The Nineteenth Byte

El'endia Starman

05:00

Humph. Test*ing* Test ing Testing

Well, that sucks. Zero width spaces don't make the markdown work like it should.

Anonymous

First SQL answer by me:

Anonymous

0

A: Golf the xᵗʰ root of x

SQL (MySQL), 60 bytes CREATE FUNCTION G(X REAL) RETURNS REAL RETURN POWER(X,1./X); Caps lock is cruise control for cool golf.

Alex A.

Test*ing*

Testing

@El'endiaStarman ^ works if you omit the zwsp entirely

El'endia Starman

......I could've sworn that was broken before.

Alex A.

Me too actually

El'endia Starman

05:02

Well, whaddya know. SE Chat became better.

Downgoat

@Quill what is PopcornSE and why is it controlling my computer. Did you intall a virs on my compouter?!?! >:U

Quill

oh you installed my userscript <3

it's a flag retainer

it lets you see the flags you missed

Downgoat

@Quill uh

I'm not a mod

@Quill I did??

Quill

>=10k network users can see chat flags

Downgoat

oh

chat flags are very rare. brb uninstalling

Quill

05:04

@Downgoat maybe you were drunkgoat when you did it

> chat flags are very rare

haha

Downgoat

what is so funnt

@Quill yeah. I felt like I was upgoat...

Jester Tran

Suppose (X,d) is a metric space and Y is a subset of X. What is the difference between the following statements:
1. Y is closed.
2. Y is closed in X?

El'endia Starman

$Mathematics$ Mathematics

Associated with Math.SE; for both general discussion & math qu...

5

2

Oh, I see you just posted that message over there.

Anonymous

@JesterTran 4 bytes

Quill

in<space>X? I count 5

Dennis

05:10

6 if we go by the edit distance. If we troll, we should do it properly.

Anonymous

Bytes matter, not Levenshtein distance

Anonymous

(unless it's one of those challenges)

Jester Tran

@El'endiaStarman Is it possible to make a plugin or something for google chrome such that each time I visit chat.stackexchange, it asks me to enter a message which will then be distributed to checked chat rooms just like how I did it manually (go through each room and enter question.)

Quill

no

El'endia Starman

@JesterTran Maybe, but you shouldn't do that anyway.

Quill

05:11

asking questions / saying the same thing in multiple chat rooms is bad

Dennis

@JesterTran I'm sure that's possible, but you really, really shouldn't do it.

Quill

Most chat rooms don't take very well to help vamping or multi-chat spamming

Dennis

Questions about metric spaces are pretty off topic here anyway.

@El'endiaStarman IIRC it works in chat, but not on the main/meta sites.

Alex A.

@JesterTran In general you should seek to find the appropriate place for your question before asking it so as only to have to ask it once.

That would be a perfectly fine question on Mathematics itself, not just in their chat.

El'endia Starman

^

Quill

05:21

Chat rooms aren't supposed to have topic outside of their parent site's scope anyway... but that's another issue entirely ;-)

Anonymous

@Quill According to the original rules, yes. But chat rooms have grown beyond the original vision/scope, and even the CMs admit that the rules regarding chat could use some tweaking.

Quill

s/original/current

and yeah, chat has grown a bit

Anonymous

"a bit"

Alex A.

@Mego [citation-needed] regarding CMs

Anonymous

296

Q: Toward a philosophy of Chat

TL;DR: The Problem This keeps happening in chat: Surprise at flags on vulgar messages. Language that would invariably get your comments deleted on the main site occasionally gets flagged and deleted in chat. Confusion reigns. Controversial topics leading to bickering and name-calling. Folks b...

Quill

05:26

> I said at the start that my primary goal here is to re-write the guidance that is given to folks using chat; indeed, several of my co-workers are already hard at work on this.

Alex A.

Right, they mean tweaking to get the rooms back toward the initial vision of a place for on-topic but less structured conversation relating to a given topic. Surely The Nineteenth Byte is not what any of them had in mind.

Quill

I doubt TNB's off-topic conversations are the cause of focus on the CMs' minds

~~When was the last time TNB had a flag~~ actually never mind, I have it retained ;p

El'endia Starman

The CMs probably don't mind TNB very much at all. We have a really nice room culture.

Alex A.

That's not what I mean

I mean in terms of a place with discussion not even remotely related to the site's purpose

Anonymous

My interpretation was "chat is being used entirely differently from what we had in mind, and so we want to re-write the guidelines to better fit the current usage while still maintaining the original principles with which we started chat"

Quill

05:30

@AlexA. yeah

Sp3000

@JesterTran As Dennis says, questions like that are off-topic here, although arguably it's more on-topic than some of the things that get said here. Having said that though, in true Stack Exchange style - what have you tried?

