The Nineteenth Byte

pxeger

12:10 PM

you can use Python's cmd module to write an better REPL without relying on rlwrap

Ginger

system inititalize

hello there, I am back

m90

@graffe You can change limit to the appropriate value?

Ginger

it is the last day of May

emanresu A

Wrong

pxeger

ugh imagine living in the eastern hemisphere

Ginger

12:17 PM

dammit timezones

@lyxal not sure how to respond to that

It feels just a little dystopian to me that SE calls their employees "Valued Associates"

pxeger

I think it's tongue-in-cheek

user

How is it dystopian?

emanresu A

o/

Ginger

seems like the kind of thing that an Evil Corporation would do, idk

lyxal

@Ginger correct

don't let emanresuA's whole "living in basically the furthest timezone" thing get you down

Ginger

12:24 PM

we have associates across the globe!

lyxal

I prefer "gamers" instead of "associates" :p

and "epic" instead of "valued"

Ginger

pretty sure there are TNB members on every continent except Antartica

Nobody

@Ginger asia china here

Ginger

does anyone know of a pygame documentation mirror? I can't access the site because reasons

pxeger

@Ginger github.com/pygame/pygame/blob/main/docs/reST/index.rst?

Ginger

12:29 PM

nice

PyGamer0

ok

pxeger

→ 35 messages moved to flax

graffe

@m90 say I want to pick exactly 4 coins. I am not sure there is an appropriate variable to set is there? The optimal should be coins of value 4, 4, 3, 5 I think with total 16

Adám

@Ginger Antarctic bandwidth is very limited, so golfing Antarctic research code would be a good thing.

8

m90

@graffe The program as I gave it already does that? limit = 4 sets the number of coins to take, and the 16 at the end of the output is the answer.

graffe

12:40 PM

@m90 true so it must be that I can't interpret the output arrays

what do they represent?

the number 4+4+3=11 doesn't appear in them :)

m90

@graffe Oh, those are the intermediate steps. The i th element of the n th (1-indexed) array is the best total of i coins from the first n piles.

graffe

thanks!

pxeger

> Data access to the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is provided by access via [...] satellite [...] support[ing] a data return rate of 50 MBit/s

from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Antarctica#Internet

Nobody

Superior Simple

Superior Simple: A 2D programming language. See github.com/Sup...

pxeger

1:09 PM

2

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Alternating permutations code-golf permutations combinatorics number-theory sequence An alternating permutation is a permutation of the first \$ n \$ integers \$ \{ 1 ... n \} \$, such that adjacent pairs of values in the permutation alternate between increasing and decreasing (or vice versa). Eq...

Any thoughts?

Especially, regarding whether or not to include n=1?

lyxal

n=1 doesn't seem like an edge case given that you're already doing duplicate checking

pxeger

hmm, I suppose

lyxal

you should output 1/2 of the total number of alternating permutations. -> you should output alternating permutations that are not reverses of other permutations

or similar

hey wait a minute

it's sequence

Either make the challenge to output permutations or change the title to indicate it's the number of alternating permutations

pxeger

The title describes the topic of the challenge, is that not good enough?

I guess if it's misleading I should change it

I just thought "number of" was a bit of a waste of words

lyxal

It's just that someone like me might go through expecting it to be outputting lists and then say "wait a minute" upon seeing the output

thejonymyster

1:15 PM

id say prepend "count"

lyxal

yeah, that's a good idea

There's nothing majorly wrong with leaving it as is, but prepending "count" would make it just a tad bit clearer

Ian Delord

@thejonymyster sry for late answer. Someone working for a supercomputer company that coded a game that won all the time, could hardly be read by his fellow coworkers, and quit when he was asked to make the game loose to make the computer more attractive to clients...

m90

@IanDelord cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel-annotated/node1.html

user

in Scala, 44 mins ago, by user

Great news! No longer do you have to have separate folders for your Java and Scala code. The newest release of Scala 3 now supports writing Java within your Scala code, providing much smoother integration than before. Here's an example

Ian Delord

@m90 wow thank you so much. that exact document.

Sandbox Posts

1:32 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Play a dumb coinflip game Write an interactive program (or function?) which repeatedly takes user input as described below: At the start of the game, the user inputs a positive integer n>1 The program should then "flip a coin" (e.g. print either 1 or 0 at random) Next, the following loop occurs ...

