The Nineteenth Byte

6:09 AM

I feel so bad for TanMath because every time he answers it's either bad code or just totally opposite of what the challenge is.

Anonymous

I don't feel bad. It's not difficult to test your code before posting.

El'endia Starman

^ That, AND especially that it's clear TanMath hasn't used Python very much if he thinks he can nest for loops (and an if conditional!) on one line.

Alex A.

Even if it is difficult to test one's code, it's necessary to test it before posting.

6

Anonymous

And when one has a problem with their code, sitting in chat and saying "help me plz" every few minutes does not motivate people to help you. Especially when one does not seem to learn from one's mistakes or make an attempt at learning more through resources others have provided.

6

El'endia Starman

6:24 AM

I love that implementing Cartesian products took off 4 bytes from my Minkolang answer! :D

Alex A.

That feeling when you post an answer you think is clever, then someone comes in with a CJam solution less than a third of the size. ∏.∏

phase

@El'endiaStarman Please use GitHub tags instead of putting all the version files in the same directory

Alex A.

What are GitHub tags?

El'endia Starman

^

phase

@AlexA. The designate a certain version of your code, such as "version 1.0"

El'endia Starman

6:36 AM

I'm almost done with Minkolang, so I'll not bother with them anyway, but I'll use them for my next language at least.

phase

Each one of these releases is just a tag with a description. Here are the actual tags.

El'endia Starman

And how does one add tags?

phase

@El'endiaStarman almost DONE?!??!?! how does one finish project?!?!

El'endia Starman

@phase Simple! Run out of characters.

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman That's when you move on to two-byte commands

phase

6:39 AM

@El'endiaStarman Creating a release on GitHub is the easiest way.

El'endia Starman

@Mego ...you know like half of Minkolang's commands are two-byte and three-byte commands, right?

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman Sounds like you need to move to 4-byte commands, then

El'endia Starman

Ha, no.

I don't really have any characters left for doing that...

Anonymous

Or use the clever strategy I'm going to use for Seriously

Thomas Kwa

Does anyone know J?

phase

6:40 AM

Do what ESMin (or [][][][][]) does and use some random Chinese characters and Emojis.

Anonymous

Define a command that means "go to the next commands page"

Anonymous

Yeah, use Unicode, you'll never run out of characters

El'endia Starman

@phase Char set is strictly limited to 10 and 32-126. status-bydesign

phase

@El'endiaStarman What is 10?

Anonymous

@El'endiaStarman status-lamedesign-amirite

Anonymous

6:41 AM

@phase lf

El'endia Starman

@phase Newline.

Alex A.

@ThomasKwa @Zgarb and @Dennis do. Maybe orlp too?

Anonymous

J is just shortened Java, right? /s

Thomas Kwa

No, it's a language in the APL family.

phase

@Mego nothing can shorten Java, nothing

APL with ASCII

El'endia Starman

6:43 AM

@Mego That's pretty much what $ does. I also have five libraries: M T Z J P (math, trig, lists/strings, bitwise ops, and itertools/matrices).

Thomas Kwa

@Mego Iverson (someone who invented APL) called J...

something good

I forget what

/me looks it up

El'endia Starman

Each library has about 10 commands, which becomes 20 with $.

phase

@El'endiaStarman So $TC is like cosh? (not that exact command, but using it that way)

Thomas Kwa

I couldn't find it.

El'endia Starman

@phase 8T

Each library pops n off the stack and uses that to pick which command to do, so in theory, each library is totally unlimited.

In practice, I'm trying to keep them within 0-10 (because l is 10).

To do -10 to 16 is 2 bytes, so that would be the next range limit.

phase

6:47 AM

@El'endiaStarman I think T<char> allows for more commands as you can use and ascii character and it will be the same amount of bytes, and you can relate what the char is to what the action does, like m[ for floor and m] for ceil.

El'endia Starman

Well, technically, I have 0-10, 1j (sqrt(-1)), their negations, and 12 special constants ($0...$l,$j), so I could have 36 library ops that only need two bytes to choose between.

@phase 2D language.

