The Nineteenth Byte

quartata

17:01

@MartinBüttner Ah, gotcha.

TimmyD

no-name-at-all

quartata

I think I'll take out the mention of "catalog" mine

I don't like that they're considered "special"

Stefnotch

@MartinBüttner I would love it if you got @ChrisJester-Young to change his question!

quartata

6

Q: Which is better - a catalog Q, or a shortest code Q?

I had the same doubt as specified here (which is why I haven't accepted any answers yet). Reading it told me that both kinds of questions are accepted: Catalog question - Users attempt to find the shortest code in every language. No answer is accepted. Shortest code question - Users attempt to...

cough cough

Stefnotch

What should I use as an alternate name..(What should the thing that the snippet produces?)

Martin Büttner

17:03

@Stefnotch I don't think that's going to happen, because it would validate some answers one way or another

quartata

@Stefnotch You can just say that's the catalog snippet.

Stefnotch

Leaderboard? (But that would imply that there is a winner)

Martin Büttner

@Stefnotch it's a leaderboard

quartata

I mean, it does make a catalog of the stuff.

But the challenge itself shouldn't be called a catalog.

Martin Büttner

@quartata I've been meaning to answer that...

maybe I'll make an answer out of the stuff I just typed up above later

quartata

17:04

The idea is that the word "catalog" shouldn't create a notion of it being special

But at the same time, you shouldn't go out of your way to remove the word "catalog"

Martin Büttner

@Stefnotch also yeah what quartata said. feel free to call the snippet a catalogue.

quartata

That makes it awkward sounding....

Just call the snippet a catalog, and make the rest sound like a normal challenge.

I like @xnor's answer

11

A: Which is better - a catalog Q, or a shortest code Q?

This is a false distinction. On every code golf question, people answer in a variety of languages, striving for the shortest solution in that language. If it were simply a competition for the overall shortest solution, there would no point coding in Java or Python or any language but a select fe...

Stefnotch

I called it a: "Leaderboard (with no winner)"

quartata

Really hits the nail on the head about why PPCG is cool

Martin Büttner

@Stefnotch don't.

Stefnotch

17:06

(But it sounds silly...ok, changing it back..)

Martin Büttner

that'll just get people worked up about stuff that is actually quite irrelevant

no one is bothered if you forget to accept an answer (unless they're waiting for Enlightened, Guru or Populist maybe), but if you explicitly say that you won't accept an answer, there's suddenly a bunch of meta posts about whether something like that should be off-topic :/

Stefnotch

"Therefore, no answer will be marked as accepted." And, what about this line?

Should I change it to: "Therefore, I will forget to mark an answer as accepted" :P

Sherlock9

@Stefnotch "Language board" ?

Martin Büttner

@Stefnotch how about removing that sentence.

Stefnotch

@Sherlock9 I suddenly feel tempted to add a link to english.stackexchange.com

@MartinBüttner Removed it!

TimmyD

17:11

I could see folks arguing that if no answer is accepted (and there isn't text explaining why), they could feel it doesn't have an objective winning criterion...

Sherlock9

Got any tips for golfing this down further? More Bernoulli!

from fractions import*
def b(m):
 s=0
 for k in range(m+1):
  p=1
  for v in range(k+1):s+=Fraction(p*(v+1)**m)/(k+1);p=p*(v-k)//(v+1)
 return s

Stefnotch

@TimmyD That is why I left the sentences before that intact: "..... - this is about finding the shortest solution in every language."

Sherlock9

I want to use sum() on the whole thing as it's just two sums from here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_number#Explicit_definition

But I don't think I can do it without making a second function for the combination. Here symbolized as p

Martin Büttner

@TimmyD there are so many challenges that don't have an accepted answer, and I've never seen that

it's code golf, clearly it has an objective winning criterion.

TimmyD

OK, fair enough

Lembik

17:15

hi @El'endiaStarman Your code seems to output p: 2, q: 3, |q-p|: 1 and the nothing else

Martin Büttner

@Stefnotch independently of all the catalogue discussion, I think I agree with Peter that it's a dupe of the additive persistence question.

Lembik

does any python guru understand how to use gmpy2 to test if a large integer is prime? gmpy2.is_prime(17) is the method but how do you do gmpy2.is_prime(2**100-1) ?

we need to make some arbitrary precision integer out of 2*100-1 somehow

hmm

maybe I have this wrong.. cancel the thought

Stefnotch

@MartinBüttner What would the digit sum of a number look like if you have decimals?