Anonymous

I'd argue (probably unsuccessfully) that our random discussions here are beneficial for the site, because challenges have been inspired by chat a significant number of times.

Quill

For the most part, the SE rooms are less of a focus for the mods; individual site mods usually police the rooms pretty well

Sp3000

Maybe it's just me, but I'd probably prefer a challenge inspired by metric spaces than a challenge inspired by avocadoes

9

Alex A.

^ agreed

Anonymous

05:32

I'd prefer if people stopped beating memes like avocados into the ground, but I appear to be in the minority

Alex A.

While I have nothing against random or varied chat discussions in general, I do think we could stand to give on-topic discussion the right of way when it happens rather than drowning it in memes. :P

Anonymous

I do make an effort to drop off-topic discussions whenever an on-topic discussion starts

Alex A.

Not everyone does though. Even if one or two people do it, this is such an active room that it unfortunately doesn't seem to help all that much.

Jester Tran

@Sp3000 Is this in reply to my metric space question?

Anonymous

The best we can do is lead by example and give gentle nudges in that direction :)

Solver

05:35

I am still here!

Alex A.

@JesterTran It is indeed. You can click the arrow that appears on the left side of the message and it'll link to the message it's replying to. :)

Sp3000

@JesterTran Yes - what have you tried with the question so far?

Anonymous

@Sp3000 If I knew anything about metric spaces other than the fact that Euclidean and Minkowsky spaces are important in math and physics, I might try writing one

xnor

How would "check if an adjacency matrix represents a metric space" be?

maybe it's too much about just iterating over triples to check for triangle inequality

Alex A.

@xnor It sounds nice! I think it'd take some careful explaining to make it accessible for the less mathy folks but I think that's certainly doable.

Sp3000

05:41

I guess it might be interesting if there's a better way for triangle inequality, but otherwise it'd be like checking associativity for groups and I think that's probably already been done

xnor

@Sp3000 yeah, i think you're right

Jester Tran

@AlexA. It's all the way up there, how can you see it?

xnor

@Sp3000 and indeed group-checking has been done: codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/49000/20260

Jester Tran

@Sp3000 I think there is no difference

Sp3000

@JesterTran What makes you think that?

zyabin101

05:45

Hello

Jester Tran

Suppose (X,d) is a metric space and Y is a subset of X. What is the difference between the following statements:
1. Y is closed.
2. Y is closed in X?

1 => 2: Y is closed and Y is a subset of X, hence Y is closed in X.
2 => 1: Y is closed in X, hence Y is closed.

xnor

@JesterTran That's basically just restating the claim.

Jester Tran

@xnor therefore, no difference

xnor

What does it mean for a subset of a metric space to be closed?

Jester Tran

@xnor It means the that subset is closed and fully contained (or equal) to the metric space

Sp3000

05:49

Hmm, I don't think that's quite what xnor means. e.g., is (0, 1) closed?

Anonymous

06:01

I believe I understand what it means for a subset to be closed

Anonymous

Consider the Euclidean metric space on R x R

Anonymous

A subset of that metric space would be the unit circle

Anonymous

Whether it is closed or open depends on whether or not you are including the points along the circumference of the circle in the subset

Anonymous

e.g. whether in polar form it's theta in [0, 2*pi), r in [0, 1] or theta in [0, 2*pi), r in [0, 1)

Anonymous

Or in rectangular form, sqrt(x^2+y^2) <= 1 or sqrt(x^2+y^2) < 1

New Sandboxed Posts

06:06

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Identify the Conic Section code-golf math Given 5 distinct points on a two-dimensional plane, determine the type of conic section formed by the points. The output shall be one of circle, hyperbola, ellipse, or parabola. Rules The points will be in general linear position, meaning that no thre...

Mars Ultor

@Mego That's what Wikipedia says

Jester Tran

@Mego Yes, a subset (Y) is closed if it contains all of it's boundary points. Boundary points are points where if you draw any disk with radius r > 0 and there contains points lying in Y and contains point lying not in Y

Solver

06:22

Hello?

Jester Tran

@Solver Yo

Solver

@JesterTran hiya

@muddyfish are you there?

Jester Tran

@Solver What's up?

Solver

too lonely.

@JesterTran bored. :P

and coding

Jester Tran

What are you coding?

