The Nineteenth Byte

« first day (2867 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2273 days later) »

dzaima

21:01

not gonna bother looking whats wrong with the initializing code though

New Meta Posts

21:24

Q: Is code restricted to having to pass a linter a valid answer for golf?

If someone answers a code-golf challenge in, for example, JavaScript, and as an additional challenge restricts to only code that is approved by http://www.jslint.com/ would that answer be acceptable? Would that count as insufficient effort at golfing, or would it be seen as a different language ...

Nathan Merrill

21:52

@trichoplax I don't see anything about whitespace. I think that that point is critical to mention in your post

trichoplax

OK golfed too much - will retry... :)

Nathan Merrill

Also, I'm totally on the fence on your question. I think that interpreters are critical for allowing people to "prove" that it works (or to prove that certain code doesn't work).

that said, if we set a bar of requiring an interpreter, then it might never happen

I really like the core idea of linter-golf (especially because it's a great alternative to people that want challenges that emphasize readable code)

quartata

ooh

thats a great idea

if you standardize which linters are okay for use

golfing languages are going to be out anyways so

trichoplax

I'm also on the fence, and keen to see what the community decides. It's a decision between allowing a 2 step proof or insisting on a 1 step proof

@quartata What kind of reasons might there be for excluding a linter?

@quartata If linter golf catches on then I'm sure someone will start writing golf-lang-linters...

quartata

@trichoplax im sure broken linters that dont do validation exist. the fundamental problem is that a linter can be broken and the code still work, which isnt true for a given interpreter

trichoplax

22:00

@NathanMerrill If the community requires an interpreter, at least that isn't a difficult thing to produce, and once one is written lots of people can use it to post answers...

Nathan Merrill

to an extent. There are lots of options for many linters

flawr

why would you exclude for-loops (as suggested by jslint?)

trichoplax

@flawr Why would you insist on whitespace?

quartata

@flawr really?

do they recommend foreach

because foreach is so slow

trichoplax

It's just some arbitrary restrictions, but if someone finds them an interesting challenge then why not

flawr

22:02

I thought it was based on recommendations how to write nice code

trichoplax

Yes they do recommend foreach. JSLint is optimised for reading rather than running

Nathan Merrill

There should totally be a speed-linter

"There are too many nested for-loops here"

trichoplax

@flawr This is their reasoning: jslint.com/help.html#for (or lack of it...)

Nathan Merrill

"This language doesn't unwind tail-call recursion. Don't do it here"

quartata

it would be useful for interprwted languages

where structural things start to matter a bit more

trichoplax

22:05

I don't personally see the readability problem with for. Especially in JS, where foreach includes an extra function to read

flawr

ok the array-method reasoning makes sense as I think it is just less error prone

trichoplax

So I can't be off by one?

Nathan Merrill

does JS-lint recommend a specific indentation, or simply a consistent indentation?

trichoplax

Specific spaces only indentation

Nathan Merrill

so, you must indent by 4 or whatever? You can't indent everything by 2?

trichoplax

22:07

Including indenting ternary if over 5 lines

Must be by 4, must be spaces, must follow set rules of what indents and when

quartata

@trichoplax I agree

@NathanMerrill pep8 also does this

Nathan Merrill

yeah, I'm considering posting an answer, but it'd be rather useful if there was a linter that allowed you to chose

trichoplax

I'd love to see pep8 golf

Nathan Merrill

because you could say "You still have to golf within the bounds of the linter: those 2 extra spaces aren't actually necessary because X linter allows indentation by 2"

quartata

@trichoplax it is a hard ass

trichoplax

22:09

Makes it a good challenge...

@NathanMerrill If I was going to try linter-golf, I'd want to do it with all the default settings

Nathan Merrill

You know...if linter + language becomes an interpreter, you could potentially use the linter behavior in the challenge itself

trichoplax

This is all secretly so I can write code postable on both PPCG and Code Review

Nathan Merrill

like, if there's a source-layout that says something like "Your code cannot work if you rearrange it" or whatever, the linter would come in mighty handy

trichoplax

@NathanMerrill Is this a linter that corrects your code rather than just complaining about it?

Nathan Merrill

oooh, yes there is! like Go!

quartata

22:12

And clang format for C

trichoplax

So you can post short code that doesn't work until the linter adds in the extra code for you...

quartata

i think there are some BASIC answers like this

trichoplax

The only BASIC trick I know like that is omitting the closing quotes

Nathan Merrill

why aren't more languages doing that? I can already automatically get semicolons inserted, why aren't languages automatically inserting closing quotes and parenthesis?

quartata

thats TI-BASIC

Nathan Merrill

22:14

yeah, and it's all been downhill from there

quartata

i think QBASIC is the one with like "autocomplete" for identifiers

Nathan Merrill

wait, really? That's crazy.

quartata

its one of them

trichoplax

So if you mistype a variable name it'll use the closest it can find??

Nathan Merrill

I assume it'll find the variable that starts with the name you typed

quartata

22:16

let me find the meta post

Nathan Merrill

so if you have var networkCallAdapter = Something(), you can simply do network.call() or whatever

quartata

Q: How to count bytes in languages with autoformatters

In QBasic, VBA, AppleScript, etc., there is an autoformatter that adds spaces and expands some syntactic sugar. For example, if I type this code: ?x*2 QBasic will expand it to PRINT x * 2 Should I count this code as 4 bytes or 11? Edit: Nathan Merrill brings up How to count bytes in macr...

discussion code-golf answers scoring

Nathan Merrill

the obvious question is "Why not just call it network in the first place :)

quartata

i think this is what i remembered

flawr

@quartata only a modified version

Nathan Merrill

22:18

What do you mean, modified? My calculator absolutely did this

flawr

but I think it only works on ti 83 or so

Nathan Merrill

yeah, that's what I had

quartata

im doing it right now on an 84

Nathan Merrill

and I actually did it, because space was important back then

flawr

as far as I remember it doesnt' work on the 92 / 92+ / v200 / and the nspires

New Sandboxed Posts

23:18

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Satisfying Rounding You know when you're in science class, and asked to round to 2 sig figs, but your answer is 5.2501...? You should round to 5.3, but that's just so unsatisfying! By rounding to 5.3, you're off by a whole 0.05, which is a large amount compared to 0.1 (the place value you're rou...