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While writing a steoegano...stogano...stega.... a program that hides information in other information, I had a slight handicap.
I was doing the program on a slightly cranky laptop wot I had just bought secondhand. In my haste, I had not fully understand that quite a few of the keys on the keyboard
did not work.
So, when writing the code, I found that the n, b, t, m + and CTRL key did not work, which was a bit of a bugger. So I went over to copy and paste, opening up configuration files in a text editor to get the required letters.
My idea for the game is this, that programmers are set a program to write, they are given a specially knackered laptop, with 33% of the keys not working and a set of bogus config files with almost none of the letters they need.
The whole thing to be televised, with a small cash prize and a "bloody obstinate nerd of the year" t-shirt to the winner.
Real Programmers
http://xkcd.com/378/
[spidermother, Dec 20 2011]
[link]
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Horrible, horrible. Worse than the Ouroboros
leech
idea. Just reading this is enough to get a migraine
started. |
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Champions would write the code with
substitutions
(say, "_plus" for "+", "1/u" for "n",
and so on) and run it through a filter.
Bootstrapping
your way to a working filter would make for real
competition, though. |
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There should be some restriction on, or obstacle
to simply using ASCII (or Unicode) numbers
directly. |
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// The whole thing to be televised // |
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I'd rather watch a show about guys cutting down trees. |
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And singing songs about being a lumberjack, acompanied by a
chorus of Mounties? |
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Related to what [mouseposture] wrote, you didn't say anything about the number keys on the keypad. If you hold down the ALT key, and while holding it down, type the keypad numbers 0 6 5 then when you let up on the ALT key, the capital letter A appears (the ASCII code for the capital-A is 65). |
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Most people who use this trick do so to get various special characters that can't normally be accessed directly from the keyboard, such as the degrees-of-temperature ° symbol (hold down ALT and type 2 4 8 on the keypad). Normal-key ASCII codes run from 0 3 2 for the blank-space to 1 2 6 for the "tilde" ~ symbol. (In-between are all the upper-case and lower-case alphabet characters, the numbers, and various common symbols such as punctuation marks, the dollar sign the percent sign, and so on.) |
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The special characters start at 1 2 8 and (depending on the overall character set your computer is using) may or may not go up to 2 5 5. They commonly tend to include Greek alphabet characters, and various European versions of the Roman-alphabet vowels, such as 1 4 8 yielding ö. |
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Programmers used to have to work within real constraints, like having to fit a program within a few K of memory, which arguably improved the quality of program-writing. |
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Certainly true for Bill Gates… the BASIC in ROM which shipped
with products like the Commodore PET in the 1970's were almost
useable. Shame it's all been downhill since then… |
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A long long time ago, I was coding a custom keyboard
handler for a market data terminal. I was working
with a regular IBM keyboard, but as a prank, a co-
worker switched a couple of the more esoteric keys,
and as I as testing my scripts appeared to be off for
inexplicable reasons. That was fun for a few days. |
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Coding is quite hard enough without additional constraints. Thank you. |
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Coding is a matter of satisfying constraints. Unlike
for algorithm design, *all* the constraints in coding
are arbitrary. For those nutters who don't find that
sufficiently frustrating, there are esolangs. *This*
idea is for masochists who can no longer get off on
brainf*ck or Whitespace. |
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[8th], yes very much so, though of course I have seen it
and sung it (and seen it sung and been seen singing it) lo
these many years, but I meant one of those gawdawful
shows about blue-collar guys doing back-breaking work
until somebody gets a little pissy and then they all start
shouting at each other. Frankly, the only thing I can think
of that would be more please-kill-me-now boring than
watching a show about programmers at work would be
watching a Star Trek Voyager marathon. |
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Or a show about a writer at work. That would be pretty
boring too. |
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I seem to remember a practical joke on the bakery somewhere,
where the font was substituted with a very similar looking name,
but with all the characters swapped. |
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It should be "adverse conditions", not just restricted to "adverse keyboard conditions" so as to include, for example, writing code outside in a blizzard, or while being attacked by jackals. |
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What, as well as having your finished code chewed at when you're not looking by the Evil Invisible Space Pixies that live in the system console ? |
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//while being attacked by jackals.// |
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ok, but only if the jackals have to wear stilts, don't want to make it too easy. |
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