The Nineteenth Byte

Martin Büttner

14:04

the Code Golf wikipedia article lists us as "CodeGolf.StackExchange.com: Questions and answers on programming puzzles and code golf"

that seems a bit misleading

do people have ideas for a better description?

my suggestion is "Community for code golf and other recreational programming challenges"

ಠ_ಠ

Are there any bigger communities for code golf at all?

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 ^ that reminds me...

Sp3000

Oh, that discussion

Optimizer

@ಠ_ಠ the real question is "are there any other communities for code golf at all?"

Sp3000

Shall we have it now then? :P

Martin Büttner

14:07

uh, sure

so what is there (regardless of how big or their exact focus)

obviously golf.shinh.org

I guess I should start with the list on wikipedia

Sp3000

Yeah, so for anarchy golf: Accepts a fairly large range of languages, including esoteric. Updated with problems regularly. Popular, to the point there's even Japanese blog posts about it (!?). It only checks that the output is correct though, which can lead to exploitation of particular test cases.

I think the last point's particularly interesting, because some tricks which apply there don't apply here since we tend to have questions which consider arbitrary input (e.g. given an integer n, ...)

Martin Büttner

alright. are you familiar with SPOJ?

Sp3000

I did a few problems there but not many. I think the thing that got me most of the time there was timeouts.

Martin Büttner

so what is it like? like a deadline-free google code jam?

(plus code golf problems)

Sp3000

Kind of - it's a bit like anarchy (fill form with program or attach file) but less emphasis on golf. Actually, I didn't even know they had golf.

Optimizer

14:15

Who is maintaining Anarchy golf?

Martin Büttner

the golfscript guy, right?

Optimizer

Idunno?

Martin Büttner

ah no apparently not

Sp3000

I see Mitch on a few "Best solutions" tables for SPOJ :P

Martin Büttner

shinh which appears to be short for Shinichiro Hamaji going by the email address

@Sp3000 what about HackerRank?

Sp3000

14:23

Apparently I don't have a HackerRank account. Let's find out :P

Martin Büttner

heh

Sp3000

Seems like questions are split into Domains (Algorithms/Mathematics/Python/Ruby/AI/Databases/etc.) and you get points per question. Once again, fill in form or upload code.

Does HackerRank do golf?

Martin Büttner

yes

in Algorithms

I guess non-golf programming-challenge communities are generally interesting as well though

Sp3000

Ah, I see. Not that many questions though :P

Martin Büttner

oh, 4...

Sp3000

14:36

I like how there's multiple choice questions XD

So yeah, as for other sites, I know CheckIO is also programming challenges (in Python), but they have the occasional golf challenge (if you remember us doing some in chat from ages back)

Martin Büttner

vaguely...

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Pardon my French Relevant Write a program or function which generates a random swears-filled sentence in French based on simple chaining rules (some sentences might not make sense, even as insults, and some may have grammatical issues, which we will ignore). A sentence is composed of swear wor...

Sp3000

14:54

btw are we listing code golf sites now or just general programming challenges? :P

Martin Büttner

I'm happy with the latter

Sp3000

Codeforces, UVa, TopCoder, Codechef, Rosalind (bioinformatics + some algorithms), Project Euler (maths + some algorithms)

^^ some from my bookmarks (not all of which I've actually tried)

Personally I like Codeforces for general programming challenges

Doorknob

@MartinBüttner yes, and I have no idea how

Martin Büttner

thanks

@Doorknob it looks really useful

Doorknob

It's just a buggy wrapper around several other existing scripts >_<

Martin Büttner

15:01

lol nice

did it get shared somewhere?

Doorknob

It was (somehow) at/near the top on HN and Reddit at some points, yeah.

Martin Büttner

ah I see

Doorknob

15:17

Hey look, my current reputation (25225) is a @Dennis number! :P

Dennis

Of order 2, it seems.

orlp

15:38

@ell do you understand why your answer is flawed?

trichoplax

@orlp Looks like you'll need a superping to contact @ell. There must be a mod around here somewhere...

orlp

@trichoplax are you kidding me?

Doorknob

there's too many @ells! Which do I superping >_>

orlp

me not being a mod seems to be the exception, not the rule here

trichoplax

@orlp Yes - my chat screen shows all mods apart from you and me :)

Doorknob

15:40

Is it this one?

orlp

@Doorknob yes

Doorknob

@Ell ^

trichoplax

Can you superping a 3 letter username without also superpinging every username which has it as a prefix?