PyGamer0

> DO NOT SCROLL BEYOND THIS POINT

user

I got lyxal lol

Ian Delord

@m90 also i rememberd really sideways. You're pretty good for figuring it out as seeing how approximative and wrong i was... Thank you

lyxal

@user I didn't scroll down further

that's why

user

A good crewmate would scroll further

lyxal

1:40 PM

not when the page is light mode at 11:40pm at night

I wanted to close the page ASAP for the sake of my eyes

user

Scastie has a dark mode button

lyxal

13 secs ago, by lyxal

I wanted to close the page ASAP for the sake of my eyes

ASAP doesn't include searching for that button

user

lyxal

25 secs ago, by lyxal

ASAP doesn't include searching for that button

PyGamer0

i have the best error message for WS (which kind of insults you):

in Wellscripted, 1 min ago, by PyGamer0

SyntaxError 4:11: Expected semi-colon.
       val foo = 1 + baz
                  ~~~~~~^
Well scripted...

user

1:42 PM

Oh nice, your parser is working already?

PyGamer0

4:11 is line numer:column number

(yes column number is wrong)

(in this case, dont bully me)

@user no

its all theoretical

user

Oh ok

thejonymyster

@PyGamer0 what do the squiggly wiggly lines represent here?

PyGamer0

idk

@user still have to figure out how lark works

if i dont i have to make my own

thejonymyster

good error message though lol

PyGamer0

1:52 PM

and with my school starting tomorrow i dont think i can complete the parser in a week, it may take 3 months lol

(cause this time the school is properly starting with proper timing from 9:45am to 3:45pm)

pxeger

@PyGamer0 I think trying to write your own parser without using any libraries and especially without looking at any formal language theory is a very interesting problem-solving exercise

Start, for example, by writing an algorithm to match brackets

PyGamer0

@pxeger that is an easy task to match brackets

uh its going to be hard to:

- learn lark and write the grammar

pxeger

I was suggesting doing it without lark

PyGamer0

- write a good old imperative parser without libraries

@pxeger doesnt rSNBATWPL use a custom parser

and it is cursed :p

lyxal

@pxeger I agree. Rolling a custom parser for a practical language is something I've been wanting to do for years

PyGamer0

2:06 PM

ok anyways i shall now go

gotta study physics o/

lyxal

o/

pxeger

@PyGamer0 well start by matching brackets, and then matching brackets while gathering their contents and build it into a tree, and then splitting the contents of brackets into terms of a + binary operation, and then extend that to multiple operators, and then extend that to multiple operators with different precedences, etc., etc.

lyxal

don't forget to lex first

mathcat

2:21 PM

@PyGamer0 good luck!

Mayube

morning peeps

or happy timezone peeps if it's not morning for ya

lyxal

it's morning here, but the kind of morning where you think "well frick I need to go" but you also think "just a few more minutes of SE chat"

hyper-neutrino

"just a few more minutes of SE chat" is a dangerous rabbit hole to go down :P

lyxal

yes

especially when it's this kind of morning:

Mayube

That's why I only open SE chat at the office

lyxal

2:27 PM

imagine doing that. smh. made by this is a habit I've accidentally developed over the last year gang

well frick it I'm going

o/

pxeger

goodbye

mathcat

\o

Wheat Wizard

Is there a way to find the user with the most questions asked?

I think it's Helka Homba, but I don't know for sure.

mathcat

~~you need to search no more, it's me~~

Mayube

@lyxal fwiw, SE chat is so far the only thing that's got me to stay in the office late. Once stayed like 45 mins late cos I was so enthralled in the conversation lol

pxeger

2:29 PM

@lyxal you should learn from @emanresuA, who leaves at about 9-10pm their time every day

@WheatWizard data.stackexchange.com/codegolf/query/1580478/…

Wheat Wizard

Ok nice. That confirms my informal top 5 ranking.

pxeger

who's Helka Homba?

Wheat Wizard

Calvin's Hobbies.

That used to be their username for a while.

pxeger

ah, some digging revealed chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31083560#31083560

Wheat Wizard

I used it because it was shorter to type and now I find myself typing this entire explanation because of it.

hyper-neutrino

2:37 PM

I find that to be a fairly common scenario - saving like 5 or fewer characters for a shortcut that takes several lines to then explain :P

pxeger

Interesting I'm #57 in questions, despite being #87 in all-time reputation

We've looked at question:answer ratios before, but have we looked at rep:question and rep:answer ratios?

