The Nineteenth Byte

Calvin's Hobbies

00:00

Let's see how this one goes.

ais523

my opinion is that challenges are often required to have extra restrictions that make them worse, rather than better, as a consequence of needing to be designed for a single winner

ETHproductions

If I recall correctly, we had a few "catalog" questions a while back that, while being code-golf still, were specifically designed to not have a single winner, but a best answer per language. Perhaps something like that might work with your challenge.

ais523

for example, this site heavily prioritizes submitting the first version of a program you get to work, rather than aiming to improve on secondary conditions (e.g. making the program more readable without compromising the main victory condition)

catalog is mostly used for very basic problems like hello world

ETHproductions

Yes, I mean the challenge could be structured something like a catalog. It doesn't have to actually be catalog

That's not even a real tag, I realize after posting it :P

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Find the shortest pangrams from a word list [Sandbox note: this doesn't have a victory condition yet] string natural-language A pangram is a string that contains every letter a-z of the English alphabet, case-insensitive. (It's OK if the pangram contains more than one copy of a letter, or if it...

ETHproductions

00:04

@ais523 "improve on secondary conditions (e.g. making the program more readable)" In what ways can you make code more readable while it's fully golfed?

ais523

more descriptive variable names, for one

often there are ties between multiple different ways to write the same thing, and some will work better than others

ETHproductions

@ais523 I try to do that from the beginning so I don't go crazy trying to remember what each single-char var is

@ais523 and I agree with posting the most readable way to do the same task, but there isn't really a "readable" aspect to golfing languages unless you really know the language, and even then the solutions have pretty much the same readability.

ais523

sometimes you need filler bytes in a solution, making those fun/interesting/informative can be a challenge in its own right, and it's one that people very rarely bother with here due to speed being a tiebreak

ETHproductions

Well, an answer with cleverly chosen filler bytes is often upvoted more than one without

New Main Posts

0

Q: Showcase what makes your programming language different from all others

This challenge is a place where people can show off what exactly makes their preferred programming language different from all the others out there. Does it have unique syntax? Is it a rare paradigm? Does it use strange characters? Stuff like that. This is another exploratory popularity-contest ...

popularity-contest

DrMcMoylex

00:14

0_0

ais523

unless it's a modpost

DrMcMoylex

Not sure how I feel about that challenge

ais523

posting that right now was a bad idea I think

ETHproductions

It's too broad by our (current) standards...

ais523

I also think it should be closed as too broad until we decide what to do about it

I think it's clearly intended to make a point

I also also think it shouldn't be downvoted or upvoted right now

ETHproductions

00:18

I have other things to do with my life, so I'm going to leave the discussion right here and come back at a later time.

Calvin's Hobbies

00:36

@xnor That way might work but I do think this way has the advantage of someone being able to craft a seious piece of work for an anwer. 20 good snippets that show effort sound better than one snippet that got lucky and zoomed to the top

Anyway, I'd like to see how it plays out as is for now

El'endia Starman

Separately, why have each answer have a bunch of snippets? As I understand, each one is separate and demonstrates a different language feature. If each one had its own answer, we could vote on them individually. And, posters wouldn't have to collect a bunch together or edit in additional ones. — xnor 10 mins ago

I wonder if it might be possible to have language-specific showcases.

That'd make them like tips.

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Tips for creating polyglots What general tips do you have for making polyglots, or choosing languages that are easy to write polyglots for a specific task? Please post only the general tips that could be applied to many languages. One tip per answer.

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Regex polyglot Write a regex that works in at least 2 regex flavors, and match only the name of the flavor it is running in. For example, your regex could match only Perl in Perl regex, and only PCRE in PCRE. You could use any acceptable name of the flavor, such as PCRE PHP PHP regex Perl Comp...

