It's just messy and doesn't contribute to the fun.
That's actually pretty darn cool. Neat.
 
rather than if condition:1/0
i was proud of that :D
i thought about allowing moves that didn't go anywhere to pass, but it's not in the rules. would be 4 chars shorter ;_;
@Joshpbarron nope
 
only as part of !=
 
2:18 PM
@sirpercival Is w always an int? If so why not w==0 or, depending on the situation, w<1?
 
ha. w was originally a list, actually, but now it's a bool. i can do w<1, def.
 
As a rule of thumb, not w is usually unnecessary - even as a list you can do []==w and save the whitespace
 
hey cool i never thought of that
awesome
ooh i think i can get rid of the if w: for the final print statement now
i was originally using raw_input() and checking for "quit" to break, but now it's input() and Ctrl-C kills the process
sweet
 
Your exec from a dict is a giant red flag to me :/
 
in terms of what? it's shorter than the other way
i need to check for two possible values, and if it's neither, do something else conditionally
 
2:28 PM
yay, down to 131 bytes from 150 (Python3) codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/49650/7311
I did it with like 2 bytes/edit :)
 
Can you do r+=0, instead of r+=[0]?
Similarly for r+=[v%3*a]
 
r is a list, how could I do that?
 
i wish you could do multiple iadds like you can do multiple assignments in python
 
It's fine for +=
 
@randomra there's a comma after the 0
makes it a tuple
one character less
 
2:33 PM
oh, the comma fit in the text, yes that works
 
Ahaha I didn't notice that. Oops.
 
What's he proper way to abbreviate a list like 1,2,3,4 ... n? I can think of a few ways
1,2,3, ... ,n-1,n
1,2,3 ... n-1,n
1,2,3 ... n
 
btw do you use a=1, in production code? [note the comma :)]
 
I can find abbreviations for sequences like 1 + 2 + ... + n but I can't find anything on a list
 
^ this
 
2:36 PM
I'd go with 1, 2, 3, ..., n-1, n for clarity personally, but dropping the n-1 is also okay
I'm personally pretty particular about having the operator before and after the ellipsis though
 
Ok, so comma before and after the ellipses, use spaces, and include n-1. Got it.
Thank you!
 
Or...]
1, 2, 3 ...
even 1, 2, 3, etc
 
@randomra For a single tuple, use (1,) - it's a lot clearer
(I don't production code, but I'm assuming the general answer would be no)
 
@Joshpbarron For some reason I feel like "1, 2, 3, etc." will not fly on PPCG.
 
yeah, (1,) makes sense
 
2:38 PM
First comment: What is "etc."?
Fifty comment upticks. Closed as unclear.
 
True
1, 2, 3 --> N
 
Post a few challenges and you'll be a pessimist too.
 
Purely for the use of the "goes to"
 
1, 2, 3 goes to N
 
The thought process exhibited here bothers me more than I think it should.
 
2:41 PM
@Rainbolt And i'm working on this...1st one posted!
 
@Geobits "So how about this:" - and then I flinched
Or cringed. That's probably the better word.
 
> It is at this point that most developers recoil.
I find that I dislike the Java mindset far more than I dislike the Java language.
 
Don't push that guy's mindset on everyone else.
 
@Geobits did you find that through the HNQ question on programmers?
 
A class without a responsibility shouldn't exist. That's true in Java too.
 
2:44 PM
I guess it might be useful for debugging, but otherwise... :/
 
@MartinBĂĽttner Yep
@Rainbolt I know, but I also know too many Java people that really do think this way. A class for everything, no matter how trivial.
 
It's ironic that the ad I got on that blog was to Pluralsight, where Scott Hanselman says the exact opposite of what the blog is encouraging.
 
"Because it's the Java way"
 
But it can't possibly be as twisted as this guy's view. If it was, then why doesn't the class have a class? And why doesn't that class have a class? And so on and so forth.
 
Maybe not quite as extreme, but still...
I accept that Java has a certain amount of bloat, it just does. Most production Java code I see has waaaaay more than necessary, though.
 
2:49 PM
When I write Java code I feel like I know exactly what code is running. The complexity of expensive functions is in the Javadoc. When I think bloat, I think .NET and C#, where I don't even understand the page lifecycle and the documentation, while it looks nice, doesn't identify the complexity of pretty much anything except for sort and the other major algorithms they teach in school.
So most of the bloat I guess comes from the people writing Java
 
For most bare Java, that seems true enough. Add in any big libraries and that quickly changes IMO. If I'd never heard of hibernate/spring, I'd be much more content.
 
That was weird. I edited a comment and it didn't change the text for me until a page refresh
 
@Rainbolt Right, that's basically what I'm saying. I like Java, just not Java people ;)
 
I guess I'd better finish my MTG simulator then and prove that at least one developer doesn't write bloaty code
To be fair though, I've spent every Thursday lunch for the last three months watching hour long Pluralsight videos on code smells
Scott Hanselman gives some nice rules to follow. I'm allowed a maximum of two switch statements per year.
 
Never seen pluralsight. Is it worth the money? (keep in mind that I'm cheap ;)
 
2:54 PM
He gave a maximum cyclomatic complexity but I forgot what it is
Of course, every time he provides a rule, he also shows some code that breaks the rule that he says he would leave alone because it does the job cleanly.
 
Hell yes. My normal training advice is to learn the rules (and the reason for them) so that you know when it's okay to break them :D
 
It is worth it IMO. If you watch a lot of television after hours, you can just make yourself watch an hour of Pluralsight per day instead (and then get back to your television)
 

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