The Nineteenth Byte

Calvin's Hobbies

12:02 AM

Which is correct? "triangle shaped" or "triangular shaped" or "triangularly shaped"

Dennis

"Triangular" or "triangle-shaped".

"Triangular shaped" is redundant.

El'endia Starman

@Dennis Actually, it's incorrect. Can't have two adjectives in a row like that.

"Triangularly shaped" is valid, but verbose and a bit clunky.

Dennis

^

PhiNotPi

^

I just selected the "diagnostics" option when booting up my laptop.

Now to see what it does.

Chris Jester-Young

@El'endiaStarman Reminds me of discussions of people putting extra parentheses in Scheme programs (I'm a [scheme] gold badge holder, so I read a lot of [scheme] questions). In Scheme, extra parentheses changes the semantics of the program. Some people refer to them as "redundant", which is not correct, so I poke people when they do that. :-P

(On SO, not PPCG.)

e.g., 42 is a number. (42) tries to invoke 42 as a procedure, which is incorrect since 42 is not a procedure. So these would be incorrect parentheses, not "redundant".

El'endia Starman

12:33 AM

...I think I might be having a bit too much fun with Befunge... :P

Chris Jester-Young

@El'endiaStarman Stands to reason. Befunge was the winner of the stack overflow code golf, after all.

213

A: What's the shortest code to cause a stack overflow?

All these answers and no Befunge? I'd wager a fair amount it's shortest solution of them all: 1 Not kidding. Try it yourself: http://www.quirkster.com/iano/js/befunge.html EDIT: I guess I need to explain this one. The 1 operand pushes a 1 onto Befunge's internal stack and the lack of anything...

Sp3000

But ><> :D

Chris Jester-Young

@Sp3000 Can it win stack overflow code golf?

Sp3000

With the exact same program, yes

It'd lose the time-of-post tiebreak though :P

Chris Jester-Young

Indeed.

Indeed, I prefer smallest and fastest...gun in the west. :-P (I just realised that I hadn't responded to your comment for over a year, so I had to say something cheeky. :-P) — Chris Jester-Young ♦ Mar 17 '10 at 5:27

To understand my comment, you have to understand that Adam Davis (whom I was replying to) is a big proponent of FGitW.

PhiNotPi

12:46 AM

I think it's more fun personally to be the SCitE. :)

Chris Jester-Young

@PhiNotPi Well, that's a perfectly valid strategy for PPCG, if your "cheater" answer is actually shorter than the answer it was based on.

Sp3000

I'm looking at the stack overflow question thinking how different it would be if posted on PPCG today :P

El'endia Starman

Is there an already-existing programming language that overflows the stack as an empty program?

If not, then Befunge (and ><>, I suppose, and derivatives thereof) would still win.

Sp3000

I was thinking more the fact that the top answer would have come a lot quicker, the joke answers would be deleted, and half of the rest would have "You can golf this further by using one-letter variable names and removing whitespace" comments :P

PhiNotPi

1:10 AM

I might have an idea for a geometry (?) -based challenge.

Based on the process of "reflecting a point across another point"

If you have a series of "reflection points" and a starting point, and you reflect over those different points in series, you end up somewhere new.

MS Paint time.

El'endia Starman

@PhiNotPi I actually did this exact thing a couple weeks ago.

Lemme take a screenshot real quick.

PhiNotPi

From what I can tell, a series of 3 reflecting points can be reduced to a single reflecting point.

El'endia Starman

Starting point is A, end point is B, magenta point is what you get when you reflect over the intersected lines in reverse order (i.e. furthest first). White points are the intersection points ordered from A to B, and the yellow points are the intermediate points in this reflection process, numbered in reverse order.

Green points/numbers are intersection points found, where a lower number generally corresponds to being closer to the center. Cyan points are where the blue point would be if it was reflected across the corresponding green point.

PhiNotPi

The 3 black points are three reflecting points, the red dot is the reflecting point that is the reduction of those three black points.

The blue and green points have paths that go through each black dot, but you can see that they are also reflected around the red dot.

El'endia Starman

@PhiNotPi What if you have an even number of reflecting points?