Doorknob

Superpings work by chat user ID.

(@@<id>)

trichoplax

That's handy

Doorknob

15:42

they just get rendered differently

orlp

@@59776 yo ♦

Doorknob

And you need a diamond :P

also

@ಠ_ಠ WHY DO YOU EXIST

3

orlp

@Doorknob fixed

ಠ_ಠ

Why not? @Doorknob

Or, alternatively, why @NotDoorknob ?

Doorknob

ಠ_ಠ

ಠ_ಠ

15:54

Why would anyone question my existence?

Beta Decay

Why wouldn't anyone question your existence?

Optimizer

^ coming from a decaying particle

Beta Decay

D:

ಠ_ಠ

12

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 do you know which of those sites have an active "community" in the sense of a forum or similar (not just an IRC channel or so)?

Sp3000

16:02

Do you count per-problem forums?

Chris Drost

There's a tag:kolmogorov-complexity question (harder,better,faster,stronger) where the top answer is just a quick decompression method in GolfScript. The only way I see to improve upon that is to cheat by doing network requests, which is not specified in the question as illegal. Should I edit the question to forbid it? Should I post a network-request answer as an illustration? Is there already a protocol where tag:kolmogorov-complexity disallows network requests? Etc.

Dennis

Network requests are standard loopholes and implicitly forbidden.

168

Q: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

I've been thinking for a while that this would be useful, and some recent discussions have strengthened that belief. There are a number of standard loopholes which experienced question-setters seek to explicitly close. However, inexperienced question-setters may unintentionally leave them open, ...

Chris Drost

Cool. Is there any plan to add things like that (rules, I guess) to the main page's sidebar?

Ell

@orlp I still don't see the problem, care to explain?

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 like PE?

trichoplax

16:06

@MartinBüttner are you able to access Computer Graphics chat? I can access main and meta but chat just hangs with the loading message.

Dennis

Hm, making the loopholes a featured meta post is an interesting idea. New users are usually unaware of it.

Martin Büttner

@trichoplax yes

(I can)

trichoplax

@MartinBüttner Great - I'll just wait then. Thanks :)

Sp3000

@MartinBüttner Yeah, like PE. Other than that I know TopCoder and Codeforces have contest rounds every so often, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were communities centred around that sort of thing too

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 well I guess general-purpose forums would be more interesting

orlp

16:09

@Ell my explanation was incorrect

Sp3000

@MartinBüttner PE's general forum isn't terribly active, unfortunately. TopCoder's looks like it might be though

CodeChef's Discuss looks oddly familiar...

Martin Büttner

heh, thanks

orlp

@Ell I'm not so sure anymore it's impossible, I missed one crucial point

in that any interrupting algorithm will be completed fully before returning to a previous level

@Ell however, your answer still has a flaw

actually, the flaw I spotted is wrong again

maybe your answer is right

Ell

@orlp Yup, that's what I was going for in the note at the beginning. No worries, though. If you still think there's a problem, let me know.

orlp

16:30

@Ell ok, I believe I was mistaken

the crucial difference that I was missing is that with single-threaded reentrancy any re-entrant will finish fully before the interrupted one will continue

Ell

@orlp No problem :)

undergroundmonorail

16:51

guys

2

A: Shortest code for writing a string surrounded in comments (hashtags)

pb - 89 bytes v[4]w[Y!-1]{b[35]^}w[B!0]{t[B]vvv>>b[T]^^^<}v>>>w[Y!4]{b[35]v}w[X!0]{b[35]^[Y]b[35]v[4]<} This is the kind of challenge pb was made for! Not that it's competitive for this kind of challenge or anything. It's still a horrible golf language. However, challenges like this are a lot ...

my pb answer is only tied for last :D

the website that hosts my favourite brainfuck interpreter appears to be dead :/ it was up as recently as the 9th so hopefully it comes back

i mean it is on github so it's no big deal but it's sad anyway

Beta Decay

18:06

Hey Black Hat

New Main Posts

0

Q: Code me some golf

I'm going out to play golf tomorrow, and I find that sometimes, I have trouble figuring out what club to use to hit a certain yardage. So I decided to write down my clubs and their yardages per shot. First Assumption: All holes are due north of their tee boxes. All of these yardages measure the...

code-golf simulation

0

Q: All possible orders of items of unknown type

This is code golf. Fewest bytes wins, only standard libraries, etc. Write code, in any language, to output all possible same-length permutations of all items of an array / list / object in the input format and any order, grouped in whatever way you like. The items can be of ANY type, as allowed ...

code-golf

Beta Decay

Woah, those were close together :P

Optimizer

its all batched

but yeah, they are actually close together too.

