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Jo King
Jo King
1:06 AM
@Jono2906 "code-gulp"
3
 
Adám
Adám
@Bubbler Btw, that has had a whole lot of good knock-on effects. Thank you again!
 
 
3 hours later…
A _
A _
3:57 AM
@Jono2906 Well, I didn't eat my lunch in order to chat here. (In other words, I guess I won the CMC.)
 
 
1 hour later…
New Main Posts
New Main Posts
5:18 AM
-1
Q: And how you solve this challange?

KingWrite a Java Program to reverse the contents of the array (Java)

java
 
Jo King
Jo King
5:38 AM
Esolang idea: Code is made of a numerator and a denominator, which form a fraction. The decimal expansion of that fraction is the program, where the individual digits are instructions. There are no loops, instead to loop you have to form an infinitely repeating decimal with the correct instructions.
 
A _
A _
That makes me think of FRACTRAN.
So there are 10 instructions in total...
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
5:59 AM
Or rather, use continued fraction and take its denominators as instructions.
So the golden ratio solves the "infinite loop without I/O" challenge
 
feersum
feersum
How do you specify the number?
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
Then the code can be an arbitrary math expression that evaluates into a real number.
 
Jo King
Jo King
that may be hard to interpret
 
feersum
feersum
You could get golden ratio by having it be root of a polynomial.
I wonder if that would be enough for all programs.
 
Jo King
Jo King
@Bubbler also, if there's no limit to the denominator, so how many instructions would there be?
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
6:05 AM
It could be solved in multiple ways, e.g. take a modulo or let one denominator encode multiple instructions by base conversion
And at least one of those instructions should be a jump of some kind, otherwise it'd be hard to encode two indefinite loops
 
feersum
feersum
No jump. It's like, barely even esoteric if you have jump.
 
Jo King
Jo King
@feersum Surely there has to be some sort of conditional though
 
feersum
feersum
@JoKing Eh? I know you're not new here...
Anyway you could have some kind of conditional stack opreation or soemthing if it's really needed.
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
I guess the question here should be "will the language be Turing complete?"
 
Jo King
Jo King
^^ I mean it could still be turing complete without an explicit jump, but that would probably push it beyond the point of usability
 
 
2 hours later…
A _
A _
8:31 AM
@JoKing Draft idea. The language operates on the input (which is similar to a fraction). Instructions: 0: Denominator + 1 1: Numerator + 1 2: If the denominator is 0, halt the program. 3. D - 1 4. N - 1 5. If the fraction is 1, stop the program. 6. If the fraction is 0, stop the program. 7. If the fraction is not finite, stop the program. 8: TODO 9: TODO
So the decimal 0.132132132... adds the values of the numerator and the denominator.
The fraction form is 44/333.
Another sample program. In order to create a Truth-machine(output 0 & halt if input = 0, output 1 indefinitely if input = 1), here is my code:
 
Jo King
Jo King
Yeah, I was thinking something similar:
 
A _
A _
I'd be glad to hear your idea. (P. S. 0.4444... solves this problem)
 
Jo King
Jo King
Skip to next zero if 0, Add one, Subtract one, Recipricol, Input, Output, Terminate, ??? (probably structure related). I'm mostly non-decided on what data struture to use as storage... maybe stack based?
 
A _
A _
Maybe use a fraction?
 
Jo King
Jo King
Well yes, but how should I represent multiple fractions? I don't just want a single fraction since that's rather hard to work around
 
A _
A _
8:42 AM
My idea is fractions nesting fractions... and then access them using some kind of multiplication operation.
 
Jo King
Jo King
Huh, that's interesting. That might work
Also, we could replace halt with whenever 0 is the denominator
 
Anush
Anush
hi all
 
Jo King
Jo King
Sup
 
A _
A _
greetings
 
Jo King
Jo King
I was also wondering if we should do an eval instruction, haha
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
8:46 AM
@A_ I guess traversing through a nested fraction would look like a binary tree
 
Anush
Anush
wondering if this could be made a challenge here...bpaste.net/show/QGIL4
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
and +1 and -1 on a fraction would naturally be an addition and subtraction
 
A _
A _
@JoKing This might be copying the fraction to the source code...
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
"inverse" and "simplify a nested fractional node" should serve value swapping and multiply/divide
 
Anush
Anush
I am guessing a subset of the codegolf population will hate it :)
 
A _
A _
8:49 AM
(Naturally we are going to need improper fractions to represent the result.)
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
and the inverse could be used to move around many values at once
 
A _
A _
Looks really interesting.
 