Wheat Wizard

Older stuff got more votes.

So that ratio would be a crude measurement of when you joined.

Mayube

@WheatWizard Are they by any chance itsHobbes on github? Because they're an admin in the programming discord I'm active in, and I swear I've seen them around CGSE before

Wheat Wizard

I don't know.

pxeger

@Mayube HelkaHomba is a GitHub user who I'm pretty sure is them

Mayube

2:41 PM

@pxeger ah, must be somebody else then

pxeger

but that account's not been used since 2017

PyGamer0

3:10 PM

i have studied levers and their mechanical advantages

pxeger

@PyGamer0 that sounds like a line from the Major-General's song

PyGamer0

lol

Mayube

@pxeger it even has the cadence for it

user

3:38 PM

CMP: What math features would you guys say a golfing language needs?

in Vyxal, 3 mins ago, by user

- Integration of arbitrary expressions? Integration of just polynomials?
- Derivatives of arbitrary expressions? Derivatives of just polynomials?
- Solving arbitrary systems of equations? Solving systems of equations with just polynomials?
- Solving nonlinear systems of differential equations? Solving just systems of linear differential equations?

thejonymyster

addition...

pxeger

even addition is kinda unnecessary imo. incrementation is really all you need

user

>:|

thejonymyster

photonumeric recognition

mathcat

^

user

3:42 PM

@pxeger That would succ

mathcat

ess

pxeger

it needs an O(1) prime factorisation function

6

user

That one's easy

Just use boolfuck

@mathcat or

Mayube

just use xor, you can build everything from xor :D

mathcat

@user flyp

thejonymyster

3:43 PM

intergals / derivatives sounds cool, but does that actually come up in challenges? genuine question

user

Not really

And it really ruins the fun when someone whips out a builtin that does everything

mathcat

and do you really need to solve systems of equations?

user

Integrals and derivatives of polynomials might actually be useful but I think it's still better to make people do it themselves

thejonymyster

how about cnr and pnr

pxeger

do you mean nCr and nPr?

or Chinese Nemainder Rheorem?

user

3:46 PM

Those are pretty trivial to implement

thejonymyster

@pxeger lmao yes that

i googled it to be sure and google was like "yeah sure thats how theyre spelled"

Mayube

@pxeger what does the New California Republic have to do with this?

user

@user I asked this mainly to convince lyxal to not put symbolic math into Vyxal

thejonymyster

didnt read past the header unfortunately

user

@Mayube Calculating half-lives

graffe

3:48 PM

I am wondering about the voting on this site :)

from -4 to 12 with almost no changes to the question

pxeger

because your question started out underspecified, and then it wasn't?

graffe

@pxeger I am not sure that aligns correctly.

I mean I did make changes but the -4 happened after almost all of them

Mayube

@user No no no. This is Fallout, not Half Life

graffe

what made the difference was comments by "important people"

the voters are very suggestible by authority :)

@pxeger congrats on becoming a room boss!

hyper-neutrino

@graffe no the voters are suggestible by the question actually being adequately specified

graffe

3:56 PM

@hyper-neutrino I feel I have started a riot :)

hyper-neutrino

I can confirm that the question already had most of the downvotes it ever had before it was properly specified and after you made the necessary edits it basically immediately went to positive and some of the downvotes were removed (although some were later added by other people)

graffe

@hyper-neutrino the spec didn't really change at all did it?

hyper-neutrino

@graffe nah I don't think you have, I'm just telling you that your question was underspecified and you fixed it and as a result you saw your question's score go positive again. I'm just telling you that your complaints about voters being swayed by authority are nonsense

Mayube

@graffe it changed from insufficiently defined, to sufficiently defined

graffe

what was the main difference?

I mean I change the number 1000 to 200

hyper-neutrino

3:57 PM

the main difference was that there were many edge cases and limitations that were not present in the first version that were later on

graffe

and added examples that don't make any difference

hyper-neutrino

such as how to handle n>100

graffe

so this line "If n>100 then some of the values in the output will necessarily be 0." ?

anyway, I can confirm that given a few days cgcc people can answer any question

hyper-neutrino

that's part of it; examples also are always good to have, the fact that different order counts as a different list is also not explicitly stated but the example makes it clear which it previously wasn't

graffe

I need to think of a new tricky question now!