Beta Decay

Oh you mean NewMainPosts

That makes sense as to why it always happens

Optimizer

haha, you noticed? ;)

Beta Decay

18:14

Haha yeah :P ;)

flawr

18:40

hi

Alex A.

@Calvin'sHobbies Not many, but a few.

@flawr Hello!

@MartinBüttner I like that one

@BetaDecay No, I was not the one who originated the names Animal Avatar Party (AAP) and Fractal Avatar Party (FAP). (cc @aditsu)

flawr

Does anyone know what this problem is called: Given a number set of points in space, find the set of line segments connecting all of them with the shortest total length.

Alex A.

Interpolation?

flawr

Basically a minimum spanning tree but with the possibility to add aditional nodes.

Alex A.

Oh. Idk then.

flawr

18:53

(I am trying to create a new challenge as you might have noticed=)

Alex A.

I didn't notice but I'm looking forward to seeing it. :)

@Calvin'sHobbies The query in my previous reply gets users with more than twice as many questions as answers, FYI.

ಠ_ಠ

@flawr This? youtube.com/watch?v=dAyDi1aa40E

Alex A.

@flawr ^ is that you in the video?

flawr

@ಠ_ಠ Thanks, I guess that's it! @AlexA. Haha, no, I wish I was^^

Peter Taylor

Steiner tree problem

The Steiner tree problem, or the minimum Steiner tree problem, named after Jakob Steiner, is a problem in combinatorial optimization, which may be formulated in a number of settings, with the common part being that it is required to find the shortest interconnect for a given set of objects. The Steiner tree problem is superficially similar to the minimum spanning tree problem: given a set V of points (vertices), interconnect them by a network (graph) of shortest length, where the length is the sum of the lengths of all edges. The difference between the Steiner tree problem and the minimum spanning...

flawr

19:06

@PeterTaylor Thank you, I believe this is exactly what I was looking for!

Beta Decay

19:29

Anyone rock climb here?

Martin Büttner

I think I'll lie down on the floor for a bit now...

0

A: Fixing a Fruit Loop Necklace

Hexagony, 920 bytes Six different types of fruit loops, you say? That is what Hexagony was made for. ){r''o{{y''g{{b''p{......../........{{<................/{}\;.................>.<.e...........>{<...=..".|..............>}{<...><...............\*;e/....@..............._........._................>...

Alex A.

@MartinBüttner Do you need some tea or perhaps a cold compress?

Martin Büttner

I'll pour myself some rum...

Doorknob

@MartinBüttner stares blankly What... how... O_o

flawr

<-- @BetaDecay

Martin Büttner

19:32

@Doorknob I don't even...

(it's actually quite beautiful... the code actually makes use of the hexagonal memory grid and its sixfold symmetry... each character is dealt with in one... sextant?... of the grid and the memory pointer keeps rotating around the grid...)

Alex A.

Sextants measure angles

Also, that's amazing.

Beta Decay

@flawr Is that you climb or just an errant arrow? ;)

Alex A.

Do you even lift

flawr

I do climb=)

(Not very often anymore =/ )

Alex A.

I climb too, but mostly things like stairs

flawr

19:36

@AlexA. Sextants do not measure angles, people do.

Alex A.

ಠ_ಠ

Doorknob

ಠ_ಠ

41 3

code-golf kolmogorov-complexity string

ಠ_ಠ

Alex A.

4

Alpha Decay

@flawr Nice, I've just started recently

ಠ_ಠ

Alex A.

flawr

19:37

Who is this guy?

Doorknob

You totally need to make a bot that does that :D

Alex A.

Beta Decay

@flawr Which guy?

flawr

Your third alter ego @Doorknob @NotDoorknob?

Beta Decay

Haha this has been done to death but I love it

Alex A.

19:38

ಠ_ಠ is dead long live ಠ_ಠ

flawr

Omg another one @BetaDecay @AlphaDecay

Doorknob

@flawr Nope. I can see who it is via super-mod-powers, though :P

flawr

@GammaDecay?

Alpha Decay

My cousin's here?

flawr

@DeltaDecay?

Alex A.

19:39

@ZetaDecay

Doorknob

My God, it's full of socks!

