The Whiteboard

1:14 AM

oh dear

"where does project management come from?"

@MattD If we knew where project management came from, we would have engineered an appropriate barricade to keep it there long ago...

dont hate me

but, i also double as a project manager sometimes

Are the questions getting worse lately? Or am I just seeing them before they get deleted?

well, it is holidays

@MattD I kid, considering the leadership roles you've had in your past I don't doubt it...

@MattD did you see my message about posting a proper quad-tree explanation for spatial indexing on that question?>

1:26 AM

so a lot of kids who would normally be busy hitting each other at school are trying to make wow

@JimmyHoffa yeah. ill have a read through tonight when i get home. there's a few ways to do it.

@JimmyHoffa i find the messaging on SE can be easy to miss sometimes!

@MattD You don't even need to explain the implementation or anything, just explaining quad trees for spatial indexing and why/how they are performant for collision detection which is pretty stock stuff for you I would guess.

yeah. thats a common interview question

i quickly read it this morning before i scooted off to work

it always surprises me that many programmers dont really "get" the whole divide and conquer thing. I guess once you've been exposed to using things like quadtrees and what not they become part of how you see the world.

what's a typical notice period when leaving a tech job (assuming of course that you're not in a hurry or sticky situation)? I was debating giving a month's notice which seems rather reasonable to me. 2 weeks feels like it would be really hard for them to get somebody new in there let alone get him/her in there in time for me to try and get them up to speed.

tyipcally 4 weeks

some companies have longer notice periods

legally, it will depend on the country/location

@MattD thanks

1:40 AM

what usually happens is your contract will state your notice period, and you can then negotiate that with your manager

usually if you negotiate a lesser notice period, then you wont be entitled to be paid out for period you dont work

but obviously, they have to pay you for the duration of your notice period that you work

some people are weird about, and want people gone immediately. others except that you're a professional and can get the job done regardless

depends on risk assesment too

Yeah no contract here. Family owned business that is really about manufacturing but as with most things computers run the whole show behind the scenes. At-will employment means I can simply stop coming in tomorrow if I was so inclined to be a royal jerk.

yeah

ive seen that on a few US based contracts, its very odd to me

we have pretty strict labour laws regarding hiring/firing

which is comforting in some ways

just got done doing my first "programming challenge" as part of an interview for a place and I must say it was rather fun actually

you know something else

i love technical interviews.

Even if I fuck up. I learn what I dont know :)

If I had time, I'd do them for fun

I hope my current place lets me help them pick my replacement. The job requirements for my position were about 90% inaccurate.

1:49 AM

hehe

sounds like you want to leave on good terms. can be difficult to do that, but I hope they let you help them :)

where are you going to be off too?

Yeah I don't hold any bad blood, just not the place for me. Not quite sure where I'll land yet but really what I want the most is a team to work with. I need other programmers to yell at me for doing stupid things and let me know when I just did something awesome.

well, hopefully not the yelling.. thats often counter productive.

user55340

2:47 AM

@MetaFight A bit of both. Consider its right before exams... there've been a bunch of "my homework is due" questions.

user20683

@MichaelT What's your Clojure setup?

user55340

@FrostEngineer At the moment, Intellij... getting familiar with that application. Otherwise Light Table.

user55340

That said, I really do like Light Table for clojure.

A: How can I write a good custom close message?

3:41 AM

queue size drop between 2013-12-13 and 2013-12-17 might be because robots discovered a safe exploit: Filtering to Duplicates makes Close-Votes Queue a Haven for Robo-Reviewers — gnat 13 hours ago

2

What is the name of this thing "What is the name of this thing" questions are off-topic. These are poor questions for the same reasons that "identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story" are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way, they...

6

A: What is the appropriate / preferred method for questions concerning programming nomenclature?

"What is the name of this thing" questions are off-topic on both Stack Overflow and Programmers. These are poor questions for the same reasons that "identify this obscure TV show, film or book by its characters or story" are bad questions: you can't Google them, they aren't practical in any way,...

robo reviewers?

wtf?

user20683

@MattD People do anything for rep

A: Many reopen votes available in the review queue

weird even.

people put that much effort into getting rep? thats weird

user55340

4:43 AM

Well, badges. There is a badge for significant review numbers.

user55340

3

There was an error in the automated processes which did a lot of things, including expiring close votes, deleting questions, and some other tasks. This was just fixed yesterday, and is why the Close Votes queue has also dropped almost 6,000 questions since then. 03:00 UTC just passed again, and ...

Ars Technica » Stack Exchange: Is it a good or bad idea to rotate developers on a single project?

11:09 AM

@MetaFight questions getting worse lately because it's day 3-4 after we've been "advertized" at Ars Technika - this is almost often the case that after some delay, site gets attacked by newcomers

Dec 14 at 22:03, by Stack Exchange

posted on December 14, 2013 by Stack Exchange

Is a game of musical chairs refreshing or distracting?

