The Nineteenth Byte

user

00:07

@lyxal I don't see how that's cursed (apart from the paint thing)

1/10 not bad enough

lyxal

@user it's completely outside the scope of the course

hyper-neutrino

see it isn't cursed I am a good java programmer thank you user

@lyxal your course is cursed

so by double negative my code is exceptionally blessed

user

^^

lyxal

"good java programmer"

that sentence is impossible

nothing is good about java

user

Whoa there

hyper-neutrino

00:08

java itself isn't good but that doesn't mean I can't be good with it

~~just like how you're good at vyxal~~

user

~~Java is good, but that doesn't mean HN is good at it~~

@RedwolfPrograms wdym?

Redwolf Programs

Nothing ignore me

lyxal

wanna see something actually cursed then?

hyper-neutrino

no thanks, I have a mirror if I wanted to

lyxal

too late

user

00:15

Finally, some real cursed code! You made my day

@hyper-neutrino What have you been cursed with? Nerdiness? :P

Aaron Miller

Is that part of the Vyxal interpreter converted to a Scratch-like format?

Giuseppe

@qwr I did; I believe Robin Ryder also posted a tweet to the now-defunct R chatroom saying that using ` would finally resolve the scan()` vs function() problem where scan() is usually shorter but just doesn't feel "right".

lyxal

@AaronMiller no

that's from a recent assignment

university assignment btw

first-year

it's bix xoring in an app development program called Thunkable

Giuseppe

@qwr R is also an incredibly frustrating language to golf in because the vectorization is inconsistent and there are so many weird edge cases with the builtins.

Aaron Miller

@lyxal Oh cool. I decided not to go to college. Instead I got a job like the bum I am.

lyxal

00:20

my main excuse for doing university is so that I can get better at code golf

9

obv it's helpful for other long term things

but code golf is my main focus lol

Aaron Miller

Lol. Priorities, right?

Redwolf Programs

ninja'd

lyxal

@AaronMiller exactly!

Redwolf Programs

Well not ninja'd becaise wifi saved me

Unrelated String

@lyxal ignoring the actual code, that is definitely one of the uglier scratchoids i've seen

Redwolf Programs

00:27

^

Aaron Miller

@lyxal In the about on your chat profile, shouldn’t it be "Through the coding and golf we carry on," instead of "the golf"?

Unrelated String

those tab things on expression blocks are also :/

Redwolf Programs

That is truly cursed

Unrelated String

the huge quotes are in a totally different style from everything else

Redwolf Programs

It's like they don't snap together and you just have to try to get them to line up lol

Unrelated String

00:29

lol

Aaron Miller

@UnrelatedString Oh god, my eyes...

Unrelated String

those settings help buttons are also kind of out of place feeling

and wait why are there two different colors of string literal

user

Strings come in different colors, duh

Unrelated String

are the light pink ones actually some kind of atom type

lyxal

Redwolf Programs

00:31

Is...is the darker one for numbers for something?

Why are there quotes around the variable names

This is deeply concerning

Unrelated String

the light pink ones are all used to name variables but there's no way they can't also be used for something else because then why wouldn't they just be variables

i feel like there are also way too many dropdowns

and with: is a very weird way to talk about passing arguments

user

I think that's an okay way to do it

Scratch doesn't even have functions that take arguments iirc

Unrelated String

with can mean too many things

yeah scratch is kinda fucked that way

lyxal

this ain't scratch

Unrelated String

from the name of "thunkable" i'm assuming this is some kind of kinda lazy kinda functional dealio

lyxal

00:37

it's for app development

what you're seeing works on Android

user

If this is such a complicated app, why not just write real code? This has to be really painful

Or did you choose to use thunkable yourself?

lyxal

We all had to use thunkable

Presumably to "get used to the fact that you might not always have the best tools"

now seems a good time to point that this is a different course to the one where I use java

Unrelated String

wait if you're assigning to global variables in like most of your functions then where does the thunking come in

user

Usually not having the best tools means the best editor you have is notepad, not that you have to drag and drop stuff

lyxal

they previously used MIT app inventor

Unrelated String

00:38

or you have some legacy code

user

@UnrelatedString That's the sound your head makes when it makes contact with your desk after you try out thunkable

Unrelated String

@user i see

lyxal

they only switched to thunkable like this year or last year

Unrelated String

lol

lyxal

dw I tried to make it less cursed by trying to piggyback off data:text/html urls laced with javascript inside web viewers and api calls

actually typing that out makes it sound more cursed

user

00:41

/claps even though I have no idea what that means

lyxal

e.g.