Martin Büttner

not very different. answers will just read the input as a string from STDIN and ignore the .

Stefnotch

17:30

@MartinBüttner So, what should I do? Change it to "multiplication product"?

feersum

change it to a challenge that doesn't involve digit-wise operations!

Stefnotch

Great, I guess I will just leave that question in the sandbox for an undetermined amount of time....

Nathan Merrill

catalog questions should really be community selected.

Stefnotch

^

Post a question on meta that asks what questions should become catalog questions?

(A catalog of to-be catalog questions!)

Martin Büttner

we have that already

Stefnotch

17:40

Or should I post it?

Really?

Link?

Martin Büttner

11

A: Does PPCG fulfil a role as a catalogue for golfed solution of standard programming exercises?

Future Catalogue Challenges This post collects ideas for future catalogue challenges. Some of these tasks already have challenges, some of which may be editable into a catalogue while others may not. Existing challenges that could be catalogues In these cases, the OP's should be asked whether ...

I'm not a big fan of that any more either

just adds to the "catalogues are special" business...

Nathan Merrill

IMO, we need to remove the rule of "no future langauges"

its the crux of the problem with catalog

Martin Büttner

yep, definitely agree

Nathan Merrill

because a language written specifically for a task, whether it was in the past or future, is a loophole

Stefnotch

(Edit Chris' catalog?)

Martin Büttner

17:44

@Stefnotch that's outdated. I'm no longer planning to do that. if anything, it'll be reposted.

(and answers migrated)

Stefnotch

Ok! :D

TimmyD

136

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Using a made-up language specifically designed for the challenge This includes any language with commands that "do whatever I choose them to do". Claiming that your answer is written in "MyOwnLanguage", where the command x means "read a sequence of numbers, split them into groups of three, and ...

Nathan's right on point, that's one of the defining characteristics of "catalog" questions.

Martin Büttner

exactly. and the idea was to show that it works, not that it's only legitimate if you call your challenge "catalogue"

Nathan Merrill

the other defining feature is that we are assigning them simple tasks.

the reason catalog questions are popular is because they are easy for anybody to answer

Martin Büttner

right, but that's only because those are more likely to attract answers from languages where you can't solve anything more difficult in :D

TimmyD

17:46

Plenty of non-catalog questions are simple, too

Nathan Merrill

@TimmyD and they are usually quite popular

Rainbolt

Swift has only existed since June 2, 2014, meaning Swift programmers cannot currently participate in a lot of challenges. (Just giving a real example of a new language that isn't designed to solve a specific task)

Nathan Merrill

so, the only other "official" difference is that we don't select a winner

Stefnotch

Bye!

quartata

meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/1098/45151

Why was that answer even there?

Anyways.

Martin Büttner

17:48

@Rainbolt only in about just over half of them ;)

quartata

Any more thoughts on my Catalan number catalog

Rainbolt

@quartata Two possibilities. Either the guy doesn't like golfing languages, or he likes them and wanted to prove that the rest of the community likes them too (devil's advocate post)

quartata

Also, how did it become CW after it was deleted?

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt But yes, you have a good point of course. It's even more present with newer versions. I can't go answering an old challenge in Mathematica without having to figure out which version was the latest release back then and then figuring which functions (and which of their overloads) existed back then.

TimmyD

@quartata CW questions automatically make all answers CW

Rainbolt

17:50

I like how he posts a loophole and everyone comments with "How does this break the rules?" The whole point of loopholes are that they aren't against the rules until we make it so.

And by everyone I mean one guy

quartata

1

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

The Catalan numbers (OEIS) are a sequence of natural numbers often appearing in combinatorics. The nth Catalan number (for n >= 0) is defined as: Starting from n = 0, the first 20 Catalan numbers are: 1, 1, 2, 5, 14, 42, 132, 429, 1430, 4862, 16796, 58786, 208012, 742900, 2674440, 9694845, 35...

FEEDBACK WE MUST GET TO 10 QUESTIONS A DAY

We're at 8.5 questions a day right now.

Thomas Kwa

Here's a good challenge idea: fora.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=110281

quartata

We need more questions.

Martin Büttner

@quartata no we don't.

quartata

@MartinBüttner 'Twas a jest.

But wouldn't it be cool if for a week we were at 10 questions a day?

@ThomasKwa I think we've had something like that...

I can't quite remember

Martin Büttner

17:53

@quartata sure, if we have enough people answering them so that each of them still gets enough high-quality solutions.

@ThomasKwa sounds familiar

quartata

@MartinBüttner That's why we have Dennis. He'll just use his sock army to answer them all.