Jan 11 at 19:17, by gnat

> my favorite pattern is from MetaFilter, which is: When we start seeing effects of scale, we shut off the new user page. "Someone mentions us in the press and how great we are? Bye!" That's a way of raising the bar, that's creating a threshold of participation. And anyone who bookmarks that page and says "You know, I really want to be in there; maybe I'll go back later," that's the kind of user MeFi wants to have.

11:32 AM

@MattD I get it, my vagueries are around the data structure details and how to apply it for that purpose, I've just never really worked with spatial data. The closest I've run into is time series data, where unfortunately techniques like that would have me smacked for "complexity"

divide and conquor makes sense to me in general from my experience with FP stuff the recursion in it is something I can appreciate

1:52 PM

Is it weird to have an abstract base class take a parameter in its constructor and then expose that value to subclasses via a protected property? (protected get, private set)

in c#

I've got leet rep!

2

user41796

@Mike In the US, 2 weeks minimum is customary if everything is on good terms. If you're feeling generous you can provide a longer window to help with a transition. And there's nothing wrong with landing an offer first and then providing notice. If you're worried about giving them enough time to find a replacement, you can always subtly suggest they need to look at business continuity and planning on recovering things if you're not around.

@MetaFight - sounds a bit like a MethodTemplate pattern. Only with a property (which, is, under the hood, a method)

user41796

> At seven hundred freaking degrees, fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature.

@Oded, it's actually very similar to that. the Subclass is what specifies the validation logic. I just thought the validator (the object being passed in) should be stored against the base class.

user41796

The humor behind that one... gallows humor at its finest.

2:03 PM

@MetaFight sounds like a reasonable use of inheritance

I feel like I've learnt alot in my years programming... and then I remember that I've never actually been peer reviewed. I've reviewed a lot of other people's code... but mine has never been reviewed... and sometimes that makes me panic! What if I'm doing something horribly wrong!

I need to find a job where they won't call me a senior developer.

Ever read: hanselman.com/blog/ImAPhonyAreYou.aspx @MetaFight?

user41796

> The sulfur chemistry of FOOF remains unexplored, so if you feel like whipping up a batch of Satan's kimchi, go right ahead.

user41796

(I know, I know, wrong chat room for this chemistry stuff. But it's fun dabbling in the past.)

nope. but it looks like something I could read over my next coffee :)

2:06 PM

While listening to the mothers of invention

@Oded random question - where does your name come from, out of curiousity?

is it a family name? or Biblical?

but, at a glance, it looks like it's along the lines of the research that recently said: Competent people rate themselves at roughly 50% skill level relative to the rest of the population, while incompetent people rate themselves much higher. Simply because incompetent people don't have the skills to properly assess their own abilities.

@Oded, of course!

@enderland First name. And it apparently appears once in the bible. It is a fairly popular name in Israel.

imdb.com/name/nm0004912

Like this guy ^^^

And the correct pronunciation: forvo.com/word/oded

user41796

@Oded Hanselman is pretty funny in person too. He was at the DevIntersections conference in October and was one of the keynote presenters.

user41796

His presentation on javascript really blew my mind and how I perceive what can be done within HTML5

2:11 PM

Hah. gotcha. Yeah definitely not quite as popular in the USA

Yeah - heard that about him. Calls what he does "infotainment". See a couple of vids with him, @Glen

@enderland can't imagine why it would be...

:)

user55340

3:02 PM

Ghads, lots of flags out there.

user55340

(I feel sorry, kind of, for SO mods)

user55340

user55340

Though that could also be an indication that the flag visibility on the menubar is working and a bunch of 10ks are using it again.

user41796

I think it was broken for a bit, but I could be wrong.

user41796

This is way way way better than what I was going to answer with. Here is a cookie. — Frost Engineer Jan 27 '12 at 6:06

user41796

3:05 PM

That's now a 10k only link

@MichaelT - the mod flag queue on SO is about an order of magnitude less than what it has been for weeks now.

user55340

Hmm. Could it be part of that strange drop in the close vote queue?

user55340

Btw... I was half thinking of an answer to that unviersity IP question on the drive in. Didn't have the resources to link to it on the ipad before getting up this morning.

user55340

Look up work for hire. Additionally, things such as IP at universities - Harvard‌, Washington, MIT -- you will need to find the corresponding policy at your university. However, this is fairly standard that the work produced as part of your time at an employer that are part of the duties you preform is owned by that employer. Talk to a lawyer. — MichaelT 1 min ago

user55340

(that's the abbreviated version that fits in a comment)

3:14 PM

@MichaelT nope. That was a schedule script that was failing for some time. And when it ran, poof, 4k items gone.

user55340

Student mods home from the holidays and taking a crack at the size?