data:text/html,<script>var%20pattern%20=%20/\d+/g;%20window.location.replace("data:text,"%20+%20"10".match(pattern))</script>

Redwolf Programs

Oh god

user

That looks more cursed

lyxal

@user put this into your url bar: data:text/html,%3Ch1%3EHello,%20User%3C/h1%3E

Unrelated String

looked at thunkable's website and did not find why it's called that but did find that this isn't something they are marketing as an education tool this is legitimately something they are trying to sell as make a killer app with No Code™️

user

00:42

@lyxal What's that? <h1>Hello, user</h1>?

lyxal

correct

it renders the HTML

user

That's some big brain stuff

Redwolf Programs

I don't get why people are scared to show children real code. Scratch is fine I guess, but all these knock-offs are awful.

user

@UnrelatedString lol why would you want to make an app with no code

Redwolf Programs

And using them in a university level class...

Unrelated String

00:43

because code is big scary

user

Having to work around all this stuff is just painful

lyxal

my point is that I was desperate enough to try and use javascript for doing things instead of drag-and-drop

Redwolf Programs

I once made a whole text editor in data:text/html

lyxal

@RedwolfPrograms first year, and the class is "introduction to professional engineering"

Redwolf Programs

it was painful

Unrelated String

00:44

my favorite professional engineering tool, thunkable

user

@RedwolfPrograms idk about other people, but I was actually scared of JS and only started learning it because it turned out Scratch was bad at math and stuff

lyxal

@UnrelatedString you'll like what the project brief was even more

Redwolf Programs

I use Thunkable every day, as a professional engineer. When I walk in to the office, everyone comments about how professional my code is.

user

I regarded it as this really, really complex language that only professionals used

Unrelated String

hiring full stack app developers must have at least a phd and 10 years of experience in thunkable (minimum wage ofc)

user

00:45

@lyxal More cursedness?

lyxal

@user "visitor-employee management for our government's defense force"

> The Defence Science and Technology Group (DST) has approached you to assist with
managing their workforce and visitors. They are part of the Australian Department of Defence
dedicated to providing science and technology support for Australia’s defence and national
security needs.

Unrelated String

@user i think js was the first text programming language i started learning and i am still scared of it

Redwolf Programs

I use Thunkable + PHP + Coffeescript as my web stack

lyxal

look the point of the course is more teaching engineering practices and report writing

the actual project is inconsequential

Unrelated String

throw fortran in for performance

lyxal

00:47

one of the people in our group made a group messaging system using thunkable

Redwolf Programs

I use Thunkable to dynamically generate PHP that dynamically generates Coffeescript, which dynamically generates the site

I managed to use SQL as a transpilation target to convert NPM's leftpad

lyxal

@RedwolfPrograms mock thunkable all you want, but it has JSON built-ins

Unrelated String

you need to use autohotkey to generate the thunkable

Redwolf Programs

No, I just type really fast

lyxal

@user if it was up to me, I'd use Android Studio. App dev in AS is way less painful than app dev in Thunkable

Unrelated String

00:49

which uses more ram
android studio, or thunkable on chrome

lyxal

honestly idk

i don't remember

java is bad, but thunkable is way worse

Unrelated String

oh yeah seriously what are the pink strings

are they atoms or what

lyxal

at least with java you can tell where the errors are

Redwolf Programs

JSON built-ins are cursed for any language which doesn't have JSON-like syntax

lyxal

@UnrelatedString yeah

they are atoms

Unrelated String

00:51

was that yeah to the atoms

okay

good

Redwolf Programs

Why...variable...names...in...quotes

lyxal

Unrelated String

in quotes makes sense, but they should be single instead of double

Bubbler

I guess Android Studio + Java is still king for android app dev, unless you're gonna make a full game using Unity (or another full-fledged game engine)

Unrelated String

wait what so you can also treat atoms directly like strings

that's not very atomy then

lyxal

00:53

@UnrelatedString not really

you can't go putting the pink strings into the "set app variable [...] to ()"

because that breaks it

Unrelated String

i mean the light pink strings

lyxal

the light pink strings are default fields

Unrelated String

the light pink strings are the atoms and the reddish dark pink are strings

lyxal

other way around

Unrelated String

"default fields"

are a data type?

lyxal

00:54

hang on

let me just get a screenshot of what i mean

Unrelated String

so the ones you use as variable names can be treated as strings, but the ones you don't use as variable names are also strings

lyxal

those are equivalent

those are not equivalent

Unrelated String

i assumed as much

lyxal

Unrelated String

why is there a third shade of pink

Redwolf Programs

00:58

is this just java but scratch and ugly

Bubbler

@NewPosts Hey!

