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Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

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Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this in my machine learning class. I started by simply coding up requirements for numerical functions (in the form of test cases), then set up a PHP script that would Google each function based on the keywords in my comments, and try to run any code on the resulting links (in a sandbox) against the requirements, seeing if it worked heuristically. Usually one of the top 5-10 pages of results results would have c…

Conrad24: this post made my day. I have dreamed of a script that would scour eBay and amazon finding products available via "buy now" that we're being resold on amazon for some configurable profit. Or vice versa. I figure with some initial investment and monitored training, it could get good enough to just cut me a check every month. Since high frequency trading has destabilized the stock market, this could be a bett…

My ex has a standing rule whenever buying stuff of e-bay to always check misspellings, and there's regularly items going very cheaply with misspelled items. I'm sure there's an opportunity there, but hard to gauge how big. Especially with relatively small ticket items that people just want to get rid off.

E.g. toys - there's a thriving market in Lego minifigures. In fact, sometimes the minifigures can individually fetch more than the set, because for many of the ranges, all the sets will contain different subsets of recognizable characters, so there's often a market consisting of people that have e.g. 3 of the 4 ninja turtles and want the last one without paying for a full set. So the prices are already ridiculously high for some items.

But many of the people in that market are totally unsophisticated. For example parents selling of their kids collections once they've "grown out of it", and when they misspell something, items can go for 1/4 of their market value or even less...

If you're willing to hold on to them and monitor prices for a while, you can do even better, as many of the ranges appreciate substantially in value (big collectors market...).

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this in my machine learning class. I started by simply coding up requirements for numerical functions (in the form of test cases), then set up a PHP script that would Google each function based on the keywords in my comments, and try to run any code on the resulting links (in a sandbox) against the requirements, seeing if it worked heuristically. Usually one of the top 5-10 pages of results results would have c…

I was still hoping this was real 5 lines in.

Now I want to try it.

I mean, I used to regularly got initial e-mail screening answers from candidates for various positions that were cut and pasted from Google (very obvious because they were so far out of what we expected that we cut and pasted a line here and there and got back "their" answer word for word - often wrong). And these were people already in developer jobs, which makes me wonder if they'd used that method in their jobs or to get them...

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, applying the Infinite monkey theorem to programming :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Yeah, but there are a few well trained monkeys hanging out [mining for karma points] at StackOverflow. The really adventurous would direct it at 4chan.

Since 4chan threads are thrown away, it lacks the "hereditary" trait of the variation/selection/heredity trio. Unless you include one of the sites that archives popular threads I suppose.

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humm ... works instantly with Chrome. Not sure why it's not working with Firefox (haven't seen the code yet - might debug if I get some time)

Let me know if you do. It works fine for me in Firefox (I'm an ex-Mozillian; that was the first place I checked), so I don't know why it's not working.

Here is the error log for firefox:

TypeError: e is undefined http://gkoberger.github.com/stacksort/js/lib/jquery.js Line 3

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#187
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will read more about GP for future attempts, thanks.

This is an exciting exchange for me because all joking aside I had this idea in the past and believe it should be a more active area of research. Why Forth? I doubt it is possible to solve "serious" problems with this approach but there is a whole class of work that is solved by mediocre programmers with copy pasting. We strive to automate other jobs, why not these? :) We should come up with some sort of Turing like…

Genetic programming is an active area of research, and there has been a number of successes. See John R. Koza's work: http://www.genetic-programming.com/johnkoza.html for starters.

It's not really, so far at least, suitable for replacing work done by mediocre programmers, because the setup cost is so high: The hard work is defining the fitness function and symbol set and other factors, and to pay off this requires problems where it is easier to recognise a good result than writing the algorithm to achieve it.

E.g. a sort function does not fall in that space: Once you've specified how you want your data sorted, you've usually done most of the work.

But once you've specified the fitness function sufficiently well, and figured out the inputs etc., there are a lot of other search algorithms that often will perform better.

I'm very fascinated by GP too (though I've never had time to truly delve into it), but without combining it with mechanisms to take a large chunk of the specification work out of the equation, it remains confined to fairly specific types of problems.

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#188
post #5

If you give it about 30 seconds it works eventually, this is beautiful. I had a good laugh. Edit: It makes me want to do something crazy like setup a tool chain that cobbles whole programs together with trial and error like this. Throw enough resources at it maybe it will be faster and cheaper than your avg. developer. It will be an unmaintainable mess as if you used Brainfuck or Perl. But it will run, by god, it wil…

It makes me want to do something crazy like setup a tool chain that cobbles whole programs together with trial and error like this. Throw enough resources at it maybe it will be faster and cheaper than your avg. developer.

This exists. It's called Genetic Algorithms. You basically try to "evolve" your algorithm.

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#189
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key last step is to have it automatically post questions to StackOverflow to fill in the last code snippets it can't complete.

I did this in my machine learning class. I started by simply coding up requirements for numerical functions (in the form of test cases), then set up a PHP script that would Google each function based on the keywords in my comments, and try to run any code on the resulting links (in a sandbox) against the requirements, seeing if it worked heuristically. Usually one of the top 5-10 pages of results results would have c…

Have you read Charlie Stross' Accelerando? It's basically about the technological singularity, and starts off something like this. It's available for free on his website.

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#190
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conrad24: this post made my day. I have dreamed of a script that would scour eBay and amazon finding products available via "buy now" that we're being resold on amazon for some configurable profit. Or vice versa. I figure with some initial investment and monitored training, it could get good enough to just cut me a check every month. Since high frequency trading has destabilized the stock market, this could be a bett…

My ex has a standing rule whenever buying stuff of e-bay to always check misspellings, and there's regularly items going very cheaply with misspelled items. I'm sure there's an opportunity there, but hard to gauge how big. Especially with relatively small ticket items that people just want to get rid off. E.g. toys - there's a thriving market in Lego minifigures. In fact, sometimes the minifigures can individually fe…

I'd have thought that eBay would have improved their search algorithm to take into account misspellings like that by now...
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