The Nineteenth Byte

Calvin's Hobbies

7:01 PM

I wonder what would happen if someone went to the SE HQ and asked to see someone about why PPCG hasn't graduated.

Beta Decay

Maybe we're the back up if SO ever fails horribly

We will be the saviours of the SE network

Martin Büttner

I think the difference between PPCG and other SE sites is that we're actually, functionally a beta. For the others, they just need to establish themselves, and then they get elections a design and maybe a new name and are "graduated" which is a completely arbitrary, because the site was 100% working before.

For PPCG, it's still a competition site shoehorned into a Q&A format and we regularly come across some issues, where that is actually quite awkward and the real solution would be changes to the software (which don't make sense for any other Q&A site). We ARE a beta, and if we just gradu…

Calvin's Hobbies

@MartinBüttner Is there a bigger programming puzzle community online somewhere?

Martin Büttner

I started collecting a list of the other sites with Sp3000 the other day, but I can't tell how "big" they are compared to us.

Chris Jester-Young

@PhiNotPi Not even the legal name. SO is more like a DBA. Legally, we're still Stack Exchange Inc.

In the same way that OkCupid's company is legally known as Humor Rainbow Inc but everyone calls them OkCupid anyway.

@Calvin'sHobbies HackerRank? But they're more of the online judge variety, not so much programming puzzles per se.

New Main Posts

7:18 PM

2

Q: Parentheses into Footnotes

Background LISP programmers have taken over the world! Parentheses have been declared as sacred characters, and from now on, they can only be used in LISP programs. It has been decided that parentheses in literary works shall be replaced by footnotes, and it's your job to automate this for simpl...

Optimizer

@MartinBüttner I am not able to come up with anything that important in a need for a site change by SE/SO dev. Do you have anything on top of your mind?

Geobits

Most things we use snippets for, for one ;)

Martin Büttner

^

Optimizer

@Geobits since snippets are working, how are those a blocker for us to graduate properly?

Martin Büttner

The sandbox is also the greatest hack of this community.

@Optimizer They are screaming "beta"

The snippets are a case of "we have patched an important feature into the software, because it's not supported natively (yet?)"

Geobits

7:23 PM

@Optimizer While those snippets are handy, they also suck. If not minified, they require a bunch of scrolling to get down to the run button once expanded. If minified, they're a pain to fix. They eat into max post length, and are confusing at first.

Martin Büttner

Sorting answers by languages or randomly would be useful as well. Searching by languages as well.

Optimizer

@MartinBüttner that is not how its used here though. Its more like "Hey, lets use snippets to do every possible weird thing we want"

Geobits

They also don't allow "open in new tab" for me on any contained links due to security crap.

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer That's exactly how it's used in the case of leaderboard snippets.

And snippets to make answer chaining challenges work.

Or cops and robbers.

Optimizer

if you say just the one standard leaderboard, I may agree, but we have so many other varieties of leaderboard now

Martin Büttner

7:25 PM

There are also several tweaks that don't require software changes, but which (as far as I'm aware) have never been made for any individual SE (certain help centre pages, the hover texts of the vote buttons, core privileges, etc)

@Optimizer which we probably wouldn't need if the software was able to understand what scores and languages are

Geobits

Rep gains for Qs vs As also IMO.

Martin Büttner

yes that

this site could even use tags for answers

Dennis

First and foremost: Questions shouldn't be called questions.

Martin Büttner

oh and that

New Main Posts

0

Q: Also want my cake

Introduction Today is my birthday, Yes my parent spend a lot time at home during the cold december holidays as many others. So I also want my cake. But I have a problem I just send the invitations today so no sure how many friends will came. Also I dont want order a big cake because I have b...

code-golf ascii-art

Geobits

7:26 PM

Challenge/Solution

Optimizer

@Dennis same for answers

Zgarb

@MartinBüttner I'll allow other bases in the footnote challenge, with a penalty for unary. Is +20% too much?