PhiNotPi

1:23 AM

If there are 2 reflecting points, then the final point is a translational shift of the starting point.

Sp3000

Playing around with Geogebra, and it seems that 3 reflecting points reduce to the 4th point which completes the parallelogram

PhiNotPi

If there are 4 points (or any other number, really) the last three of the four can be reduced to a single point.

@Sp3000 yes

El'endia Starman

Hmm. Does math work in here? $\sqrt{x+y}$

Ah, right. I have the ChatJax extension installed.

PhiNotPi

In the case of 2 reflection points, the translational shift is twice the length and in the same direction of the line segment formed by the two points.

If you have 3 reflection points, but go around the loop twice, you end up back where you started.

El'endia Starman

@PhiNotPi That sounds a LOT like group theory is at play here.

Hmm. If $\vec{a}$ is the original points and the reflecting points are $\vec{v_1}, \vec{v_2}, \dots, \vec{v_3}$, then the final point $\vec{b}$ is...

PhiNotPi

1:30 AM

2*v3 - (2*v2 - (2*v1 - a)) ?

Alex A.

@Dennis Sounds like you need to add some features to CJam. :)

PhiNotPi

which is the same as 2*(v3-v2+v1) - a

So v3-v2+v1 is the "equivalent point"

Which is the 4th corner of the parallelogram

El'endia Starman

Let's make up some data and test that.

Let's say that a = (2,2), and that v1 = (3,2), v2 = (3,-3), and v3 = (-1,-3). Then v4 should be (-1,2) by your hypothesis.

a0 = (2,2). a1 = (4,2). a2 = (2,-8). a3 = (-4,2). (2,2) reflected over (-1,2) is indeed (-4,2). Cool!

PhiNotPi

Earlier, I also said that reflecting over two points is a translational shift by 2*(v2 - v1)

v2 - v1 = (0,-5) and a2 - a0 = (0,-10)

El'endia Starman

nice

New Main Posts

1:44 AM

3

Q: Beatles Songs and Hexagons

Write two triangle (i.e. pyramid) shaped programs. The first one should be an upwards pointing text triangle with a minimum base width of three characters. So it would have a structure like X XXX or X XXX XXXXX or X XXX XXXXX XXXXXXX or larger. Each of the X's is to be replace...

Doorknob

@MartinBüttner, gonna try that one in Hexagony? :D

Sp3000

Sorry, I'm having fun :P

El'endia Starman

If there are four points, then 2*v4 - (2*v3 - (2*v2 - (2*v1 - a)))) = 2(v4-v3+v2-v1) + a. Hmm.

@Sp3000 That's awesome.

PhiNotPi

What software is that?

Sp3000

Geogebra

El'endia Starman

1:46 AM

Geogebra, probably.

Thomas Kwa

@Doorknob "hexagon" should be a tag

Sp3000

I can drag point D around and see what happens

PhiNotPi

downloading now :)

Calvin's Hobbies

@ThomasKwa Or something between geometry and ascii-art at least

Doorknob

"Boys", "Girl", "Junk", "Rain", "Wait"

El'endia Starman

1:49 AM

@PhiNotPi Oh, that makes sense now. Reflecting through three points is equivalent to reflecting through one, so doing it twice is just reflecting through that one point twice.

Doorknob

Okay, so there's some 4-letter titles I can do this in. :P

There's also five 5-letter titles.

Calvin's Hobbies

@Doorknob Only 8+ length songs are allowed

Doorknob

oh :(

I should read things more

Sp3000

I think that part should be bolded for the TL;DR'ers :P

Doorknob

"Birthday", "Catswalk", "Etcetera", "Get Back", "Hey Jude", "I'm Down"

the 8-letter titles

Sp3000

1:52 AM

@PhiNotPi If you get it working, here's the ggb

Calvin's Hobbies

The longer song titles wins tiebreaker though ;)

Doorknob

My priority is mainly solving this at all in Snowman right now, don't really care about winning :P

Sp3000

My first thought is 2D languages because I'm lazy, but knowing what happens in these challenges Dennis is probably going to come up with some nice and simple CJam

Doorknob

So "anything except line terminators" means spaces are okay as X or y?