New Main Posts

00:52

0

Q: Program template for printing *any* string

Write a program with the following properties: When run as-is, the program produces no output (i.e. 0 bytes of output). There is a location within the program (of your choice: it could be at the start, end, or somewhere in the middle) with the following property: modifying the program via placi...

code-golf source-layout

xnor

01:15

@El'endiaStarman I do wish there were more dynamic ways to share golfing knowledge than tips questions

many people learn better by doing something themselves or at least seeing things in action, than by reading explanations

i tried something with golf practice problems, but those got closed

@Calvin'sHobbies i do like requiring posters to actually spend effort

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

@Downgoat So your life is in total 8.3 days? 0_o

New Meta Posts

01:34

0

Q: Is a double popularity contest a bad idea?

I have an Idea for a set of four challenges. The first round is a double popularity contest. Specifically two questions each linking each other with identical requirements but different judging requirements. Each answer should be posted to both contests but should score differently in each. Speci...

discussion challenges

Calvin's Hobbies

We could reopen just to see how it goes <3 codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/100928/26997

Mitch Schwartz

learn to swim

wat

02:56

hey @everyone

can someone invite me to the TNB steam grou please?

DrMcMoylex

You'd have to ask Alex. iirc He's the only admin

El'endia Starman

@xnor Indeed. One thing I hope to do with Pytek's docs is to have inline interactive snippets. Perhaps a site could be built with such a feature, maybe using @Dennis's TIO backend.

Dennis

I'm currently rewriting the I/O format of the backend to simplify it. Access is allowed from all origins.

I'm also planning an official API and a simplified frontend for iframes.

Nathan Merrill

03:34

so you can TIO on directly on the post?

that's cool

Dennis

The backend already makes this possible (there's a user script that runs all TIO links in the page automatically), but we should be able to improve on that.

Nathan Merrill

also, per Showcase issue: would it be a bad idea to have a different showcase for each language?

I don't think that having lots of questions is a bad thing, and it'd certainly make finding/learning about a specific language easier

Dennis

That may be true, but PPCG's goal isn't to teach about programming languages.

Nathan Merrill

...but if we make an exception for showcase, I don't see the line

xnor

the showcase is on the wrong side of the line, but we're making the exception anyway because people like it

Nathan Merrill

03:43

right, but I don't think having 20 small questions is any better/worse than 1 large question (assuming the 20 small questions all have the same format)

(at least, concerning how far they cross the line)

I do think its better for searchability/discoverability. The most interesting snippets would naturally rise to the top

Dennis

We're (probably) going to make an exception for the showcase because we already have it and the community wants to keep it. That doesn't give carte blanche to post similar questions, as I've stated very clearly in my proposal to reopen it with modifications.

Nathan Merrill

right, I understand that your post doesn't allow for a multiplicity of similar showcases

I'm asking what the disadvantages would be if we were to make a showcase tag instead of a showcase question

Dennis

They do not fit on our site. Neither does the original showcase, but the community wants to keep it nevertheless.

Nathan Merrill

right, but that's a shared disadvantage.

I don't see a disadvantage that the tag would have that the question wouldn't

quartata

Does anyone know where I can get the full xkcd Hoverboard comic as an SVG?

Nathan Merrill

03:48

likely on their forums

those people obsess over the comics

(that's not necessarily a bad thing :P )

Dennis

The showcase has 214 answers. Making an exception for one question is one thing, but 200+ questions is an entirely different scenario. The front page would be littered with showcases.

Nathan Merrill

that's 214 answers over nearly 2 years...so I'd expect at least 1 showcase to be on the active question list at any given time, but its not like 214 answers are going to be posted all at once (except initially)

Yodle

@Dennis With that amount of showcase questions, it'd only be a matter of time before we go full meta and have a "Showcase your Showcase" showcase.

Nathan Merrill

but I do agree, it'd have a larger presence on the front page

Dennis

20 answers were edited in the past 30 days, many of them more than once.

