The Whiteboard

12:22 AM

Seems he's in the penalty box now

Seattle is the best city ever.

Dynamic

Since when is this here?

programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

user41796

@WorldEngineer - no, I think that was a garden variety troll, not an enderman. Goma questions tend to have a subtlety to them, balancing between could have been a real question and trolling. The 3 (that I saw) from that troll were just blatant without any subtlety at all. OTOH, it's usually the IP addresses that give it away and we non-mods don't have access to those.

user41796

@Dynamic - not sure about that page, but I recall seeing that information in one form or the other. Kind of nice to put it in one easy to find page though.

Dynamic

@GlenH7 Yeah I'm assuming they moved it there because it's not in the new about page...

But I just noticed :-)

12:37 AM

Is it boasting to point out that I know 5 languages well enough to write code in them with usually one or two repeated compilation errors as I switch and forget one or two details, and that I speak 3 spoken languages, and that I've had numerous fiction stories published? I bet it is. But at least if I do it intentionally I'd understand when people get defensive about everything I say and do their best to find fault. :P

user1947236

Hello everyone

Is anyone here?

Jimmy Hoffa

Perhaps

@NathanC.Tresch.. wot? I didn't understand what you said really :s

or am I missing a whole heap of context? lol

Jimmy Hoffa

lol

mortalapeman

1:09 AM

So I just had an interesting thought. I really want to ask the question "What programming language are YOU going to learn next and why?" as a parody question to all that ask what language they should learn next. I suggest this because I never would have learned what I have about functional programming had my mentor not told me he was interested in clojure. However, I feel that I might get chastised for a question like that xD. Any thoughts?

It would also have the benefit of being a single link for all future "which language next" questions.

Q: Do really bad questions come from spammers? Or are they indicative of really bad programmers?

5

When I review questions with close votes, I invariably come across some very poor ones. Some appear to be from non-native English speakers. I still vote to close these questions, but in my mind I give the OPs a pass because English isn't their first language. But others imply a total misunder...

-3

Q: Questions about creating a full blow mobile OS

I know that this sounds a little far fetched, but I am going to attempt it. I want to create a full blown ARM mobile OS, with a user interface and all. I am either going to base it off linux, or start from scratch. Obviously I would prefer to start from scratch with an ARM emulator. Will starting...

mobile operating-systems getting-started

^^^ When I asked the first question on Meta.Stackoverflow.com, my question was closed and dismissed as "ridiculous".

^^^ But it beats the heck out of me - What kind of "beginner" would ask the second question?

psr

1:38 AM

anything with both "operating system" and "starting" tags can probably just be closed via script.

1:56 AM

@Deco I am whining. :)

@Deco Mainly I am whining about this ... But I'm afraid to paste it because I torched the commenters so much. :) programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185118/…

concepts programming-practices self-improvement theory

Kewigro, Los Angeles, CA

36 4

^^^ Question ban in 3...2...1...

@JimG. what does that mean?

@Nathan C. Tresch: In light of his first three questions, do you think there's any hope for redemption? In other words, do you think this person will suddenly begin asking very constructive and worthwhile questions?

Are we going to ban someone because their questions are poor quality even though we can edit them to make them better? I've found that I can usually discern the kernel what they were asking and rephrase it for a great many instances of poor questions, and my edits make them meaningful.

I do it on writers all the time

Should I do it here too?

(Speaking a bunch of languages makes it totally easy for me to parse gibberish and make it useful. :P )

mortalapeman

That last comment makes me want to rub my face on my keyboard and have you interpret it :P

2:06 AM

I spend the majority of my life wanting to stab myself in the face.

user20683

@NathanC.Tresch quantas l n u g s spracht desu ka?

user20683

;)

I speak 3

@Nathan C. Tresch: **Are we going to ban someone...?" No, we're not going to ban anyone. The automated question ban will kick in soon.