Solver

06:26

Trying to use impress.js

Jester Tran

@Solver I'll try that after I finish with C :P

Solver

XD

Anonymous

One does not simply finish with C

Anonymous

There is always another bug, gotcha, or obscure use case lurking around the corner

Katenkyo

^

Mars Ultor

06:32

@Mego s/use/edge/

@Solver ಠ_ಠ This is PPCG, you're not supposed to use impress.js, you're supposed to create the impress.js designer

Solver

@MarsUltor &whateverface:

so silent

@zyabin101 are you alive?

@Downgoat Gulp and Grunt are both task runners, but gulp is newer and just better :P And more human-readable.

AND @Downgoat my solution does work because I tested it myself, so ping me and tell me that my help was useful - pleez it meanz a lotz to meee

mınxomaτ

06:51

Found this on SO: "My crc32 was c8cb204, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt!"

Solver

@mınxomaτ are you there?

zyabin101

@Solver Yup.

Katenkyo

07:15

I feel like we're having less challenges these days

Mars Ultor

@Katenkyo Because we graduated

Katenkyo

Didn't think it would have this kind of effect :/

Anonymous

Less challenges isn't so bad, as long as the quality is maintained

Katenkyo

hum, we have like 1/2 challenge closed as off-topic, unclear or whatever...

Anonymous

Graduation brought a lot of new users to the site

Anonymous

07:22

It's not that surprising that more new users -> more closed challenges

Solver

Half of the closed challenges are mine :(

Katenkyo

I think people should try to actually do some submissions to existing challenge to understand what's interesting in them. You can't properly design a game if you've never played one!

@Solver ahah, I don't think you have hundreds of closed challenges :p

Solver

I SURE DO LIKE IT WHEN MY ALARM CLOCK GOES OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

@Katenkyo true say

Katenkyo

calm down on caps! ^^

Solver

K

Katenkyo

07:31

Also, my alarm only wake me up when I'm supposed to, so it never bothered me :D

I once had a talk with my neighbor, who couldn't sleep because my alarm was ringing during all night... Never slept so well :°

Solver

:P The default time for my alarm clock is 1200 am

Katenkyo

I think it is for all :p

Solver

So if i accidentally set it, it goes off

Katenkyo

as it's technically 0000 ^^

Solver

When my alarm clock resets, its to 2:00 1999 XD

Katenkyo

07:35

Oo

should be 00:00 1970-01-01 !

Solver

Im not even that old :D

Anyway i am going to class so may not be around for long.

Katenkyo

CS classes?

Solver

School.

Still in education :P

Youth spirit

Oh no, school is just starting

Mars Ultor

Seems like there are actually more school-age people here than not

Solver

LLel

Katenkyo

07:49

@MarsUltor yes, it's nice to see that ^^

Solver

I am in school now so see ya.

Katenkyo

Have a nice day

muddyfish

@Solver I'm in lessons now

Katenkyo

08:06

It would be funny to have a professor and one of his students meeting on 19th byte

Mars Ultor

@Katenkyo I'm not sure how many professors go on The Nineteenth Byte though

@flawr When you view it on Firefox in its own tab, the favicon fades from black to white

flawr

Haha, so cool=)

Katenkyo

@MarsUltor It's sad, some challenges here would be great tools for those learning CS

flawr

Aliasing sucks.

Mars Ultor

@Katenkyo Not the code golf ones

Obviously, they're very bad for good code style

Katenkyo

08:11

@MarsUltor Hum, codegolf will force you to look for other algorythm, other functions, other approche

Mars Ultor

but the fastest-code and code-challenges promote good style and good performance

Katenkyo

I'm not only speaking about code style, but about puzzle solving and manipulating a language

Mars Ultor

@Katenkyo Yeah, but short isn't always good

It's usually slower

Katenkyo

I know, I know, I'm not saying that for learning good practice, but for learning how to solve a problem

Mars Ultor

But still, aren't code-challenge and fasstest-code better for that?

Katenkyo

08:13

I know people who would benefit from that, after 3 years studying cs, they can't even do a Java program alone

Mars Ultor

@Katenkyo Apparently most CS graduates cannot write a program

Look on all the Quora and reddit thread/question things

I think it's pretty unbelievable they can't even code up a FizzBuzz program. After three years.

Katenkyo

@MarsUltor they're good when you're mostly comfronted to known problem, codegolf enforce parallel-thinking to be optimised, thus helping you to find new solution to not solved problem

Amazing isn't the word I would use but it sure is something

Optimizer

@Solver Dead Or Alive?

Mars Ultor

wonders why JS is so bad

Optimizer

wonders why you don't know JS at all

Mars Ultor

08:24

@Optimizer ?

Optimizer

@MarsUltor ?