Calvin's Hobbies

yes

I would restrict it to plain printable ascii but then the APLers get snippy

PhiNotPi

1:55 AM

@Sp3000 thanks, I got it working

Sp3000

:)

Doorknob

Wait... there's a song called "From Me to You" and another one called "From Us to You"? O_o

Sp3000

@PhiNotPi You can drag A,B,C,D around. E is defined by A,D. F is defined by B,E. G is defined by C,F and H is defined by D,G (so these ones won't move even if you try to drag them)

Doorknob

... there are three songs called "Revolution," "Revolution 1," and "Revolution 9." Should you possibly not allow those (or at least the ones with numbers)? Because they could be abused really easily.

Calvin's Hobbies

@Doorknob Good idea, I'll restrict those

PhiNotPi

1:59 AM

The point-reflecting problem simplified down a whole lot.

Doorknob

... huh, I just I realized I never require block comments ([[ ... ]]) to have the end mark, so [[ without a matching ]] simply comments out the rest of the program. This shall be taken advantage of

Sp3000

... this hexagon challenge is pretty tricky in Python :/

Doorknob

I'm beginning to develop a strategy for Snowman...

El'endia Starman

And I'm thinking about Befunge...

Sp3000

2D languages should be pretty good :P

@Calvin'sHobbies Can we read our own source code?

(or is this quine rules?)

Calvin's Hobbies

2:11 AM

hmm

Im thinking no

@Sp3000 No.

Sp3000

k.

Calvin's Hobbies

May not matter, but I'd like to see "pure" answers

Sp3000

:)

... damn Because is 7 letters

Double checking: Do "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" count as one song?

El'endia Starman

I was thinking that they probably do.

Calvin's Hobbies

@Sp3000 Mmm, they're different enough to count as distinct songs. (Way farther away than the revolutions)

Sp3000

2:20 AM

Oh? That's interesting then, this might actually be doable :)

Doorknob

The real bottleneck for me here is the length of the song names...

I think I've got a working pseudo-Snowman solution here, now I just need to wrestle it into triangle/hexagon format in as little code as possible

Geobits

Chat has led me to believe people are flagrantly disregarding this rule: :P

> You must choose your three favorite Beatles songs. (Well, try to.)

Doorknob

I have no favorite Beatles song. Does that mean I'm off the hook? :P

Calvin's Hobbies

From Me/Us to You is kinda koopholable I realize but I think I'll allow it

Sp3000

^^ ditto

Geobits

2:22 AM

I think that means you lose automatically.

Doorknob

D:

If that were the case, I would do to the question what your avatar suggests.

Geobits

Play it? It's clearly a play button, as seen on a sideways player.

Calvin's Hobbies

@Doorknob As long as you tried to think of your favorites. That's all I ask.

Doorknob

@Geobits Sidevoting confirmed once again...

Calvin's Hobbies

^ Invert Geobits' avatar and it looks like an N64 controller C button

4

Geobits

2:29 AM

I was always a playstation person, so inverse N64 makes sense.

PhiNotPi

If you turn my avatar into a yellow circle, it also looks like an N64 controller button.

Geobits

If you do nothing to Calvin's avatar it looks like he stole it from a comic strip.

Doorknob

If you cat my avatar it looks like a PNG file.

Geobits

Most cats are bad at doorknobs.

PhiNotPi

That's a really good thing.

Doorknob

2:34 AM

141

A: Why do door knobs still exist?

Doorknobs provide a worse UX for bears, which can be a useful feature for humans who want to keep bears out. ...elderly and disabled people find it easier to operate doors with handles. But so do bears. In British Columbia, bears have been known to scavenge for food inside cars—whose doors ha...

New Main Posts

0

Q: Truth Tables: Your great-grandfather's computer

If you remember back to your schooling years, you might remember learning about Truth Tables. They seemed boring, but they are basis for logic and (some would argue) all computing... Problem Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to write a program, function, or widget of code that c...

code-golf ascii-art logic-gates

Geobits

> If you're going to break the rules, be clever ;)

That's supposed to be an unwritten rule :o

Calvin's Hobbies

@Doorknob What's the technical term those metal bars that span the width of a door that you push to open? (You must be the expert..)

