Code Golf at Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Code Golf at Google

#11

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 1:50 AM UTC

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #10

rory096 wrote: post #2

> http://go/codegolf How does this work, some sort of TLD magic? (That shouldn't be possible, right?) Is it just routed within Google's internal network?

Search paths. The full address is go.corp.google.com (which is simply a URL shortener), IIRC; however, I think the resolvers are also configured to respond to a bare name in a lot of cases as an optimization. They talk a little bit about corp in their BeyondCorp paper[0], which is well worth a read, and I'm speaking to ancient memory so I might be wrong these days. [0]: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/resea…

[deleted]

Re: Code Golf at Google

#12

Post by userbinator » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 1:52 AM UTC

spydum wrote: post #7

i think the sad pattern I see in a lot of these code golf implementations is the solution score is based on Lines of Code, which we already agree is a POOR representation of either complexity or simplicity. I think it would be far more interesting to measure number of instructions to complete the objective. Though I suspect the folks familiar with assembly would run circles, perhaps you could segment by solution lang…

The demoscene may be of interest if you're into optimising the binary for size and not the source:

http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/

That one seems abandoned for a few years now but you can find plenty of tiny graphical effects here, executables are 512 bytes and below:

http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type%5B%5D=32b&type%5B%5D=...

Re: Code Golf at Google

#13

Post by modeless » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 2:03 AM UTC

spydum wrote: post #7

i think the sad pattern I see in a lot of these code golf implementations is the solution score is based on Lines of Code, which we already agree is a POOR representation of either complexity or simplicity. I think it would be far more interesting to measure number of instructions to complete the objective. Though I suspect the folks familiar with assembly would run circles, perhaps you could segment by solution lang…

You may be interested in http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/. It's essentially a code golf game with many different metrics to optimize including number of instructions.

Re: Code Golf at Google

#14

Post by JoshTriplett » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

spydum wrote: post #7

i think the sad pattern I see in a lot of these code golf implementations is the solution score is based on Lines of Code, which we already agree is a POOR representation of either complexity or simplicity. I think it would be far more interesting to measure number of instructions to complete the objective. Though I suspect the folks familiar with assembly would run circles, perhaps you could segment by solution lang…

Lines of code is a poor representation, but non-whitespace characters is a somewhat better one. Perl golf and vim golf both use that.

Re: Code Golf at Google

#15

Post by webo » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 2:24 AM UTC

Hah, I remember spending hours on this during work hours when I was interning last year. I used to come up with very clever and short solutions only then to find out I wasn't even top 10 :(

Re: Code Golf at Google

#16

Post by nsajko » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 2:30 AM UTC

modeless wrote: post #13

spydum wrote: post #7

i think the sad pattern I see in a lot of these code golf implementations is the solution score is based on Lines of Code, which we already agree is a POOR representation of either complexity or simplicity. I think it would be far more interesting to measure number of instructions to complete the objective. Though I suspect the folks familiar with assembly would run circles, perhaps you could segment by solution lang…

You may be interested in http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ . It's essentially a code golf game with many different metrics to optimize including number of instructions.

It's DRM-ed, sadly.

Re: Code Golf at Google

#17

Post by Omnipresent » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 2:32 AM UTC

Can a googler put the questions in public for others to see?

Re: Code Golf at Google

#18

Post by nate_martin » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 2:59 AM UTC

Fun fact: there has been a problem with Googlers calculating hash functions that pass all the test cases for certain questions.

Re: Code Golf at Google

#19

Post by spydum » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 3:12 AM UTC

modeless wrote: post #13

spydum wrote: post #7

i think the sad pattern I see in a lot of these code golf implementations is the solution score is based on Lines of Code, which we already agree is a POOR representation of either complexity or simplicity. I think it would be far more interesting to measure number of instructions to complete the objective. Though I suspect the folks familiar with assembly would run circles, perhaps you could segment by solution lang…

You may be interested in http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ . It's essentially a code golf game with many different metrics to optimize including number of instructions.

wow, thanks! great line: "It’s the assembly language programming game you never asked for!"

Re: Code Golf at Google

#20

Post by NegativeK » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 3:27 AM UTC

spydum wrote: post #7

i think the sad pattern I see in a lot of these code golf implementations is the solution score is based on Lines of Code, which we already agree is a POOR representation of either complexity or simplicity. I think it would be far more interesting to measure number of instructions to complete the objective. Though I suspect the folks familiar with assembly would run circles, perhaps you could segment by solution lang…

Given the entirely whimsical and (hopefully) intentionally rebellious nature of Code Golf, I don't think that worrying about the usefulness of the metric is really worth it.