The APL Orchard

12:00 AM

@dzaima They're are actually two tied for top votes. But the one at the top the way you filtered, simply said consistent results. Anything appended to an empty program will behave consistently, in any well-behaved language. So I suppose that means it's up to the discretion of the voter?

dzaima

@AviF.S. it also says "given consistent input(s)". You're not giving anything inputs, pretty much by definition :p

and as i said, an empty program isn't reusable as you can't assign it to anything

(second answer says "should be able to be assigned/named/referred to in some way")

Avi F. S.

@dzaima By the language's definition, sure. But there's no visible difference to the outside observer. And one could make an APL, for instance, implementation that behaved identically, except it happened to also treat empty programs/whitespace as function

dzaima

@dzaima ah, "there must be some consistent method of providing input to the function" makes that more concrete

Avi F. S.

That is, given uncountably infinite time it would...

But that's just minutiae ;)

dzaima

@AviF.S. if i could do f← ⋄ 4 ≡ f 4, then sure, an empty expression would be a function, but that is a visible difference

Avi F. S.

12:06 AM

@dzaima Hmm, that wasn't my interpretation of resusable

I just figured that if [nothing]1+2 works, [nothing]2+3 should also, and anything else you pass the function

Not anything about assigning, many (eso)langs don't even allow assignment/naming

dzaima

@AviF.S. by that definition - would be a valid function in Python, which it's definitely not

@AviF.S. neither is required for being able to reuse code, but a function necessarily needs to be storable for reuse, otherwise it's not a function but a code snippet

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Good point. I'm agreed that it's not by any sane measure. And it's actively un-helpful to think of it that way. But I still think that it counts as under-the-hood, and that the language could hypothetically be implemented either way. Which means that in the case of a competition like this, one could make a concrete case, given the goal in mind

dzaima

@AviF.S. it's still not reusable by any means however it's implemented without visible effects

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Sorry, I didn't follow!

You're saying assignment isn't required to reuse code, but then by saying it's storable it sounds like you're saying it is required...

What's the differentiation there?

dzaima

@AviF.S. for example in in Jelly (and Canvas) each line is a separate function, callable by some means. Neither part is naming the function nor storing it anywhere, they just "are"

Avi F. S.

12:15 AM

@dzaima So then every line is a function in all languages with gotos?

dzaima

and languages which don't allow reusing code in any way just don't have functions

Avi F. S.

That hardly seems to hold because in all reasonable languages (ones with file reading), you can implement gotos by reading your own source code and counting lines?

dzaima

@AviF.S. that is pretty much how assembly functions work

Avi F. S.

@dzaima But then any and every code snippet is a function, because you can simply give the starting and ending location of it and then later on you can run through and find that code snippet...

dzaima

@AviF.S. now we're moving into the "what are valid ways of calling a function" aspect of the question

Avi F. S.

12:20 AM

So then the distinction between a code snippet and a function falls away entirely (in TC languages with file reading aka most reasonable ones)

dzaima

@AviF.S. i'd say not file reading but self-source-code reading, the source might not be in a file

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Good point!

You agree then, though?

dzaima

@AviF.S. we haven't yet discussed the "what are valid ways of calling a function" part (i'd certainly say "read source, cut between X and Y, execute" is not a valid calling method)

Avi F. S.

Also, it seems messy because no one ever said anything about post processing... Any function could allow + or - to become a 'function' if they allowed post processing to do lambda a,b: a symbol b for dyadic funcs or lambda a: symbol a for monadic

@dzaima True! But at this point I'm losing site of the larger discussion, haha

dzaima

"what are valid ways of calling a function" definitely needs to be a standard fact about each language afaict, otherwise i could say "Python, 0 bytes, call with print("Hello, World!")" for a hello world competition

Avi F. S.

12:26 AM

@dzaima Haha, couldn't agree more!

@dzaima Does that mean a meta is needed, or are you saying it's already been defined?

dzaima

tl;dr "what is a function" can't be defined unambiguously uniformly for all programming languages, which is kind of obvious when said that way

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Couldn't agree more :)

Shall we let it rest at that?

Wezl

@dzaima related: abusing headers and footers in TIO

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Thanks a million for indulging me in all of this :)

dzaima

@AviF.S. i think this handles the "valid ways of calling a function", though it also uses the term "function" which we're trying to "define" here :p

Avi F. S.

