this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
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[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 87 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The advantage of that last approach is that it has side effects and cannot therefore be optimized out by the compiler.

[–] ronigami@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That’s only one advantage. In theory it does not necessarily terminate, so that’s another one.

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[–] OshaqHennessey@midwest.social 63 points 1 week ago (2 children)
function myFunction() {
  try {
    x = new Random().nextInt();
    if (x != 10) {
     throw "not 10";
    }
    else {
      return (10)
    }
    catch(err) {
      myFunction()
    }
  }
}

x = myFunction()

Commit notes: Added error handling

[–] firewallfail@lemmy.world 62 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Returning 10 instead of x when x finally ends up being 10 really ties it together.

[–] OshaqHennessey@midwest.social 28 points 1 week ago

I'm glad you noticed. That was my favorite part too.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

SyntaxError: Unexpected token 'catch'

[–] OshaqHennessey@midwest.social 9 points 1 week ago

Coding on mobile is hard

[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 41 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For a time on Reddit (some years ago when I still used it) there was a trend of finding the worst way of implementing is_even(x: int) -> bool. My contribution to that was a function that ran Ackerman(x,x) flipping a Boolean at every iteration, and check if it was true or false at the end.

It works btw, I will find the proof later

[–] uranibaba@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I would love to see the implementaion.

[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

The implementation is not very exciting, I capture a variable in python. It could have been done more cleanly.

1000041934

The proof is this. But, I could have made mistakes, it was many years ago.

1000041935

Note that in python you'll never be able to run is_even(5) the stack cannot handle it

Edit: daaaamn, that variable is ugly as hell. I would never do things like that now.

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[–] Hirom@beehaw.org 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The compiler will optimize it anyway. /s

[–] Dumhuvud@programming.dev 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You jest, but you aren't wrong. At least if we are talking about C, C++ or Rust. https://godbolt.org/z/oPPfdfcf5

.NET compiler is weak when it comes to optimizing your code; I assume Go's is as bad.

[–] yggstyle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Technically yes... But I think he was more making the excuse for the gore "from the goresmith's perspective."

And I'm not sure if the compiler in any language would change a random check function... The others are a possibility.

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not sure about the last one though. The other two are trivial to optimize away.

[–] Hirom@beehaw.org 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

An infinite loop canot be ruled out in the last case, so a compiler couldn't optimize this away without potentially changing the program behavior.

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[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

How about

x=x-x

x++

x++

x++

x++

x++

x++

x++

x++

x++

x++

[–] okmko@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Freshman year of college doing assembly programming, I spent a while figuring out a "programmic" way to solve a problem, trying to wrangle labels and gotos. My friend came in with essentially this but as lookup table. It blew my mind.

It was then that I learned to trade space for complexity.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is actually a valid brainf*ck program, but it results in 19, not 10.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How so? It’s only 10 increments

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago

Because the only brainfuck instructions in your comment where a - which decrements and 20 +, each of which increments.
Mine echos the first two characters from stdin, because of the commas and dots.

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[–] ulterno@programming.dev 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That's not even enough to get you a job these days.
You now have to use:

do {
    x = reinterpret_cast<int>(AI::Instance().ask("Do Something. Anything. Be efficient and productive. Use 10 tokens."));
} while (x != 10);
[–] Tetragrade@leminal.space 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This isn't just a function, it's a bold restatement of what it means to write code — a symphony of characters, questioning the very nature of the cutting edge language models that I want to beat with hammers.

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[–] melfie@lemy.lol 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You’re absolutely right! Who sets a variable these days without running it though a LLM?

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[–] Mika@piefed.ca 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I once was helping to organize the testing of town-level algorithmic competition for school students.

The competition had one entry level issue that was basically solvable by reading the question properly, recognising that it's just multiplication of two numbers, and writing the simplest app ever.

And there was one student who passed the automatic tests. We had to read the code too for the protocol, just to make sure there was no cheating.

We looked in the code. What? Why? It had two nested for loops and a++ inside. When we understood what's going on we couldn't stop laughing for like solid ten minutes.

[–] TheOakTree@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

Multiplication is just repeated addition :) glad it worked for the kid, despite the... inefficiency.

[–] 6nk06@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)

What is the value of x in the Good example before the loop?

[–] Devial@discuss.online 28 points 1 week ago

Doesn't matter, it's 10 after the loop.

[–] BassTurd@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

An int. Value doesn't matter because it's overwritten.

[–] OshaqHennessey@midwest.social 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not in this case. First, i is declared and assigned a value of 0. Next, x is declared and assigned a value of -i or -0. On the first loop iteration, i will decrement to -1, perform the conditional check, then execute the loop body which will assign x to -i or -(-1) or positive 1, and so on.

The only time a variable is created without a value is if you declare one without assigning a value like with

[int]i;

[–] BassTurd@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I know. OP asked what x was before the loop, and I just said it's an int. The int can be any value because as you pointed out it will be set to 0 in the first loop iteration.

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[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It would get you promoted at Twitter, where lines of code is the productivity metric.

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[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Probably Microsoft: You’re hired! Go work on GitHub

Context

[–] cooligula@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

I'd say Meta hiring someone to work on WhatsApp. Man, is that piece of software crap... Every update, a new UI bug/glitch appears

[–] Atlas_@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Oddly enough, out of all of these the one the compiler has the best chance of optimizing out is the last one

[–] zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago

Not if Random writes to global state, that's a side effect that must be preserved

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[–] Ooops@feddit.org 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wants to be Pro but doesn't even do it recursive...

[–] OshaqHennessey@midwest.social 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)
function foo() {
  x = new Random();
  case (x = 10):
    return (x);
  default:
    foo()
}
[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

What unholy mix of languages is that? It is dominated by a blend of javascript and python, but with notes of something exotic. Maybe algol? or vhdl?, there is to little to tell.
Impressive, someone write up a spec and publish it to the esolang wiki.

[–] OshaqHennessey@midwest.social 6 points 1 week ago

It's an incoherent hodgepodge of C#/.NET, PowerShell, and JavaScript, each of which I've forgotten more about than I currently know

[–] OshaqHennessey@midwest.social 4 points 1 week ago

Now write a function to unroll the while loop to "optimize it for the compiler"

[–] irelephant@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago
 x = (function(){
return 10
})

Or something like that

[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Something like

int *a = new int(10)

Int*b = null

While *b !=10 { b = rand(); a=new int(10)}

Return *b

I haven't coded recently enough in c/c++ to remember syntax but the concept might work eventually if you're lucky and have enough memory... Might need a time variant seed on the rand()...

[–] ThunderLegend@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)
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