Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Question

This "sandbox" is a place where Code Golf users can get feedback on prospective challenges they wish to post to main. This is useful because writing a clear and fully specified challenge on your first try can be difficult, and there is a much better chance of your challenge being well received if you post it in the sandbox first.

Sandbox FAQ

Posting

To post to the sandbox, scroll to the bottom of this page and click "Answer This Question". Click "OK" when it asks if you really want to add another answer.

Write your challenge just as you would when actually posting it, though you can optionally add a title at the top. You may also add some notes about specific things you would like to clarify before posting it. Other users will help you improve your challenge by rating and discussing it.

When you think your challenge is ready for the public, go ahead and post it, and replace the post here with a link to the challenge and delete the sandbox post.

Discussion

The purpose of the sandbox is to give and receive feedback on posts. If you want to, feel free to give feedback to any posts you see here. Important things to comment about can include:

• Parts of the challenge you found unclear
• Comments addressing specific points mentioned in the proposal
• Problems that could make the challenge uninteresting or unfit for the site

You don't need any qualifications to review sandbox posts. The target audience of most of these challenges is code golfers like you, so anything you find unclear will probably be unclear to others.

If you think one of your posts requires more feedback, but it's been ignored, you can ask for feedback in The Nineteenth Byte. It's not only allowed, but highly recommended! Be patient and try not to nag people though, you might have to ask multiple times.

It is recommended to leave your posts in the sandbox for at least several days, and until it receives upvotes and any feedback has been addressed.

Other

Search the sandbox / Browse your pending proposals

The sandbox works best if you sort posts by active.

To add an inline tag to a proposal, use shortcut link syntax with a prefix: [tag:king-of-the-hill]. To search for posts with a certain tag, include the name in quotes: "king-of-the-hill".

Answer 1

ABACABA pattern without recursion

ABACABA pattern on Wikipedia

Taking a number n as input, generate the ABACABA pattern with n symbols as stated in the above page, without using any form of recursion in your code. You can use any output method; characters, a list of numbers, an image, whatever is possible.

If taking input is not possible in your programming language, output the pattern forever. E.g.: ABACABADABACABAE...

Test cases:

input => output

1 => A / 1
2 => ABA / 1, 2, 1
3 => ABACABA / 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1
4 => ABACABADABACABA / 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1
5 => ABACABADABACABAEABACABADABACABA / 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 5, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1
```

Answer 2

Detect if a variable is declared

Create an expression which detects if a variable (named whatever you wish) has been declared yet. For languages that set undeclared variables to a type that can not be differentiated from a declared variable set to that type (e.g. nil in Lua), just detecting that type is enough. If the variable exists, the expression should return a truthy value, and if it doesn't it should return a falsy value. It should not output anything.

For example, the following expression in D detects if a variable named x has been declared in the current scope or not:

__traits(compiles, x)

PS: this challenge definitely wouldn't work for stack-based or assembly languages, and I'm also not sure if marking this as code-golf or popularity-contest would be better.

Answer 3

PHPFuck Golf - Hello World

Like this

PHPFuck is an esoteric language in which any PHP statement can be accurately reproduced into another valid PHP program that uses only the 5 characters (^.9).

The PHPFuck converter, when given an input of echo "Hello World!", produces a block of code that is 74,450 characters long. Because the program used a lot of automatic conversions to create that block, I believe that the code can be made a lot shorter using manual optimizations.

Your task is to build a PHP program that performs the task echo "Hello World!", using only the characters (^.9). The shortest code to do so wins.

Answer 4

Polishing off a Sudoku

Given a set of 8 numbers as input, output the missing one.

Examples

12346789 -> 5

94351726 -> 8

Answer 5

Print the input times infinity

Make a program/function that prints the input of the function infinite times, separated be a line break. Do note that the output must be to stdout.
tags: code-golf

Answer 6

That is disproportionate!

You want to overwhelm your nasty boss with an error message so large that they quit their job. But your boss will fire you instead if it's too long.

---

Challenge

In this challenge, you have to write code that is more than 0 bytes long that produces the longest error message possible.

Scoring

Answers will be scored using this formula: $$\frac{\text{Error message length in bytes}}{\text{Programme length in bytes}}$$

Other

All answers must include the answer score, source code and error message.

---

code-challengeerror-message

---

Meta

• Is this a duplicate?
• Any other appropriate tags?
• Anything else?

Answer 7

KCMCK

Print this ASCII art:

  +--------------  +-+                   +-+   +--------------  |
 ++                | |                   | |  ++                |
 |                 |  \                  / |  |                 |
 |                 |   \                /  |  |                 |
 |                 |    \              /   |  |                 |
 |                 |     \            /    |  |                 |
 |                 |      \          /     |  |                 |
 |                 |       \        /      |  |                 |
 |                 |        \      /       |  |                 |
 |                 |         \    /        |  |                 |
 ++                |          \  /         |  ++                |
  +--------------  |           \/          |   +--------------  |
________________________________________________________________|
________________________________________________________________|

Shortest code in characters wins!

• Any leading whitespace must be the same on every line.
• No restrictions on trailing whitespace.

Answer 8

Be a cat

I have not found a single challenge that asks for a plain cat programme. The closest I have found requires you to print cat goes meow when the input is cat.

---

In this challenge, you must read everything from STDIN, or an acceptable alternative, and print the exact text to STDOUT, or an acceptable alternative, with only the leading and trailing whitespace in the input.

---

Meta

• Have I been so silly that I missed a duplicate?

Answer 9

Type annotation

Given a function definition and a list of types, both valid in your language, output the function annotated with those types. Shortest code wins, since this is code-golf.

Meta

• Is it a duplicate?
• How should I include languages without type annotation support?
• Does it need to be explained better?
• Anything else?

Answer 10

Execute... yourself!

Almost a duplicate, but only requires you to compile a subset, and is closed.

---

You work at a compiler factory, making compilers tailored to your customers.

---

Challenge

In a programming language of your choice, write a program that executes code in the chosen language. Snippets are allowed, but you may not hardcode the input.

This is code-golf, so shortest code wins!

---

Meta

• To deal with languages like No, should I change it to a popularity-contest, or disallow languages like that completely?
• Is it clear enough?
• Are there any unclosed challenges this duplicates?
• Anything else?

---

code-golfcompiler

Answer 11

Optimal Span for Multiple Byte Ranges [Draft]

I recently ran into the following challenge, you have a list of common crawl URL indexes that have the setup below. Each of the GZ files are ~1.2GB, the challenge would be to design the most efficient solution that can respond with the decrypted byte span. If this if of interest, I'll revise this to flush out more details.

In the real world, some considerations are:

1. Cache vs HTTP fetch byte range
2. Minimizing number of requests by making requests spanning multiple offsets