Naw. One awesome mod spending a whole day killing it.

user55340

Ahh... awesome mod then.

user55340

Btw, bug in the review queue pop up:

user55340

3:16 PM

The window is behind the links.

user41796

@Oded mod or SE employee or why quibble?

@GlenH7 cause it wasn't an employee

@MichaelT please report on meta.programmers

user41796

If there isn't already, I was thinking there ought to be private leaderboard for the mods with the review queues. Add in that requested counterstrike mod and watch the numbers plummet. :-)

user41796

and I can tell that gnat is already out of close votes today

There kinda is one

user41796

3:19 PM

@Oded sweetness! Now @MichaelT and I will have to continue our pseudo-quest to get our chat names to show up in blue... :-)

user55340

@Oded Done.

user41796

It would be good fun chasing after Yannis's reviews & weekend purges.

@MichaelT thanks

user55340

@Oded I recall Yannis speaking of "falling behind in his flag handling count" awhile back.

@MichaelT Probably about the time I showed up with the flagger gizmo, right?

3:21 PM

heh. Might be my fault ;)

user55340

@UndotheSnowman Nah, last year some time.

Good. I am less scared now.

user41796

@UndotheSnowman Don't worry, Yannis wastes no time in letting you know if you've jacked up the site. :-)

user55340

Mar 4 at 22:02, by Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Comment flags would be perfect for hazing the new guy. They don't show up in our flag handling counts, they are all work without any credit.

Hah

user41796

3:22 PM

@MichaelT dang, nice digging there

I'm waiting for the new write API we're supposed to get soon - we can build a distributed flagging network.

user55340

That might have changed with the change to comment flags being more 'real'

i know that they show up in my flag count.

user55340

Sep 12 at 19:49, by Yannis Rizos

@WorldEngineer Heh, I guess that's a good bug, I'm no longer at the bottom of the flag handling list...

user55340

Jun 28 at 15:47, by Yannis Rizos

@ThomasOwens I'll give you 10 seconds to clear @MichaelT's flag, then I'm stealing it for myself (my flag handling stats have been pathetic lately).

3:24 PM

:D

user55340

@UndotheSnowman btw, read the rest of that June 28th conversation... you'll get a chuckle.

Heh

user55340

4:05 PM

@gnat do you think you could actually get the frosty hat?

user55340

> cast only upvotes on a day, to at least five different users

@MichaelT at Programmers? never. I got it on MSO yesterday though

user55340

@gnat you're currently the hatteist (12 hats) on P.SE. @GlenH7 and I are tied at 10 for 2nd and 3rd place.

A: Filtering to Duplicates makes Close-Votes Queue a Haven for Robo-Reviewers

@MichaelT wow, previous bash I wasn't even close to the top league. Guess I did something wrong this time. While we're at hats, would you mind dropping a test upvote here? I'd want to verify one theory about Yeager. You can rollback it tomorrow if you wish, I'll edit the post and it will unlock votes

1

It is a pity that SE dev team doesn't invest effort into these audits because per my understanding, designing reliable and realistic audits for dupe closure is not really difficult. For example, an audit where user is expected to Close to pass can simulate a fairly routine case of a migrated cro...

user55340

Cast.

user55340

4:11 PM

winterbash2013.stackexchange.com/leaderboard/…

user55340

@MichaelT thanks!

user55340

I suspect that ultimately, @GlenH7 will get more hats than me - there are three non-trivial ones to get (silver badge, bounty and repcap)

@MichaelT Oh I see, my extra 2 hats are for flagging, I certainly got better at it this year (not that I'm happy about this)

user55340

As an aside, the description of frosty might give a hint as to the serial upvote reversal script.

user55340

4:14 PM

> cast only upvotes on a day, to at least five different users

user55340

4:31 PM

@gnat you might try going for that "steal a checkmark" hat.

A: Should we and how can we report suspected vote rigging?

@MichaelT oh so that's why they didn't revert my votes back then...

16

In this case, "serial upvoter" is me and this time, it took me about 2 minutes to re-check my votes listed in your link. Most answers I upvoted are nothing special - simple and correct stuff - except for maybe this one which taught me a little bit I didn't know before. PS. in case if you won...

back then, I've been casting votes right and left no matter to whom. 9 that went to that guy were just a drop in the ocean, apparently script ignored these

@MichaelT I somehow don't feel like hunting hats. Yeager only made me curious as to how it is triggered...

user41796

7:06 PM

@gnat - did you figure out how to get the chuck yeager hat? I'll run an experiment and confirm how to get the headphones.

user41796

And for the record, I'm a bit surprised to see I'm on the leaderboard for programmers hats

@GlenH7 no, not yet. It's really cryptic, profiles I checked so far (like 20 or something) don't give clear indication

user41796

You saw that MichaelT has it, right?

seen one or two users who seem got it without editing an answer, one seems to got it even without getting an accept (though it could be the case for unaccept)

user41796

Hmmmm... I think the headphones has something to do with rejecting edits, but I'm not sure.