Martin Büttner

@ThomasKwa well sort of

Thomas Kwa

@Martin @quartata We've had codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/50907/…, but that was about taking prime factors of the exponents

the xkcd thing is about prime index

and there are a bunch of interesting alternate notations too

Martin Büttner

oh, right

Thomas Kwa

To the sandbox!

Martin Büttner

17:57

while everyone is talking about the sandbox and number theory... (incoming plug)

1

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Converging Sums of a Fractal Sequence code-golf number sequence number-theory fractal Background A fractal sequence is an integer sequences where you can remove the first occurrence of every integer and end up with the same sequence as before. A very simple such sequence is called Kimberling'...

TimmyD

Batman Transition (+ download sound link)

►

quartata

@MartinBüttner ooh

Also, somewhat off-topic. but what happened with this guy:

ןnɟuɐɯɹɐןoɯ

1 4 23

code-golf string popularity-contest math quine javascript binary

I saw yesterday something about socks

But I'm not quite sure what happened or what "voting irregularities" means

Alex A.

Voting irregularities typically implies serial voting, be it up or down.

quartata

@AlexA. Ah

Alex A.

It can also imply sock puppet voting, where a separate account is made primarily for the purpose of upvoting a single user.

Thomas Kwa

18:00

@quartata From the rep changes page, it looks like they forged about 420 rep

Rainbolt

I don't think you get suspended every time you serially vote and get reversed. I think it takes more than that

Thomas Kwa

Through sock puppet voting

quartata

@AlexA. Better watch what buttons you press with @ಠ_ಠ then

Rainbolt

Because I had my votes reversed on meta once, and was not suspended

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt that was clearly neither a case of sock puppetry nor of artificially inflating someone's rep

Alex A.

18:01

^

Rainbolt

Are suspensions always manually applied, or can you get suspended automatically for repeated serial voting?

Thomas Kwa

I was caught by the serial voting script several times and didn't get suspended.

Alex A.

@Rainbolt I think in most (if not all?) cases it's manual.

Martin Büttner

I don't think you can get suspended automatically

Alex A.

Most amusing name for a post I've seen in a while:

-6

Q: Plzz answer this code

The question is One of our agents recently caught a young hacker with the code name !$criptkiddie. He hid the below piece of javascript on a page which calculates a value but doesn't output the final result. It's also embedded on this page - can you find the result? I need the code please.. va...

string javascript

quartata

18:05

@AlexA. hue hue

Thomas Kwa

I bet they've already posted on SO

I feel bad for SO

Martin Büttner

@ThomasKwa not with the same account at least

Thomas Kwa

Huh, apparently not.

stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&q=plzz

Alex A.

> don't know for sure plzz help!!

Martin Büttner

might be deleted already

quartata

18:08

^

Martin Büttner

@quartata re Catalan numbers. looks good, but could use some motivation about how it's the number of balanced strings of length n or something. just the definition as a binomial coefficient is a bit boring.

quartata

@MartinBüttner Yeah, I'm working on a new intro.

I just wanted to post the more bare-boned spec

Just in case there were any major issues with the rules

Right now I'm working on fixing the grids for Grocery Store Micromanagement

Martin Büttner

also as much as I'm looking forward to a plain binomial-coefficient challenge (because I recently discovered a neat way to compute them in CJam), that makes it a fairly trivial challenge in most languages. not a bad thing, but something you should be aware of.

quartata

I was trying to think of a way to show Catalan numbers without the explicit formula for that exact reason

But, I think it's kinda unavoidable to bring it up.

Hey @MartinBüttner, can you help me with these grids?

Martin Büttner

@quartata sure, just introduce them as the number of balanced strings. it's a valid definition.

@quartata uh, probably not right now

I'm procrastinating hard enough as it is ;)

quartata

18:21

@MartinBüttner ;)

Thomas Kwa

Trying to find the shortest Catalan language... J gets 8 bytes directly from the definition >:%~[!+~

quartata

All right.

I'm going to try to write a script to convert them.

Martin Büttner

@ThomasKwa can't beat that with CJam, because there's no built-in for binomial coefficients

I'm quite happy about my 10 bytes there (iirc)

quartata

Does Mathematica have a built-in for Catalan numbers?

quintopia

@MartinBüttner what do you do irl?

quartata

18:22

Probably not, just wondering.

Alex A.

@quartata Almost certainly.