Jo King
Jo King
@Anush Does A-1 mean the inverse of A?
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
But halting when any fraction has zero denom can be a trouble, so halt only when "simplify" on the root node results in zero denom
 
A _
A _
If it halts on any fraction with 0 denom then you can't store 0 anymore.
 
Anush
Anush
8:53 AM
@JoKing yes.. there was a typo in the first version I pasted
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
Instead, zero denom at current node can be a breaking condition of a while loop (or whatever looping construct it will have)
 
A _
A _
Remember that the only looping construct is repeating decimals.
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
...
 
Anush
Anush
@JoKing you can compute the answer exactly, which is fun
@JoKing but I don't fully understand what can be a code-challenge here
can you for example just give a win to the first answer that computes something ?
 
Jo King
Jo King
No
Questions have to be competitive, you can't just have a winner with no chance of beating them
 
Anush
Anush
8:57 AM
right but being the first is not a win criterion?
aha.. thanks that's very helpful
 
Jo King
Jo King
Well, technically there are zero byte answers to questions too, but they're rare
 
Anush
Anush
so I could have "compute this to as many decimal places as you can" for example?
clearly not here as there is an exact answer :)
or where there is an exact answer there is fastest-code
 
Jo King
Jo King
@Anush Erm, maybe, though you shouldn't let infinite precision be possible
 
Anush
Anush
code-golf gets increasingly irrelevant as the problem gets harder
@JoKing right.. so it's no good here as there is an exact solution
 
Jo King
Jo King
Yeah. Perhaps input could be size of the array?
 
Anush
Anush
9:00 AM
@JoKing true!
but what is the challenge? Solve for as big a matrix as you can?
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
Even if the problem gets harder, it's usually fine code-golf if it can fit in a few hundred bytes in Python
 
Jo King
Jo King
@Anush Probably code-golf, lol
 
Anush
Anush
@Bubbler true. I just meant that if the main challenge is solving the problem at all, golfing it seems irrelevant
@JoKing it could be code-challenge right?
people may complain that you just need a bigger and more expensive computer of course but I have seen recent challenges where that would hold
in fact almost all code-challenge's seem to have that property
ok so let's start off with that question for n = 2 :)
 
Jo King
Jo King
Well, we mainly assume submissions have infinite time and memory
If you limit that and have the goal be the biggest solved array in a limited time, then it would be fastest-code
 
Anush
Anush
 
Jo King
Jo King
9:06 AM
And you can't really have the winning criteria be based off the answer's computer since that would be unfair
 
Anush
Anush
both are similar to what I had in mind but have not been shot down interestingly
despite clearly suffering from the "but how fast is your computer" problem
 
Jo King
Jo King
I'm one of the people who upvoted the comment: I think you should pick a time limit (say, 60s) so the contest isn't about how long someone spent running their code. Generally, all the code should be run on the same computer so they are more comparable
 
Anush
Anush
right.. I know there are problem with TIO but it would be great to be able to use that for this
Also, does TIO not support C#?
oh it does! Hmm.. I wonder why the answer says it doesn't
codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/195360/9207 asks how you do the byte count. Is there a good link for this I could give them?
 
Jo King
Jo King
@Anush I don't see anything about TIO in that answer. It just uses a different website.
You'd should wait until the questions about it's validity are addressed, since it's currently 7692 bytes by the dotnet link
 
Anush
Anush
@JoKing ah right. I could swear there was a TIO comment. But maybe it has been deleted
@JoKing I feel people should be helping the person rather than criticising them
the SE message even says that ! :)
(new user message)
 
Jo King
Jo King
9:24 AM
Is telling them how their submission is invalid not helping?
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
@JoKing But having an arbitrary time limit may raise a question about "on which computer?".
 
Jo King
Jo King
um, did you read the second half of my message?
 
Bubbler
Bubbler
Oh, sorry
 
Anush
Anush
my question which looked hard is quite simple now codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/195216/9207
in that I think just about any numerical integration technique/library will work quite well
... maybe :)
@JoKing "Also, you didn't even make the effort to count the number of bytes in your question." seems unfriendly
 
Jo King
Jo King
@Anush Okay yeah, that might be a bit unfriendly, but there are two other comments asking more politely about it (yours and mine).
 
