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Quine Relay

github.com

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Re: Quine Relay

#51

Post by eksith »

Sealy wrote: post #37
eksith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. That's a transmutation circle of awesome.

I think he's referring to the relative uselessness of the code. Yes it would have taken a lot of time, talent and intellect to produce but from what I understand is of relatively little use? Can someone correct me if I'm wrong?

There has been a spat of comments criticizing stories along the lines of "what use does it have?" As pointed out previously on all of them, and at the risk of sounding redundant, this is "Hacker News", not "Only Useful Things News" or even "Mildly Interesting News".

Looking at the front page of HN, I think it's pretty safe to say it's moved a fair distance from news of only VCs, startups and such to the realm of what we find interesting. This is interesting. It's not useful, particularly well built or even presentable at a sales meeting. But it is interesting.

Re: Quine Relay

#52

Post by lifeformed »

hnriot wrote: post #38
GuiA wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, how is that sad?

possibly that someone clearly very smart wasted his/her intellect doing this, rather than advancing the species by curing obesity, heart disease and cancer?

Smart people are too burdened with the responsibility to save the world to spend on leisure.

Re: Quine Relay

#53

Post by ionforce »

raldi wrote: post #49
hnriot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

possibly that someone clearly very smart wasted his/her intellect doing this, rather than advancing the species by curing obesity, heart disease and cancer?

Do you feel the same way when someone bakes a cake, takes a walk, watches a sporting event, knits a sweater, or writes a poem?

I think that people view art as a side effect of abundance. It is something that naturally arises given a surplus of some thing.

The point of contention here is that someone of that level of intellect has "wasted" their talent on art, rather than productivity, which "should" come first.

For varying definitions of "should" and "wasted", of course.

Re: Quine Relay

#54

Post by brey »

Sealy wrote: post #37
eksith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. That's a transmutation circle of awesome.

I think he's referring to the relative uselessness of the code. Yes it would have taken a lot of time, talent and intellect to produce but from what I understand is of relatively little use? Can someone correct me if I'm wrong?

you've just described art.

Re: Quine Relay

#55

Post by gambler »

breadbox wrote: post #50
hnriot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

possibly that someone clearly very smart wasted his/her intellect doing this, rather than advancing the species by curing obesity, heart disease and cancer?

I also know plenty of people who waste their intellect painting canvases, when they could be advancing the species by doing something practical. Shall we shed a tear for their wasted efforts as well? But of course not. Art is its own justification. And this program, my friends? This is art .

Art that only exists for the sake of existing, without intent to express, explore, or otherwise stimulate human mind - art of that sort is garbage. There are plenty of people who vehemently defend that garbage, but it doesn't make it any less wasteful use of human time and attention. Personally, I will never respect it simply because there was a lot of effort involved.

Re: Quine Relay

#58

Post by mbillie1 »

quchen wrote: post #3

In case someone is able to run this beast, I'd appreciate an upload of the intermediate source files.

I'm grabbing the packages (in Ubuntu 12.04, just sub "clojure1.4" with "clojure" and you should be able to grab them all)... will attempt to run it once I get this all set up.

Re: Quine Relay

#59

Post by thedigitalengel »

terabytest wrote: post #17
SilasX wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the explanation linked in the discussion [1], the initial file generates code in another language. That code, when executed, generates code in yet another language. The process continues until the output is the code of the original file. [1] https://github.com/mame/quine-relay

What is unclear to me is how the final program manages to represent the entire code (thus the entire language loop). Wouldn't doing that make the source code recursive and infinite? Or am I missing something important?

Representing self is actually not that difficult or mind-bending; you just need a representation that is isomorphic to the program source. For instance, you could store the ASCII symbols in an integer array:

  int array = { ... } // holds the source code,
                      //  except its own representation

  int array_index; // The index in the source code
                   // (where the actual integers in
                   // array interpreted as source appear)

  for i = 0 to array_index:
    print (array[i] as an ASCII character)

  for i = 0 to array_length:
    print (array[i] as integer ++ ", ")

  for i = array_index + 1 to array_length:
    print (array[i] as an ASCII character)
The core idea is that you can interpret `array` in two ways, as an array of integers or an array of ascii characters representing the program source. The only difficult part is adjusting array_index. With a little effort, this can be scaled to a chain of languages.

Re: Quine Relay

#60

Post by toyg »

dragontamer wrote: post #22
tome wrote: post #6

Why's there a Star of David in the middle?

The symbol of note is not "The Star of David", but instead Ouroboros, the eternal snake... symbolized by a snake eating his own tail. I believe he chose the symbol Ouroboros to represent the "immortality through change" of the code. In one story... Ouroboros was an immortal snake who constantly shed his skin, and took on many forms. Similarly, this code constantly changes form, yet is immortal. While it changes form,…

The "Star of David", like many Jewish symbols, has long been associated with alchemy and magic arts (and other less savoury enterprises) in classic European cultures. See for example [1] from a basic google search. This is likely why it was used in the anime, probably just to avoid the usual boring pentagram.

[1] http://www.truthperfected.com/2012/12/seal-of-solomon.html

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