Martin Büttner

@quartata reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/CatalanNumber.html

quartata

@quintopia IIRC he's a PhD student currently

Thomas Kwa

Pyth also gives 8: /.cyQQhQ

Martin Büttner

@quintopia PhD

quartata

18:22

So, he's basically MLG

2

@MartinBüttner holy shit

Seriously?

Alex A.

As an aside, I love seeing new users post quality answers right off the bat:

2

1

A: Generating Вrаinfuсk NOPs

Python 3, 150 bytes import random as r,sys;f=lambda s,p=0:f(s[:p]+r.choice(["-+","+-","<>","><"])+s[p:],p+r.randrange(2)) if len(s)<int(sys.argv[1]) else s; print(f("")) To run, save it as filename.py and then python3 filename.py 10 where 10 is desired length. ... well, first 24 is nothing ...

Martin Büttner

@quartata seeing that it got two stars, I feel like I should understand what it meant.

Alex A.

@MartinBüttner MLG = Major League Gamer

quartata

Major League Gaming

Major League Gaming (MLG) is a professional eSports organization. MLG is headquartered in New York City, New York and was founded in 2002 by Sundance DiGiovanni and Mike Sepso. MLG has held official video game tournaments throughout the United States and Canada. Major League Gaming competitions have been broadcast on television, ESPN.com, and other broadband sites. The company has also been involved in television production, and game development. MLG's aim is to elevate computer and console game tournaments to viable competitive and spectator events. Major League Gaming acquired Agora Games on...

Thomas Kwa

APL doesn't have increment; Jelly doesn't have combinations

Martin Büttner

18:24

@AlexA. are you sure that works?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@ThomasKwa Sure it does. Jam and Jelly.

X3

Alex A.

@MartinBüttner Yeah, it seems to.

Martin Büttner

I think it can only generate correctly nested solutions

he only inserts a matched pair at a time, so I don't see how it could generate <+>-<->+ for instance

Thomas Kwa

K doesn't have nCr either

Alex A.

@ThomasKwa Dyalog APL supports modified assignment, so you can do (pardon my ASCII shorthand) x +<- 1.

@MartinBüttner ...I missed that. ;-;

Thomas Kwa

18:30

@AlexA. Sorry, I meant (a+1) as a 1 byte builtin

Alex A.

Oh, okay.

feersum

lol Martin posted the exact test case I was going to suggest except with pluses/minuses inverted

quartata

I wonder whether there's any language in which counting Dyck words is shorter than the explicit formula

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@quartata Mathematica?

quartata

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ No, Mathematica has a built-in

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

18:32

@quartata Oh.

what's a dyck word? :/ it sounds like a bad term

feersum

It's gotta be balenced parentheses sequences

Martin Büttner

a balanced string

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

oic

Martin Büttner

Dyck language

In the theory of formal languages of computer science, mathematics, and linguistics, the Dyck language is the language consisting of balanced strings of square brackets [ and ]. It is important in the parsing of expressions that must have a correctly nested sequence of brackets, such as arithmetic or algebraic expressions. It is named after the mathematician Walther von Dyck. == Formal definitionEdit == Let be the alphabet consisting of the symbols [ and ] and let denote its Kleene closure. For any element with length we define partial functions and by is with "" inserted into the...

quartata

ninja'd

Optimizer

18:33

such a dyck language!

quartata

We've heard all these jokes.

Please stop.

Alex A.

^

quartata

Think of some better math jokes pls

Alex A.

Is anybody hungry for some tacos?

10

Q: Programming Puzzles and Taco Truck

Programming Puzzles & Code Golf has opened a taco truck! The word is out and now users from all over the Stack Exchange network are coming to try our tasty, authentic ASCII tacos. We need your help to ensure that everyone gets their orders in a timely manner. There isn't a whole lot of room insid...

code-golf ascii-art

</plug>

quartata

@AlexA. too hard

I'm just going to be lazy instead

feersum

18:35

In Snails the dyck-word approach would be pretty short

Assuming unary input

quartata

@feersum Shorter than the regular formula?

I'd love to see that

@feersum Unary input is fine

feersum

It's a 2D pattern matching language

quartata

@feersum Ah, that's why.

feersum

It's basically impossible to use the formula

quartata

I meant more like "would it be shorter in CJam?"

I wonder...

Brute-forcing all possible two-character strings then keeping all the ones that are balanced is probably too long though :/

sigh

Was hoping for some clever solutions.

14

A: Ignore chat pings found in links

This will be fixed in chat build 347. Enjoy!

ALL HAIL CHRIS

2

@ChrisJester-Young THANK YOU BASED SENPAI

Alex A.