Sherlock9

@El'endiaStarman Isn't that 5 libraries? M T Z J P

El'endia Starman

Also, that would require a significant rewrite of M T Z J and I am not doing that now (or ever).

@Sherlock9 Within each library, I mean.

phase

@El'endiaStarman I'm just saying for your next language.

El'endia Starman

Oh, next language will be totally different.

Sherlock9

6:50 AM

@El'endiaStarman I was replying to:
@Mego That's pretty much what $ does. I also have four libraries: M T Z J P (math, trig, lists/strings, bitwise ops, and itertools/matrices).

El'endia Starman

You would do \cosh(a to do cosh(a).

@Sherlock9 Oh, whoops.

Sherlock9

Np

El'endia Starman

Use the reply feature next time! (Hover over message, click bent arrow on the right or "reply to this message" in the dropdown on the left.)

Sherlock9

Ah ok

phase

Why not just make a language with 1 byte chars that compiles to Mathematica?

El'endia Starman

6:51 AM

'cause that's no fun.

Sherlock9

@El'endiaStarman OK then

El'endia Starman

I also don't know or have Mathematica...

Calvin's Hobbies

^

El'endia Starman

@Sherlock9 Awesome! :D

Sherlock9

I want a language that compiles to C

Golfs and runs quickly

phase

6:52 AM

@Sherlock9 Someone was talking about making one on Meta

Sherlock9

I'm not sure I have the know-how to make one myself

@phase I see

phase

@Sherlock9 I'd start with a BF to C compiler and go from there

Alex A.

@ThomasKwa Thanks for your help :)

Thomas Kwa

@AlexA. No problem

Sherlock9

Or I could make a Golfscript to C compiler that Darren mentioned on the home page

Ah yes

BF may be a better starting point

Thomas Kwa

6:53 AM

Too bad APL's array indexing is weird so we can't use a train

Sherlock9

I do, however, have exams in two weeks

Alex A.

@ThomasKwa Yeah. :/ And I dislike the syntax for sorting.

Calvin's Hobbies

To the people who voted for Numbers and Math on strawpoll.me/6096370 does my latest challenge satisfy you or would you be more interested in harder problems?

El'endia Starman

@Calvin'sHobbies To be honest, I was surprised at how easy and simple it was.

(But then again, I like easy challenges because I actually write Minkolang answers for them. :P)

phase

@Calvin'sHobbies I think something more towards algorithms and mathematical functions (like the Phi(not Pi) challenge) would be more fun. As @El'endiaStarman said, it is quite an easy challenge, just multiply everything and unique filter (which most languages have an operator for).

El'endia Starman

6:59 AM

Practically a catalog.

phase

^

Alex A.

Hahah

phase

Though doing it in O would take like 89024385 bytes because there wasn't an operator for that like there is in CJam, Pyth, or GolfScript.

Alex A.

Still a fun challenge though, evidenced by the fact that I've submitted 3 answers. :P

phase

@AlexA. What does the E-looking-thing do in Julia?

Alex A.

7:01 AM

What?

∈?

Justin

Hopefully it means "in"

Alex A.

It does

It's a test for membership

El'endia Starman

@phase I implemented sort and set in Minkolang a while ago. (A month and a half!) :P

phase

@AlexA. Like "3 is in [1, 2, 3, 4]"?

Justin

a∈{a, b}

Alex A.

7:03 AM

@phase Yes. 3 ∈ 1:4 returns true.

Justin

3∈{1, 2, 3, 4} (assuming the {} are set notation). This is math notation

El'endia Starman

Wut. I've been working on Minkolang for that long?!

phase

@El'endiaStarman My first commit for O was over 4 months ago and it's still missing like, everything.

Justin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_(mathematics)#Notation_and_terminology

Alex A.

∈ is equivalent to the infix operator in but it doesn't require surrounding spaces. The compiler converts both a in b and a ∈ b to in(a, b).

Sherlock9

7:06 AM

Aw man, my day of the week game challenge got downvoted

Alex A.

Did you sandbox it first?

