The Nineteenth Byte

Alex A.

00:01

@epicTCK That may as well be :P

New Meta Posts

Recent Questions - Programming Puzzles & Code G…: Who will get these badges first? [on hold]

posted on March 30, 2016 by CrazyPython

In the badges section, exactly zero people have gotten the "Tenacious" badge (Zero score accepted answers: more than 5 and 20% of total) or the "Unsung Hero" badge (Zero score accepted answers: more than 10 and 25% of total). This means that our community loves to fertilize itself by giving out up votes and that we do it more often than other communities. yay for us…

epicTCK

@AlexA. assuming the silence was due to eveyone being distracted....

Downgoat

@AshwinGupta you can help me make Cheddar if you know Java/JavaScript

CrazyPython

In the badges section, exactly zero people have gotten the "Tenacious" badge (Zero score accepted answers: more than 5 and 20% of total) or the "Unsung Hero" badge (Zero score accepted answers: more than 10 and 25% of total).

epicTCK

not sure how darude sandstorm could be very distracting but....

CrazyPython

00:02

@Downgoat What's Cheddar? Is it this new platform that people use now?

Bernard Meurer

Hey folks, any more seasoned programmers around?

CrazyPython

That's a matter of opinion

quartata

Silence? When was there silence?

Quill

@CrazyPython really tasty cheese

CrazyPython

@Quill Javascript: make cheese in your browser!

Bernard Meurer

00:03

Seasoned: with lots of curry on top

quartata

@BernardMeurer Seasoned but on mobile and habitually lazy

Bernard Meurer

No, jk, I meant as anyone who has somewhat of a backgroud with working in the field/in teams

Quill

@BernardMeurer I'd rather basil

quartata

What's your question

Quill

@BernardMeurer Most of PPCG's higher rep users are adults with programming jobs

that said, I have one of those too

Doorknob

00:05

@Quill ... >_>

Quill

@Doorknob You're a special one <3

CrazyPython

In the badges section, exactly zero people have gotten the "Tenacious" badge (Zero score accepted answers: more than 5 and 20% of total) or the "Unsung Hero" badge (Zero score accepted answers: more than 10 and 25% of total).

epicTCK

@Downgoat btw had an Idea for a golfing (or regular) languege: x+y; would set x to x+y, but z=x+y would not. Basically, an undefined statement will not be undefined, but set as the value of the statement's first variable argument...

Bernard Meurer

I'll just go to it then; I've worked on a couple of projects in which I got known around as "stalin" because I was very harsh with following the contribution guidelines (not pushing to master yadda yadda) and with general code styling and stuff

epicTCK

probobly would make lots of problems, but its an idea

quartata

00:06

Of the moderators only Alex has a programming job

Liam

if anyone wants a quick lol, I just ran sudo rm -r etc while in the / directory.

Bernard Meurer

Now I've just recently joined a new project where I'm just being myself and, well, taking care of that; but there's this guy who thinks that's all rubbish and just won't comply

Alex A.

@quartata Whoa

Bernard Meurer

and I really don't want to have to go Stalin and force it

How to deal with it?

Doorknob

@BernardMeurer try Programmers chat

Bernard Meurer

00:07

Thanks @Doorknob!

Downgoat

@CrazyPython It's a programming language I'm making

Doorknob

Code Golf is probably the worst place to ask about good code style :P

Liam

also workplace.se

CrazyPython

@Liam That was a VM, I'm assuming, right?

Alex A.

@CrazyPython You said that a few minutes ago

Bernard Meurer

00:08

@Doorknob I like to consult the devils themselves :p

Doorknob

@AlexA. oh good, I thought I was imagining things... >_<

Liam

@CrazyPython nope. And I didn't have a backup

CrazyPython

@AlexA. no response, sorry if it seems like spam

epicTCK

@Dennis +1 for freehand circle... and yes I am stalking chat msges that I missed out on

Quill

@BernardMeurer what do you mean by "being yourself", are you changing code styles, naming structure, project styles etc

Bernard Meurer

00:09

@Quill Being an schmuck and bending people to my will while making their lives miserable :)

Shog9

...renaming all index variables to "Bernard"

2

Bernard Meurer

No, jk, I mean as in just doing my thing and trying to put order to the current code chaos the project is

Alex A.