Optimizer

ok, so are we saying that either we stay in beta or branch out to a separate community? These changes look a lot to me tbh.

Dennis

Having a separate section for tips questions would also make sense. They do not belong on main IMHO, but they're even more out of place on meta.

Martin Büttner

My ideal version of PPCG has a somewhat modified software to host the challenges, and a separate Q&A site (like Area 51 discussions) to talk about programming challenges, which might be able to replace a sandbox.

Geobits

7:29 PM

@Dennis You've been talking to @Rainbolt, haven't you? :P

Optimizer

that was his election campaign promise to Rainbolt!

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer I don't think moving this community off SE is an option. So I think we'll stay in beta unless SO decides that having PPCG as a dedicated programming challenge community that works a bit differently from the other Q&A stuff is a worthy product to spend money and developer hours on.

Geobits

Aww, I didn't get any promises made to me :(

Dennis

Well, I have been fighting the holy war against spaces. ;)

Optimizer

@MartinBüttner moving out is our decision. We can simply request a backup of PPCG data, import into another solution which is fundamentally based on challenges in mind

Martin Büttner

7:30 PM

@Zgarb I don't really know. I'd take the 20%, because doing the conversion manually won't be worth it, but I know that rs can do the conversion in much less than that, kirbyfan will probably just use decimal anyway.

orlp

I don't think we should move off SE

Geobits

Moving it off of SE would be probably a death sentence. Maybe not right away, but I'm pretty sure we get most of our traffic (new users esp) from SE.

3

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer sure we can, but I don't think the community would follow, or that we'll survive without the traffic we get from the other SE sites

ninja'd

orlp

here's what moving from SE will get us: some minor features / annoyances fixed

here's what it will cost us: almost all of our traffic

Optimizer

@MartinBüttner I am not really sure how much value that brings anyway (given that off SE, we would not have a duty to fulfill meaningless stats). Its not like there are no programming challenge communities off SE.

Zgarb

7:33 PM

@MartinBüttner Edited.

Calvin's Hobbies

Am I the only one who wants to graduate for a new design? That's all I need.

Optimizer

haha

Geobits

@Optimizer That neglects that this site would still be here if we did a backup/transfer to another site. It would fracture the (somewhat small) community we do have right off the bat.

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer the fact that this community is based on the SE format does have some advantages which probably make it quite unique compared to the other sites. those are definitely worth keeping. it's just that it also brings some disadvantages with it that could potentially be fixed.

Dennis

I doubt I'd even notice the design change after a week.

Geobits

7:34 PM

I'd be tempted to stay on the SE version even if there was a splinter.

Optimizer

@Geobits well, at that point, we would decide to delete PPCG.SE of course.

Martin Büttner

we?

did SO hire you? :P

Optimizer

we = community

Geobits

How is that our decision to make...?

Optimizer

@MartinBüttner of course those advantages would be in the new solution we would move into (hypothetically)

Rainbolt

7:35 PM

The Delete-Gasm

Calvin's Hobbies

@Geobits I suppose if we stopped posting

the beta would shut down

Martin Büttner

because that's going to happen ;)

Geobits

See my earlier comment ;)

Optimizer

well, SO/SE devs can help us out considering that this would be a better future for PPCG as a community and platform.

(by helping us out, I include the final deletion of the SE variant, taking care of redirects etc.)

Geobits

Is that their main concern? I can't see them being eager to help us rip out a bunch of content, copy the system used, and leave.

Martin Büttner

7:38 PM

I don't really see any advantage in moving off SE in the first place.

Geobits

^ this

Optimizer

well, snippets it is then!

Calvin's Hobbies

@Optimizer We could just mirror the site ;) But change every instance of "question" to "challenge" and such

Martin Büttner

We couldn't even reimplement all the stuff from the SE format that works for us.

Rainbolt

@MartinBüttner That's kind of an annoying view. I see advantages and disadvantages, and the disadvantages severely outweigh the advantages.