3. Decrypting entire file for multiple offsets vs decrypting offsets individually
4. Trade off between # of connections, download time, local storage space, decryption time

Example:

FileName.gz	Offset	Length	CONTENT_DIGEST
crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224648465.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20230602072202-20230602102202-00011.warc.gz	755688583	1327	123456789
crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224648465.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20230602072202-20230602102202-00011.warc.gz	86276364	3404	ABCDEFGHI
crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224648465.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20230602072202-20230602102202-00011.warc.gz	963176585	1294	987654321

Answer 12

Code-challenge: Guess my number

The challenge

You have a number from 1 to 10 in mind, and your program should ask questions to find out which number. These questions can be any questions, the program only has to find out the number as fast as possible.

Your program should ask a question, such as "Is the number a prime?", and the user must answer either y or n (yes or no). Ask questions until you know the number.

The scoring

To calculate the score, you need to take the sum of the question count for each number. For example, if you need 1 question to find the number 1, 2 questions to find the number 2, and so on, the score is 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10, so the score is 55.

Important note: the question count for a specific number must always be the same. For example, if you need 4 questions to find out the number 10, then you have to ask always 4 questions to find out the number 10, otherwise it is impossible to calculate the score.

Answer 13

Popularity Contest: Implementation of a Hash Table

Create a class in some OOP language for a hash table that supports getting, setting, and removing values. You can't use the built in hash table/dictionary/map implementation. Highest votes in one week wins.

A key is any valid string. A value is any valid string, number, or boolean.

Example functionality:

hash.set("key","value");
hash.get("key"); // returns "value"
hash.set("key", 1234);
hash.get("key"); // returns 1234
hash.set("key2",hash.get("key"));
hash.get("key2"); // returns 1234
hash.delete("key");
hash.get("key"); // returns null/undefined/none/etc. or throws an error
hash.get("key2"); // still returns 1234

Definition of a hash table (from Wikipedia):

In computing, a hash table (also hash map) is a data structure used to implement an associative array, a structure that can map keys to values. A hash table uses a hash function to compute an index into an array of buckets or slots, from which the correct value can be found.

The hash table cannot be simply an array that is searched in linear time. It must be an actual hash table that uses a hash function to map the keys to the value.

Answer 14

Bovine Ignorance

I'm curious about code which still works after being mangled by figlet, toilet, cowsay et al, but I'm not sure whether this in any way sane.

What I'm toying with is a challenge in which a participant may submit any program in any language. It should be possible to use this program's source code as input to cowsay or whatever, and the result should be another valid program in any language, which still does a similar thing. For instance, the following bf program prints Hello world! with no newline:

+++++ +++++
[
> +++++ ++
> +++++ +++++
> +++
> +
<<<< -
]
> ++ .
> + .
+++++ ++ .
.
+++ .
> ++ .
<< +++++ +++++ +++++ .
> .
+++ .
----- - .
----- --- .
> + .
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Running cat ./prog.bf | cowsay -e .. -T $'>.' yields the following output:

 _________________________________________
/ +++++ +++++ [ > +++++ ++ > +++++ +++++  \
| > +++ > + <<<< - ] > ++ . > + . +++++   |
| ++ . . +++ . > ++ . << +++++ +++++      |
| +++++ . > . +++ . ----- - . ----- --- . |
| > + .                                   |
| +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
\ ++                                      /
 -----------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (..)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
             >. ||----w |
                ||     ||

Which is itself a valid bf program which prints Hello world!!!, followed by a newline.

The problem with using bf here is that it ignores most of the cow, making this a bit too easy. The problem with using any other language is that it doesn't ignore most of the cow, making this far too difficult. Is there a sensible middle ground I could pick for this? I don't think it's impossible, I'm fairly sure you can exploit cowsay's behavior on one-liners to produce valid svgs, but I'm not sure how best to pose this challenge. Any ideas?

Answer 15

99 Bottles of Errors

While there are already many versions of "print 99 Bottles of Beer," I thought another one wouldn't hurt.

---

The challenge is fairly simple: print the lyrics to 99 bottles of Beer to STDERR. I don't care how you do it, so long as the entire lyrics show up. An entire program is required, so the following Java program would be invalid (even if it did do the correct thing):

System.out.println("99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, take one down and pass it around...");

The scoring:

• This challenge is code-golf, so shortest code by byte count wins.
• If necessary, assume UTF-8 is the character encoding used.

The rules

• All the code must be in one file.
• Any language is allowed.
• Reading input, whether it is from STDIN, a file, or the web, is not allowed.

Answer 16

Create an Identicon Generator

The challenge is to create an identicon generator. The identicons must be randomly generated, so we get a new identicon for each key the program receives. You can input a key using std-in or you can use your language's random number generator for the key.