@Shog9 for (Bernard in theStore) { beer.get("me", 1, Bernard) }

Shog9

That's a Best Practice right there.

though in seriousness, I'm pretty sure there's a TWP question about this exact thing somewhere

Quill

there's probably 15, but you can't really close them as duplicates

Downgoat

00:12

2 days ago, by Downgoat

@QPaysTaxes Welcome to Programming Puzzles and Code Golf! This website is tagged code-golf so you need to make your code as short as possible, you can start by removing all that horrible whitespace and making all variable named 1-char long.

Shog9

105

Q: How do I tell my colleagues that the codebase they've built is a total mess and their practices are ancient?

The situation For a few months, I've been working with a new team in a new company. The company offers some web services and the team's role is to develop and maintain those services. Problem #1: the team is not a team, it is a set of individuals. They do not collaborate with each other. Everyo...

Bernard Meurer

@Shog9 Thanks!

Alex A.

@Downgoat haha

Bernard Meurer

I have to be gentle, last time I tried to do that it ended up being an outright war of people who wanted to follow PEP8 and those who didn't

and I'm not even mentioning PEP257

Alex A.

@Shog9 I should read this. I'm the only programmer in a group of non-programmers who built the entire codebase.

Bernard Meurer

00:14

Obviously I won because using tabs is for twisted people

3

Shog9

@AlexA. oh, that's... fun...

Downgoat

@BernardMeurer +1, wait, no, -1

Bernard Meurer

@Downgoat You're a tabber?

::holds knife::

Alex A.

@BernardMeurer See, I knew I liked you. Spaces forever.

Downgoat

I'm a spacer, but tabs > spaces

@BernardMeurer O_O

Bernard Meurer

00:15

@AlexA. :D

Tabs are just as bad as switching semicolons for that greek character that looks the same but doesn't work

Alex A.

@Shog9 Also there's no version control and so far they've rejected my attempts to get the group to use it.

Shog9

@Downgoat that's clearly wrong; space is 32 while tab is only 9.

5

Downgoat

@AlexA. version control?!?! >:U I should have control over version numbers!

@Shog9 but here, we are fond of custom encodings, tabs is probably > spaces

Shog9

@AlexA. I had good luck, once upon a time, setting folks up with a script that'd watch for changes and periodically sync with version control. They "deployed" by copying their stuff to a special folder and could pretty much ignore the existence of anything else if they wanted to.

Quill

@AlexA. I had a similar thing before my newer colleagues arrived, I just used version control on a GitLab repo and submitted my code from the release branch

Alex A.

00:19

@Shog9 I like that idea but I already know that they'd tell me it doesn't suit their workflow (because it's something different). It's worth a try though. Thanks!

Shog9

Don't get me wrong, it was extremely messy because they'd just drop whatever in there (including file_1, copy of file_1, file.bak, file.back3...) but it meant I could always rely on having their stuff along with a clear chronology of changes if I needed it.

Alex A.

Everyone edits the same files, all in production, with no tests

Shog9

heh...

Well, that's easy then. Just sync production.

Bernard Meurer

I once proposed we physically punished those who force push to master, I didn't have much support though

Shog9

Eventually, you quietly change prod to staging, set up continuous integration, and detail the changes in a long email that no one will read.

Downgoat

00:22

@BernardMeurer what is wrong with force pushing to master?

Bernard Meurer

@Downgoat What's wrong with murder?

Downgoat

@BernardMeurer it's not legal ~~and is morally incorrect~~?

Bernard Meurer

HA

There

1. It's not legal (or it shouldn't be at least)
2. It's morally incorrect

Force pushing to master is literally the version control analogue of sexual abuse

Downgoat

@BernardMeurer I have forced pushed to master and I'm not in jail?

Bernard Meurer

Awesome, now I have a summer project :)

Downgoat

00:26

@BernardMeurer wait what ._.

should I have switch statements in Cheddar?

