2026-05-06 09:10:40 <veltas      > You've got two branches and one needs shutting down.  You go to each branch and ask them "can you take the other branch's work on?"  One branch answers "oh yes, we've been saying this for years, shut them down we'll take it all on"
2026-05-06 09:10:58 <veltas      > The other says "you're kidding me, we've got enough work as it is, we can't possibly do that"
2026-05-06 09:11:04 <veltas      > Which one do you keep?
2026-05-06 09:40:06 <iv4nshm4k0v > Huh; that sounds like a trick question.
2026-05-06 09:57:12 <veltas      > Yeah sounds like I'm going to say "keep neither"
2026-05-06 09:58:00 <veltas      > I don't know I don't think there's a right answer but I'd lean towards keeping the team that said it was too much work, because at least they're honest, but there are situations where that's the wrong decision
2026-05-06 09:59:01 <veltas      > Like if they're just useless and the other team really is better, or if the branches' business are worth totally different amounts
2026-05-06 12:59:28 <Stalevar    > dc -e '2o[seq]sq1[d127<q0n2*lzx]dszx0p1[dlzxp1+d256>n]dsnx'
2026-05-06 13:09:52 <Stalevar    > I wonder if it looks better in Forth
2026-05-06 13:23:01 <veltas      > Depends what you mean by better
2026-05-06 13:23:08 <veltas      > More readable, quite possibly
2026-05-06 13:36:13 <Stalevar    > veltas, I like dc, but it cannot edit strings, just print or execute them
2026-05-06 13:38:14 <veltas      > Somehow the author resisted the temptation to go ahead and make it into a general purpose programming language
2026-05-06 13:38:34 <veltas      > Which deserves some praise in hindsight
2026-05-06 13:38:46 <Riviera     > hehe fair
2026-05-06 13:39:14 <Riviera     > do y'all know dc implemented in sed?
2026-05-06 13:39:44 <Riviera     > it's even better than most actual dc implementations, as it (iirc) supports negative and even fractional bases. :)
2026-05-06 13:41:28 <Stalevar    > veltas, it is turing-complete, it just doesn't have proper way to input arbitrary bytes, but if you use a preprocessor you can probably write arbitrary stuff
2026-05-06 13:41:52 <Stalevar    > only input operator ? executes the result as dc code
2026-05-06 13:42:26 <Riviera     > everybody and their dog is turing-complete, it's actually not so easy to avoid it
2026-05-06 13:42:43 <Riviera     > so obviously not what veltas meant with "general purpose programming language" :D
2026-05-06 17:14:20 <KipIngram   > Yeah, it's not a very high bar.  I mean, the NAND gate is Turing complete.
2026-05-06 17:23:22 <Riviera     > mh, is it, by itself? i mean, hm. i get what you're saying, but i'll have to think about that :)
2026-05-06 17:25:21 <Riviera     > also similar to like a one-instruction machine language, with e.g. subleq.
2026-05-06 17:29:18 <DKordic     > W/Turing_tarpit ?!  FWIW "(& S K)" is Turing Complete Combinator.
2026-05-06 17:37:16 <Riviera     > Didn't know that term :)
2026-05-06 17:42:05 <DKordic     > Riviera: The Cheat Code is ""Lambad the Ultimate"", or abbreviated LtU.
2026-05-06 17:42:30 <KipIngram   > Ok, the "NAND operation."
2026-05-06 17:42:58 <DKordic     > ""only Cons""?
2026-05-06 17:43:53 <KipIngram   > I didn't mean 'a single gate'.  :-)
2026-05-06 17:45:06 <DKordic     > W/Transmission_gate is also interesting.  Yes, it's an idealization.
2026-05-06 17:45:38 <Riviera     > KipIngram: no worries, didn't mean to argue, was just thinking loudly :D
2026-05-06 17:46:08 <Riviera     > DKordic: i meant i didn't know "turing tarpit." :)
2026-05-06 17:49:56 <DKordic     > Ah.  IMHO W/Brainfuck is BrainFart that they call ""Brainfuck"".  A theoretical foundation of C.  It's like Beawis and Butthead: ""pull my finger""!!
2026-05-06 17:53:54 <Riviera     > :)
2026-05-06 18:18:29 <DKordic     > youtu.be/hZ3gmh-d9oI ""Computers for Cynics""