In order to make your identicon look reasonably nice, it must generate a picture, then rotate that picture around the bottom right corner, the way this mockup shows:

The output must be to a PNG file. Shortest code wins.

Answer 17

Shortest Program that May or May not Terminate:

Write a program such that whether or not it terminates depends on the answer to an unsolved question in Computer Science or Mathematics. For example, your program might test the Goldbach conjecture for every N and quit if a counterexample is found, or hunt for odd perfect numbers. Please include an explanation of why your program may or may not terminate!

Note: assume infinite memory and stack size, because otherwise they all terminate. Your program must be self contained, take no input, and only use standard libraries. This is Codegolf, so shortest code wins!

Answer 18

Every number is interesting

We know that every number is interesting but how?

You should write a program or function which:

• takes a list of N positive integers (>0 and <2^31)
• outputs N lines each of them showing how the corresponding input number is interesting
• is not longer than 1024 bytes
• uses no more than 1 second per number
• doesn't use external sources

Examples

172: 444 in base6
5776: 76*76
9801: 9 * 1089 (reverse)
68101: no 11 in base2 (10000101000000101)
491033: 317 * 1549 (product of 2 big primes)
467808816: no digit 5 from base6 to base10

Inputs

You should include the output for the following input in your post:

58 92 120 224 358 490 912 1578 7812 222008 1645060 19796411 550453633 

If you care to run your program on a bigger sample and share the result with us use this input data (2500 numbers). (You can upload your output to e.g. pastebin.)

This is a popularity-contest so highest voted answer wins.

Tags: popularity-contest, number

Answer 19

Something Else - ASCII Art maker:

A text to ASCII art generator maker, the program must input a string and return ASCII art from it. Something like patorjk.com/software/taag/. It has to use the Graffiti font. The winning criteria is the whoever gets the most likes.

Answer 20

Identifying a Sonnet

This challenge is about determining if a given file (read-in from stdin) meets the criteria to be a sonnet. You may use any language for this challenge. If your language supports an API to use an online dictionary you may use that API, if your language doesn't then too bad.

Additionally, it is preferred if your language is one that can be ran directly from the command line and is a language that has a compiler or interpreter available directly from my distro's repos(Fedora), as I would rather just use a bash script to test the various programs, then test each program manually.

Definition of a Sonnet

• Has 14 Lines (lines are denoted as the standard newline on your operating system).
• Has a definite rhyme scheme, it will have one of the following rhyme schemes
  • ABBA ABBA CD CD CD
  • ABBA ABBA CDE CDE
  • ABAB ABBA EFEF GG
• Iambic Pentameter - consists of alternating stressed, unstressed syllables. This doesn't have to be perfect 100% of the time, just at least 50% of the time.

In order for your program to declare a given string a sonnet, it must meet all of the above criteria.

Additional Notes

You do not have to identify the following:

• Thought Structure - too intense for a code golf challenge, and too subjective.
• Topic - computer lacks context to determine this

Input

Input will be read from stdin. This is the string that you will be declaring to be or not to be a sonnet.

Output

Your program will output either yes or no for the question:

Does this string meet the given requirements to be a sonnet?

As this is code golf yes or no can be abbreviated to Y/N.

Winner

The solution with fewest number of bytes win that has the highest accuracy ratio for the correct identification of a sonnet. The preference is for higher accuracy rather than brevity of the program.

Test Data and Resources

• Wikipedia
• Test Data - You have to copy and paste yourself, but it does have examples.
• Shakespheare? - All of Shakespheares sonnets are here

What is not a sonnet

The following are examples that you program should return false on:

• Beowulf
• Haiku
• Input that doesn't have exactly 14 Lines in it
• The text of this question.
• The text of just about any other question on StackExchange.
• Things that don't have a rhyme scheme. See Below

---

Not A Sonnet

A man got on a boat
The boat was leaky
and had poor construction
For it was made by a one-eyed blind man
and his dumb intern
As soon as he got out of port
at the fort
it started to sink
eventually, it tanked.
And it capsized
If only that shipwright
wasn't so blind deaf and dumb
as microsoft tech support
That's not much support at all.

Answer 21

Represent a Number in the Strangest Way You Can Think Of.. while staying under 8 unique characters

Your goal is to represent some numbers in the strangest way possible.

Rules:

• The result must be a number that can be used in the programming language like any other ordinary number. For instance, <my expression> + 3 should return 3 more than the value of <my expression>.
• The code must be under 20 kilobytes. That's a rather large size for a number so you should be all set.
• The expression must have under 8 unique characters! The length of it can be as long you want, just keep it under 8 unique characters. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa is valid (if it works in the programming language) but abcdefghijklm isn't valid because it uses 8 or more unique characters.

Guidelines:

• The goal here is to represent a number in the strangest and most interesting way possible, so if I ask you to represent the number 35 it would be a good idea to respond with something more interesting than 35 or 12 + 23.