Unrelated String

so why do the dark pink string literals exist

lyxal

Unrelated String

alternatively, why are the light pink string literals strings at all

Bubbler

@RedwolfPrograms The bot is not grabbing my new post somehow :/

OldSandboxPosts

01:00

Sandbox posts last active a week ago: Return shortest integer-is-one-of function, JS onelineriser

Redwolf Programs

The bots died

Getting captcha'd, hold on

lyxal

Lyxal's cursed Jav.... oh wait this isn't actually java

47 mins ago, 45 minutes total – 151 messages, 8 users, 4 stars

Bookmarked 20 secs ago by lyxal

Bubbler

TFW the human is essentially a captcha-solving bot and the bot is doing the real work

Redwolf Programs

No, it just errors when there's a captcha

I can't solve them, just have to wait it out

ws decides to be "helpful" and exit the program when it errors >:|

lyxal

hey we have 169 bookmarked conversations

nice

@lyxal hey the message id of that post ended in 69

nice

@AaronMiller no, because the actual line I'm copying is "through the fire and the flames" not "through the fire and flames"

hyper-neutrino

01:33

my solution to ijk string feels so stupid help

willing to bet some math-based language has built-in quaternion support or we'll get like Mathematica for 0 bytes :P

caird coinheringaahing

Man, I take a 2 day break from PPCG and you guys insist on sending 10s of thousands of chat messages :P

Also, does anyone know if, given a Minecraft save file, is it possible to tell whether cheats were ever used in that world?

Aaron Miller

@lyxal But the actual line is "through the fire and flames", as is the name of the song; it’s just usually misquoted as "through the fire and the flames". Source: Genius

hyper-neutrino

@cairdcoinheringaahing oh so you did take a break. was wondering if i just got unlucky and missed your activity since i don't really read the transcript :p

Unrelated String

01:48

@cairdcoinheringaahing cheats as in commands or cheats as in third party cheats

answer might be no to both but worth clarifying

caird coinheringaahing

@hyper-neutrino No, I just took a couple of days away from the site. Thought it'd be good to let others get in some reviews :P

@UnrelatedString Commands

Although both would be good

I'm considering a challenge in the form "Do X in a survival minecraft world. User with most Y after Z wins", but that can be circumvented by turning on cheats/commands

hyper-neutrino

@cairdcoinheringaahing heh fair enough :p i haven't been specifically delaying on reviews but i've had a couple where i missed it for an hour. strangely enough, nobody did them even if i gave an hour before i did it

you could make people screen record but that might limit people who have bad computers and also you'd have to watch hours of footage and that's probably not fun :p

caird coinheringaahing

Hmm

lyxal

@AaronMiller the guitar hero version at least has "the flames"

caird coinheringaahing

I'll need to do some experimenting, but the level.dat file might have clues/info

Aaron Miller

01:58

@lyxal Oh, I didn’t know that. Carry on then and don’t mind my lunatic ravings.

@cairdcoinheringaahing It’s only available for 1.12, but here’s a mod that disables cheats, so you could maybe require people to use it?

qwr

@Giuseppe oh man I wish I had a nickel for every time a code golf answer didn't feel right to me

Bubbler

02:18

Any Feed Back?

Redwolf Programs

02:40

Ordered my new laptop, should be here in early July

hyper-neutrino

oh that's quite a long delay

or maybe not. idk what's normal

Redwolf Programs

@cairdcoinheringaahing You can enable cheats from the Open To LAN menu though

@hyper-neutrino I added on some custom stuff like a better SSD (more data to lose :p), so I guess it takes them time to have an actual human do the assembly :p

There are disadvtantages to not being able to drive or vote or work or own anything but the ability to spend all my money on something stupid with basically no consequences is the best :p

hyper-neutrino

driving is nice but the insurance for males my age is brutal. lol.

Redwolf Programs

Usually I'd try to try/catch the issue with NP/SP but the problem is...I have no idea where the error comes from

Oh, figured it out. I added error handling code to NP's ws instance, but not SP's

And now I got captcha'd on SP but not NP, so I still have to wait so that I can get both of them running :/

Eventually I'll set up some sort of system to persist the credentials across restarts so I don't have to worry about that happening

NP/SP back online. Should be the last time I need to announce that.

Redwolf Programs

03:43

I love how there's no picture for the wikipedia page for aphantasia

It's probably coincidental but I hope it never changes

A username

04:23

Hi

Redwolf Programs

Hi!

A username

04:44

This is fourth on search results for Lyxal

hyper-neutrino

unsurprising; i think of that every time i force myself to pronounce the name correctly as Like-sal and not Lick-sal

Redwolf Programs

Lyxal licks all

hyper-neutrino

ಠ_ಠ

A username

And this

Redwolf Programs

Wait what

A username

04:47

Idk

One of your other profiles is also on there.