Anush
Anush
9:36 AM
@JoKing true
I just fear they might be driven away completely given its their first answer
 
Jo King
Jo King
Well, you expect a modicum of sense with new users, like looking at other answers to pick up on obvious standards like headers containing scores
Obviously that's no excuse for being rude, but even fair points about deleting invalid answers or what the scoring method is may come off as elitist without any way to mitigate that
 
Anush
Anush
@JoKing they asked me how to do the byte score but I didn't know the answer
is there a link I could give them
 
Jo King
Jo King
Well, just pasting it in TIO should give a byte count
 
Anush
Anush
@JoKing Thanks.. I'll add that
 
Jo King
Jo King
as long as the actual submission is valid
 
Anush
Anush
9:46 AM
I suspect they may know nothing of TIO
 
Jo King
Jo King
As it is, the byte count for the code block in the question would be invalid
 
Anush
Anush
by the way.. how on Earth does TIO work? I mean which OS is it running?
 
Jo King
Jo King
@Anush Here's the github for setting TIO up. It says it runs on Fedora 26, though that may be outdated
 
Anush
Anush
so how does it manage C# ??
It says .NET Core with a link to Microsoft
 
Jo King
Jo King
@Anush I don't understand. What's wrong with running C# on Linux?
hmm, it does say supported for Fedora 29+
ah yes, the readme is outdated since recent commits reference Fedora 29
 
Adám
Adám
9:56 AM
@Anush Bash 17 bytes: cat /proc/version
 
Jo King
Jo King
Interesting, there are leaked plans to increase rep from questions to +10 instead of +5
 
primo
primo
for some sites, including this one, it makes a lot of sense
 
Jo King
Jo King
Which is something we've asked for for years
 
primo
primo
"the reasoning behind this is to benefit women because they believe the change would impact women and help them on the site."
wut
 
Jo King
Jo King
Yeah, that kinda stuck out to me as weird too 
We know that people who contribute by asking have a harder time earning privileges than people who focus on answering. Independent research suggests this disproportionately affects women:

We also see that women contribute differently to building the community’s knowledge base: they are asking more questions. Stack Overflow’s current system strongly incentivize answering by rewarding upvotes on answers twice as much upvotes on questions.
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
10:14 AM
Waiting for the days you’ll have to scan your ID card to have a SE account, and your rep calculation will depend on the gender stated on your card
 
primo
primo
this sort of motivation seems almost obsessive to me
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
It wouldn’t even surprise me
 
feersum
feersum
Well, we know what to do next time we have a feature request.
 
Jo King
Jo King
@feersum Go to Twitter?
 
New Sandboxed Posts
New Sandboxed Posts
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

KrishnaList Max: Return the maximum value in the final Array In this challenge, start with an array initialized to zeros with indices starting at 1 and a series of operations to perform on segments of the list. Each operation will consist of a starting and ending index within the array, and a number t...

 
A _
A _
10:31 AM
 
Jo King
Jo King
@A_ Um, yes?
 
 
1 hour later…
Anush
Anush
11:54 AM
@Adám good point!
@JoKing I just didn't know it was possible!
I remember the good old days of mono
CMC Let A be the 20 × 20 matrix whose entries are zero everywhere except for the primes 2,3,5,7,… along the main diagonal and the number 1 in all the positions a_{i,j} with |i-j| = 1, 2, 4, 8,.. What is the (1,1) entry of A^{-1} ?
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush 0.5952301124
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám is that an exact answer?
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush You want more decimals?
 
Anush
Anush
there should be an exact fractional answer
we can start with something smaller, like 4 x 4
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush You mean this, right? 
2 0 1 0
0 3 0 1
1 0 5 0
0 1 0 7
@Anush 5÷9
 
Anush
Anush
12:11 PM
yep!
so the challenge is to the same in code for the 20 x 20 case
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush Well, I did it numerically and recognised the fraction ;-)
 
Anush
Anush
:)
shall I write it as a challenge?
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush No.
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám go on....
 
Adám
Adám
Because it is a KC challenge for a short uninteresting output.
 