• This isn't a code-golf! Feel free to make your code as long as you want, so long as it's under 20 kilobytes. Fancy code can look nice!
• The code doesn't need to support decimals (floats) but if it does, it will get 10 extra points (see below).
• The code also doesn't need to support negative numbers (for instance -37) but if it does, it will get 10 extra points (see below).
• Try to make your post follow the below:

Post format:

Language

Description

0

...

1

...

30

...

108

...

1337

...

1234567890

...

3.1415 [10 bonus points if you can get this!]

...

-25 [10 bonus points if you can get this!]

...

Bonus numbers:

...

The points is equivalent to the number of votes on the answer plus 10 if it supports decimals with 10 more points if it supports negative numbers. Whoever has the highest points is considered the current winner. Have fun!

---

This is my first go at making a popularity contest so if you have any tips those would be appreciated.. :)

Answer 22

Stop the dance!

Your sister was at the hospital, but now she's fine, awfully, you lost a day of work, one of your most important days.

You work at your local television, and they have a contest, called "Stop the dance!", what is it about?: People is dancing, they have a big screen in the wall, while it says "Dance!", they have to dance, if it says "Stop!", they must stop, if you move, you lose.

You don't have internet at the studio, so you use some strange offline data sharing method. The day you weren't there, another programmer came, such a silly programmer! He made a "Reciever" program, basically, gets data, processes data and prints data in the Big Screen Wall.

The programmer was bored, so he made a way to get data, well, you don't know what way he choose! (Author comment: Let's assume he made all the possible ways. Cya.) Now you have to make a sender program, in any language, that sends data to that program using the protocol specified under this section.

You are an expert code golfer, so you decide that you must make the shortest code possible. (Another author comment: Any lang is allowed. Cya.)

How did I came out with this idea?

Having a shower, my friend...

Your task

You must make the shortest (and winner) code possible, that sends data to the reciever, using this protocol:

The reciever must recieve:

$displaytext:"<text here>";$instnm:<integer here>;

$displaytext corresponds to what it is going to be displayed on the Big Screen Wall.

$instnm corresponds to the number of the instruction, the count of things displayed, starts from 1.

Your program may take an input, and send the data, in any way (except the ones in Rules) to the Reciever. Remember there's no internet.

The winner will be the user with shortest bytes of code.

Rules

As a good code golfer, you may not:

• You can't use program arguments to send the data.
• It must be an application.
• If you apply for the bonus, mind you have to make both programs, if not, just the sender.
• The string you have to send it has to be STRICT, no different ones, if not, unvalid answer. (I decided to call that "Strict JASON Protocol", get the joke?)

Bonus

You can make the reciever program, and you get -1 byte. Not much, but k. (In bytes, you must not decrement your byte result, you must do: "n Bytes + Bonus")

Example Input and Output

Input:

From Sender program:

Dance! or Stop!

Protocol:

Inbetween both commands

$displaytext:"Dance!";$instnm:5

Output:

In Reciever program:

Dance! (9) or Stop! (187)

Overall objective:

Send data between two programs, without internet connection.

Edit: i can't post an example answer, because then i can give ideas of how to do this codegolf/puzzle, while the ideas are limited, i'm finding for the creativity of the user.

Answer 23

Biggest single character

This challenge is simple, its like the busy-beaver challenges we've had before where the goal is to produce the biggest output one can. But in this one, you can only use one character in your code.

You get no input, your code has to be a single character (not byte), and the person with the largest output in byte wins, ties broken by posting time.

Answer 24

Alphabetization 101 (popularity contest)

Your task is to use all 52 letters of both the uppercase and lowercase alphabet, ONCE and ONCE only, and make a program.

You are free to use any other ASCII character more than once, or use a letter of the alphabet more than once if it's required for the language to function.

Meta:

• Not sure if this has been done before.
• Any questions regarding the task?

Answer 25

Why did I come to Sandbox?

I have a very specific challenge, and I wanted to see if it was too specific.

The challenge is to output "Valdosta ACM" using the shortest number of characters with the BrainF**k programming language.

I've noticed it isn't the norm to specify a programming language on this domain, so I've come here to get feedback on whether or not this is acceptable.

---

Introduction

As a challenge to the members of my local Association for Computing Machinery(ACM) chapter, I asked them to produce the shortest Brainf**k code that would output "Valdosta ACM".

This was a very fun challenge for all of our members, and we got very competitive! I was impressed with the solutions turned in, but I wondered if it was possible to beat our best solution. Surely it's possible, but who could do it?

Challenge

Output the string "Valdosta ACM".

Stipulations:

• Use only the Brainf**k programming language (you can test your code here)

• No input can be accepted by your program

• Your program must halt

• The space in the string must be ASCII character #032.

These are the ASCII values of each character, as they appear in the string, for convenience:

 086 097 108 100 111 115 116 097 032 065 067 077

The winner is determined by the shortest code, by character count.

