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Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

gkoberger.github.com

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Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#4

Post by fwenzel »

gkoberger wrote: post #2

This was inspired by the alt-text from last week's "Ineffective Sorts" xkcd ( http://xkcd.com/1185/ ). It tries to sort a list or JSON by fetching code from StackOverflow until it properly sorts the input.

Do you test the result, or just hope if it runs, it actually worked?

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#5

Post by recuter »

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 will run. :D

You laugh now, but imagine a bizarre combination of genetic programming and machine learning with Stackoverflow and Github used as corpuses. Great Scott!

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#6

Post by jstanley »

fwenzel wrote: post #4
gkoberger wrote: post #2

This was inspired by the alt-text from last week's "Ineffective Sorts" xkcd ( http://xkcd.com/1185/ ). It tries to sort a list or JSON by fetching code from StackOverflow until it properly sorts the input.

Do you test the result, or just hope if it runs, it actually worked?

I found one that returned the wrong result, so it seems to just assume it works as long as it runs.

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#7

Post by TheAnimus »

recuter wrote: 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…

Worst case scenario, Shakespeare.

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#8

Post by gkoberger »

recuter wrote: 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…

Ah, applying the Infinite monkey theorem to programming :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Re: Show HN: XKCD-inspired StackSort

#9

Post by gkoberger »

fwenzel wrote: post #4
gkoberger wrote: post #2

This was inspired by the alt-text from last week's "Ineffective Sorts" xkcd ( http://xkcd.com/1185/ ). It tries to sort a list or JSON by fetching code from StackOverflow until it properly sorts the input.

Do you test the result, or just hope if it runs, it actually worked?

It doesn't test for two reasons:

1) I thought it would defeat the purpose

2) "Sort" is very arbitrary. Do you want to sort by key or value? Is "1000" bigger or smaller than "2"? etc

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