Anush
Anush
12:16 PM
it has an input parameter n
Let A be the n x n matrix....
 
Adám
Adám
OK, but will you require exact results?
Or is decimal approximation good enough?
 
Anush
Anush
yes
exact only
I don't like easy questions :)
 
Adám
Adám
Then no. It'll basically be a problem only for languages that have exact stuff built-in or as a library.
 
Anush
Anush
hmm
 
Adám
Adám
Just generating the matrix is already involved for many languages.
@Anush Do you know the answer?
 
Anush
Anush
12:31 PM
@Adám I know a general method, yes
I think I see the question of a challenge being more difficult in some languages differently
first, all challenges are per language
 
Adám
Adám
1,2:1÷2
3,4:5÷9
5,6:27÷47
7,8:452÷785
9,10:20662÷35085
11,12:634637÷1076708
13,14:25918099÷43964828
15,16:1215226851÷2061368528
 
Anush
Anush
and inevitably for any given challenge, it will be easier to code in some languages than others
@Adám very nice!
is that in APL?
 
Adám
Adám
Now if I can only spot the system here…
@Anush Yes.
 
Anush
Anush
has anyone ever paid you to write APL code?
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush Uh, yes. I have a full-time APL job ;-)
 
Anush
Anush
12:34 PM
oh!
can you say more about it?
who wants APL code?
 
A _
A _
People want APL code.
 
Adám
Adám
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám I do think that's great
 
Adám
Adám
@A_ Mostly people, some animals…
 
Anush
Anush
@A_ but which paying customers?
 
Adám
Adám
12:37 PM
@Anush I work for Dyalog Ltd. which sells a commercial implementation. I work mainly in the development and maintenance of APL tools, customer support (when it is the APL code they struggle with), teaching, and "spreading the work". (So you have been warned: I will try to let me teach you APL!)
 
Anush
Anush
:)
Thanks.. I am still interested who the paying customers are
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
Not sure this is public info
 
Anush
Anush
it's there :)
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush Yes ^^ but the biggest are financial institutions like investment managers and financial service providers, but also e.g. a (super) large oil/chemical company (can't mention names, obviously).
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
tl;dr APL causes global warming
6
 
Adám
Adám
12:42 PM
7 mins ago, by Adám
@A_ Mostly people, some animals…
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám fascinating... thank you
I never would have guessed
APL to me equals 100% unintelligible
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush They tend to not mention it. Some are afraid their competition will find what gives them the advantage…
@Anush Let's fix that! Up for a quick intro?
 
Veskah
Veskah
1:19 PM
Just pick random unicode characters and you'll eventually make Doom
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
(apparently they have had this going on for a while, but I had never heard about it)
 
Quintec
Quintec
Seems fun
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám I would love to but not today! :)
 
Quintec
Quintec
(my 2 cents: APL is tied for the easiest language to get started in along with Japt) and both are equally fun
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush Do you know when it will fit you, or will you ping me?
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
1:31 PM
APL's ok to start with
 
A _
A _
@Anush My previous quick intro was really boring. I already know everything taught in that intro.
 
Adám
Adám
@Quintec Cool to know. APL has the benefit over Japt of being an actual real-world production language.
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
I didn't find it exceptionally easy, but it was mostly intuitive
Compared to the amount of work to start in most serious languages (so like not BF) it was pretty nice for an intro
 
Adám
Adám
@A_ I'm sorry for that. It can be hard to know exactly what the student knows if they don't communicate it.
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám I will!
I do want to learn Julia
before the language dies :)
in fact I would love it if it became at least slightly popular
 
Adám
Adám
1:33 PM
Can a programming language truly die?
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám no not fully... but lots are very close to dead
 
Adám
Adám
I guess, if they are specific to very specialised hardware…
 
A _
A _
Lisp was dead when it was released.
 
Anush
Anush
:)
cobol is not very alive
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
@Adám Objective-C?
 
A _
A _
1:34 PM
(Because it (Lisp) is too impractical to implement)
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush You'd think, but:
COBOL
COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL is still widely used in legacy applications deployed on mainframe computers, such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs. But due to its declining popularity and the retirement of experienced COBOL programmers, programs are being migrated to new platforms, rewritten in...
 
A _
A _
COBOL is a common language.
 