Example Input and Output

Input:

NO input is allowed

Output:

Valdosta ACM

Answer 26

The FitnessGram™ Code Golf Test

Same concept and rules to the well-known Rick Astley post a while back, only instead of using samples of various sizes, sample length is limited to what number sample it is. And different text for the program to write.
It's code golf, so standard loopholes apply, and fewest bytes wins.

Answer 27

Obfuscate your program

In this challenge, you must create a program which does something but you need to obfuscate it so that it becomes hard to understand (so don't explain it in your post).

It can accept anything as input and output anything.

Score

The shorter program (in bytes) which hasn't been understood wins.

Example

Can you guess what does this code calculate?

var t=1e5,s=t/1e4,n=s*0.1,i=n*s*7.5,r=!true,b=1,t='01'.split('').map(c=>parseInt(c)).concat(Array(i).join('.').split('.').map(m=>{a=r+b;(r=b)&&(b=a);return a})),t=t.join('').length,b=s,t=r,s=4+NaN;

Rules

• You should say what language you used
• You must not use any obfuscation tool

Answer 28

"01_firstHole" Challenge for Performance Golf

First there was code golf. Now, there is Performance Golf. FORE!

Motivations

This is a crowd-sourced approach to easier and better performance troubleshooting. Performance problems are everywhere, so java technicians need access to easy-to-use diagnostic tools at every step of the SDLC.

How to play?

1. Start by installing the live demonstrations of Java Performance Problems in this repo.

2. Pick one of the six holes of golf to play. You can do this by picking one of the six numbered folders in the repo. This particular codegolf.stackexchange.com challenge is for the 01_firstHole.

3. One at a time, run the 'a' load test and the 'b' load test for the hole you selected. The a & b tests are two different implementations of the same REST/SOA service. See the 'installing' link, above, for how to run the tests.

4. Compare the performance of the two tests, a & b. Which has better response time / throughput?

5. Using the least amount of tooling/instrumentation, identify the performance problem of the slower test. Hook it up your self and run the tests.

6. At codegolf.stackexchange.com, there is one "Stack Exchange Challenge" for each hole of golf. Post the following two things for your solution to that challenge:

   • Post a description of the tools/techniques you used to detect the performance problem. Must be detailed enough so that others can reproduce your work. Performance golf always compares two different loads -- a & b. The solution must identify the inefficient code in the slower of the two examples. It must also show the absence of that inefficient processing in the faster of the two examples.
   • Tally the number of strokes for your approach, using the "Scorecard" below. All solutions must specify the # of strokes incurred, and it must be specified in the answer heading/title.

7. Upvote the solutions that best identify the performance problem and have the fewest strokes (see Scorecard, below). Similar solutions on different platforms (Mac/Linux/MS-Win) deserve roughly the same number of upvotes.

Scorecard

This scorecard determines the approach with the least amount of tooling/instrumentation. Lowest score wins!

• 1 stroke if JVM restart is required to hook up your monitoring tool of choice.
• 1 stroke for any tool with any $$ licensing cost.
• 1 stroke for every separate install process. No strokes for JVM and pre-installed OS tools.
• 1 stroke for tools/techniques specific to a particular Database vendor. Ex: Oracle AWR report. Even ‘EXPLAIN PLAN’ solutions are proprietary.

Example One -- zero strokes :-D

This example does not use this github repo, but it will give you the general idea.

This solution to solving a high CPU problem would get lowest=best instrumentatin score: zero strokes. Only JVM and OS tools are used (thread dump and top -H). There are no tool license costs and a JVM restart was not required for the thread dump.

Example Two -- 3 strokes :-(

This example also does not use this github repo, but it will give you the general idea of what we mean by the best troubleshooting with the least tooling/instrumentation.

A modern, commercial profiler (YourKit, JProfiler, etc...) would easily solve the high CPU problem in example 1. But look how many strokes (1+1+1=4!) are taken off with this approach: * 1 stroke because a JVM restart is required to hook up the tool * 1 stroke because there are licensing costs. * 1 stroke to install profiling the tool

Answer 29

Make a Fork Bomb code-golf

^{under construction, please constructively (no pun intended) criticize}

Create a program which forks itself at twice and exits, or forks itself once and idles. Whether it continues forever or exits is your choice. Forks can be OS forks or simply a command to relaunch the program.

Rules

• No spoon bombs allowed, please.
• Don't make any assumptions about the location of the program.

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Bash, 10 chars

./$0|./$0&

Acts as a standard punching bag for other solutions.

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Microsoft Windows Batch file, 5 chars

 %0|%0

Anybody who beats this one gets a million internet points. (and maybe a bounty)

Answer 30

Stump The Golfing Languages

This is the seed of an idea. I'm unclear on the details that might make it work.

I want people to submit answers in the form of a program in a "normal" language (defined how?), such that reproducing its functionality in a golfing language isn't much smaller. That is, I want to find the algorithms that Jelly and Pyth and Matl and such are not optimized for.

I would appreciate suggestions on how to make this work. Maybe cops and robbers? Maybe each entry just contains two programs, and comments are given to help golf the smaller one?