Mars Ultor

@Optimizer ^^^

Optimizer

@MarsUltor ^^^

Katenkyo

The last time I used JS seems so far... I doubt I could use it again

Mars Ultor

@Geobits C# foreach(var /*or int*/ i in thing) > java for(int i:thing)

New Sandboxed Posts

08:31

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Primonacci Sequence code-golf sequence primes fibonacci Let us define the sequence p(n) as the sequence of prime numbers. The first few terms of this sequence (starting with p(0)) are: 2. 3. 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 23, 29, 31 Let us also define the sequence F(n) as the Fibonacci sequence. The first...

zyabin101

08:42

Infinite sum bounty ends in less than 5 hours ;_;

Lembik

@zyabin101 it does!

Mars Ultor

@zyabin101 ?

Lembik

@zyabin101 but I am interested that you are interested in it

zyabin101

08:58

23

Q: Approximating a special case of the Riemann Theta function

This challenge is to write fast code that can perform a computationally difficult infinite sum. Input An n by n matrix P with integer entries that are smaller than 100 in absolute value. When testing I am happy to provide input to your code in any sensible format your code wants. The default wi...

math fastest-code

flawr

I know this is slightly off topic, but this video is hillarious=)

Discover the Missouri Star Quilt Company!

►

Solver

@Optimizer Alive!

Lembik

@zyabin101 I know what the challenge is :) I am just wondering what your interest is.. that is are you writing code for it

?

zyabin101

@Lembik Nope.

Lembik

@zyabin101 or were you just kindly advertising it?

zyabin101

08:59

@Lembik Yup.

New Main Posts

0

Q: Where is this coding game site with restricted editing?

There once was a coding game site in which the editor restricted the editing possibilities to a few places in the existing code. It was organized in levels and the objective was - I think - to free something by changing the walls. It was pretty good, because an experienced programmer could finis...

game

Lembik

@zyabin101 thanks :)

zyabin101

vtc-plz codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/77714/…

Solver

@Optimizer Though i will delete my account myself and award my rep as bounties to someone else. When i come back i will reclaim my rep

In class btw

zyabin101

@zyabin101 s/5/4/

Mars Ultor

09:05

wonders if we should start a reply chain

Like how reddit has link chains

No, as in a certain easily searchable phrase

Optimizer

09:19

@Solver looks like a nice plan! I am not sure if mods will see it as a bad thing (giving rep to someone for now and then taking back.. in bulk..)

zyabin101

@Optimizer I think they will.

But I leave it to @StackCodeGolf/mods.

Katenkyo

I think it is a bad idea too..

It's abusing the system, and putting some +XXX marks were there shouldn't be one

Mars Ultor

10:04

@Solver You shouldn't do that. Just get the mods to temporarily ban you

or something

Like VTCAKAVSMoACE did IIRC

zyabin101

MediaWiki apparently disabled downloads for their newest 1.26.2 version. BUT I MUST DOWNLOAD IT ;_;

Yup, MW disabled the downloads.

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Between fractions The challenge: You will need to create code that takes 3 inputs; 2 integers and a string Critieria: The string will always be a fraction; example "1/4" The second integer will always be "larger" than the first integer. Input can be via STDIN or other language appropriate ...

Nathan Merrill

11:31

Command–query separation

Command–query separation (CQS) is a principle of imperative computer programming. It was devised by Bertrand Meyer as part of his pioneering work on the Eiffel programming language. It states that every method should either be a command that performs an action, or a query that returns data to the caller, but not both. In other words, Asking a question should not change the answer. More formally, methods should return a value only if they are referentially transparent and hence possess no side effects. == Connection with design by contract == Command–query separation is particularly well suited...

^ way cool

basically, if you are querying data, your function must be functional

Solver

11:46

wat

I am going for lunch break seeya

zyabin101

@Solver o/

Optimizer

12:23

@QPaysTaxes I am surprised it doesn't have more..

Maltysen

@QPaysTaxes i guess people are curious :P

Doorknob

12:38

@QPaysTaxes Especially since the announcement is pinned :D

That one was me, and the one right below it on the starboard was Alex (the vacuuming one) :P

I thought his was more clever/amusing actually :P

New Sandboxed Posts

12:53

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Colorize! In Ruby, the colorize gem allows you to output text to the terminal in pretty colors: It uses the ANSI color standard to tell the terminal how to color things, then trusts that the terminal will do the right thing. For this challenge, you can too. What you'll do is take a set of co...

Geobits

@MarsUltor I agree that in is nicer than :, but I'd rather for than foreach.