El'endia Starman

@Calvin'sHobbies ....push bars?

Doorknob

Uhhhhhh... metal-door-bar-openy-thingy. That is definitely a very official term that I did not just make up.

Calvin's Hobbies

2:38 AM

Push bar sounds alright, if laymanish.

Sp3000

I think I set a really low initial bar for hexagons :P

El'endia Starman

Ah-ha! I have a Befunge solution!

PhiNotPi

Here's the closest Wikipedia article I could find, referring specifically to those bars when used on emergency doors.

Crash bar

A crash bar (also known as a panic bar, exit device, panic device, or a push bar) is a device for unlocking a door during emergency conditions. The mechanism consists of a spring-loaded metal bar fixed horizontally to the inside of an outward-opening door. When the lever is either pushed or depressed, it activates a mechanism which unlatches the door allowing occupants to leave quickly from the building. == BackgroundEdit == Following the events of the Victoria Hall disaster in Sunderland, England in 1883 in which more than 180 children died because a door had been bolted at the bottom of...

El'endia Starman

@Sp3000 HOLY MOLY.

PhiNotPi

If it floats, it boats.

Geobits

2:40 AM

Oh yea that kind is a panic bar around here.

Doorknob

I might have a Snowman solution in 13! (it outputs to STDERR a bunch in the combined version, but that doesn't matter)

Geobits

13 seconds? Minutes? Days? When will we see it?

Calvin's Hobbies

13 factorial?

Geobits

Dammit, these ninjas are everywhere.

Doorknob

sigh

Calvin's Hobbies

2:41 AM

:D

El'endia Starman

Befunge in 15. Dang. Probably could be made a bit smaller. Maybe.

Doorknob

Nice, Snowman in 13 works :D (albeit spits out 4 errors in the process)

El'endia Starman

I guess I do have that going for me. No errors.

Does Befunge even have errors? I don't think it does.

Sp3000

Overflows probably

Doorknob

/me plans to suppress errors by default in the next Snowman version, requiring an explicit flag to output them. :P

Posted Snowman solution in base width of 13. I can't believe Snowman is actually winning for once \o/

Sp3000

2:48 AM

... for now :P

Calvin's Hobbies

@Doorknob Can you link to the snowman documentation?

El'endia Starman

For now. I could probably get a shorter Befunge solution.

Doorknob

whoops, I even put [Snowman 1.0.2]() like I always do but forgot to put the actual link

El'endia Starman

I really need to implement something that makes it easier to lay these out.

Doorknob

@Sp3000 That's why I said "winning." :P

Sp3000

2:50 AM

Oh right, present tense :P

If you put it that way, I could probably be "winning" a challenge in, er, Malbolge if I tried

I'd just have to post it fast enough :D

Doorknob

... valid point. :P

New Main Posts

0

Q: constructing tables for a given data

I have the following data for O-ring failures: 0 1 0 NA 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 2 How do I construct a table with categories 0 Failure, 1 Failure, and >1 Failures? I tried using the following codes, but an error occured... oringfailures <- matri...

r

PhiNotPi

3:03 AM

The only reason the Snowman response looks good is the ginormous Python solution right next to it.

Doorknob

:D

Alex A.

Haha

Doorknob

Alright, done writing the explanations. Going to sleep now, that was fun :D

Sp3000

Maybe next time we should all post a massive solution as the first one, then follow it up with a tiny one so that it looks extra awesome

El'endia Starman

lolz

Finally posted mine.

PhiNotPi

3:16 AM

+1 because your "hexagon" doesn't look like a hexagon at all.

El'endia Starman

lolz

The fact that the only no-op is a space kinda made it difficult to line it up properly.

Sp3000

You can pad the useless parts with other chars so it's easier to see where the program moves

El'endia Starman

yeah

Justin

3:31 AM

I'm really curious what people think of this kind of challenge: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/7002/9498 . I don't really want to post it if it's not something people would like

PhiNotPi

Sounds like a job for an object-oriented golfing language

I was going to make one of those once, but never did

Alex A.