18:38

Based?

quartata

@AlexA. Based.

Alex A.

Um... Okay.

quartata

Why do I have to explain all of these basic memes to you filthy plebians?

urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Based

Alex A.

@quartata Can anyone with sufficient Meta.SE rep to see vote breakdowns tell me whether this has any downvotes?

Chris Jester-Young

@quartata Um, sure, you're most welcome. :-)

quartata

18:39

@ChrisJester-Young :3

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

mechanicalscribe.com/notes/most-common-two-letter-combinations

Alex A.

Exit Chris stage left

On a somewhat related note, I'm exceptionally bad at left and right.

quartata

@AlexA. That's OK, some famous person whose name I can't remember was too.

orlp

GOOD EVENING

quartata

GOOD MORNING

orlp

18:46

\o/

Alex A.

^^

Timwi

Not me

orlp

\\o//

\\\o///

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

GOOD AFTERNOON

orlp

WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE BEHIND ME

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

18:46

YOUR FANCLUB

orlp

ITS CREEPING ME OOUT \\\\o////

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

THE ORLP FANCLUB

CAPS LOOK EES GUD

Alex A.

orlp seems to be growing extra limbs at an alarming rate.

orlp

I SEE

IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@orlp I'm not a fan of the picture.

quartata

18:47

@orlp YES THEY'RE READY TO CLUB AT YOUR COMMAND

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

(Quick! XKCD comic search! Go!)

quartata

THEY'VE GOT GOLF CLUBS, GIANT WOODEN CLUBS...

Alex A.

Ok, plan B: Fly a kite into the blades, with a rock in a sling dangling below it, and create the world's largest trebuchet.

quartata

Why are we talking in all caps again?

@AlexA. hue hue

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

GG ALEX

quartata

18:48

WP

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

WPGGNORE

oh shoot quick act like we're on topic

quartata

ALT-QQ

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Oops.

As I was saying...

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@quartata Erm, yeah.

^_^

orlp

what would you do

if you're in a self driving car

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

(How many mods are there in here? ^^")

Dennis

18:49

Right now or ever?

orlp

and it locked the doors and asked me how long it takes for a human to starve to death?

Alex A.

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ 2

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Sadly, it probably won't even have enough gas to make it to the first border crossing.

@AlexA. phews

It's the nice mods

All the mods are nice actually

Optimizer

except Alex

Alex A.

._.

quartata

18:50

@AlexA. Don't listen to them

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

He's nice, but alex-is-wrong

quartata

You're far too nice

Matter of a fact, you should kick-mute people more often

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

;)

Alex A.

@quartata Allow me to bake you some cookies of appreciation.

quartata

:D

Optimizer

18:51

Alex is not nice, and if he kick-mutes me for saying that out loud, that only proves my point ;)

New Main Posts

0

Q: Write a 0815 interpreter

I like the concept of 0815, except the interpreter on the creator's website returns an Error 404. So I decided to ask you all to help! The Basics 0815 is based around three (3) registers and a queue. The registers are named X, Y, and Z, with X being write-only, Z being read-only, and Y being a ...

code-golf interpreter

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@AlexA. I'll have a byte. ;)

Alex A.

lel

Optimizer

I'll have The Nineteenth Byte

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@Optimizer As an aside, I have a concept for a programming language: "the fourth byte"

Optimizer

18:52

"as an aside" - is that correct english ?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

Yes.

Why wouldn't it be?

quartata

@Optimizer It's valid.

But I could see how a non-native English speaker could be confused

Optimizer = French confirmed?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

> english ?

Optimizer

is anyone "French confirmed" here?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

French confirmed

space BEFORE (it's Monday) ? and lowercase english

^_^

Optimizer

18:54

before*

TimmyD

Spaces go before only on Mondays.

Thomas Kwa

I think Optimizer is Peruvian; llamas are native to S America only.

2

Alex A.

I think one of the first things I asked Optimizer in here when I first became active in chat was whether he's French. I also thought that because of the punctuation spacing. But alas, he is not.

Optimizer

Why are you generalizing that all French are this bad in spacing?

I just love spaces (much more than tabs) a lot!

Timwi

Incidentally, I'm not French either, but then I don't think anyone suspected it

quartata

18:57

He's getting defensive. That confirms it even more.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@Timwi Really? I assumed you were French because of Sclipting. ;)

Timwi

And I like spaces more than tabs too

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

As an aside

Timwi

Sclipting? French? Please explain :-)

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@Timwi 'Twas an absurdity XD

Transcript for