@hyper-neutrino thanks

thejonymyster

3:59 PM

i think you should just use the sandbox this time :Pc

hyper-neutrino

in any case all I'm saying is that there are definitely issues with votes but in this case the voting reflected the quality of the question

graffe

@thejonymyster I sort of hate the sandbox although I agree with the idea

mathcat

@thejonymyster I'm using a Pc too!

thejonymyster

i would suggest one last edit to the 100 sum question btw

hyper-neutrino

you made your question good and got upvotes as a result of the changes so I'm not sure why you're complaining about voters being swayed by authority

graffe

4:00 PM

my problem is that not enough people comment and then you get contradictory comments and it's hard to know what to do with it

pxeger

I think there's no such thing as "I need to think of a question". When you've thought of a challenge, maybe it would be a good question. But if you decide you "need to" think of a question, it probably won't be very good

3

thejonymyster

if n<201, "should run fast for results below 200" is redundant

graffe

@thejonymyster go on

hyper-neutrino

especially because I don't see who this "authority" is even that commented

thejonymyster

@graffe srry i slow pace my messages lol

hyper-neutrino

4:00 PM

@graffe why? is there anything we can change with the sandbox or how we approach the idea that would make it better in your opinion?

graffe

@thejonymyster what do you mean? You could try to sample from all arrays with values from from 0 to 100 and then accept only those that sum to 100. This would be insanely slow

thejonymyster

ok i gotta go back to doing my work job that i get paid to do at my job at the office at work. my job

pxeger

@graffe if nobody comments, and it has a positive score, then it's probably a good question and doesn't need any comments

if nobody comments, and it has a score of 0, it's probably a boring question, and (IMO) not worth posting, but doesn't need any comments to tell you that

thejonymyster

@graffe my point is that n<200 is 99% of the n's allowed by the question

graffe

@thejonymyster oh I see :)

thejonymyster

4:02 PM

yea lol ^_^ ok byeeee

graffe

@hyper-neutrino it's tricky as I am not sure what is possible given the SE framework. Ideally people who make suggestions on the sandbox could have them upvoted for points

some sort of incentive system is needed in any case

hyper-neutrino

ah. unfortunately that's not really a thing we can do since we are, like you said, restricted by the SE framework

pxeger

@graffe if nobody comments, and it has a negative score, then it's probably a bad question for reasons that are too annoying to explain (because you've already explained them lots of times, or you think they should be obvious). At least, that's the reason for when I downvote without commenting

hyper-neutrino

it is possible to incentivize the sandbox with bounties but that's really expensive and I'm not actually convinced yet that that would be a good idea

graffe

I guess each sandbox question could be a real question and comments could be answers

hyper-neutrino

4:04 PM

that's an idea we've had in the past but we decided against it

graffe

ah ok

at least I came up with something that someone else thought was a good idea once :)

hyper-neutrino

too much clutter regardless of if we put it on main or meta. that's what codidact does because they have a special Sandbox section for code golf since individual sites can have custom sections with custom reputation rules, unlike SE which only has main and meta with a handful of exceptions

graffe

understood

pxeger

@graffe and if you get contradictory comments, then you should use your own judgement to determine which of them are right and wrong, and to what extent, soliciting further opinions if necessary

Mayube

@pxeger I also see people downvote excessively boring and/or trivial challenges

graffe

4:05 PM

@pxeger right

Radvylf Programs

4:30 PM

@Nobody Yeah, I get a notification when I'm pinged, just like everyone else. I was asleep.

If someone doesn't respond immediately, that doesn't mean they didn't see it, it means they're busy.

Mayube

busy sleeping? Pfft yeah, a likely excuse

pxeger

Or just not interested in replying. Noone has any obligation to respond to any message

pxeger

4:59 PM

→ 22 messages moved to Off-Topic TNB

Ginger

I am currently making a fancy makina visualizer

and by "fancy" I mean "using UI software from 1955"

des54321

5:18 PM

im assuming thats a typo cause i dont think computers had graphical UIs in 1955, did you mean 1995?

Ginger

...yes :|

Radvylf Programs

Ginger's UI is just blinking vacuum tubes

mathcat

wait vacuum tubes blink?