Optimizer

7:38 PM

I was not the one calling SE not meant for PPCG format :P

Geobits

I'd say no major advantages at the least.

Optimizer

Why am I playing Sasuke here ? :/

Rainbolt

I can think of one small advantage. We wouldn't have to count on people who want to be in a stack-snippet generated leaderboard to start their post with #Title - Score.

Geobits

There would still have to be some kind of format to follow, I'd imagine.

Optimizer

a few messages above, snippets were being called patches/hacks

Martin Büttner

7:42 PM

Well I guess you could have separate fields for language and score in the answer posts.

Optimizer

@Geobits ^

Geobits

I suppose. You'd need to special-case certain types of challenges.

New Main Posts

0

Q: Modernized Test Card

Warning: this challenge is best shown on a Personal Computer running Windows 95 with Internet Explorer or Netscape, connected to the World Wide Web through Dail-Up or Modem. Everyone has seen Test Cards as a kid on TV between broadcasts. However, these old TV sets had a tendency to have burnt in...

popularity-contest graphical-output

Geobits

KotH, popcons, anything scoreless. You'd also need an asc/desc toggle when setting a challenge, etc.

Rainbolt

The site could even check to make sure your submission compiles and produces correct output, if the site knows how to compile that particular language. PPCG could become test driven.

Martin Büttner

7:45 PM

@Geobits Sure, but that is just what you need if you made a programming challenge community (catering to different types of challenges) from scratch.

Rainbolt

"Your submission does not produce the correct output."
"Submit anyway. The test case is wrong." "'Kay fine. I'll fix my submission."

Optimizer

I am pretty sure the advantages are actually non-minor, if we compile them all.

KOTH can actually be run by the site itself, inherently!

Geobits

Even so, I don't think they'd outweigh even the one single biggest disadvantage: not being part of the network.

Dennis

@Rainbolt That only works for constant output challenges or a very small amount of test cases though. It would also impose a time limit on all solutions.

Optimizer

@Geobits well, maybe lateron, we can become a part of the network back again :P, just using the newer site platform

Rainbolt

7:48 PM

@Dennis "Don't be cowed by how." I could sit here all day deflecting. It could be an optional setting, or it could just not run for submissions that run for longer than 15 seconds. We could get around it any number of ways.

The point wasn't to introduce an idea and also get bogged down in the details of how it might be implemented.

Optimizer

yes, we can at least happily cover 80% of the cases

of course submissions to questions like "yes" cannot be run by the design of the challenge itself

Martin Büttner

right, but the ideal solution would be if we got all those things while remaining an SE site

Rainbolt

I failed to find the guy who said "Don't be cowed by how." during my two minute editing period :(

Geobits

@Optimizer What percentage of cases aren't met by the current platform though? Sure there are a number of challenges that could benefit, but I'd like to think that over 80% of challenges work fine the way it is.

Martin Büttner

"work fine" ^^

Optimizer

7:51 PM

@Geobits all submissions here have languages associated with them and a score in one form or other.

then there are cnr, answer-chaining, etc etc special types of challenges which are not minor

then as pointed out by other users, snippets use is to patch up things to make them "work a little fine"

Geobits

I agree that snippets aren't optimal. The answer to "not optimal" is not always (or even often) "redesign the whole thing".

Optimizer

snippets is not the only thing, as clearly mentioned in my above message

Geobits

I include them all in "not optimal". They're not breaking problems, they're "nice-to-haves".

Optimizer

its not "redesign from scratch" in the beginning, but then you build upon existing limitations, workarounds grow up and finally you have something totally unrecognizable and unmanageable. We are not there yet, but heading in the same direction.

Calvin's Hobbies

I'm gonna go build my own programming puzzles website, with blackjack, and hookers!

Optimizer

7:55 PM

then you have to make a call to fix everything or start from scratch keeping every current issue and feature request in mind

anyways, this is the end of my part in the discussion. I do not favor any of the two sides anyways :P

Geobits

@Optimizer You can take a copy of the DB, but you can't use the SE software, so you're looking at writing the whole thing from the ground up.

