While this doesn't work all the time, when it does, it's really fast. Similar to the isPrime function, it's correct most of the time and is much faster than alternative implementations:
function isPrime(number) {
return false;
}
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
273 points (95.3% liked)
Programmer Humor
19623 readers
34 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
What your code can do is run this first and if it returns false then do a quick double check using a traditional isPrime function. Really speeds things up!
I mean, it has a 99.999%+ success rate on a large enough sample and I can live with that.
Nah, you've always got to check the corner cases. It's a variation on Murphy's Law - you don't encounter corner cases when you're developing a program but corner cases are 99 percent of an everyday user's interaction.
Good idea, but it would be much faster if you do the double-check on true instead.
This is a power(ful) idea.
Are my stats/programmers in the house?
Better. Return true if the number is in a stored list of known primes, otherwise return false right away. But then, start a separate thread with an actual verification algorithm. When the verification is done, if it was actually a prime number, you just crash the program with a WasActuallyPrime exception.
asymptotically this is 100% correct!
What would be the accuracy on something like a 64bit unsigned integer?
50/50 chance of being right in O(1) time
It's right much more often than just 50/50.
50/50 would be for isOdd with the same implementation
Primes are not that common especially as numbers get bigger.
It'll be right the vast majority of times.
Copilot is fucking killing it these days.
Lossy sort
inplace sort be like:
def sort(list: list):
list.clear()
Besides the obvious flaws... is that parameter a list named list, shadowing the list() constructor?
It works as long as you don't call list() within that function.
That is a type hint
Well duh. I wonder what happens if you shadow the list constructor and try to use it as a type hint...
def foo(list: list):
def bar(thingies: list):
pass
you can even have a case where you return the first element of the list if the list is not empty, and it will still be O(1).
you can make it sort the first k elements and it will still be O(1). Set k high enough and it might even be useful
I set k to 50,000,000,000... that's more items than my shitty computer can fit in memory (including swsp) but I am now happy to celebrate my O(1) algorithm.
By that logic, any sorting implementation is O(1), as the indexing variable/address type has limited size
Honey, wake up. The new Def Leppard Album just dropped