Sherlock9

No. I think I should have

-2

Q: Make a day of the week game

There have been many day of the week challenges on this site. This is just one example. This challenge is to make a game, where you randomly select a valid date on the proleptic Gregorian calendar, print that date, take a player's guess as to what day of the week that was, and then verify that g...

Alex A.

I always recommend the sandbox

Sherlock9

Should I delete the question and move it to the sandbox?

Alex A.

The "right" thing to do would be to leave it up, put it on hold pending changes, then reopen it when it's ready. But since there hasn't been any feedback, only downvotes, I'm inclined to think that it may continue to accumulate downvotes without feedback while it's on main.

Oh hey, some feedback!

Calvin's Hobbies

7:14 AM

@Sherlock9 Not necessarily. You do need to tighten up the rules and give the precise in/out formats.

El'endia Starman

An alternate course of action: delete it, put it on the Sandbox, get feedback, then edit the original and get it undeleted.

Calvin's Hobbies

You can't edit while deleted (I think?), so just need to be quick

Sherlock9

Right, I'll tighten it all up

El'endia Starman

@Calvin'sHobbies I know you can edit deleted answers, so it would make sense that deleted questions would also be editable.

Alex A.

You have to be able to see them though, otherwise you can only get to them if you have a permalink.

El'endia Starman

7:18 AM

~~Right, but I'm pretty sure Sherlock9 wouldn't have a problem with that.~~ Forgot we were suggesting the Sandbox, where it might stay for hours if not days.

In any case, if he improves it quickly enough, deletion is not necessary at all.

Alex A.

Right. I don't think deletion would be the right thing to do in any case anyway.

Sherlock9

Edited

El'endia Starman

+1'd.

Sherlock9

Thanks

I removed the bonuses, since they can't apply anymore

Besides that, I think this works

Calvin's Hobbies

@El'endiaStarman The edit button is grayed out for one of the only questions I've deleted ->

codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/49800/…

El'endia Starman

7:24 AM

...I can edit it. Weird.

Sherlock9

Hang on. I think I need to restart my browser

Or my computer

I can't load the Javascript to add a comment. Weird

Alex A.

@Calvin'sHobbies Wtf what is the context of my comment?

Calvin's Hobbies

@El'endiaStarman You're a mod

El'endia Starman

@Calvin'sHobbies Not on PPCG!

Calvin's Hobbies

well idk then

Alex A.

7:26 AM

@Calvin'sHobbies It appears gray for me but I can still click it.

Calvin's Hobbies

I can't :( I'm not modly enough

phase

We need a better 404 page.

El'endia Starman

@phase We'll get one if/when we get a site design.

Calvin's Hobbies

May 8 at 2:17, by Alex A.

Is it seriously just as easy as your answer, @Sp3000? I can't math because brain good not.

You were frustrated that you didn't see how easy it was?

Alex A.

I guess

El'endia Starman

7:29 AM

AH-HA!

26

Q: Why am I allowed to edit my deleted answer but not question?

If I delete my answer, I can edit it deleted. But to edit my deleted question I must undelete it. Why this inconsistency?

discussion support edits deleted-questions deleted-answers

Alex A.

OIC

Calvin's Hobbies

@El'endiaStarman Hmm, but you can't self delete questions with answers anyway so I don't see that much harm in allowing self-editing once self-deleted

phase

Is Perl good for simple (non-golfing) scripts like extracting text from a file?

Sherlock9

Thanks for the help, gentlemen

Alex A.

@phase Actually yes, it works fairly well for things like that

In general it's a festering turd

But it's good for things like that

Sherlock9

7:34 AM

And if there were ladies; Thanks for the help, ladies and gentlemen

feersum

@phase only if you are well familiar with unix utils

If you aren't a crusty unix hacker there's no reason to use it

phase

I'm looking for a language like Python, but not Python. Not that Python is bad or anything, but I just don't like its syntax.

I might just make Groovy scripts

Sherlock9

That's fair

Alex A.

I don't think you have to be familiar with Unix utilities to understand Perl file I/O and processing.