Optimizer

of course. that was well known. If there is nothing that can be used, writing from scratch it would be. Keep in mind that the decision to move off has not been done at this point. so there would be a lot of search and exploration required in terms of what is possible using other softwares.

Geobits

There are a couple of supposedly OS clone platforms (like OSQA), but I have no idea the quality.

Optimizer

OS?

Geobits

open source

Calvin's Hobbies

7:59 PM

You'd need your question writers to come along. And I doubt I would :P

Optimizer

its decided then

:P

PPCG needs C

Martin Büttner

Can we ask the potentially more constructive question? How do we convince SO that PPCG is worth dedicated development effort?

Optimizer

maybe we can help too

(in the dev effort)

user4067565

Bake cookies?

Optimizer

get a better name?

Geobits

8:01 PM

@MartinBüttner Drive more traffic. More traffic -> more money. That's how it works AFAIK.

Martin Büttner

exactly

Geobits

Driving more traffic (without sacrificing quality) isn't exactly easy, though.

Martin Büttner

but I guess for that we need to ask what this community can do that the existing and established programming challenge/golf sites can't.

Optimizer

one thing in which we are clearly helping SE a lot is in the careers aspect.

they clearly note the careers part of the SE a major part of their company (its in the top 4 bullets of what SO is)

Geobits

Are you implying that PPCG users are regularly fired for slacking off and need to find new jobs? :P

Optimizer

8:04 PM

if we have better language tagging and score tracking features, we can easily get users who are good in languages erc

@Geobits haha. but I think you know what I meant.

Geobits

Not really. I'm not sure how we are helping Careers, tbh.

Martin Büttner

I personally think we should allow questions about (writing, designing and solving) programming challenges. I'm not aware of another community which does this, and the Q&A format is perfect for it. Of course, currently it would be a bit of a mess if those were meshed together with the challenges and the tips, but if we had some custom software for the challenges we could still use the full potential of vanilla SE instance to generate content about recreational programming.

It might also be able to replace the sandbox.

"I have this idea for a challenge, how can I close this loophole?"

Geobits

I wouldn't VTC a good about question (and IIRC they're technically allowed already), but nobody writes them.

orlp

we could also go with a hybrid

Martin Büttner

@Geobits they are?

orlp

8:06 PM

a third party site maintained by us, that scrapes the SE site

(or maybe gets to tap into a special API feed)

Martin Büttner

15

Q: Let's decide what kind of non-challenge questions we want once and for all

4 reopen votes and 1 delete vote is a strange thing to see. It's also slightly worrying that we have so little consensus on this matter. So let's bring the community together. What kind of non-challenge questions do we want? Each answer will contain one type of non-challenge question, some ex...

discussion

@Geobits this would actually be a USP that could generate traffic though. especially if the scope of this Q&A included competitive-programming-style challenges (I mean the annual competitions like Google Code Jam)... like questions about how to judge the difficulty of a challenge or the find the right size of the test cases.

Geobits

Hmm, maybe not. That's the question I was thinking of, but the answer I thought was there isn't. Those answers seem to allow a subset of what we're talking about, but not all.

PhiNotPi

That meta question is also a year old.

It may be worth it to revisit some of that stuff.

Optimizer

so we increase the scope of tips ? Someone is bound to be unhappy :P

Martin Büttner

I regularly use it as a reference, so I'd appreciate if it was kept up to date :P

Geobits

8:11 PM

I think we'd need better tagging than just [tips] if we widen the field :P

Martin Büttner

ideally, we need separate categories of posts

Optimizer

fundamentally its tips only, whatever you call it. You cannot hide the real fact from Rainbolt!

Martin Büttner

but that's a non-trivial software change

Geobits

Ideally, we'd have a third not-meta-not-main site ;)

Martin Büttner

exactly

Optimizer

8:13 PM

"secondary"

Geobits

And now we've come full circle :)

Optimizer

"life"

PhiNotPi

How about, we redesign the entire site within a stack snippet to be whatever we want, and then the "real" site would just be a single question with that stack snippet inside of it.