Beta Decay

Hmm. I just need to find a use for Alpha

Alex A.

@Doorknob I have a drawer like that in my dresser.

ಠ_ಠ

Is it allowed to make custom bots here on SE?

Beta Decay

I have no idea

Doorknob

19:41

@ಠ_ಠ Yes! I even have a framework on Github for it, written in Ruby

(Manish has got a much better one in Python, called ChatExchange)

Beta Decay

Meh Ruby

ಠ_ಠ

@Doorknob Isn't ruby the language that is about as bad as perl???

Alex A.

No, that's PHP

Doorknob

Sep 9 at 2:07, by Doorknob

@Tyzoid how dare you Ruby is awesome

Alex A.

PHP belongs in hell with Perl

ಠ_ಠ

19:42

At least PHP is inconsistent AND readable.

Alpha Decay

You sound like Smeagol

cjfaure

woah what did i miss

Doorknob

Oh by the way, ever since SE introduced new login my bot framework has been b0rken. So... use ChatExchange :P

cjfaure

why is the personification of disappointment in this chatroom

Doorknob

@cjfaure socks everywhere

Alex A.

19:42

@AlphaDecay Isn't that the pirate from Peter Pan?

cjfaure

@Doorknob socksy

Alpha Decay

@AlexA. Yeah

tick

Beta Decay

tock

ಠ_ಠ

@cjfaure You want to insinuate that I am disappointing?

cjfaure

@ಠ_ಠ well i mean this whole site is centered around being short

ಠ_ಠ

19:45

ಠ_ಠ

cjfaure

sorry, I get weird when it's late, i mean come on it's checks clock 9:45pm

Beta Decay

ಠoಠ

cjfaure

.ಠ.

Beta Decay

._.

flawr

@BetaDecay

2

Beta Decay

19:52

:D

flawr

nootnoot.net

Beta Decay

I love Pingu but...

ಠ_ಠ

Pingu butt?

PhiNotPi

@AlexA. Why such Perl-hate? :(

Alex A.

Mostly joking.

Beta Decay

20:03

I think the time I just wasted looking for pictures of Pingu's butt is the most useless 5 minutes I've ever spent

flawr

I tried to learn pearl once.

Then I noticed that it is the same thing as with regex: You will never be able to read it again.

Alex A.

I'm okay with Perl, I'm just not a big fan of it.

PHP really does belong in hell though.

flawr

PHP was my first real language!

Until I noticed that it was not a real language.

Alex A.

haha

flawr

But I still feel bad for PHP... It is being made fun of all the time...

Oh, new challenge idea=)

Expand the PHP backronym by n steps.

Beta Decay

20:09

What does PHP stand for?

Doorknob

PHP Hypertext Preprocessor

Beta Decay

I thought that was a recursive acronym

Not a backronym

Alex A.

I think it's a recursive backronym

flawr

What is the difference?

Alex A.

A backronym is an acronym made after the fact

Beta Decay

20:10

A backronym is an acronym that's been made to be a word

NASA has a lot of them

flawr

Oh, I mixed those up.

rackronym?

Why don't we call those things mynorca?

Doorknob

What would be the plural of that... smynorca?

flawr

Of course.

So what do you think of my challenge?

7 mins ago, by flawr

Expand the PHP backronym by n steps.

Alex A.

52 secs ago, by Alex A.

34 secs ago, by Alex A.

22 secs ago, by Alex A.

12 secs ago, by Alex A.

32 secs ago, by flawr

7 mins ago, by flawr

Expand the PHP backronym by n steps.

flawr

How long does it take until it gets put on hold or deleted?

Alex A.

20:17

What?

flawr

Well do you think it has any chance of surviving? Should I even try to post it?

Beta Decay

I think it might be better if it's for any recursive acronym (which shall be known as a rackronym from now on)

Alex A.

Post it to the sandbox

flawr

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

I <3 PHP code-golf PHP is being made fun of constantly, so I thought it is time to show some love for PHP! Your task is making a program, which accepts a non-negative integer n as input and outputs the expansion of the recursive acronym of PHP (a.k.a. rackronym or mynorca). Example Inputs/Out...

@AlexA. Done.

Beta Decay

If I could be bothered, I'd flag that as offensive

Alex A.

20:26

Does "program" mean "full program" here?

flawr

Yes, what else? I thought that was clarified by Martin Büttners Poll?