Calvin's Hobbies

Nythop

Sherlock9

7:35 AM

Ruby?

Alex A.

^

Never used it myself but Ruby looks nice IMO

feersum

Sure, it's possible to learn Perl without being on a Unix-based system, but there's no reason you'd want to.

Maltysen

@phase Pyth? No syntax whatsoever ;P

Alex A.

@feersum I've had to write and maintain Perl scripts on my employer's Windows-everything infrastructure. For doing simple I/O things there's really no difference across OSs that I noticed.

Sherlock9

I've used Ruby a bit. It's pretty decent for an interpreted language and after you've drilled it into your head that everything is an object, the syntax is pretty nice

phase

7:37 AM

@AlexA. I think Ruby's syntax is something... special. I'd never write real software in it, but it is interesting to use. I'd use Crystal but it isn't for Windows.

feersum

@AlexA. Yes, it generally works on Windows.

Alex A.

It only generally works in general though. I maintain that Perl is crap.

phase

@Maltysen Too much overhead when I want to write a simple program.

Alex A.

@phase Crystal? Haven't heard of it.

Sherlock9

BRB

phase

7:38 AM

@AlexA. Same syntax as Ruby, but it compiles to LLVM

Alex A.

Barbaric Rhubarb Barbies

feersum

I think the point is that it allows people familiar with Unix tools to use them in a programming language and and windows.

El'endia Starman

@Sherlock9 "everything is an object" is true of Python as well.

Alex A.

@phase Oh, I bet that's nice. Linux only?

phase

@AlexA. I think it's for OSX as well.

Alex A.

7:40 AM

Damn son. I'mma check that shizz out.

phase

@AlexA. crystal-lang.org/docs/installation/…

Cola looks interesting

Alex A.

You know what's better than anything else? Julia.

feersum

Julia has 1-based arrays doesn't it?

Alex A.

Yes

feersum

-1000

phase

7:50 AM

I keep forgetting Julia exists

Alex A.

@feersum Any reasonable language uses 1-based indexing

@phase Don't

phase

@AlexA. Already did

Alex A.

Shit

Calvin's Hobbies

Whose Line: Scenes From A Hat 10

►

Alex A.

lel

Sherlock9

7:57 AM

@El'endiaStarman But in Ruby everything is a method

All the built-in stuff anyway

phase

coffeescript is cool, I might just use that with Node

El'endia Starman

Including 1?

feersum

So everything is both an object and a method?

Alex A.

@phase It is not cool

It compiles to JavaScript, which isn't cool

phase

@AlexA. aufkms ilism

Alex A.

8:00 AM

translate: aufkms ilism

(from English) aufkms ilism

phase

but its syntax is sooooo beatiful

Alex A.

Keyboard mashing confirmed

No, its syntax is meh

feersum

If you're forced by circumstances to produce a Javascript program, it would be cooler to use something that compiles it rather than having to do it directly.

Alex A.

Fair enough

Calvin's Hobbies

Will javascript still be the only popular client-side scripting language in 50 years? shudders

Alex A.

8:05 AM

It'll be CalvinScript

Running on TempleOS

Calvin's Hobbies

@AlexA. Yeah, but I won't have coded any of it. All my questions are secretly about having you guys develop it for me

Alex A.

Oh good. So while CalvinScript will be open source, the source will be virtually unreadable.

Calvin's Hobbies

Yep, and in about 78.6 languages

Alex A.

What's the fractional language?

Calvin's Hobbies

HQ9+ and variants each count as .1

But they replace all of jquery so they're pretty important

Alex A.

8:11 AM

CalQuery

github.com/manastech/crystal/wiki/Crystal-for-Rubyists

El'endia Starman

That moment when you write a determinant function and test it with a matrix and get 0...so you check it in Wolfram|Alpha and the determinant is 0.

xnor

was it [1,2,3; 4,5,6; 7,8,9] ?