Redwolf Programs

Oh, I thought that was one for Lyxal lol

A username

The rest is just random nonsense

Hi lyxal, we're discussing you

lyxal

Yed

*yes

@RedwolfPrograms cursed.

Redwolf Programs

It's not what you want to be known for lol

lyxal

@Ausername that's from that one time we all swapped usernames and pictures

@RedwolfPrograms correct

A username

04:50

@lyxal Oh.

Redwolf Programs

That or google's picking up on the hivemind

(I'm actually user and user is actually Lyxal, we never switched back fully lol)

lyxal

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240/2021/4/29/…

A username

I'm not actually part of the hivemind directly, I'm one of redwolf's chatbots.

lyxal

@Ausername I ninja'd you by a month

A username

Yes you did

lyxal

04:53

@RedwolfPrograms wait that means I'm you

Dang

Redwolf Programs

I know right

lyxal

Here's me thinking I was a normal person when instead I think JavaScript is a good programming language (a clearly incorrect thought)

Redwolf Programs

I personally love Scala

But must hide it

lyxal

A username

@lyxal Javascript is a good language.

lyxal

04:57

I am speed

@Ausername it really isn't

A username

Also you has not swapped.

Redwolf Programs

Sure it is

Good is relative

A username

You still has the toaster quiz lyxal

lyxal

@RedwolfPrograms JavaScript corrupts the mind

I mean, look what it's done to you

Redwolf Programs

D:

lyxal

04:59

May 21 at 6:48, by Razetime

no fine person likes chromebooks

Razetime really do be spitting facts

A username

05:35

When Vyxal loses to Javascript

I think redwolf's server just died, Redwolf and both bots just left.

hyper-neutrino

things aren't looking exceptionally good for the testing phase of these bots

should i maybe run it on my server? i think it's more reliable

A username

Do you have the code?

hyper-neutrino

no

will need to wait for redwolf to return to discuss

A username

lyxal

05:50

your inbox is mine

@Ausername ^

Razetime

@Ausername can probably port the jelly idea

A username

What jelly idea

Razetime

uhh whatever hyper-neutrino

has done

A username

That's weird, I have an entirely different approach

With a lot of repeated code that I'm trying to remove.

Nvm I give up for now

lyxal

try and port javascript lol

hyper-neutrino

05:57

what's your current idea?

A username

Maybe

Lol

hyper-neutrino

my idea is pretty unintelligent overall lol, it's just a large compressed multiplication table

A username

@hyper-neutrino My current idea is to slowly reduce the string, bubbling -s to the end.

I used some tricks with transliterate...

hyper-neutrino

i wonder if there's a way I can shorten mine by handling signs separately

since it would quarter my multiplication table in theory

A username

I had handled signs seperately by:
Checking if they're the same, and appending a -, otherwise...

If the string `ijki` includes the first two letters, make it positive, else make it negative.

Bubbler

06:03

JS is weirdly good at weird challenges

A username

Yes. I think porting tsh would actually be longer than JS because there's nothing verbose in there and vyxal variables are verbosoe.

*verbose

lyxal

TIL watching the real time questions page for SE is actually somewhat fun

A username

Here it's not.

lyxal

stackexchange.com/questions?tab=realtime

Bubbler

07:19

Because NSP is offline now:

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Solve the halting problem for S combinatory logic code-golf functional-programming lambda-calculus halting-problem decision-problem Background Combinatory logic is a system where a term is written using a finite set of combinators and function application between terms, and reduction rules are de...

lyxal

And this is why we don't fully rely on feeds from unofficial sources

Bubbler

It really isn't going well

StackMeter

My small brain had an idea

gonna go put it on sandbox

you know how we can prime factorise numbers

lyxal

07:36

Idea: if the new bots fail, a RO should add the feeds back temporarily

StackMeter

what if we did that with the exponenets

lyxal

@Bubbler ^^

StackMeter

how does one LaTeX

Bubbler

Damn, adding feeds is annoying

...and I don't see how I can set up a feed to be posted by a specific feed user

StackMeter

ok

lol

Bubbler

07:44

@lyxal I give up. Ask another RO (or mod) for that.

StackMeter

if you banned ok I'd be mute

Bubbler

@StackMeter MathJax tutorial, but note that our site uses \$..\$ instead of $..$ for inline math.

StackMeter

i see now

got it now

boom

new challenge

Bubbler

08:02

Erm...