Nathan Merrill

03:55

right, but that matches my current statistics: the current front page has answers from the past 13 hours. Even if we round up to 1 edit a day, we'd have an average of .5 showcase posts on the active question list

I do think that the initial push of showcase posts is something to worry about though, as well as if one of them gets on the HNQ list. We don't want to perpetuate the line crossing more than we need to

quartata

04:22

@Dennis Can you make TF2Goat a room owner in the TF room so it can trash its own messages?

It does not have enough rep currently.

(61 needs 100)

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

71 now

betseg

Good morning!

Dennis

@quartata As a room owner, you should be able to do that yourself.

betseg

@Dennis Pbrain chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240?m=33682079#33682079

Dennis

Right. Thanks for reminding me.

betseg

04:32

Thanks for adding the lang.

Dennis

@betseg pbrain.tryitonline.net/…

in PPCG TF2 Server, 18 secs ago, by Feeds

Dennis has added TF2Goat to the list of this room's owners.

New Sandboxed Posts

04:50

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Give numbers space Say that an integer b is close to an integer a if it's most 1 away, i.e. one of a-1, a, or a+1. Given a list of integers, replace each one with a value close to it so that no two consecutive numbers are close in the result. There can be more than one way to do this. Examples:...

betseg

05:21

Damn... I was so close doing this challange in C :(

ais523

what was your approach, and what went wrong? C strikes me as a language that it's very unlikely to be possible in

betseg

#if 0

But an #endif will end the string

ais523

right, yes, I don't think that's an approach that's likely to work

it's basically the same thing as using a comment, and you always have to fear the end comment marker

although that's got me thinking: is the challenge possible in m4?

betseg

TIL the C preprocessor stringificator won't accept escaped chars with backslash.

ais523

bleh, there's a command in m4 which would allow you to make it impossible to end a comment, but apparently the m4 devs thought of that and arbitrarily disabled it :-(

betseg

05:29

Lol

If I post an HTML answer with 0 bytes would I get downvoted or upvoted? :p

ais523

ooh, I think I can replace the parser to one that's incapable of understanding any tokens

@betseg you'd get a very-low-quality flag against the post, according to site rules

although being upvoted enough (which is possible) makes those flags impossible to issue, so something like "needs moderator intervention" might end up being used instead, and then the moderators would get annoyed because of extra work for htem

DrMcMoylex

I don't think that's true

Oh wait, you're right, never mind.

betseg

Oh I have an idea

But I know too little JS

Can I change every < into a <?

Downgoat

@betseg HTML wouldn't be valid?

OHHH

I GOAT AN IDEA

ais523

HTML+JS would be, but I fear that parts of the page would be unescaped by the parser before the script even runs

ais523

05:58

OK, m4 doesn't work: it deletes NUL characters, and ensures the output ends with a newline no matter what

I can get very close, though, by redefining the parser to be unable to parse quotes, comments, or any of the language's keywords

Qwerp-Derp

06:38

Hello

isaacg

07:07

Hi!

Qwerp-Derp

07:20

Ah hey people are on now

Yay

New Meta Posts

07:32

0

Q: What's wrong with pupularity contest?

Some time ago I asked a question 8 ought to become Infinity, which was closed as too broad. Currently it has 8 upvotes and 6 downwotes. What's wrong with this challenge? According to The state of the popularity contest tag popularity-contest is ontopic. According to tag description: Qualities...

discussion specific-question

Qwerp-Derp

Yes finished the CSS part of the lang

betseg

08:29

What does it look like?

Qwerp-Derp

This is kinda the full code thing

With most of the required elements

style (
  section uses (
    colour #fff
    font_size 20
  )
  text uses (
    font Candara
  )
)
section div (
  text para "
    Hello, World!
    This is multi-lined.
  "
  header 2 "This is a single-lined header."
)
section otherdiv (
  header 3 "This is a smaller header."
)

You can do nested divs as well, I've supported that

Oh yeah, and the text thing auto-aligns to get rid of the spaces

So that's cool

betseg

Is section, <section> or <div>?