Oh ahahaha

Well in that case :)

@WorldEngineer I didn't parse that sentance well at all and I took a guess at what you were asking based on the parts I did parse

Note that I learned to speak the languages from travelling and at work, so I cant read or write them well at all.

user20683

2:08 AM

@NathanC.Tresch well done

@WorldEngineer Thanks :D

user20683

that's Spanish, language with every other letter removed, German and Japanese (in Romaniji)

user20683

*Romanji

user20683

only one of which I can actually still speak with any facility

Yeah I caught the spanish and german

2:09 AM

I caught the Japanese :P

user20683

desu ka is the question particle in Japanese

I dont count german as a language I know, but I sort of do

user20683

desu is "it is"

user20683

and desu ka is "is it so?"

user20683

pronounced des and deska respectively

2:10 AM

ich sprechenzie drei ... espaniol, francais, english

user20683

espanol y engles

user20683

very small chunks of about a dozen others

jag talar svensk och japansk :)

å och engelsk

I dont speak norse

english, swedish, japanese

user20683

2:12 AM

I spoke Swabian German as a child

although my japanese is a bit dodgy these days.. been a number of years since i've had to speak it properly

@WorldEngineer I also know bits of many

user20683

in addition to my native English

@Deco Damn it I can't tell the diff between scandinavian langs I knew it was one or the other

ANd not finnish

jag is common to both, svensk also

engelsk isn't, so now I know

user20683

@NathanC.Tresch Norwegian is the middle, Danish on one end and Swedish on the other

2:13 AM

AYe

I can understand some norwegian and danish due to similarities

but because I don't live in Sweden it's hard as I don't converse a lot

Ah

Some words are just completely different though, which throws me off

My favorite words are fjorits fyella

<-- pervy douchebag

lol

one of my favourite swedish words is: lunnefågel

2:15 AM

I'm 40 and I married a 22 year old slut. What can I say I'm that guy.

which means "Puffin" as in the bird

Ahaha

They are cool birdies

user20683

I can't utter most of the bad Spanish I know in this chat room

@WorldEngineer same

@WorldEngineer I learned spanish from travelling and from my time as a chef

... Kitchen spanish is super vulgar

Q: Will I Get Banned If Buy A Low Amount of WoW Gold In Patch 5.2?

do we have any ABAPers hanging around P.SE?

user20683

2:20 AM

-5

If you have the experience of buying gold online, you must have ever heard about the rumor saying buying a large amount of gold will be easier to get account banned. Lots of professional wow gold stores also suggest you to buy a low amount of gold to avoid getting banned. Well. is it possible to ...

backwards-compatibility

user20683

ROFL

user20683

poor gaming

@deco I dont even know what ABAP is

user20683

@NathanC.Tresch German programming language, kind of like COBOL

@WorldEngineer Also I can order you to cut the lettuce. Tu corta dos cajas lechuga, whey

Oh, like Eiffel is a weird french C++ ?

user20683

2:22 AM

kinda

DOes ABAP have some relation to ADA?

user20683

no

k

user20683

it's more like an unholy fusion of COBOL and SQL

Okay I'm irritated, ('#id').remove() refuses to work

Oh that sounds terrible

COBOL was the second compiled language I learned

The first being LOGO

user20683

2:23 AM

C was my second

user20683

Java was technically my first

Eh ...

user20683

though I knew some Python and Basic before that

By compiled I mean "reduced to hardware machine code" not "reduced to virtual machine code"

Because the latter includes Python, Perl, PHP and all of their ilk, along with Java

So C is your first. :)

user20683

Haskell is my second then

2:25 AM

Whenever people throw that out ... 'Oh its a scripting language' I get irritated.

user20683

of the ones I've bothered to try and learn

user20683

Python

Haskell is serious business friend

user20683

Haskell is black sorcery

Yeah

I try and explain to them that if python is a scripting language so is java, only javas compiler is so awful you have to precompile it. :P

Haha I jest, java is fine.

Seriously if this element doesnt remove itself from the dom I'm going to stab myself

2:29 AM

ABAP is the archaic unholy merging of COBOL and SQL into the SAP suite of products

Unfortunately I now wish I was coding in C# or Java

A: What *are* the programming concepts I should master to have a deep understanding of my craft (programming)?

0

The most important thing to know about being a programmer is that writing code is a grind, and a workmanlike "blue collar" attitude towards producing what you're being paid to produce will get you farther than any esoteric learnings. Learn to get into the zone. By that I mean the mental state wh...

His question isn't terrible

I think he'll find my answer useful

Hah! I got my first accepted answer here.

stackoverflow.com/questions/11850026/… Things like this are the reason I love stackex, I was able to clarify that for anyone behind me so they wont burn 20 minutes. :P

3:02 AM

Are you sure that the docs haven't been updated since the answer was posted?

Or the interface to the method changed?