Geobits

As long as you can golf the snippet to fit in max post size.

Optimizer

sure, the real code can be hosted.

so we only have an iframe inside a snippet. :P

user4067565

8:16 PM

I thought that was disallowed

PhiNotPi

relevant to the 3rd subdomain thing:

14

Q: Sandbox good for its own subdomain?

Edit 2: See Grace Note's answer. Edit: Answers may be allowed, so that question-specific sandboxes would be actually on topic, such as attempted for Stack Exchange Quine. It could also enable people to post more detailed comments to proposed questions and potential answers, helping mitigate more...

discussion status-declined sandbox

Martin Büttner

@user4067565 you can definitely load external JS

Beta Decay

8:31 PM

I've found the perfect way to waste a whole day and still contribute to the world of science

Dennis

My browser sure likes to scare the crap out of me. My rep just dropped 2269 points after navigating back in history...

Rainbolt

I have to ask - why does losing two thousand reputation scare the crap out of you?

Dennis

That's at least 11 days of work.

Beta Decay

You've kept your browser open for 11 days?

Don't you sleep? :o

Rainbolt

PPCG is "work"?

> abandon all work, ye who enter here —aditsu

Dennis

8:46 PM

@BetaDecay No, when I went back in history, it decided to serve me a really old cached copy.

Beta Decay

@Dennis Ohh haha.

And I read that as your rep was at 2269

So dropping like 30000

Dennis

@Rainbolt "Work" may not be the best word. You still get the point though.

Digital Trauma

so I recently used AliExpress (chinese eBay clone) to buy a specialised audio adapter.

transaction was fine

I just got feedback from the seller "Dear your positive feedback is highly appreciate!"

followed by this emoticon:

imgur.com/x7dpuAp

Beta Decay

...

Digital Trauma

does this emoticon mean what I think it means?

Beta Decay

8:52 PM

Am I just dirty minded or...

@aditsu You seem to be our resident smut expert ;)

Digital Trauma

@BetaDecay clearly you thought the same as me ;-)

Beta Decay

Unfortunately :D

Peter Taylor

Is codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/57972/194 still only on one close vote because everyone thinks that despite none of the answers meeting the spec there isn't a problem, or just because no-one has looked at the question?

orlp

@PeterTaylor I think the intended problem is clear, so a close vote is out of place

instead, you should just edit it with the fixed spec

Peter Taylor

The thing is that the OP has had plenty of opportunity to correct it (something like 4 edits since my first comment), so does the fact that they haven't changed it indicate that they actually want the specified behaviour?

minxomat

9:00 PM

Would this be an adequate golf challenge: Take the current layout and next move of a game of 2048 and output the score this move would add the the current score.?

There are a few related questions, but they all try to play to game, not evaluate a single move. Is this different enough?

orlp

@PeterTaylor I doubt it

Martin Büttner

@minxomat I'd have to review the the existing ones, but it sounds like nicely scoped challenge.

orlp

@PeterTaylor and even if the OP intended that, I feel that 10 implementations of one spec weigh in stronger than the preferences of one OP

Peter Taylor

@minxomat How does the scoring system work? Is this just going to be "Do one lookup in a 2D array", or is it more interesting than that?

minxomat

@PeterTaylor Well, it depends wether the language has "inbuilt" functions for that. It is a very simple challenge though.

orlp

9:04 PM

@minxomat built-in * :)

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor Hm, you're right, if you just want the score, you don't need to implement the collapsing correctly.

orlp

kill me

5

Calvin's Hobbies

Seriously. People are getting ridiculous with their Fruit or Froot or whatever loop nitpicks

Peter Taylor

@minxomat Generally a challenge which is only non-trivial in BF will attract a few trivial answers in other languages and zero non-trivial answers in BF.