Qwerp-Derp

Wait there's a <section> tag?

What's it used for?

Yeah it's a <div>

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Roflcopter code-golfanimationascii-art Your task is to print animated helicopter. Rules Animation should contain at least two frames. Delay between frames is up to you, but rotation of airscrews should be visible. Helicopter could be very simple (simpler than standard roflcopter showed below)...

betseg

@Qwerp-Derp for separating sections? Duh

Qwerp-Derp

08:44

@betseg What

Eh searched it up anyway

Apparently it's for documents

betseg

<section> and <article> are used solely for semantic reasons.

Qwerp-Derp

So they're basically <div>

betseg

Yeah but search engines like Google like semantics. Use <section> for paragraphs. :p

mınxomaτ

Many tags can be omitted and Google doesn't care. They also advocate the content-oriented HTML layout that's achieved by not using optional tags. See google.github.io/styleguide/…

Also html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#syntax-tag-omission

Destructible Watermelon

09:08

hi

Qwerp-Derp

Hello

New Meta Posts

0

Q: Is Minipy fair?

Minipy is an extension to Python 3 that changes the names of many functions, adds other useful functions, and automatically imports modules. Because it is Python (Just with assignment statements prepended to every program), it naturally satisfies our conditions for a programming language. Every ...

discussion

Qwerp-Derp

09:33

Hey guys

What's your highest minesweeper time?

For easy board (9*9)

Kritixi Lithos

09:45

You mean lowest time?

New Main Posts

10:26

0

Q: Help me I'm lost in the ocean!

Today I went fishing alone with my canoe, unfortunately I fell asleep and the stream brought me away, I lost my oars, now it's night and I am lost in the ocean! I can't see the coast so I must be far away! I have my cell phone but is malfunctional because it got wet by the salty water, I can't ...

code-golf geometry trigonometry

Qwerp-Derp

@KritixiLithos Yup

Is a multi-site challenge a good idea?

So like, Puzzling + PPCG

Kritixi Lithos

I am a member of Puzzling and I find that a great idea!

Qwerp-Derp

The question is how to implement it though...

Kritixi Lithos

10:44

PPCG: You give a sequence in the challenge, but you must not reveal the term-to-term formula for it. Then you give the first 100 terms of the sequence, and then the actual challenge is to create a program that takes a number as input and outputs the term that is at the input.

Puzzling: You have to find out the nature of this sequence, what is the rule, what is the formula for the n-th term of the sequence. The catch is that in PPCG you have to hardcode the first 100 terms if you don't know the sequence. That is why you have to find it in Puzzling

Just an idea that has been dwelling in my head for a long time, but I haven't put any effort into creating such a challenge

Qwerp-Derp

Ah

It seems like two "too broad" questions though

Kritixi Lithos

I know, but that's the only idea I have

What are you thinking of?

New Main Posts

0

Q: Knuth's Algorithm X

Task Implement Knuth's Algorithm X: If the matrix A has no columns, the current partial solution is a valid solution; terminate successfully. Otherwise choose a column c. Choose a row r such that Ar, c = 1. Include row r in the partial solution. For each column j such that Ar, j = 1, for each...

code-golf matrix sudoku binary-matrix algorithm

Qwerp-Derp

Hmmm I just have a minesweeper-like puzzle

In Puzzling you have to figure out the final message of the puzzle by hand

And in PPCG you have to create a program that solves the puzzle

@KritixiLithos TBH, now that I read it closely, it seems alright

One sequence might be too easy, though

Maybe two intertwining sequences?

betseg

11:08

@Qwerp-Derp 8 sec

I was lucky

Qwerp-Derp

Got lucky as well - 7 seconds

betseg

Damn not enough lucky :P

Qwerp-Derp

lol

Yus completed intermediate in 83 seconds

TuxCopter

11:27

Hallo golfers

betseg

Once done hard in 94 seconds

I was too lucky

Kritixi Lithos

@Qwerp-Derp What do you mean by intertwining?