Mars Ultor

@Geobits I guess, but foreach reads more nicely, like: for each var element in array

Geobits

Either way, they both seem to work properly, which is more than can be said for some languages ;)

Mars Ultor

@Geobits It's kinda weird though how Java has the extremely verbose extends and implements but shorter foreach-loop syntax

Geobits

It's because they just don't call it foreach. It's just enhanced for for some reason.

Mars Ultor

13:04

Also, TIL apparently C# has bad features. Like implicit accessors/mutators (obj.foo = 1 not obj.setFoo(1)) and subscript operator overloading

Geobits

I don't see anything wrong with obj.foo = 1 in many cases. As long as you private the ones that need it, using a get/setter for every single thing is overkill.

Mars Ultor

@Geobits Apparently using the implicit { get; set; } on each property is good practice though, I think.

zyabin101

Installed Kiwix with Simple English Wikipedia, now indexing. Takes a lot of time.

Even worse: I have 512 MB of memory not reserved for the OS.

Mars Ultor

13:19

@QPaysTaxes Image is inconsistent, middle pipes | should be blue

jQuery, partly completed: a=>b=>$('<div/>').css('font','monospace').text(a.split(',')).appendTo('body')

@QPaysTaxes How many languages have ANSI output support though?

Lembik

I may have mentioned this before.. but codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/77212/9206 needs to get an award at some point if we are giving them out

at least that is my view

Mars Ultor

@Lembik Then that probably means Dennis' Phi function answer and primo's (IIRC) 78-byte brainfuck Hello World deserve them too

Nathan Merrill

I'm joining the train of "let's make a language", and making a language called Elegance. Many of you will probably hate it, because it'll be quite different than the languages today, but I designed it according to what I think languages should do, as opposed to what they currently do

Katenkyo

Makes me think, I should continue to write Taple (a tape language using a lua-table as a tape :))

Mars Ultor

efficient?

Lembik

13:29

@MarsUltor ok.. doesn't sound bad to me

@MarsUltor although I don't know those answers sadly I am aware that some of Dennis's answers are awesome at least

Mars Ultor

> Command-query separation

really bad for multithreading

Nathan Merrill

I think the opposite: Functional programming is easy to multithread

Mars Ultor

@NathanMerrill But Command-query seperation is not

look it up on wikipedia

Nathan Merrill

right, and the example they gave is terrible

Martin Büttner

@NathanMerrill sounds nice except for code style enforcing thing ;)

Mars Ultor

13:32

@NathanMerrill 0/10 it's not spelt right

@NathanMerrill terrible how?

Nathan Merrill

queries allow you do do anything you want to do in a functional language. So, because command-query is a superset of a functional language, you can stick to the functional parts and do multithreadedness just fine.

that said, its also possible to have commands work as well, but the mutex is simply a property of the class

basically, the example they gave on wikipedia is trying to do two things at once: Increment and return

@MartinBüttner You'll be able to disable it via compiler options, but I don't see why people hate code style enforcement

Mars Ultor

@NathanMerrill code style enforcement?

Martin Büttner

there always comes a point where a human has a good reason to violate the enforced code style to improve the clarity of the code. you can't possibly foresee all the ways the language's syntax might be used.

muddyfish

The enforcement of code style

Mars Ultor

but

shouldn't the parser just correct code style itself?

muddyfish

13:43

Why?

Mars Ultor

I mean, code style enforcement is pretty much pointless. If the parser can detect code style errors, then it should be trivial to fix them as well.

muddyfish

Oh you mean understanding noncompliant code?

Mars Ultor

Yeah

muddyfish

Depends how you program the parser

Mars Ultor

I mean, if Nathan wanted code style to be enforced it would be much less of a hassle for the parser to fix it for you

muddyfish

13:47

'Fix' it. It's hard to pragmatically write good code

That does the same as bad code

Mars Ultor

@muddyfish ?

Example?

muddyfish

I'm not certain on what you mean but I gtg

Fricative Melon

What if your programming language enforced code style in a similar way to Python does with indentation, where the proper code style is required to disambiguate code (if semicolons weren't allowed)? Then the code style would be a part of the language as opposed to an added restriction that provides no new possibilities.

New Main Posts

5

Q: Subsequence Substitution

Most languages come with a built-in to search a string for all occurrences of a given substring and replace those with another. I don't know of any language that generalises this concept to (not necessarily contiguous) subsequences. So that's your task in this challenge. The input will consist o...

code-golf string subsequence

Katenkyo

@FricativeMelon there's also languages where you can do eveything in a one liner, and without semicolons ^^

Mathematics

Transcript for

$Mathematics$ Mathematics