Alex A.

Yes

But make them good. The way R does switch is garbage.

Bernard Meurer

Source Control Inquisition

Downgoat

:/ making a language just keeps getting harder and harder...

Bernard Meurer

that should be a thing

Quill

Nobody expects the

Downgoat

00:31

@AlexA. how do I make the good?

Mars Ultor

implicit break if no return/continue maybe?

Quill

34

Q: How to use the switch statement in R functions?

I would like to use for my function in R the statement switch() to trigger different computation according to the value of the function's argument. For instance, in Matlab you can do that by writing switch(AA) case '1' ... case '2' ... case '3' ... end I found this...

r switch-statement

oh wow @AlexA. was right

epicTCK

@Downgoat var the = good :: sigh ::

Downgoat

Ok, so should I have the syntax something like:

Alex A.

@Quill Yeah. It's bad.

Mars Ultor

00:33

that will mean instead of case 0: case 1: to make it work for 0 and 1 you could have case 0, 1:

Downgoat

switch variable {
    case 2 {
       print "variable is 2"
    }
}

Nathan Merrill

@Downgoat No

Alex A.

@Downgoat I like this

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill I woudl aggree byt e oke like switch statements

:28638329 ? D:

Mars Ultor

^ Why not that?

Alex A.

00:34

@Shog9 That's an intriguing idea. Perhaps I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

Mars Ultor

switch variable {
    case 2:
       print "variable is 2";
}

Nathan Merrill

@Downgoat switch statements can always be done in a better way

Quill

@AlexA. or get a job where they use version control

Nathan Merrill

if you are doing string parsing, a Map<String, Function> is better

Downgoat

Do you prefer case statements with : or {?

Mars Ultor

00:36

Wait, this is a brace language, use {}

Even though most don't

Downgoat

okay

+1

braces are the best

Alex A.

@Quill I like to think I'm a fairly capable guy but so far no company seems to agree enough to want me. ._.

Mars Ultor

Don't use braces for properties though

Downgoat

@MarsUltor what do you mean by that?

Mars Ultor

It'll probably be annoying for properties: foo := {a {1}, b {2}}

Downgoat

00:37

@MarsUltor oh, no, I wouldn't do that

@MarsUltor is that supposed to be an object?

Mars Ultor

@Downgoat Yes

Liam

I think this challenge has an interesting idea. Would it work better if the submissions had to compile/run error free? codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/75899/…

Mars Ultor

Probably the only place not to use braces

Downgoat

should I make object syntax like JSON or like PHP?

Nathan Merrill

@Downgoat what's the goal of the language?

Downgoat

00:39

to be a high-level dynamic language

that has nice syntax

Mars Ultor

@Downgoat JSON

Downgoat

ok

Nathan Merrill

isn't that like the goal of every language?

Mars Ultor

@NathanMerrill C isn't high-level. Or dynamic.

Bernard Meurer

C is pretty high level

Nathan Merrill

00:40

in its day, it was

Downgoat

1 min ago, by Downgoat

that has nice syntax

this apparently wasn't Python's goal...

Bernard Meurer

Python's goal was to not suck I believe

and it somewhat achieved that

Downgoat

not every goal is achieved...

Nathan Merrill

it has a very well defined goal: python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020

Bernard Meurer

It's basically Perl but without having having the requirement for a beard to code in

Mars Ultor

00:42

class initializer should be like: ClassName(args) {property: value} IMO

Downgoat

@MarsUltor assignment is := in Cheddar. Should I use : in classes?

Mars Ultor

Hmm

I was thinking more like JSON syntax

but := works as well

Nathan Merrill

you could make all assignment :

would that even work?

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill oh, I would never do that

Nathan Merrill

I don't think I've ever seen code that does that

Downgoat

00:44

@NathanMerrill you could just change the assignment operator in the config, but you shouldn't

Mars Ultor

what will = be used for?

Quill

@AlexA. What language/s do you do for work?

Nathan Merrill

that's what you should do! Don't define a syntax

Downgoat

@MarsUltor equality checking

Nathan Merrill

the syntax is given as input

Downgoat

00:45

@MarsUltor I think assignment is used less than equality checking

Alex A.