Lembik

11:43

hi all

TuxCopter

CMC: Decode
115191743774858383382669850946871940003753850504259734042561213331278065347408618172402439553355738970480374841757504237024060408875035381778160778245514291815091567794598125805792893702844096510141409599185987122314970659554215641390093511636508575021766548840966079093653899425369343665277693682691552704736367786366253438190270747630869198671880756068626492678056962243895939071881332258223930601806618153432542709141729436136982128303213641367533570842536751559489096720411071963692911585871126431366996385817733290342748498820060007407416638379031887874949407600078951535699864927…

TuxCopter

12:03

TIL Wikipedia has some pages in Old English

betseg

@TuxCopter no

TuxCopter

Why?

It's actually very simple to decode

Mitch Schwartz

hello fellow plants. how is your photosynthesis today?

TuxCopter

ಠ_ಠ I am a penguin

betseg

@MitchSchwartz it's cloudy ;_;

@TuxCopter how

TuxCopter

12:11

Spoiler

betseg

Spoiler 2: lots and lots of 2s and 5s

Steven H.

Spoiler 3

Solution: Godel Numbering

TuxCopter

Exactly

Steven H.

CMlM.gkP Pyth decoder

TuxCopter

wat

Steven H.

12:17

Given a message encoded like that was, this will give you the decoded message

Actually make it sCMlM.gkP for nicer output

TuxCopter

What black magic is this e_e

Steven H.

This is Pyth code

pyth.herokuapp.com/?code=sCMlM.gkP

Mitch Schwartz

but how many magicians were involved in writing it?

TuxCopter

@betseg You are lucky

Steven H.

Just me

betseg

12:23

@TuxCopter wat iz diz

TuxCopter

> Haute-Corse
> Vigilance ROUGE en cours dans ce departement

betseg

Ah I got it

It's the mobile site

TuxCopter

? no

betseg

Plz look at mobile site

Steven H.

@TuxCopter If you want an encoder, this will give you the smallest possible encoding *F^MC_,CMQ.fP_ZlCM

Mitch Schwartz

12:57

i hope you were wearing your wizard hat when you wrote that. it's dangerous to cast spells without protection.

Lynn

13:12

6

@Qwerp-Derp Aren’t those 10×10 usually?

Martin Ender

@Calvin'sHobbies I don't really understand what your point with the new showcase is. You've been going on all week about acting without or against community consensus, and now that there's a pretty clear consensus for making the original showcase an exception and not an example of a perfectly valid challenge format, you go ahead and post a new one? What am I missing?

3

Apart from the fact that I still think that this is way too broad, I don't even see how it's not a duplicate of the original showcase. Surely, if you want to showcase your language in a popularity contest, you'd focus on unique features that set your language apart from others?

Fatalize

If it is too broad then this is also too broad

Answers in Calvin's challenge are constrained to be deemed interesting, so it is not too broad though the broadness is limited by a subjective factor unlike the challenge above.

Dennis

@Fatalize Not even remotely the same. You have to be able to come up with changes others won't notice.

Fatalize

But the challenge can be argued to be a duplicate of the showcase though.

Martin Ender

@Fatalize I just commented on this.

Fatalize

13:19

@MartinEnder It is still possible to output pretty much anything that respects this.

Kade

Hello :)

Fatalize

Answers to Calvin's challenge can also be anything, like this one, and like this one broadness is reduced with something else. In that cops one it's that rule, in Calvin's one it's the interestingness of the language presented

Martin Ender

Just to be clear, I don't think "output a string of your choice" CnRs are a good idea, but they're still a lot more constrained than the showcases.

Fatalize

In any case the challenge is a duplicate of the showcase

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

@Fatalize I think the problem with that is that "interesting" is subjective, unless you define it otherwise, to an objective definition.