Definitely thought it said "Moose Machine"

El'endia Starman

On a different note, is there a way to hide some of the content of an answer? I think I've seen that on questions, but I don't know how it's done.

Geobits

Spoiler-hide or collapse-hide?

Alex A.

You can collapse/hide snippets

>! for spoilers

El'endia Starman

3:53 AM

@Geobits Collapse-hide. Like, I kinda want to leave a previous Befunge answer viewable once I come up with a better one, though I suppose the revision history will have it.

Geobits

Yea, the only collapse-hide is snippets. I haven't tried abusing them that way yet, but I assume it would work ;)

Alex A.

If you put it in a snippet you could collapse hide it but that would be confusing because the snippet wouldn't be executable but would still have a big "RUN" button on it.

Geobits

Solution: Make Befunge runnable in snippets :P

Alex A.

Didn't someone do that in one of Calvin's challenges?

Sp3000

It's in the snippet interpreter challenge already

Alex A.

3:56 AM

Oh, okay. Cool.

Sp3000

93 is, at least

Geobits

I always forget about that challenge. The one challenge that's legitimately useful for something here :D

(Ok, maybe not the only one, but still)

Sp3000

It's definitely the challenge I open the most - that BF debugger is pretty useful

Justin

4:23 AM

Ouch... I just spent the last 45 minutes figuring out how to compile gtest via g++ such that I can actually use it without waiting 15 or more seconds for compile. Precompiled headers and an object file later, it now takes 6 seconds.

El'endia Starman

4:36 AM

Darnit @Sp3000, you're not making things easy for me here!

Alex A.

Sp makes life difficult for everyone by being awesome at everything. :P

Hello :)

Oi

What's up?

SHOOT. GolfScript with 9?!? Ugh.

Alex A.

4:44 AM

@Shebang ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What's up with you, broseph?

Shebang

Very busy with university-related stuff

Alex A.

Yeah? What classes are you taking?

I think you've told me before but I can't recall.

Shebang

Only 3 this term: Elementary Algorithm Design and Data Abstraction, Algebra for Honours Mathematics and Calculus 1 for Honours Mathematics.

But we moved in ~2 weeks before the start of classes, along with a lot of friends. So, we did as many university students do when they have no responsibilities.. :P

Alex A.

Ooh, the first class sounds like fun. (Well, they all do. I loved calculus.)

I assume there were plenty of shenanigans in those 2 weeks.

Justin

You loved calculus? I still love calculus. When I come across a calc problem, I struggle not dropping whatever I'm doing to work on it.

Alex A.

4:53 AM

I mean I loved taking the courses.

I still love calc.

Justin

Yay

I think it's interesting how the TAs for my classes come to me when they are confused...

Alex A.

Haha

El'endia Starman

Lolz. That's a nice position to be in...

Alex A.

Srsly.

Sp3000

Ah, I see Dennis' answer, right on time

Justin

4:58 AM

It's not for all my classes, and they don't come to me for their classes, but for when they are confused over something a student is confused about

New Main Posts

0

Q: Person of Interest

Background Person of Interest is a crime drama on CBS, and my favorite TV show, as of late. The show is about a man named Harold, a billionaire programmer, and his partner Reese, a special forces veteran and ex-CIA operative. This programmer created a sentient AI called "The Machine" that predi...

code-golf

Reto Koradi

The TAs we had for math classes were all excellent. At least based on my theory, only people who are pretty smart in the first place study math. And the best of them get research positions, where they are also TAs. CS classes were a different matter entirely. It was a very popular degree, and attracted a mixed bunch. And most of the best graduates went for industry jobs, and passed on research/teaching.

Justin

Yeah for my math classes, the TAs have all been grad students

For my CS classes, the TAs are people who took the class either the semester before, or two semesters before.

I'm actually still a little bugged that they didn't hire me as a TA for the intro programming class.... The interviewer said I didn't tutor well. The problem was teaching about modulo and I kind of rely on feedback from the person I'm teaching... there was absolutely no feedback...

Reto Koradi

Oh, I see. I believe our TAs were all at least PhD students, and partly research assistants that already had a PhD. Still, in CS, not all of them were very convincing.

