Talk:Babbage problem
task clarification
I can only assume that a positive integer is meant to be found, otherwise finding the smallest negative integer would be pointless.
How about:
-99,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,025,264
(Of course, there are smaller numbers!)
And, in the hinterlands of the Rosetta Code coders, it was heard:
Oh yeah? my googolplex thingy is bigger than your googolplex thingy. So there!
-- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 01:17, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- I've clarified the wording so it now asks for the smallest positive integer. The reference in the Hollingdale and Tootill book only says 'smallest number': but the fact Babbage thought 99736 was the answer makes it clear it was a positive integer he was after. (Hope I'm doing this right—I'm quite new to Rosetta Code.) --Edmund (talk) 05:52, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
computer program comments
It's a good thing that Charles Babbage, being English, understands ..., er, ... English --- otherwise all of our computer programming languages' comments would be for naught. Ay, what? Jolly good show! -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 09:56, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Pictures
Can we not limit ourselves to a picture of the Analytical Engine, two pictures is a bit much. Fwend (talk) 10:35, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- Three pictures may be a bit much, two is just right. It's hard to get 1.5 pictures for an average. Just ignore the 2nd picture and not look at it. It's not hurting anything (with the right-justified image). This Rosetta Code task is more about Charles Babbage understanding the computer programs than his analytical engine. I only included the image of the engine because I thought it looked interesting. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 11:21, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- It's crowding the BBC BASIC entry, at least on my screen. Also in other tasks we don't include pictures of the people who invented algorithms either. What is special about Babbage is not his mug but the Analytical Engine. Anyway, we could also move the BBC BASIC entry down, but it would leave a rather large gap. Fwend (talk) 11:27, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- As for (user) Fwend's screen crowding, that concern/issue will go away as the TOC (table-of-contents) grows larger. This is a pretty simple task as far as Rosetta Code tasks (problems) go. As for who invented what, the picture of Charles Babbage is there as he (or rather, his comprehensibility/understandability) is the main focus of the Rosetta Code task (as we are writing/creating computer code so that he can comprehend and understand the code) --- as far as I can tell, that requirement is a first for Rosetta Code. His picture (or as it was said, his mug) wasn't included because of what he invented. I never assumed or thought that Charles Babbage invented this (or these) particular algorithm(s), we (the programmers et al) are creating the algorithms ourselves, hoping that the clarity and/or simplicity of the computer programming code will be understandable by Babbage (who has never seen a computer or computer program, except possibly for a Jacquard loom). However, I'm sure that Charles Babbage was intelligent enough to only try integers that ended in the decimal digits four or six. -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 20:59, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Upgrading from draft task?
Would anybody object if I upgraded this from a draft to a "proper" task? It now has solutions in 20+ programming languages, and there seems to be a reasonable degree of clarity about what it requires. Edmund (talk) 14:18, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
64-bit integer arithmetic
Hopefully Mister Babbage you guessed wrong! The solution of your problem is 25264 and not 99736. Hopefully because half of the languages examples would have been wrong. Because the square of 25264 (638,269,696) needs only the 32-bit integer type but the square of 99736 (9,947,269,696) needs the 64-bit integer type! And a lot of languages have problems with it. --PatGarrett (talk) 19:47, 11 February 2017 (UTC)