Anush
Anush
I think the NHS in the UK is still running windows XP.. or something like that :)
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
Okay the thing is some really old languages are still used pretty commonly and I want to say the main reason is just that people either just refuse to adopt to new tech and adapt, or just don't want to change old infrastructure
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
CJam is an extinct language on PPCG. It didn’t adapt to its predators, mostly 05AB1E
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
1:37 PM
Not sure if maybe that many people just enjoy COBOL or VBA though
 
A _
A _
@Fatalize GolfScript is an extinct language on PPCG. It didn’t adapt to its predators, mostly CJam
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
The university I'm applying to teaches Racket lmao, which makes sense since it wants to teach a functional language, but I'd much prefer Haskell
 
Anush
Anush
:)
@HyperNeutrino did they develop Racket?
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
^ probably this
 
Anush
Anush
sometimes universities stick with the language they invented/developed
I had a language called Orwell which is basically Miranda but a version they made
when I was at university
Miranda (programming language)
Miranda is a lazy, purely functional programming language designed by David Turner as a successor to his earlier programming languages SASL and KRC, using some concepts from ML and Hope. It was produced by Research Software Ltd. of England (which holds a trademark on the name Miranda) and was the first purely functional language to be commercially supported.Miranda was first released in 1985, as a fast interpreter in C for Unix-flavour operating systems, with subsequent releases in 1987 and 1989. Miranda had a strong influence on the later Haskell programming language. == Overview == Miranda is...
hmm... we need some miranda answers here
 
A _
A _
1:40 PM
If I can post in the language without the effort of finding a duplicate, I would love to use the language.
 
Fatalize
Fatalize
"Commentary is introduced into regular scripts by the characters ||"
No thank you
 
Anush
Anush
and cobol answers!
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
@Anush That would make sense, but nope.
 
Anush
Anush
oh racket is still developed!
codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/195268/… has really had a lot of up and down votes!
is there some way of seeing the record ?
that is question with a huge number of both
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
Probably can make a dataSE query
 
Adám
Adám
1:44 PM
Heh, APL still winning that one with a large margin ⍥
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
+19/-5 isn't even that much
 
Anush
Anush
@HyperNeutrino how do you get that information?
 
A _
A _
Click the votecount. You will eventually be able to do it once you have enough reputation.
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush Once you have enough rep, you can ^
 
Anush
Anush
aha.. I have +17/-8 for my other question
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
1:50 PM
@Anush data.stackexchange.com
 
Anush
Anush
can anyone beat +17/-8?
 
A _
A _
Beat the downvote votecounts?
 
HyperNeutrino
HyperNeutrino
what are you trying to maximize
 
Adám
Adám
I think it is the ratio.
 
Anush
Anush
I guess I am looking for a ratio near 1 and a high absolute number
+100/-100 would be good :)
 
A _
A _
1:52 PM
Looking for challenges with votecounts of 0... (Pretty bad that my browser is slow)
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush Can you give us a score formula?
 
AdmBorkBork
AdmBorkBork
 
Anush
Anush
@AdmBorkBork that's awesome!
 
AdmBorkBork
AdmBorkBork
I think that's been the most controversial question since I've been around.
 
A _
A _
@AdmBorkBork Downvote the challenge!
 
Anush
Anush
1:54 PM
@Adám I think it's just the largest total number of votes for each score. So that's one formula for a vote of 0, one for a vote of 1 etc.
 
Adám
Adám
The key to get high vote count with lots of both + and - is a boring challenge, simple enough for lots of languages to solve.
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám do you still think the matrix question from earlier is not suitable?
even after your awesome APL code for it
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush Then a +1000/-0 would be more interesting than a +100/-100‽
@Anush But my code doesn't work for high N.
 
Anush
Anush
@Adám they are in different categories. The first is in the 1000 vote category and the second in the 200 vote category
the optimum is a curve
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush OK, so how do we compare them, since few will have same number of votes.
 
Anush
Anush
1:57 PM
@Adám right.. hence the need for a challenge. How high can you go with your code?
@Adám we don't. We can bin the vote counts though if few have the same votes
so 0-10 votes, 10-20 votes etc.
 
Adám
Adám
@Anush I think 22:331288986896183÷556542348309597. I suspect 23:70957683559613÷119203561594927 is incorrect.
@Anush Or, is 20:4777819749183÷8026844828572?
 
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