Justin

5:15 AM

My favorite thing my CS TAs have done is mark me down 10 points out of 100 on a test because they didn't know you could use the ternary operator with L-values.

They gave me 10 out of 20 points for that problem because I "had the right idea"

So I clearly understood C++ better than the TAs...

Reto Koradi

It could be worse. I got a relatively bad grade in one of my final exams because one of the professors did not understand how the modulo operator worked. Fortunately there was a second professor there, and he confirmed that I was right. It cost a lot of time, and my grade was still bad. They let me repeat the exam, but it ended up hurting my final grade.

Justin

Boo

The 10% would have affected my final grade, so I pestered my professor about it

It took the entire remaining half of the semester before he finally changed my grade

Meanwhile, I went to ideone.com and gave him examples to show that what I did was valid c++. In all version of c++ that ideone.com had. I also gave him a C example and showed that it did not work.

Probably the thing that bugged me the most about the class was that we were required to use certain header files that the TAs made. The header files all had using namespace std. That bit me a few times. Urgh.

Reto Koradi

It does seem kind of uncommon to use the ternary operator for l-values. I think I just stumbled over something mentioning it recently. I either never knew it before, or forgot about it. I believe it's legal in C++, but not in C?

Justin

That's right

But you can do the same in C if you use pointers and dereference the pointer when you assign.

Reto Koradi

At least they should look it up of there's any doubt. It's not hard to find if you're specifically looking for it.

Justin

5:26 AM

Yes

I don't think the TAs even knew the words "l-value" or "r-value"

I guess I was a little too pleased that I was able to write the answer in two lines of code rather than the 10-15 they gave us to do it.

When code-golf mindsets invade school assignments.

Justin

5:43 AM

'night

Reto Koradi

goodnight

Dennis

I predict an insanely popular Hexagony answer for the Beatles challenge.

El'endia Starman

6:14 AM

I golfed this CodingBat problem, has22, before I knew about code golfing.

I think the best I and my friends got was like 37 characters.

feersum

'2, 2'in`l`?

unless it has 2-digit numbers

El'endia Starman

That just returns false for all tests.

Wait, I wrote that wrong.

has22=lambda n:'2, 2'in`n`

feersum

has22=lambda l:'2, 2'in`l` is oll correct for me

El'endia Starman

Ah, there we go.

It is, however, technically wrong. They just didn't think to include something like [12, 2].

Reto Koradi

6:38 AM

@Dennis Yes, that's what I was thinking of immediately, that Martin would have to write a solution for the hexagon challenge in his crazy hexagon language. But the triangular sub-parts might be somewhat problematic, since all his programs need to be hexagonal?

Dennis

Hexagony completely ignores whitespace and arranges the characters in a hexagonal pattern.

Sp3000

^^ that

Reto Koradi

Oh, that's right.

He normally shows them as hexagons, but I saw that when I looked at the language description earlier.

Sp3000

@Dennis btw in case you missed it: link. GolfScript should have been the more obvious choice though, in hindsight :P

Dennis

Yeah, I missed that. CJam would have been painful though. No no-ops and no "super comments".

Reto Koradi

6:42 AM

Your score of 9 will be hard to beat by anything. With 7, you only have 32 bytes total, which will be tough for 3 songs of at least 8 characters, and some quotes and control characters.

El'endia Starman

I'm already convinced that I cannot do a Befunge solution with 11.

Sp3000

I think Befunge 11 should be doable in a similar method to mine (directing upwards from the start)

... oh wait no, nevermind. ~~One~~ Two of the mirrors is are actually used on both sides

Dennis

@RetoKoradi I tried 7 in GS, but I hit a wall. Maybe by carefully selecting the songs. I actually went with ones I liked...

Reto Koradi

The only ones I found with obvious parts in common were too short. I think there was "Boys" and "Bad Boys" on the list, but they are both less than 8. I captured a bunch of titles with exactly 8, and they don't have much in common. The ones I know with 8 characters are "Hey Jude" (my favorite), "Michelle", and "Get Back".