IMO your answer seems a little narky

Well, when I wrote it I had just wasted 20 minutes

ANd no the interface hasnt changed in the last 5 months ;)

I checked that before I got irritated

@Deco I do my best not to be snarky. My very, very best. I fail often. :(

@deco On other SE sites some of the mods know to just un-snark my answers : \

3:18 AM

You just might want to un-snark that one a bit :)

Yeah I will when I'm no longer irritated, for sure. :)

I do my best to be as nice as possible

As I said, I fail often

stackoverflow.com/questions/11850026/… Opinion, good sir?

@Deco ? :)

3:34 AM

It's a bit better, but my suggestion (take it however you want) is: "The solution in the accepted answer breaks the droppaple, which means it only appears to have disabled it. But if you do it this way, you cannot enable it again later. According to the documentation(link), the correct way to do this without breaking the element is: <insert code here>"

this way you're being diplomatic and respectful without mentioning that you wasted 20 minutes

I see. You're right, that's extraneous and self serving to leave it in.

nodnod thank you

nw :)

heh it's been a while since i've browsed SO

P.SE is where i lurk these days

The thing about my snarks: THEY ARE BOOJUMS.

CAVEAT EMPTOR, friends.

:D

user20683

5:37 AM

I kind of want to see a question that hits all 5 close reasons at once.

6:32 AM

@WorldEngineer hehehe

8:27 AM

Atwood argued hard for phpBB. — Anthony Pegram 14 hours ago

@JimG. Heh, I was the first one to upvote that comment.

12:58 PM

I find it very unlikely that this was the primary reason for not to include MI in C#. Furthermore, this post does not answer the question why MI works in C++ when you don't have "namespace clashes". — Doc Brown 51 mins ago

That guy seems prtty snarky to me

Blog - Stack Exchange: About Page 2.0: The QuickStartening

1:35 PM

Am I mistaken? :P

Jimmy Hoffa

5:02 PM

@JimG. wait what? Atwood likes phpBB? Is that accurate?

Just seems like a non-sequitor given his famous anti-php blog

TRiG

@AnthonyPegram: Sure he did. — Robert Harvey 23 hours ago

user41796

@NathanC.Tresch - I read that exchange as well as a few others. The impression I get is that you've got your hackles up and there's a bit of an unnecessary edge to your comments. Full disclosure, I have the some problem too on occasion. Your answer to the MI question was good, perhaps great, once I knew you had insider knowledge from working on VStudio. Without that knowledge, I was left wondering how you were going to back that claim. Doc Brown could have been more diplomatic too.

user41796

@NathanC.Tresch - I guess I would recommend giving people the benefit of the doubt and let the smaller stuff slide off. He misread your answer; that happens. Others didn't and upvoted accordingly. A better approach would have been to take the material parts from the comments and put those in your answer. Comments are 2nd class citizens that are more subject to deletion. FWIW, I'm glad to have you as part of the community and contributing.

user41796

@mortalapeman - IF you go down that route, I'll upvote to counteract the downvotes. But that's because I appreciate a good satire. OTOH, it would still be off-topic.

Stack Exchange

5:19 PM

Jay Hanlon on January 29, 2013

We’ve just rolled out a new Quick Start guide to help new users learn the basics. Here’s one example, but you can find any site’s version by going to sitename.com/about.

“Please, make yourself at home. Oh, actually, could you not sit on that? Yes, it looks like a couch. That’s what makes it so avant-garde. But it’s actually art. Whoah, careful there, too – I see your confusion, as that does resemble a doorknob, but it’s actually a very small furnace. And – I’m sorry, but – could you NOT use a coaster? We’re testing the effects of wet drinks on finished wood, and coaster usage generates noise in our data.” …

5:33 PM

> You said I had to add a tag. I didn’t even know what a tag WAS, but I used my context clues and I figured it out. And added one. And now it’s telling me that I NEED MORE REPUTATION TO CREATE NEW &*%$ing tags. I hope a rock falls on you. A heavy one.

user55340

@YannisRizos How.... kind.

A: How would Functional Programming proponents answer this statement in Code Complete?