@Quill Currently SAS but SAS is clunky, ancient garbage and I don't want to work with it anymore.

Downgoat

is it? I can still change it now...

Mars Ultor

== is instance checking then?

Downgoat

== has no defined use

Mars Ultor

You may want an instance checking operator though

Alex A.

00:46

@Downgoat Make it string concatenation as a big middle finger to the programming community.

Downgoat

@MarsUltor I'll make that an infix keyword

@AlexA. PHP has already done that

Chris Jester-Young

@Downgoat Like Python's is?

Downgoat

@ChrisJester-Young yeah

Mars Ultor

oh wait my bad, I mean foo has the same memory address as bar

Downgoat

@MarsUltor I will think about that, new operators will be hopefully really easy to add

Nathan Merrill

00:47

You know, somebody should make an easy to use syntax tree parser

but not attached to any language

therefore, you can simply write an interpreter that generates a syntax tree, and it'll make the rest of the language for you

Quill

@AlexA. so what's after that for you? Are you gonna go for a data science role with R? And weren't you learning Python as well?

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill like lex&yacc/bison?

Nathan Merrill

googling...

Alex A.

@Quill I think I have a pretty advanced knowledge of R and I already have a background in statistics. (Undergraduate minor and I'm currently doing a master's in applied statistics.) "Data science," though a term I've not yet come to accept, is where I'd like to be.

Mars Ultor

@NathanMerrill That's ANTLR

Nathan Merrill

00:50

no, antlr simply recognizes grammars

Alex A.

@NathanMerrill Sounds like a middle school English teacher

Mars Ultor

@NathanMerrill And parses syntax

Nathan Merrill

this takes a tree of "Class with member X, function Y", and does all of the compiling

Quill

@AlexA. relevant, maybe

Nathan Merrill

I'm not talking about the String to Syntax tree step, I'm talking the Syntax tree to asm step

Mars Ultor

00:52

@NathanMerrill The easiest way is probably to use an ANTLR-generated tree

Downgoat

@Quill that reminds me of this programming video

Mars Ultor

@Downgoat BTW, test.js is broken

Downgoat

reallly? checking

Alex A.

@Quill Hah. I just don't really see how it's distinct from statistics, since the same tools of statistical inference and analysis apply, yet it seems to be surging in popularity without really mentioning stats anywhere.

Downgoat

@MarsUltor oh, I don't think I've built yet

Quill

00:53

@AlexA. terminology is important, perhaps

on a side note, do you have your moderator here on your resume?

Alex A.

@Quill What do you mean?

Mars Ultor

@Downgoat Oh wait nvm

Alex A.

@Quill Actually no

Nathan Merrill

yeah, Lex/Yacc is not what I'm looking for

Downgoat

@MarsUltor I also haven't finished the property.es6, so it might now work

Quill

00:54

@AlexA. Perhaps "stats" is a boring term for prospective employees and employers, "data scientist" sounds more futuristic and cooler

Alex A.

@Quill Oh, I see. Yeah, I think you're right.

Quill

PPCG is today's featured site on the Stack Exchange home page

Downgoat

@Quill I'm not surprised, we are pretty great ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Quill

@Downgoat that's true :)

Doorknob

Fun fact: The Ubykh language has 84 distinct consonants and... 2 vowels.

3

Downgoat

01:04

Are gotos inherently bad, or can I use them in certain cases?

Quill

@Downgoat gotos are bad

Downgoat

are you calling me bad, gotos bad, or both?

El'endia Starman

@Downgoat I've only ever used gotos in Blitz 2D/3D when it was near impossible to do what I wanted any other way.

Downgoat

well I'm using JavaScript so no matter what I do, it's bad...

El'endia Starman

You don't have to make it worse...

Alex A.

01:07

@Doorknob Is it related to Welsh? :P

Doorknob

haha

Nathan Merrill

Gotos are never needed

if they are, its the fault of the language design

Alex A.