New Sandboxed Posts

-1

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

I <3 PHP code-golf PHP is being made fun of constantly, so I thought it is time to show some love for PHP! Your task is making a program, which accepts a non-negative integer n as input and outputs the expansion of the recursive acronym of PHP by n steps (a.k.a. rackronym or mynorca). You shou...

flawr

NOO why the downvote?

ಠ_ಠ

ಥ_ಥ

Martin Büttner

I didn't vote, but it's not incredibly interesting, is it?

flawr

20:29

No it really is not that intersting.

Peter Taylor

Two things: 1. One person being silly on PPCG chat does not constitute an aka. 2. Having "Call str_repeat" as a question does not do anything good for the quality of the site.

Martin Büttner

In CJam: "PHP"" Hypertext Preprocessor"q~*

Alex A.

Julia: print("PHP"*" Hypertext Preprocessor"^int(readline()))

Martin Büttner

it might be even shorter in Retina with unary input

^\nPHP\n1\n Hypertext Preprocessor

flawr

We already have 3 answers by now, I should have posted it right away^^

Well then, I delete it....

aditsu

20:31

"PHP sucks!"es*

hm, I actually got an idea for a challenge :p

PhiNotPi

We could have just labeled it as a "catalog" and it would have been wildly successful.

Beta Decay

Not another one :D

cjfaure

itt: big room house but as a tag

Calvin's Hobbies

@PeterTaylor Agreed. Having ಠ all over chat and our starboard doesn't increase site quality either.

cjfaure

@Calvin'sHobbies ಠ_ಠ became a very ironic username very quickly

Alex A.

20:46

@Calvin'sHobbies The Nineteenth Byte is hardly reflective of the actual site.

PhiNotPi

DAE remember when this chat room was regularly frozen for inactivity?

Alex A.

What's DAE?

flawr

DoesAnyoneElse

PhiNotPi

Does Anyone Else (I just got ninja'd)

Alex A.

Oh okay, thanks

That must have been before I was active in chat because I've never seen it happen

PhiNotPi

20:49

This used to be a regular day of chat: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240/2011/10/14

Alex A.

Wow

cjfaure

oh man

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240/2011/10/26

"One day, this room's gonna become a permanent freezer. ;-)"

PhiNotPi

That was 12 days later, meaning no messages for 12 days.

cjfaure

@PhiNotPi indeed o-o

PhiNotPi

Even better is here: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240/2011/11/10

That's the transcript of 10 November 2011, the next page of transcript is 5 August 2012

I was at a college football game last night, and it had its fair share of "well this is a bizarre." Like, attempting a 2-point conversion that was fumbled and returned 98 yards for 2 points for the other team.

cjfaure

21:06

"well this is a bizarre"

PhiNotPi

Dost thou not appreciate?

cjfaure

i depreciate

PhiNotPi

Studies show that cjfaures lose 20% of their value as soon as you walk out the store.

DanTheMan

I just learned that if you middle click on a tab in Firefox, it closes that tab.

Alex A.

Was that an "oops" realization?

DanTheMan

21:15

yep

Warning: Do not try at home

Doorknob

You can press u to undo closing a tab, @DanTheMan.

Err, Ctrl+Shift+T I mean.

DanTheMan

I knew that

It's the same thing in Chrome

The re-opening I mean

Also, you can basically hide tabs by using "Tab Groups"

Here, the transcript goes from December to March: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240/2012/12/28

New Main Posts

22:12

1

Q: Is this a candidate Calvin Number?

This challenge is a tribute to our Legendary Challenge Writer™, @Calvin'sHobbies, in the same spirit as Generate Dennis Numbers. Calvin is a pretty impressive contributor to PPCG, with the 6th most reputation overall and probably indisputibly the best challenge writing skills out of all of us. H...

code-golf number sequence

Alex A.

@Doorknob Lol @ "almost interesting"

Doorknob

@Calvin'sHobbies, you have to have the first answer. It's the tradition (1, 2). ;)

Alex A.

Not to mention the one for NBM

Doorknob

@AlexA. No, he wasn't the first to answer :(

Alex A.

22:33

Oh u_u

New Main Posts

23:54

0

Q: propleme Full text of "Algebra - Basic

If hamburgers cost $2.50 each, write a short program that asks the user how many hamburgers they would like to purchase and provides the total cost of the hamburgers they desire. This is the formula for determining the area inside a trapezoid: Area = ½(a+b) × h Write a program that initiali...

1p5

Transcript for