Fatalize

13:21

That's why it's a popularity contest, that's the whole point

Calvin's Hobbies

@MartinEnder I feel differently there. But I'll respect community opinion if they want to keep it closed.

Fatalize

An answer to that challenge that presented an Hello World in Java would be invalid because deemed not interesting

Steven H.

Does this conversation have to happen in TNB? ._. I'd rather see memes and wizardry jokes than arguments here.

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

Doesn't consensus say to re-open?

Martin Ender

@Calvin'sHobbies differently about what?

Fatalize

13:22

@StevenH. Discussing PPCG is always more important than discussing memes in chat

Martin Ender

@StevenH. this is the main chatroom for this community...

Steven H.

Fair enough. Is there a "The Meme Bytes"?

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

@StevenH. From the chatiquette: PPCG-related (on-topic) discussion always overrides idle chatter.

Calvin's Hobbies

@MartinEnder About making the original showcase the only exception. Broadness is only bad if it generates bad or disjointed content.

Steven H.

slowly backs out of room

2

Martin Ender

13:25

@Fatalize While we're on the top of community consensus and scope, one of the popular answers to our "state of popcon" discussion (which doesn't contradict, but rather complements the top answer) suggests splitting up popcons into well-scoped and too-broad kinds. This one falls very much into the first category.

Fatalize

(you mean the second category right?)

Dennis

@Calvin'sHobbies We can't hold different challenges (or different challenge posters) to a double standard. Even if this challenge won't generate bad content, other equally broad challenges will.

Martin Ender

@Fatalize sorry, yes

they were presented the other way round in the answer

@Calvin'sHobbies So now that the consensus is an opinion you don't agree with, you chose to ignore it?

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

From the linked answer:

There are restrictive conditions under which the challenge is to make the most popular answer. These are the most likely to be closed but also seem the best fit for the tag "popularity contest".

That is a problem with popcons.

Martin Ender

(Actually, re-reading the answers on that discussion, we should probably pursue this separation of popcons in a separate meta post some time, after we've settled the current debate.)

Fatalize

13:31

I would personally extend tips to be "Questions about how to improve your skills at solving challenges on the site. Questions about code-golf tips for a specific language, speed-increase tips for a specific language, and descriptions of languages that are used to solve challenges fit this tag". The showcase and this one would be the third kind of tip.

Calvin's Hobbies

@MartinEnder I chose to try to write another Showcase challenge because I feel it's a good way (better than meta arguing) to make the point that such challenges have validity. Again, if the community wants it closed then fine.

Fatalize

Where you can find descriptions of which languages are good for what kind of problems

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

@Calvin'sHobbies ... another Showcase? I'm sure it will be instantly deleted by a mod the first second it is posted, except if it has major differences.

Calvin's Hobbies

@ErikGolferエリックゴルファー Hasn't been yet

0

Q: Showcase what makes your programming language different from all others

This challenge is a place where people can show off what exactly makes their preferred programming language different from all the others out there. Does it have unique syntax? Is it a rare paradigm? Does it use strange characters? Stuff like that. This is another exploratory popularity-contest ...

popularity-contest

Fatalize

You should write a challenge because you think it's good, not to prove a point though.

Martin Ender

13:34

@Calvin'sHobbies I appreciate trying to push the boundaries, but I don't see how this does it. Apart from the lack of the one-byte-at-a-time rule, I don't see how this one will generate content that is any different from the original showcase.

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

See the positive side: One-byte-at-a-time issue is solved, but I don't think this is how PPCG works.

Calvin's Hobbies

@Fatalize True enough. I do think one has potential, though probably not to the same extent as the old showcase.