El'endia Starman

4x4 actually, starting with 0.

xnor

all matrices that list arithmetic progressions have det 0

there's a story about a prof ... lemme find the link

El'endia Starman

d'oh!

feersum

8:24 AM

it should be pretty simple

subtract two rows and you get a row of all equal entries

then you can add a multiple of that to any row to get any other row

so they aren't linearly independent

El'endia Starman

Right, that makes sense.

orlp

8:37 AM

damn

I think I set a record

0

A: Sort the unique numbers in a multiplication table

Pyth, 7 bytes {*M^SQ2 Try it online.

I made that golf in 30 seconds

feersum

It will probably get several hundred upvotes then.

orlp

@feersum couple thousand I reckon

feersum

I don't think so

I have 70-some for one I spent 1 or 2 minutes on

So couple thousand is too much according to the inverse square law.

Upvotes are proportional to the inverse square of effort.

New Main Posts

9:10 AM

0

Q: The unique multiplication spiral

This one is inspired by Calvin's Hobbies recent multiplication table challenge. Write a function or program that takes an integer N as input and prints or returns a N-by-N unique multiplication spiral. The code must (in theory) work for N between 0 and 1000 (outputting this can be hard though). ...

code-golf number arithmetic

Martin Büttner

9:21 AM

@orlp did you make any more progress on the tiling?

orlp

@MartinBüttner nah

I actually believe feersum

that any finite region can have 1/2 + delta density

I still believe 1/2 is optimal for the plane though

Martin Büttner

yeah that seems likely

I have no clue how to prove that though

wanna run your code on 4-in-a-row?

I have a 8/15 tiling for that.

orlp

@MartinBüttner wait what

oh

no I see

I 4-in-a-row is easier

got confused for a sec ^^

@MartinBüttner it makes my laptop slow - feel free to run it yourself though :P

Martin Büttner

9:37 AM

haha, maybe later or tomorrow

Sherlock9

Welp my challenge got marked as a duplicate

Sigh

Martin Büttner

btw, you might want to update your answer with the lowest bound you've found an feersum's conjecture

Sherlock9

Today is not a good day for me and electronics and code

orlp

2

A: Maximal tiling without any 3-in-a-rows

You can achieve 5/9 density by infinitely tiling this pattern horizontally: 010101 110110 101010 This does not however tile the plane. I also did an exhaustive search for 3x6, and found that 10/18 was optimal. Any tiling of the plane with a greater density of 10/18 must contain blocks of 3x6 ...

@MartinBüttner

phase

> This isn't lactose, it's milk.

Martin Büttner

9:42 AM

looks good

Sherlock9

Thank you for your help with my question everyone, but it appears to be dead. codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/65052/…

El'endia Starman

Sandbox next time. :)

Sherlock9

Yep

Should I delete it now?

El'endia Starman

Nah, I don't think you should.

It's not really normal to delete closed questions.

Sherlock9

Ah okay

And I had a nice 600 Python solution too if it passed ;_;

Ok 600 bytes isn't that nice, but it worked

Anyway

phase

9:54 AM

You could answer the original question

Sherlock9

True

It is, however, 4 years old. Hence, why I wanted to start up a new one

Well, alright

Has anyone come up with an idea for the paradox challenge an hour ago?

3

Q: Paradox of time travel

A man has two devices. A time machine - He can control this machine by thinking. It allows him to travel from any point in time to another point in time in the past or future (or even the present point in time) in no time at all. Note that if he travels to the past from B to A, then all normal ...

code-golf

mınxomaτ

Hmm, jed is really cool.

Sherlock9

Jed?

I see

phase

oic

mınxomaτ

I'm probably used to the menu bar in a CLI editor, because I spent most of my childhood programming time in EDIT.COM or the QBasic IDE :)

New Sandboxed Posts

10:03 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

This is my first try here and the idea is inspired from a real problem. Group data entries in 4 categories based on 3 rules The data input contains 200 rows in the following format: Name, Size, Tag1, Tag2, Tag3, Tag4 Data 1, 50, orange, apple,,, Data 2, 1400, apple, pineapple, melon,, Data 3, ...

flawr

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Count the number of sides on a polygon Given a black and white image of a polygon return the number of sides. The edges are at least 10 pixels long, and the polygon is completely contained within the image, and the polygon as well as it's complement is connected (there are no isolated islands) ...