@orlp Spec almost completely rewritten.

aditsu

9:27 PM

@BetaDecay I don't know what you're talking about

Optimizer

half of what he says rot away anyways

Alex A.

Stack Overflow Logo Update

►

Wth did I just watch

Martin Büttner

@orlp I would actually put that on my wall.

orlp

@MartinBüttner who's stopping you?

Alex A.

Did you make it, @orlp?

It's really cool.

Martin Büttner

9:37 PM

@orlp the resolution of that image

Calvin's Hobbies

Anyone want to give me some longish random words? They might cameo in a challenge

paraphernalia

Martimizer

smorgasbord

wherewithal

9:41 PM

immeasurability

Doorknob

uhhh... do they have to be English? compartiéndonoslas

Optimizer

olasdhalkjiiiiasdhq

misunderstanding

That's enough

It's never enough

Abhijñānaśākuntalam

9:43 PM

I could just be trolling ;D

Alex A.

Optimizer

this is not even close to trolling

this is usual

Alex A.

Optimizer knows how to troll.

Optimizer

orlp

@AlexA. no

Calvin's Hobbies

9:44 PM

Can you make that an onion or potato?

Alex A.

@Calvin'sHobbies No

Optimizer

its supposed to be a caret

Alex A.

^

Optimizer

(if u didnt get the joke)

Calvin's Hobbies

I see. Still potato > onion > carrot

Alex A.

9:45 PM

@Calvin'sHobbies No

Calvin's Hobbies

potato >= onion at least

Alex A.

@Calvin'sHobbies Yes

Optimizer

do you even know onion prices?

Alex A.

@Optimizer Yes

Optimizer

they are far more than potato or carrot

Alex A.

9:47 PM

Depends. There are different kinds of potatoes and different kinds of onions. (And carrots, for that matter.)

Calvin's Hobbies

llama meat > potato

Alex A.

Let's cook and eat Optimizer.

Optimizer

But you have to make llama fat by feeding them birds

New Main Posts

1

Q: Am I perfect (number)?

This is my first challenge! Background Perfect number is a positive integer, that is equal to sum of all its divisors, except itself. So 6 is perfect number, since 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. On the other hand 12 is not, because 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 = 16 != 12. Task Your task is simple, write program, which ...

code-golf

Calvin's Hobbies

Surely a dupe?

Doorknob

9:49 PM

That's what I was thinking

Alex A.

Yeah

I participated in the dupe

Dennis

We have more than one challenge about perfect numbers, but none that I recall prohibits built-ins or requires printing the divisors.

orlp

@MartinBüttner the artist: mauriziobongiovanni.com/paintings.html

sadly I can't seem to find a better res picture

DLosc

10:46 PM

On my Curly Numbers question, a couple people have used flags and then qualified for a 10% bonus. We've been calculating it as 0.1*(bytes + flags). Does that sound reasonable?

As opposed to 0.1*(bytes) + flags.

Alex A.

I think it's too late to change it now

DLosc

Sure, but I mean for purposes of a de facto standard.

I didn't think it was a big enough issue for a meta post, but I could be persuaded otherwise.

Alex A.

To me, 10% bonus means -10% of your original score. Your original score is bytes + flags as per usual.

Dennis

DLosc

What I figured. Thanks!

orlp

10:51 PM

@Dennis what is the meaning of this carrot?

Dennis

^

undergroundmonorail

@orlp i think it's that it points up

Dennis

(caret)

undergroundmonorail

ohh haha i didn't even get the pun

orlp

...

Dennis

10:53 PM

@DLosc Your 17-task answer is very impressive. It's nothing like the boring switch(version){...} loophole I was trying to close...

On the bright side, everybody else still has a chance. 17 tasks is probably unbeatable.

Martin Büttner

@orlp thanks :)

DLosc

@Dennis I actually shoehorned two more tasks (in Python 2 & 3) into my original version. Left them out of what I posted in case I want to use one in a non-rules-bending answer.

