The Nineteenth Byte

Alex A.

2:10 AM

@Dennis This is how I feel about my production code from 5 days ago.

Alex A.

2:23 AM

The digital crickets in here are nearly deafening.

Maltysen

Alex A.

My girlfriend's dad used to do maintenance on mass spectrometers for national labs. He once had to go to the Hanford Nuclear Plant. He found a tumbleweed, thought it was neat, and put it in his bag. But on his way out, he had to be scanned for radiation. His bag made the sensor go nuts. Turns out it was a highly irradiated tumbleweed.

That's what I have to say about tumbleweeds.

Reto Koradi

well, that's probably much more than most people have to say about tumbleweeds ;)

aditsu

2:38 AM

there's a tumbleweed badge

Alex A.

I'm glad that I don't have that badge on any site.

It would probably be irradiated due to cross contamination.

Reto Koradi

ah, that's a question badge. I think I only asked one question on one site so far. on SO, I'm at over 1000 answers and 0 questions

Alex A.

:O

Reto Koradi

Necromancer is another badge that does not sound very flattering. I do have that one on SO

aditsu

I am a silver necromancer on ppcg

Sp3000

2:56 AM

Necromancer's easy on PPCG if you answer a tips question :)

Reto Koradi

hey @Alex, I see an upvoted comment from you about Sudoku solvers. I wrote one a few years ago. unfortunately lost the code. it was pretty fast. how fast is yours?

Alex A.

@RetoKoradi I actually dislike sudoku too much to be interested in making a solver. :P

But if I wanted to participate in sudoku, it would be by programming a solver.

I think it was @Pietu1998 who was saying that he has a really fast sudoku solver.

Reto Koradi

well, I solved them manually for some time, too. was reasonably good at it. not sure why you would dislike them if you're on a site with "puzzles" in the name :)

Alex A.

Oh I like puzzles, just not ones that infuriate me.

Doorknob

@RetoKoradi Programming Puzzles & Code Golf != Puzzling ;)

Reto Koradi

3:10 AM

@Doorknob Sure. But I could imagine that similar kinds of people would like both activities.

Alex A.

A lot of folks here are active there too.

Reto Koradi

Computers are much better at Sudoku, though. My solver solved about 2000/second from a benchmark dataset. And those are ones that are too difficult for almost any human to solve manually.

Alex A.

Well if that's not badass, I don't know what is.

Nice work. :)

Reto Koradi

Apparently some people were at about 5000/second. Of course it depends on the hardware, but others had definitely come up with faster algorithms.

Alex A.

Sounds like you and @Pietu1998 should talk algorithm-advice the next time you overlap in chat.

Reto Koradi

3:16 AM

If it's ok to pimp your own answers, this recent one was a really fun algorithm problem codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/51728/…. Probably more work than I ever spent on any other SE answer, though...

Dennis

@AlexA. :P The gesture suite for my touchpad aside, I don't think I've ever written production code.

Alex A.

@Dennis :O What do you do for work? Are you not a programmer of some kind?

Dennis

I'm a Mathematician. Just finished my Ph.D.

Sp3000

@RetoKoradi My personal problem with Sudoku and other Nikoli puzzles is that it's very algorithmic to solve for most. Sure, you might get a clue or two by nice leaps in logic, but half the time it's rows/cols/squares/pairs/trips/wings and whatnot

Dennis

Not counting LaTeX, I've written zero lines of code for work.

Alex A.

3:27 AM

Congrats on finishing your PhD! That's fantastic!

Dennis

Thanks!

Reto Koradi

@Sp3000 That's true. When I solved them daily, I had a well defined strategy. Looked for the same kinds of patterns in the same order. It was fairly routine. In a way, it actually helped me switch my mind off, even though it required a lot of focus.

Alex A.

Sp3000

:) doesn't mean I don't like Sudokus in general though, just not by hand for me

Dennis

:D

Sp3000

3:29 AM

(Unless there's a twist)

Reto Koradi

Mathematicians scare me. :) Actually, sometimes I wish I understood more of it. Who was that a few weeks ago who used some crazy math to solve a problem? I believe it was once of Martin's diamond pattern things. I didn't understand half the words he used.

Dennis

I don't think I'd be very interested in code golf if I had to code for work. I don't participate on Math SE at all...

Alex A.

@RetoKoradi @PeterTaylor

Reto Koradi

Yes, that was him.

Sp3000

Peter is pretty crazy. Crazy good.

Alex A.

3:31 AM

Crazy smart.

Reto Koradi

I worked quite a bit with physicists. Some of those are very smart as well.

Alex A.

@Dennis So do you work in academia? What does your work as a mathematician encompass?

@RetoKoradi @MartinBüttner studied physics!

Reto Koradi

More seriously, I was actually kind of interested in studying math as well. But the career options seemed fairly limited. And since I was about equally interested in CS, I went for that.

Sp3000

Double degree - best of both worlds. At the expense of time and money.

Alex A.

I studied math. I didn't give a shit about career opportunities.

And then I graduated and needed a career.

Dennis

3:34 AM

@AlexA. Pure math, almost exclusively. I'm currently researching (Topology) and teaching a couple of courses.

Reto Koradi

We had to choose another subject where we had to take a number of courses. Not sure if that's similar to a "minor" in the US. I took numerical analysis. Learned about eigenvalue algorithms, finite element algorithms, and all that fun stuff.

Dennis

@AlexA.What do you do for work?

aditsu

I often solve sudokus by hand to kill time (when I'm out and waiting)

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. /me has a stats major. Luckily, a lot of that stats major was spent working on R. :-P

aditsu

I used to be a math guy in school, but programming was way more attractive

Alex A.