Oh, I was about to say I use them often in SAS macros

But that's the language's fault

So I feel better about it

Doorknob

Oh, also, an alternate pronunciation of its name (spoken in the same language) has the amazing /ʙ̥/ bilabial trill sound.

New Main Posts

0

Q: Child Phenotypes

The Challenge Everybody loves genetics, right? In this challenge, you will be given the genotypes of two parents. You must find each possible genotype of a child produced by the parents. You must account for dominant and recessive alleles as well as incomplete dominance and codominance. An exam...

code-golf

Alex A.

01:08

> Everybody loves genetics, right?

Downgoat

does anyone know why this code isn't working:

Alex A.

get rekt, Raymond

Downgoat

pastebin.com/d17N5q6T

seems to be an error at line 49

nevermind, I forgot a parenthesis

CrazyPython

Why is it called "The Nineteenth Byte" anyways?

Doorknob

31

A: Let's think of a creative name for our chatroom

Well, the traditional generic name for the country club bar is "the nineteenth hole", which suggests The Nineteenth Byte or something like that.

Alex A.

01:10

ninja'd

Downgoat

31

A: Let's think of a creative name for our chatroom

Well, the traditional generic name for the country club bar is "the nineteenth hole", which suggests The Nineteenth Byte or something like that.

ninja'd

CrazyPython

@Doorknob Thanks.

Downgoat

\o/ my property parser works!!!!!!

oh, wait, there's no output

CrazyPython

@Downgoat Huh?

Downgoat

Shit

CrazyPython

01:12

What "property parser"?

Downgoat

@CrazyPython I'm making a programming language called Cheddar so I'm trying to make a parser to parse the property names, e.g. foo.bar.baz("a", 24)

Quill

how do you do a single quote match in regex? my regexfu needs training

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat I do know java!

Downgoat

@Quill '((?=\\*)\\.|.)*?'

Alex A.

@Quill You mean a regex that matches a single quote?

Ashwin Gupta

01:14

@Downgoat I wanna help you make Cheddar! (What's cheddar?)

Quill

@AlexA. one of these '

Alex A.

@Quill Then your regex is '

Downgoat

@AshwinGupta it's a Programming language I'm making

if you know deterministic finite automata, the code's logic should come easily to you

CrazyPython

@Downgoat Have you tried nltk or another natural language lib? That way you can parse it with strict grammar definitions instead of just regex.

Alex A.

If you only need to match one particular character, the character alone suffices as a regex since it will only match that character

Ashwin Gupta

01:15

@Downgoat seems cool, I'd love to help but I probably won't be very useful since I don't know very advanced things. I bet I'd learn alot thought trying to help. If you give me some easy jobs I could do stuff

Downgoat

@CrazyPython I'm not using regex?

CrazyPython

What are you using then?

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat idk what that is but I'll read up on it.

Doorknob

@AlexA. -1 can't match *

Downgoat

Deterministic finite automaton

In theory of computation, a branch of theoretical computer science, a deterministic finite automaton (DFA)—also known as deterministic finite accepter (DFA) and deterministic finite state machine—is a finite state machine that accepts/rejects finite strings of symbols and only produces a unique computation (or run) of the automaton for each input string. 'Deterministic' refers to the uniqueness of the computation. In search of simplest models to capture the finite state machines, McCulloch and Pitts were among the first researchers to introduce a concept similar to finite automaton in 1943. The...

Ashwin Gupta

01:16

found that thanks ;D.

CrazyPython

I mean, to parse the language

Downgoat

@CrazyPython oh, lots of code.

CrazyPython

Yeah a natural language thing would be useful

thats how they did python

epicTCK

python: There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. so basically the opposite of TMTOWTDI perl

Downgoat

@epicTCK TMTOWTDI?

epicTCK

01:17

theres more than one way to do it

Dennis

There's more than one way to do it.

Downgoat

Mar 17 at 3:36, by Vihan

nevermind I googled it

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat So in other words its just a series of steps started by an input character sequence?

epicTCK

@Dennis Hmph. I have been ninja'd

maybe b/c my das keyboard is taken apart right now I have to use my laptop keyboard... D:

CrazyPython

How many of you guys have voted in the primary?

