Ask HN: What's one of your favorite personal programs, and why? I have a python script that uses my phone's haptic motor to produce morse code. Its not at all important, but it feels cool to be able to read a notification covertly. So what are some of your favorite programs like this? |
So I wrote a nice elegant program that crunched through every possibility (using 12 nested loops), eventually spitting out solution after solution after solution. The first time it produced a valid solution, I was thrilled -- and from then on I felt like I'd already somehow solved all the puzzles in advance.
There is a rule that lets you transform between valid solutions, right? What happens when you use that rule to help impose additional constraints onto the problem such that you are solving for a particular solution rather than a solution? I feel like that should sometimes let you choose pathologically transformed variants. For example - lets say you were stuck with eight and nine as your valid answers in a bottom left corner, but the constraints don't forbid nine. We ought to be able to pick nine in this situation under the logic that there will be a transformation rule which makes nine a valid solution. Such a choice means we are now solving for a particular solution - not a solution - because eight might have worked just as well.
In other words can you use the "do you know a related problem technique" to make your problem more specific?
I have been using it everyday since i first developed it in 2018.
I didn’t release it to the public because:
1. It very probably would violate patent law, and I don’t want to find out.
2. It was extremely crashy, probably because I was more concerned about making something kinda work than learning memory management. (The only change I made restarted it when it crashed.)
`cfg pull` - pull latest git repo and apply via `stow`
`cfg push` - push local config changes to git server
`cfg apply` - apply local changes with `stow`
There are a few other commands too but I don't use them often. This simple script + repo lets me manage my dotfiles across ~7 machines
- A `daily` script that creates a daily notes markdown file with the current date and pulls in the tasks from the previous day of notes
- A `config` script that tweaks some files for a local development environment so I don't need to worry about using `git stash` for the things I always change the same way
it's such a tiny thing, but I can't imagine not having it on my machine. It's one of the first things i always download on a new system.
PS. The morse thing sounds cool! Care to share?