Opinions?

Onions?

New Sandboxed Posts

10:18 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Count the number of sides on a polygon Given a black and white image of a polygon return the number of sides. The edges are at least 10 pixels long, and the polygon is completely contained within the image, and the polygon as well as it's complement is connected (there are no isolated islands) ...

aditsu

phase

un yeah

aditsu

@Sherlock9 the problem statement is too long and confusing

Sherlock9

Ah I see

aditsu

also I doubt you are covering all cases

Sherlock9

10:34 AM

Well, what am I missing, what should I edit and should I just try again in the Sandbox?

Or should I move on?

aditsu

you should probably make a drawing, and make the example shorter

and I'm confused about the loops

in your first loop, after those 125 years pass, what happens if the next thing is a T+500 or T-500?

(and btw, how does that guy live hundreds/thousands of years?)

Sherlock9

Ah wait

Sorry, I thought you were talking about the dates again

You meant the time paradox

And that's somebody's challenge

Sorry for the confusion

aditsu

ah, sorry I thought it was yours

Sherlock9

@aditsu Nope, mine's the day of the week one that got marked as duplicate

I should put in a test case anyway

xsot

@xnor Just wondering, do you already have a python solution in mind for "Count sums of two squares"?

xnor

10:52 AM

@xsot nothing particular

i haven't spent long on it

Sherlock9

@phase On the paradox question, I think wrt is shorthand for "with regards to"

xsot

It's one of those problems that appear very inviting but turn out to be frustratingly tricky to solve.

Well, not solve. Tricky to shorten beyond the obvious solution.

xnor

yes, i find it intriguing

python seems clumsy in just the right way to make this a challenge

xsot

Haha, that's true.

VoteToClose

@Mego It says the current time, so that may be interpreted as sys or GMT.

> It may be system time.

flawr

11:06 AM

May I ask for your opinions on my new sandbox challenge?

VoteToClose

:D Looks good to me, at least from the idea standpoint.

The niggly bits I'm looking into now.

Sherlock9

11:33 AM

@xsot @xnor @xsot When you say the obvious solution, do you mean something like this? lambda n:list("({})^2+({})^2)".format(i,j)for i,j in product(range(-n,n+1),repeat=2)if i*i+j*j==n)

Oops misread the question

`from itertools import*`
`lambda n:sum(1 for i,j in product(range(-n,n+1),repeat=2)if i*i+j*j==n)`

xsot

11:51 AM

@Sherlock9 Have a look at my submission. You don't need itertools, just two loops.

Optimizer

12:05 PM

he stole the words from my mouth

Sherlock9

@xsot I have implemented that. Thanks

If you would rather you implemented that, since I basically nabbed your answer, go ahead and use it, and I'll delete my own submission

xsot

I don't think you can save the range like that if it's to be considered a standalone function, but I'm no authority here.

Sherlock9

12:24 PM

Well neither the question nor the bounty asked for a standalone function

So I assumed standard program or function rules applied

Though if it's program, I can probably do away with the lambda bit and just print()

flawr

5

Optimizer

do the same for geobits

anOKsquirrel

12:42 PM

^ will do

Sherlock9

Ah, I cannot "do away with" lambda

Optimizer

such a nerd chatroom, I post a cat selfie and nobody cares, you see bits and bytes meme, hell looses

Sherlock9

Man, I can't even load the image

Imgur is still blocked in my country

Optimizer

are you in china?

north korea?

Sherlock9

Indonesia. In an attempt to stop porn getting into the country, they blocked Reddit, Imgur, and Vimeo

Hasn't worked worth a damn

Dennis

12:46 PM

They're still letting images through. Blocking all images should achieve that.

Sherlock9

Brilliant! I'll let the government know!

@xsot Just realized the problem.

N isn't defined till the lambda is called

Dennis

My University tried to do something similar and blocked all GET request with words like sex in its name. Tried to a sextic interpolation on WolframAlpha. Didn't go well.

flawr