Downgoat

01:19

@AshwinGupta yeah, it's basically defining the syntax as "sentences". Based on what token is occurred, the interpreter goes to a different state and parses from there.

Chris Jester-Young

@CrazyPython Over 300.

Downgoat

@CrazyPython Probably every one who's in here

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat okay I sort of get it, so what do you need it for?

CrazyPython

@Chris _Jester I mean directly, you, not the community.

Downgoat

@AshwinGupta It's basically how the lexer is structured, /tok/ contains the lexer / tokenizer classes. /literals/ contains the states and /parser/ contains the parsers

Nathan Merrill

01:21

zimbu.org

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat got you.

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill regex = BAD for making a parser

regex is not recursive

recursion is important

_Tokens: [Object]

Kenny Lau

use retina to make your parser lol

Downgoat

JavaScript is great for debugging...

they might as well say _Tokens: [Some Value]

CrazyPython

@Downgoat I'd use a grammar specification, just like python did

Nathan Merrill

01:22

@Downgoat that's just for their switch statements

Ashwin Gupta

This es6 lang seems alot more like Java then JS.

Downgoat

@NathanMerrill still

CrazyPython

I'm getting a steady stream of rep from this (codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/76604/…) question despite about 8 down votes and a blip of -2 for a while

Nathan Merrill

regex in switch sounds like a good idea

Downgoat

@CrazyPython eh, I'll write up a formal grammar spec later

Nathan Merrill

01:23

zimbu.org/Home/inheritance-example

but look at that syntax

all caps for keywords

CrazyPython

@Downgoat No, I mean grammar for actually parsing the code nltk.org

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat where can I get a compiler for es6?

Downgoat

@CrazyPython Oh, I'm not planning to do that.

@AshwinGupta use babel-node

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat and just to be clear, the language is java or js?

Downgoat

JS, but pretty similar to Java

Ashwin Gupta

01:26

mkay

Alright downgoat, what should I work on?

Downgoat

if you can make an object literal parser that would be great.

use:

import CheddarLiteral from './literal';
import * as CheddarError from '../consts/err';
export default class <Class Name> {
    exec() {
        // this instanceof CheddarLiteral === true
    }
}

you may have to dig through the code to figure out how CheddarLiteral works though

Quill

/\w'|\w/ig.exec`R'R`

why won't this match both in the string?

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat okay I'll try when I can. I'm honestly probably useless though.

Downgoat

@Quill exec only does single match

use string.match(regex)

Ashwin Gupta

@Downgoat what type of literals will you accept for objects?

Quill

01:31

thanks

what kind of single match returns an array...

Downgoat

@Quill JavaScript single match

Chris Jester-Young

@Quill Presumably ones with multiple capture groups, but that depends on what language you're using. (I'm thinking mostly Perl and Ruby.)

Mars Ultor

@Downgoat What's broken?

Downgoat

In Cheddar? function calls, they seem to enter an infinite loop. I'm debugging right now

New Meta Posts

0

Q: Change the stackexhange subdomain to "ppcg.stackexchange.com" and let the original redirect

A large amount (20-60%) of the questions here are not code golf questions. It might also confuse new users.

discussion feature-request

Dennis

01:42

9

Such nice, round numbers...

Doorknob

Congratulations on reaching 70k @Dennis! \o/ \o/

16

Downgoat

@Dennis Congrats on 70K!!!

ninja'd

Dennis

Thanks! :)

Downgoat

also, congrats on 1K answers, that's a lot of people outgolfed

Dennis

hahaha

New Main Posts

01:49

0

Q: Final Fantasy XV UNCOVERED!

Since I am INSANELY hyped for the Final Fantasy XV Uncovered event, I want you to write me a program to tell me when it is!!! The input Your take input in the form of HH:MM XDT, where HH is a number in the range 1-12, MM is a number between 0-60, and XDT is a time zone, with X being one of E (e...

code-golf

Quill

oh no 108 bytes, well, that didn't turn out how I though

Alex A.

@Doorknob Or .

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