@MartinEnder You sound like Jan ;)

Kade

I was going to submit Haystack but there may be too many other 2D languages that share similar features :/

Fatalize

The other good thing with labeling it tips is that those questions fundamentally don't require a winning criterion

Calvin's Hobbies

@Kade Nah, go for it. Just focus on how it differs from befunge or fish

Martin Ender

13:37

@Fatalize making it a non-challenge post is part of Dennis's exception proposal

Fatalize

@MartinEnder So my proposal is too simply extend tips instead of making an exception

We have "tips to golf in X", I don't see why we can't have "tips to choose a language depending on its strengths"

Martin Ender

I don't see how it fits under the tips umbrella. it's going to get a new showcase tag, but unless someone can convince the community that it would benefit from several of these, I expect it to remain the only such question for a while.

@Fatalize the showcase isn't actually about choosing the language based on its strength

it's about showcasing "cool" features

it's not even golfing related

Fatalize

Doesn't have to be golfing related

Steven H.

Isn't that the PP in PPCG?

Martin Ender

it's not related to solving any kinds of challenges at all, so what exactly is it a tip for?

Calvin's Hobbies

13:42

@MartinEnder And I admit I was kind of an ass about insisting on reopening. But I do still believe that "locked for historical reasons" (as the showcase was for a few days) was entirely the wrong decision. "Locked for content dispute" as it is now is understandable, even I don't agree it's necessary.

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

That's only until disputes are solved.

Fatalize

As far as I know we have challenges other than code-golf on the site. One can understand from the showcase that Mathematica is good at having loads of powerful built-ins, which one can probably use to e.g. solve that challenge about recognizing goats.

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

I agree with showcase tag, let's do it!

Martin Ender

well we had codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/2070/8478 and that was closed even though it was specifically asking about advice for choosing languages

Calvin's Hobbies

@Calvin'sHobbies *this one

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

13:45

@MartinEnder That one was rightfully closed because it was in fact opinion-based.

Fatalize

@MartinEnder "Closed as primarily opinion-based" I don't think there is any opinion involved in saying that Jelly is good at code-golf challenges, this can be easily verified.

So I'm not sure this is quite the right closing reason

Ideally we should get the documentation like on SO and put all of that in there

but we can't even get a design :p

Martin Ender

The problem is that answers aren't going to be "use Jelly or osabie, because everything else is longer", but they are going to be this

ais523

The answers on that post are generally terrible

Martin Ender

whether the showcase acts as a source of inspiration for what certain languages are good at or not, the post (and its answers) in no way focus on "tips for choosing a language".

ais523

the one about J is good but that's about it

admittedly, the correct approach for "likely to produce terrible answers" is to protect, not to close, unless it's experienced users doing the terrible-answering

but even then, you often need to know a language very well to know whether it will be a good choice for a program

e.g. I can normally look at a problem and mentally assess how well Perl would do, and how well Prolog would do

and typically Perl will do well but not winningly so, whereas Prolog needs a very specific sort of problem to be competitive

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

13:49

@MartinEnder @Dennis And, why the dispute has not been solved yet?

ais523

maybe I'll have to write my own golf variant of Prolog (or learn Brachylog)

that said, I got a huge number of upvotes recently for answering a problem in PDP-11 assembler, and you're unlikely to ever get a suggestion to use that in a tips thread :-)

(as a serious tip, though: x86 is usually better)

actually x86 is one of the earliest examples of an intentionally defined golfing language, I think

the reason it's kept around despite its complexity is that it allows smaller programs, = you can fit more into cache, = it runs faster

TuxCopter

24

A: Shortest code to throw SIGILL

Swift, 5 bytes [][0] Access index 0 of an empty array. This calls fatalError(), which prints an error message and crashes with a SIGILL. You can try it here.

Why Swift, why?

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

And, how is that related to the serious discussion going on here?

TuxCopter

idk but wtf

ais523

@TuxCopter likely because an illegal instruction is the shortest way to crash safely

gcc does that too if you ask for an intentional crash, in order to reduce the cache pressure of your memory-handling code

TuxCopter

13:56

But crashing with a SIGILL for an indexing error is weird

ais523

what would you consider correct? SIGABRT?