12:30 AM

@Wezl Haha, great prank when using esoteric languages no one knows!

@dzaima Haha, don't those meta posts make you die inside with jealousy!! Martin Ender, who totally does deserve the points, asked the question with ~100 votes = 1000 rep. But then answered in 14 different ways, each with a title and nothing else. Each of those has average ~85 votes. Meaning he earned ~10k from that one question, immediately proposing answers to himself!! Those meta posts just crack me up so much!

dzaima

@AviF.S. meta posts don't give reputation

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Oh... Now I'm super embarrassed! Well, still super amusing!

Any explanations anywhere as to why, though? It seems like an equally important part of the community, no?

dzaima

@AviF.S. answer votes are often used as "polls", posting answers expected to be downvoted sometimes is good

also discussion is, well, for discussion, which can include disagreement

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Ah, understood. In other words, you're not downvoted because your post is bad quality, or not well though out, or not helpful, but rather because they disagree!

Darn! You edited, which renders mine moot

dzaima

@AviF.S. yep

Wezl

12:41 AM

can't you post an answer as a community wiki, which shows you intend it to be upvoted and downvoted alot?

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Ah! Had no idea you could do that! Another one to add to the Wiki under formatting! Mind sharing how to do a tag?

dzaima

@AviF.S. [tag:code-golf] for main and [meta-tag:feature-request] for meta though this is very unrelated to APL

Avi F. S.

@dzaima True... but I started a draft of how to use APL Orchard. There's a section on formatting in the messages, so seems worth adding for completeness, no?

dzaima

31

A: How should Community Wikis be used?

Community wiki is not a rep waiver I've mentioned that from time to time in the past. Community wiki doesn't just mean that you cannot earn rep from a post. Yes, it does have that side effect, but the community wiki option is for posts that can be edited by anyone without worrying about post ow...

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Better add how to do that, too...

dzaima

12:48 AM

@AviF.S. also, little tip - to view the source of any message, go to the transcript (again, middle click its arrow) and edit history is always viewable there

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Super useful, will add as well! How though? I can't figure that one out...

dzaima

@AviF.S. under left arrow → history

Avi F. S.

- i.stack.imgur.com/iFZqu.png -

@dzaima Is that a feature that comes with more rep?

dzaima

@AviF.S. that's why i said go to the transcript (either permalink there, or middle clicking the arrow)

in the main chat it only shows up if the message has been edited

also sandbox is better for testing

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Good point, thanks

@dzaima Interesting, you can access history of removed messages directly from the removed message. But if you permalink from anywhere else, the (removed) doesn't even appear in the transcript...

dzaima

12:58 AM

@AviF.S. doesn't appear to be the case for me

ah, you can view the history of your own deleted messages if you have the ID, but not others'

if its visible from the transcript though i'd guess that's a caching issue

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Is it also the case for you, though, that you can't see whether there even was a removed message in the transcript?

dzaima

@AviF.S. yeah, that's how it behaves. Removed messages aren't useful for the transcript anyways

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Thanks a bunch! I added 5 new things to page just now re: all this. Becoming a bit over-the-top, but always easier to cut than to add, I suppose!

@dzaima N days from now, will the removed message still be visible here, in non-transcript land?

dzaima

@AviF.S. don't know about any N, but N≥2

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Ah! After at most 48 hours they're no longer visible?

dzaima

1:06 AM

@AviF.S. no, i just scrolled back 2 days and saw a deleted message by me

i'd guess the (removed)s stay here forever

Avi F. S.

@dzaima Ah, I got it backwards! Okay! Well thanks for all that! I feel like I should let you go rest now after like 3 pages of all sorts of bargering you!

Thanks a bunch, though, all super entertaining, helpful, and much long-term value extracted now on the wiki draft :)

dzaima

N≥70 in the sandbox, and i really doubt they have any message count limit (or time limit somewhere past 70)

Bubbler

Wow, someone just upvoted my new answer exactly one second after I posted it...

Bubbler

4:53 AM

For anyone who didn't notice, RIDE 4.3 is also out.

(And Acre 8, which means I have to update all three on my docker image)

Transcript for