Also it has a high chance of being viewed as a hybrid dupe of vanilla prime factorization and any of "recursively apply" challenges, because mathematically there's no escape from doing so

@StackMeter ^

pxeger

08:15

1

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Gödel numbering of a string code-golf string primes number-theory integer Background Gödel numbers are a way of encoding any string with a unique positive integer, using prime factorisations: First, each symbol in the alphabet is assigned a predetermined integer code. Then, to encode a string \$ ...

^ any feedback?

(it's about primes, I'm afraid)

Adám

@Bubbler Maybe the primes info should mention that?

Bubbler

@pxeger Yes it is, but I'm slightly lenient when the task is about an established thing somewhere else. It looks fine and clear enough

pxeger

thanks!

Bubbler

@Adám Edited.

Adám

Nice.

StackMeter

09:10

hmm

how would I make my challenge not a dupe

because I thought no-one had done that

StackMeter

09:23

I have a CMQ: how do I make my challenge better

Adám

@StackMeter What is the essence of your challenge?

StackMeter

the essence is to prime factorize - with the constraint exponents must be factorized too - I feel like that would kill many short solutions and/or builtins

also halfway to "civic duty"

Adám

@StackMeter How would the result look for say 192?

┌───┬─┐
│2  │3│
├───┼─┤
│2 3│ │
│1 1│ │
└───┴─┘

Would you have to find the factors of the factors' exponents too?

StackMeter

192 is \$2^6 * 3\$, so \$2 ^ {2*3} * 3\$

Adám

No MathJax here.

StackMeter

09:37

my MathJax is not working

Adám

192 = 2²˙³∙3¹

StackMeter

ok

@Adám that's the goal

Adám

But how about 65536?

StackMeter

2^2^2^2

Adám

65536 = 2¹⁶

So 2²˙²˙²˙²

StackMeter

09:40

how do I get that font

Adám

Isn't this inconsistent? Why isn't it ₂2⁴ leading to wanting to factorise that 4 as well?

StackMeter

@Adám which is represented as 2^2^4

Adám

@StackMeter But 4 is not a prime!

StackMeter

which is then represented as 2^2^2^2

Adám

@StackMeter It isn't a font, I'm just using Unicode symbols.

StackMeter

09:42

ok

Adám

How would you represent 589824?

StackMeter

so 2² ^ 2²

and 2 is prime

@Adám 2^2^2^2 * 3^2

Adám

In other words, the challenge is to represent the given number as a mathematical expression using only primes, exponentiation, and multiplication?

StackMeter

@Adám yes, I suppose

I think that's unique

Adám

What's to prevent me from writing it as 2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙2∙3∙3?

StackMeter

09:45

must be in the shortest form

so because 2² ^ 2² * 3² is shorter, it must be used

Adám

OK, but I assume you don't want to require using MathJax or Unicode in answers.

StackMeter

yes

nested lists/arrays are also allowed

Adám

Uh oh, this is getting complicated.

So how do parentheses factor (pun intended) in for length?

And what is a^b^c? Is it (a^b)^c or a^(b^c)?

StackMeter

parenthesis are fine, and do not count for length

@Adám a^b^c is and always will be a^(b^c)

if you want the former, use brackets

Adám

No, if you want the former, use multiplication!

StackMeter

09:49

that's fair

Adám

So how would one check if the solution is indeed optimal for all possible inputs?

StackMeter

I'll run some test cases, and I won't reveal them, but I will reveal the hash of them

such that people can verify I did not change them

Adám

Huh. I guess just providing open input→output of a lot and varied examples should do.

StackMeter

yes

gtg for a sec

Adám

So 26542080 should be 2^2^2^2*3^2^2*5 if I understand right. That might actually be an interesting problem.

Although 2^2^(2*2)*3^(2*2)*5 is an equally valid solution, no?

pxeger

09:54

CMQ: how many scissors are there in Unicode?

(answer: far more than there reasonably needed to be)

Adám

@pxeger I suppose you only want images of actually scissors, right?

pxeger

yes

ideographs for words that mean scissors don't count

Adám

I count 5 then.

✀✁✂✃✄

I have no idea why we need both white and black scissors.

pxeger

and 3 types of scissors of unspecified colour

Adám

Now that we have color characters (!) it should be possible to join those with a single base scissor symbol…

Maybe a safety symbol combined with a base scissor would yield the safety scissor…

But seriously, are they trying to create a new sort of Hieroglyphics where combining pictograms creates more refined nouns?

pxeger

09:59

if I were in charge of Unicode, I would definitely prefer unique characters over lots of combinations with ZWJs

Adám

I, for one, think the abjad/alphabet was a great invention.

2

Lyxal's cursed Jav.... oh wait this isn't actually java

Transcript for