Ginger

no, Radvylf is british and was using blinking as an expletive

mathcat

waaait

Conspiracy Theory: Radvylf is british

Argument No. 2: Radvylf uses the imperial system

Radvylf Programs

5:28 PM

CMC: Given an array a and a value b, return the last item in a, or b if a is empty

hyper-neutrino

prepend b + tail?

Radvylf Programs

I have a particularly evil solution in raisin-batwaffle

hyper-neutrino

;Ṫ in Jelly accepting arguments in order b, a

pxeger

Zsh, 19 bytes: (<<<$1;cat)|tail -1

accepting a as a list of lines on STDIN, and b as a command-line arugment

Radvylf Programs

rSNBATWPL: a~b~(a{id{b}~};b)

Basically, map over a with the function id{b}~Null, which sets b in the scope of b~ to that item

Then return b

pxeger

5:32 PM

Haskell, 17 bytes: []%a=a;r%_=last r

Radvylf Programs

@RadvylfPrograms The reason that this works is that, instead of giving the function a (syntax) identifier to use for the argument, you give it a (value) scoped identifier, which it gets confused by

Best part is, I think it's the golfiest way to do this in rSN

mathcat

Vyxal, 6 bytes: t¹L¬⁰*+ (very stupid solution)

Ginger

Python, 27 bytes: lambda a,b:a[-1]if a else b

pretty boring, working on a better one

pxeger

@mathcat Vyxal, 2 bytes: Jt

Seggan

Vyxal, 5 bytes (with reversed input) :[t|$

@pxeger oof

mathcat

5:37 PM

flyp

very clever solution

Seggan

MyLanguageIJustMadeUpForThisChallenge, 0 bytes

Ginger

VTC per standard loophole

mathcat

Vote to close

btw

does your language use a SBCS or a HBCS?

Seggan

It uses a NBCS

3

Ginger

my internet is on drugs

@RadvylfPrograms may we assume that b is a string?

user

5:45 PM

@RadvylfPrograms Scala 2, 24 bytes: _.lastOption getOrElse _

des54321

@Ginger lambda a,b:(a or[b])[-1] 24 bytes

Ginger

darn

user

@des54321 lambda a,b:([b]+a)[-1]

des54321

oh good one user

user

Not my idea

@hyper-neutrino hyper suggested it immediately after radvylf's CMC, I'm surprised everyone didn't immediately use it

pxeger

5:54 PM

@RadvylfPrograms Python, 21 bytes: lambda a,b:a[-1:]or b. Only works with strings.

des54321

@pxeger does that seriously not error on empty string? wack behavior there python

pxeger

slicing never errors (unless the slice elements are invalid, like a step value of 0)

des54321

also i dont see why that only works with strings? my tests show it working fine with lists too

user

@pxeger Why wouldn't it work on lists of other stuff?

Mayube

6:17 PM

@RadvylfPrograms C# with Linq: (a,b)=>a.LastOrDefault(b)

thejonymyster

lol i almost sent js: (a,b)=>a[a.push(b)] but then i had to get back to work and mulled it over

Not quite right

hyper-neutrino

6:43 PM

@user because it returns a list containing the last element of a, not the last element of a itself

Mayube

just to be boring, here's C# without Linq: (a,b)=>a.Length>0?a[a.Length-1]:b

user

7:02 PM

@hyper-neutrino Oh ok

@Mayube Maybe something like (a,b)=>a.Reverse().Append(b)[0] would work too

Mayube

@user you can't append to an array in C#

also it'd be Array.Reverse(a) without Linq

Ginger

7:22 PM

jre. irnu abe lpripammcbi lg;;n.o

Mayube

@Ginger Please don't summon cthulhu in TNB, we have enough trouble holding onto our sanity as it is

Ginger

good enough

des54321

8:15 PM

i dunno if we're nice enough to cthulhu he might give us some secret eldritch golfing knowledge

Radvylf Programs

@Ginger No

(Well it's a CMC, I can't stop you, but I'm guessing that's a bit of a cheaty I/O format)

Ginger

muahaha I am unhaltable

user

8:41 PM

@Mayube There's an Append method for IEnumerables right?

Mayube

@user no

user

:(

Mayube

@user there's an Add method for ILists

user

Ah ok

Oh it's in Linq so also not allowed

Radvylf Programs

8:58 PM

2

FRICK

Ginger

what

Radvylf Programs

I was about to click "off-topic tnb" then more rooms loaded in and what was under my cursor changed

Superior Simple

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