Dennis

I like Hey Jude too, but that would have wasted a character. Yesterday is my clear favorite.

Reto Koradi

6:53 AM

That's an obvious classic. It was in our middle school song book.

New Sandboxed Posts

7:39 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Fill in the Blanks code-golf [Is this a dupe?] Take a string with blanks _OD_G___ and insert the given letters CEOLF into the blanks like _OD_G___ ^ ^ ^^^ C E OLF to produce CODEGOLF

Sp3000

@NewSandboxedPosts That looks really familiar...

Except I think it was with lists or something

Oh right, Generalised Array Riffle has indices too, so it's slightly different

minxomat

@Dennis Help is now avail. @ codegolf.xyz/readme.txt

Martin Büttner

8:53 AM

@Doorknob maybe not...

New Sandboxed Posts

11:01 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

I have an idea for a challenge but I'm not sure if it would be best as a popularity-challenge or code-golf, I'm also not sure what rules I should apply to make it more interesting. "Convert an image to LEGO safe-colours" The task is to convert the existing colours from a JPEG image into LEGO-...

orlp

cjfaure

11:17 AM

code golf: the programming site that reminds you that it's probably midnight for everyone else

it's 6 AM here :P

exactly

It's midday here

@trichoplax welcome to the outside

do you ever see somebody else's golf and just

trichoplax

@cjfaure All golfs make me look like that

cjfaure

11:30 AM

@trichoplax >can't figure out how to start writing >sees that top entry is 5 bytes

trichoplax

I once wrote a question that I thought would attract long complex answers, and it was solved optimally in under an hour, in 13 bytes, ruling out the possibility of any further answers.

It wasn't even a golf question...

cjfaure

O-O

I've been on here for over a year and a half and I've yet to write a question

trichoplax

There seem to be some people who specialise in either asking or answering. Personally I feel more inclined to asking

cjfaure

I like answering because you can objectively tell whether it's correct or not

with questions I'm really unsure all the time hehe

trichoplax

The answers that come in give a fairly objective measure of how good a question is. The question I just mentioned seemed like a good one until I posted it, then the answer made clear that it was not...

That's the only time I've posted a question without sandboxing it first. Lesson learnt... :)

New Main Posts

11:42 AM

0

Q: Rugby scores code golf

The Rugby World Cup starts in a few hours! Write a program or function which, given a rugby team score as input, outputs all possible ways the score could have been attained in a Rugby game. Ways to score in Rugby Penalty kick/Drop kick: Both penalty kicks and a drop kicks are worth 3 points ...

code-golf number

cjfaure

who needs rugby when you can try for 3 characters

trichoplax

groan... :P

cjfaure

ba dum tss

"A try is worth 5 points."

SINCE WHEN

a try is very literally called "pressing a three" in afrikaans

cjfaure

11:58 AM

am I the only one that dislikes python's ternary operator slightly

feersum

Yes. Everyone else hates it passionately.

2

cjfaure

@feersum well I mean...it's really nice for generators and lambdas...

but everywhere else it sucks

it's so weird to write if a if b else c:

that's probably the single most confusing line of code ever

I mean come on, you'd think it easy to design a programming language that doesn't suck

why can't there be a language that's writing-oriented but not aimed at beginners

trichoplax

You could draw up a spec...

cjfaure

I could probably implement it too

Imma do that actually

but you are all contractually obliged to use it

this is a good opportunity to study Lisp more in-depth :D

Fatalize

12:22 PM

"A try is worth 5 points."
SINCE WHEN

wut? @cjfaure

cjfaure

'a try is very literally called "pressing a three" in afrikaans'

Fatalize

well then south africans are dumb :p

cjfaure

this is what happens when you're not actually interested in a sport and all you know about it is from people yelling HY GAAN A DRIE DRUK from your living room

Fatalize

you're south african and not interested in rugby

how does that happen?

cjfaure

I went on tumblr

the only sport I like is ice hockey

...oh god I'm a canadian trapped in a south african's body

Fatalize

12:27 PM

is there even an ice rink in south africa?

cjfaure

@Fatalize there are 3 or 4 that I know of - I'm actually a sort of decent skater, but not hockey