this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Programmer Humor

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[–] brophy 138 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Kids get infinite registers and no restrictions on stack ordering. Programmers are constrained to solving it with one register and restrictions on stack put operations.

./insert we-are-not-the-same-meme

[–] [email protected] 100 points 9 months ago

It's even called tower of Hanoi because of the Vietnam war flashbacks.

[–] expatriado 88 points 9 months ago (2 children)

oh, i solved that assignment in school... by finding the algorithm online

[–] [email protected] 63 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You’re hired, welcome to the team!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

I had enough colleagues unable to type exactly what they asked me into whatever search engine they preferred to accept your statement. If you don't know how to use a search engine go ask for another job.

"Hey pancake, how do I run all tests via gradle?"

Open your browser, head to Google and type "run all tests in gradle"

"Oh, nice. Thank you for your help!"

And the next day the game starts all over again.

[–] ChlorineAddict 7 points 9 months ago

Bonus points for leveraging the work of others contributing to their success

[–] Anonymousllama 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

As it should be, there's way too much reengineering of the wheel. Let the big brains of the past do the heavy lifting

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (2 children)

screams in that's not the point

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Pfft, writing a program that collects user input and displays it is just trite. I'm going to skip straight to building an MMO.

[–] frickineh 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Science-based, 100% dragon MMO or gtfo.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I need 100k in my kick starter by tomorrow, sharp

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

You're right. The learning is the point. So rather than flail in the dark, why not learn the optimal solution?

[–] PapstJL4U 32 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Before studying CS, I recognized it as 'the bioware puzzle'. They were probably copying their own scribbles fron back then.

Haskell was the hardest, but it looked the most beautiful.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Haskell was the hardest, but it looked the most beautiful.

That pretty much sums that language up

[–] TheBananaKing 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In order to write a haskell program, you must first write the corresponding haskell program.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

And in order to do that, you have to imagine sisyphus happy

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Strange. I find the language hideous, most likely because it resembles math, or maybe because I'm already used to the C-like syntax.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Haskell is beautiful because it resembles math

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

It's also beautiful because it doesn't have C-like syntax.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)
hanoi :: Integer -> a -> a -> a -> [(a, a)]
hanoi 0 _ _ _ = []
hanoi n a b c = hanoi (n-1) a c b ++ [(a, b)] ++ hanoi (n-1) c b a

From here: https://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Towers_of_Hanoi#Haskell

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Edit: I understand it now. That first line is just a really weird way to define a function.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Welp, imma try myself at an explanation. Mostly cause I haven't written Haskell in a while either.

So, that first line:

hanoi :: Integer -> a -> a -> a -> [(a, a)]

...actually only declares the function's type.

In this case, it's a function that takes an Integer and three values of a generic type a and then returns a list of tuples of those same as.
So, those as are just any types representing the towers. Could be strings, integers, custom data types, whatever. The returned tuples represent movements between towers.

Following that are actually two definitions of the function.

The first definition:

hanoi 0 _ _ _ = []

...is the recursion base case. Function definitions are applied, whenever they match, being evaluated top-to-bottom.

This line specifies that it only matches, if that first Integer is 0. It does not care what the remaining parameters are, so matches them with a wildcard _.
Well, and to the right side of the equals sign, you've got the return value for the base case, an empty list.

Then comes the more interesting line, the recursion step:

hanoi n a b c = hanoi (n-1) a c b ++ [(a, b)] ++ hanoi (n-1) c b a

This line matches for any remaining case. Those small letter names are again wildcards, but the matched value is placed into a variable with the provided name.

And then, well, it recursively calls itself, and those ++ are list concations. This line's only real complexity is the usual Tower Of Hanoi algorithm.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

Oh but we don't play it, we put lighting into rocks and trick them into doing it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Towers of Hanoi? I don't think so.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Example for stack

[–] stingpie -2 points 9 months ago

Did you guys find this hard? There are only four possible ways to move a ring, two of which are disallowed by the rules. Out of the remaining two, one of them is simply undoing what you just did.