Dennis

So you got 19/20? o_O

DLosc

Yeah, I did. I was trying to get to 20/20, but the last one I hadn't done was spaces/tabs, which had too much literal text to fit into my remaining 30 bytes.

I assumed you picked 20 to make it very difficult to solve all of them, and it looked like that number was about right. Of course with the different languages requirement, it's probably plumb impossible now (which apparently is what you actually intended).

Dennis

11:09 PM

I hoped 20 would be too much for a perfect solution, yes.

orlp

@MartinBüttner forgive me

@MartinBüttner but isn't matching parenthesis trivial for repeated substitution in retina?

\([^()]*\)

Martin Büttner

that's inside out though

orlp

@MartinBüttner does that matter?

Martin Büttner

well at least I'd have to fix the numbering afterwards

maybe with a two-step loop... let me check

New Main Posts

-1

Q: When are numbers not numbers?

The Challenge Given two integers as strings, multiply them and print their product. Now, you may say, "what's so difficult about that" or "I've done that plenty of times before", but all is not how it seems. Rules You may not convert strings to integers (or decimals). You may not use numbers...

code-golf math restricted-source

0

Q: Generate the lyrics for Daft Punk's "Technologic" in Javascript

Code Golf Challenge! Generate the lyrics for the first verse of Daft Punk's "Technologic" in Javascript (ES6 is ok) - as below: Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, Trash it, change it, mail - upgrade it, Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it, Snap it, work it, quick - erase it, Write it, cut it,...

code-golf kolmogorov-complexity javascript

Martin Büttner

11:27 PM

@orlp Hm, it's tricky... enumerating the footnotes in reverse order would work, but getting reverse order right is hard, because I can't just start from the end: I have the start from the deepest nesting level.

and I don't think I can determine that without using balancing groups

Alex A.

@DigitalTrauma Have you ever Google Image searched "digital trauma"? If not, don't.

orlp

11:43 PM

can we all take a moment

and see that 2 = 2 == 2 makes no sense?

Alex A.

Idk, looks fine to me :P

It would probably compile in Haskell

orlp

@AlexA. but it's a mathematical equation - there is no such thing as ==

Alex A.

Are you talking about the perfect numbers thing?

orlp

@AlexA. yes

Martin Büttner

sure it's nonsense, but that doesn't actually make the spec invalid... at the end of the day it's just a random string the OP wants on STDOUT in case the input is a perfect number

Alex A.

11:48 PM

Yeah, the notation is meaningless, but it's what the OP specified as output and he seems pretty set on it. So... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ninja'd

DLosc

(30 seconds late) Works fine in Pip too, where = is numeric comparison and == is identity comparison. (2 = 2) == 2 is 1 == 2 is false.

orlp

@DLosc that's beyond broken

DLosc

Thanks :D

(I may add that I don't recall ever having used ==. Usually numeric = or string equality Q is all that's needed, and they're also chaining operators and can be used in lambda expressions.)

orlp

>>> 256 is 255 + 1
True
>>> 257 is 256 + 1
False

DLosc

I may further clarify that by identity comparison, I mean my own version of it in Pip, not Python is. So 257==256+1 gives 1 (true) in Pip.

Actually, I need to look at == and see if it serves any purpose at all... :P

orlp

11:54 PM

@DLosc may I then ask what identity comparison is in Pip

(obligatory mention that Pip is a very unfortunate name choice for a Python-based programming language)

DLosc

@orlp (Yeah, well, mine is capitalized :P)

Identity comparison forces the types of both operands to be the same.

Numeric comparison can compare e.g. a List and a Range as equal if they contain the same numbers.

orlp

Pyth doesn't have that

DLosc

String comparison can compare a Scalar and a Pattern (think regex) equal based on the raw pattern data.

orlp

@isaacg I did some more profiling, testing and thinking, and I think I'm going to drop the sympy idea

I'd like to be self-contained

Alex A.

Isn't Sympy super slow? (From what I remember)

orlp

11:59 PM

and sympy is very slow to import

@AlexA. it wasn't actually that bad while running

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