TuxCopter

idk

betseg

@ais523 SIGSEGV

ais523

actually, given the existence of the into command, you could make a case for whatever signal it is that command raises

bleh, why does into have to have a name that's so hard to search for

I guess it's logically a SIGFPE but that would be weird too

betseg

Does 1/0 trigger a SIGFPE?

TuxCopter

14:01

Nope, it generate a normal exception

ais523

it does for me in C

int main(int argc, char** argv) { return 8 / (argc - 1); } gives "Floating point exception (core dumped)" and returns 136 when called without arguments

TuxCopter

^^^ In Swift

ais523

oh, in swift

hmm, are we going to have to run a "shortest SIGFPE" contest now? :-D

TuxCopter

It's weird that Swift supports exceptions but SIGILL for an out of bound accessing

betseg

@ais523 #define a()1/0

ais523

14:06

that doesn't do anything by itself, though; it's not a function

it's a macro

betseg

Call a() anywhere and boom! SIGFPE

ais523

and there are contexts where it's perfectly usable, e.g. a()##2

TuxCopter

main(){return 1/0;}

K&R FTW

ais523

@TuxCopter: that may well depend on optimization level (although I agree it's likely to work at -O0 in at least one compiler)

betseg

You can remove a,b

New Main Posts

14:09

0

Q: The Golfer Adventure - Chapter 1 : The vase

The Golfer Adventure This is the first challenge ! There will be more challenges later that will require data from the previous challenge :) Chapter 1 : The Vase Let's imagine a minute.. You are a powerful God, your powers are limitless but requires one thing : Souls. Each soul is here represe...

code-golf

TuxCopter

323

A: Strangest language feature

The weird things C++ templates can be used for, best demonstrated by "Multi-Dimensional Analog Literals" which uses templates to compute the area of "drawn" shapes. The following code is valid C++ for a 3x3 rectangle #include"analogliterals.hpp" using namespace analog_literals::symbols; ...

What???????

ais523

there are a ton of languages where you can do that sort of thing

might make for a good challenge if it can be specified precisely

TuxCopter

Yes but this is pure black magic to correctly implement this

mınxomaτ

Nothing is black magic if you've ever used order-pp in C: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12989445

TuxCopter

ಠ_____________________________ಠ

I hate this law about cookies

@mınxomaτ wat

black magic black magic

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

15:05

@TuxCopter What site?

TuxCopter

SF

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

So, Server Fault does that?

TuxCopter

SourceForge -.-

ErikGolferエリックゴルファー

Oh. I'm used to abbreviating Server Fault as SF.

New Meta Posts

15:33

0

Q: Should I always give every minimum detail and specifications about a challenge or we can rely also on intuition?

Regarding my challenge: Help me I'm lost in the ocean! I went to read: What details should always be given for a code golf task? and a question raised in my mind. I hope I can ask that here in Meta, if not please let me know and I will delete my question. My original idea was to produce a chall...

discussion challenge-quality contest-type

Dennis

There are many good reasons not to use SourceForge. Cookies aren't one of them.

6

Do people still use IRC?

TuxCopter

Yes

Kade

Yes, a few sites that I help moderate have dedicated IRC chatrooms and support channels

ETHproductions

Why, are you considering shutting it down?

Dennis

I need an official chat room for TIO, and I don't like the rep requirement on SE.

TuxCopter

15:45

TIO users are most likely to be SE users

Dennis

For now, yes.

Although I guess SE chat room + GitHub issue tracker + contact email address should be enough for the near future.

Martin Ender

@Dennis gitter

you can attach it directly to the GitHub repo

Dennis

Ooh, that sounds perfect!

Martin Ender

it's a pretty decent chat, too

Dennis

I'll check it out later. Can't log in from my phone.

Transcript for