3:40 AM

@ChrisJester-Young I did a stats minor and now I'm in a distance master's program in stats. :)

@Dennis Currently I'm a programmer in medical research but I'm looking to change careers.

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. :-D

Alex A.

High five for stats!

o/

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. I was lucky to be doing stats at the university that invented R, at a time when R was nascent.

Reto Koradi

@AlexA. What kind of medical research? I worked for a medical device company for a while.

Chris Jester-Young

So my honours project was to actually do work on the R core. :-)

3

Alex A.

3:42 AM

@RetoKoradi Currently I work at a nonprofit group that, in a nutshell, does statistical consulting for cancer researchers.

Chris Jester-Young

Fulfils my interest in programming, while still doing something marginally statistical.

Alex A.

@ChrisJester-Young That's awesome!!!

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. I know; back then I didn't know R was going to get so big.

I really liked the language, though, so I championed it whenever I could.

Alex A.

I haven't seen you doing much R golfing. ;)

Clearly code golf > core dev

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. Well, so, I don't work with R so much any more, so it's gotten rusty. :-(

Reto Koradi

3:45 AM

@AlexA. I see. That's quite different. I'm more interested in medical imaging.

Alex A.

@RetoKoradi Medical imaging is really interesting. I took a Coursera course on statistical analysis of fMRI data, and that was fascinating.

Chris Jester-Young

(Sorry, I had to edit Reto's comments some so that the thread linkages are in place. OCD. ;-))

Alex A.

I completely understand.

OCD: Ordinary Computer Dudes

Chris Jester-Young

I know, right.

aditsu

@ChrisJester-Young I wonder if this works

Alex A.

3:47 AM

@aditsu Trying to ping yourself?

Doorknob

@Doorknob You can ping yourself like this

aditsu

no, replying to the future

Chris Jester-Young

:23101742 See if I get the ID correct

Doorknob

Oh, I'll make that reply to this

Chris Jester-Young

Holy shit! I guessed the ID correctly. :-P

Doorknob

3:48 AM

Time travel! :P

Chris Jester-Young

Two more.

This one!

Alex A.

When you ping yourself does it make the satisfying bonk sound?

Doorknob

@AlexA. Yes. :P

Chris Jester-Young

@AlexA. Yes.

Jinx!

Alex A.

Diamond jinx

You must now duel

Maltysen

3:49 AM

@AlexA. sits in the sandbox for the whole day pinging yourself :)

aditsu

hmm, didn't seem to work

Chris Jester-Young

@aditsu I guess the message must be rebaked.

aditsu

oh wow, you did it

Chris Jester-Young

;-)

Alex A.

@Dennis, are you a university researcher/professor?

Dennis

3:57 AM

Technically not a professor yet, but yes.

Alex A.

That's great!

Reto Koradi

4:08 AM

@AlexA. A fried of mine did his PhD on automatic interpretation of MRI images. I think it was about measuring white and gray brain matter. My first job out of college was for a company that made MRI instruments, which is where I worked with him.

Alex A.

@RetoKoradi Wow, that's really cool!

self.toBed();

Everyone here is super awesome. <3

Reto Koradi

@AlexA. I have a hobby project for displaying volumetric datasets. It was initially motivated by somebody claiming it was difficult. But then I took it much farther than originally planned.

vihan1086

4:26 AM

Someone has got to tell me why V3Fd.PG+N1Iqdwd isn't working. I'm loosing my mind

Dennis

What is it supposed to do?

vihan1086

@Dennis loop through all permutations of the alphabet and check if a permutation is the same as the input

Maltysen

@vihan1086 w calls input() again every time

you want z

this can be much shorter with filter

vihan1086

@Maltysen ohh, thanks. This is my first Pyth program so it'll probably be very bad

Is there a way to do os.system in Pyth?

Chris Jester-Young

Sure, with $. :-P

vihan1086

4:35 AM

ohh, I was trying v before

Maltysen

@vihan1086 v is only ast.literal_eval online but it works locally

v"__import__('os').system('ls')

xnor

5:57 AM

is there a way to make code blocks not cut out leading or trailing lines of spaces?

Chris Jester-Young

@xnor Is this for Whitespace?

xnor

no, test cases for a challenge i'm writing

Chris Jester-Young

@xnor Okay. Try using a manual <pre><code>...</code></pre> block. It may or may not work, but you won't know till you try.

xnor

@ChrisJester-Young that works, thanks!

Chris Jester-Young

Cool beans. :-)

New Sandboxed Posts

6:28 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Frame ASCII art code-golf I draw ASCII art on a rectangular canvas of spaces. This can leave some sides with too much empty space, while others are flush against the edge. ____________________ |\ \ l____ | \______________...

Sp3000

@xnor Can the ASCII art have empty lines in the middle?

(or lines of just spaces)

xnor

hmm, that's a good question

Sp3000

(I'm bringing it up because I had to specifically exclude that case because textwrap.dedent treated it differently to how I wanted for this question, and I didn't want to confuse anyone)

xnor

i see

i think i'm going to exclude it because i don't want to bother with the test case coverage needed

Sp3000

6:44 AM

That'll make stripping the top and bottom easier, I guess :)

xnor

yeah

New Sandboxed Posts

8:28 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

No one likes Chunky Butter code-challenge Challenge Given the equation of a line and the coordinates of the vertices of a shape, output the coordinates of the reflected shape. Further Information The line's equation will be given with a y and an x separated by an equals sign (there may not a...

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