@MichaelT It's from the blog post above, a hypothetical example (supposedly?) but it feels vaguely familiar...

user41796

6:03 PM

The recent SE blog post is worth reading for the snark alone.

user55340

6:15 PM

While I recognize the social software issues with it, I still feel that it is awkward to not have a way to interact with another user outside of in the context of a question. Being able to mentor a person who seems to be having trouble asking a question is sometimes an important tool.

user55340

On Everything2, there were more formal mentoring, open messaging, and a 'sandbox' which was easy to write to, share, and move from the sandbox to an actual 'node' (in E2 parlance).

psr

@MichaelT - Mutually agreed on private chat would be nice, but would only make SE money indirectly.

user55340

The difficulty is that there is no way to say to someone "next time you ask a question, could you consider not complaining about the deficiencies of php - it doesn't add anything to the question and instead makes people less likely to help."

user55340

People see that little red dot, but it is difficult to get people to converse in chat. The 'create a chat room' doesn't seem to be used except when the system complains about too many comments... and can we even get a 1 rep person into the room to work with them?

user55340

Furthermore, working on the answer to a good question in a chat room or private messages that doesn't make its way back to a question runs counter SE's model.

user20683

8:25 PM

Need to kickstart the blog again...

user20683

also met Steve Wozniak today. Nice guy, very friendly.

user55340

@WorldEngineer He is. I haven't had the pleasure of meeting him in person, though I've been told first hand accounts of his personality. And one can't be a good grade school computer teacher without being a nice guy.

user55340

One story I heard of him was he was waiting in line at an Apple store for some new thing that came out (Valley Fair in Sunnyvale... I kick myself for going to the Palo Alto one). A woman was trying to go to the genius bar in the store, but it was closed for the rollout. So Woz just sat down with her, in the hall of the mall and fixed her computer. She didn't know who he was.

user20683

@MichaelT I trick or treated at Steve Job's house by accident when I was 12

user20683

his candy was typical for the area which is affluent

user20683

8:29 PM

as you are well aware

user55340

Oh yea...

user55340

The story can be read in the "Wiz on Open Source, DRM" story on /.

user20683

so I've met both of them without really meaning to

user55340

I heard one anecdote of Jobs that as he was heading to his car at the Apple campus and a family wanted their photo taken in front of it. So they asked Jobs if he would take their picture and handed him their iPhone. He smiled and took the picture and handed it back to them. They didn't realize who he was until much later.

user20683

@MichaelT I didn't know who he was at the time I trick or treated. I knew of him but not what he looked like

user55340

8:34 PM

A tech writer I worked with once was a limo driver. He had Woz in his limo. When they got to the concert Woz stuck around talking to the drivers after the people that they drove headed in. He then gave them tickets to the concert that were probably better seats than the people they drove had.

user20683

this was years before Macs took off again

user20683

@MichaelT he mentioned several times that he has no interest in money

user55340

While at the concert, in the skybox type seats, he would make paper airplanes out of bills of various denominations and throw them out over the lower seats. He would then watch where it fell with a pair of binoculars and chuckle at the people's reaction.

user55340

Picture that you're at a U2 concert... and just got hit in the back of the head with a paper airplane. You reach around behind you, slightly annoyed, and then realize that its a $20 bill.

user20683

@MichaelT yeah

user20683

8:42 PM

unix-itude...

user20683

that must mean a familiarity/possibly partisan familiarity with UNIX-likes?

user55340

@WorldEngineer Hmm? There's a context switch somewhere there that I'm still page faulting on.

user20683

@MichaelT sorry, was twiddling my careers.SE page

user20683

trying to boil down my nebulous set of CS degree skills and various half-baked projects into a presentable set

user20683

Software Engineer at EasyESI, Inc.

javapythonoopusabilityscalability

Join a small, rapidly growing startup. You'll be developing core components of our web review infrastructure, an online platform for lawyers to search and review millions of…

Posted on Careers 2.0 on January 17, 2013

user20683

8:46 PM

this job posting lists unix-itude

user55340

@WorldEngineer I suspect it also implies familiarity with the unix philosophy of tools. Use pipes and such. As opposed to winditude of services and such.

user20683

@MichaelT ah

user20683

one tool does one thing, pipe tools together if you need more than that

user55340

@WorldEngineer Yep.

gnat

9:04 PM

this answer from unregistered new user looks like an irrelevant ("Mason"? who's that?) flamebait, targeted at brining attention to their profile that advertizes their "rccconsulting"...

-1

Mason is just plain uninformed about data, code and macros. Anyone who ever programed in dBase would know how useful single line macros were to making reusable code. Although I haven't programmed in Lisp, I have read from many others who swear by compile time macros. The idea of injecting code ...

psr

@gnat - Mason wheeler commented on several answers, so probably him.

user41796

@gnat - the tone of that answer was a little overboard; nothing to back the claims. Not sure that's how I would want to advertise a firm...

gnat

@psr I see, thanks. Indeed it's like reaction to Mason's comments (not that it does an answer better, just less suspicious of spam:)

@GlenH7 agree; it's just overly vague and rhetorical