7:12 PM

quick accept seems common but one of the guys seem to have been awarded it prior to accept, for an answer that was accepted few hours after posting

edit after upvotes without accept doesn't trigger it, I tested

@GlenH7 Yeager, "test pilot", hmm your theory could make sense

user41796

@gnat test pilot and speed are the two things I think of with Yeager

user55340

I've got Yeager on MSO - meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/212240/timeline is the only real activity I've had there with questions, answers, and posts.

user41796

@gnat could also be a secret hat that was given out only at the beginning of the bash. Meaning you had to be quick to do whatever in order to earn the hat

user55340

I've also got it on P.SE - programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/221582/timeline is the likely source.

A: What can go wrong with composing a method name out of a string?

@GlenH7 maybe... oh wait, one of the guys I spoke to got it recently

I don't think editing is part of it; I've answered one question today, and had one answer accepted today, but I've never edited either of those answers. Today's answer was posted within a very few minutes of the question being asked, though, so maybe that has something to do with it. — Aaron Miller 29 mins ago

user41796

7:19 PM

Yeah, look at the timeline on @MichaelT's answer there. He dropped the answer in within 10 minutes of the question being asked.

user55340

This may be the MSO source - meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/212187/timeline

user55340

11 min from Q to A.

user41796

0

The biggest risk is trying to access something that doesn't exist within the array structure. In the worst case, that will crash your application.

user41796

yeah, it's a crap answer. Throw me some love. It's in the name of Science!

But what I'm saying is that I got mine hours before my answer was accepted, so I don't see how that could be a factor. Unless OP accepted and retracted it without my knowledge before accepting it again later, that is. Then again, hats hate me, so maybe I'm the exception here. — Generic Holiday Name 3 hours ago

I don't think editing is part of it; I've answered one question today, and had one answer accepted today, but I've never edited either of those answers. Today's answer was posted within a very few minutes of the question being asked, though, so maybe that has something to do with it. — Aaron Miller 31 mins ago

@AaronMiller I see, interesting. You're the second I've seen who seems to have gotten it without editing so yes, this maybe doesn't count. Regarding how fast to answer, hard to tell, my hat-related answer has been posted almost an hour after the question — gnat 16 mins ago

"my hat-related answer has been posted almost an hour after the question"

user55340

7:21 PM

I'd guess "positive score on answer that was answered within N minutes of question being asked"

user55340

Or maybe also a first requirement in there too?

@MichaelT where N < 60?

psr

@MichaelT Wouldn't SO have a ton of these due to FGIW?

user55340

Sufficiently high threshold for positive score, and only a first... so 1/q.

@GlenH7 reject alone is not sufficient for headphones. Maybe reject after someone else's approve... programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/47217

user41796

7:23 PM

If someone upvotes my answer above, we can test the "first to answer" theory

i'm gonna answer that question. lol :P

user41796

Also notice that FrustratedWithForms is sporting a yeager hat. I haven't asked where he picked his up from.

user55340

@GlenH7 DBA and Workplace.

user41796

maybe he's going for a trifecta of yeager hats?

A: What can go wrong with composing a method name out of a string?

0

What can go wrong with composing a method name out of a string? If the index myObject[filterMethod](); doesn't exist, you could crash your application. If your application is part of the safety controls for nuclear missile fire control, you could be potentially disabling critical safety con...

user55340

7:26 PM

workplace.stackexchange.com/posts/17433/timeline -- 21 minutes there.

where do you get the full timeline like that for a Q?

user55340

change questions to posts, replace the title stuff with timeline.

user41796

@enderland +1 if only for the "for the love of the children" comment

user41796

@enderland - here's an example programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/221788/timeline

oh cool. that's really nifty

user55340

7:28 PM

Note that it shows when downvotes happen too.

whatever, I think I give up on Yeager investigation, will wait until end of bash or someone else figures it out. After all, being the only one not wearing hat at first 8 pages of network-wide leaderboard, I am not supposed to get so much involved into this fun

user55340

@gnat come on... you know you want to put that tinfoil hat on... and you've got a headpic avatar that could wear it well.

@gnat Put on a hat or I go all Grinch on you.

I'm probably going to pick up all sorts of DVs for that. lol

user41796

My headphones haven't come through yet on my gravatar

user41796

7:29 PM

@ThomasOwens - the mod hat is awesome

jozefg

@enderland A new charity idea, "code reviews for kids", to prevent this sort of thing

A: What i need to do to make this code faster(lags in animation)

@GlenH7 I should put on this shirt and my mod hat and make that my gravatar after winter bash.

user55340

(I'm wondering if the cat & mod hats are in any way influenced from my "favorite mod hats" MSO post)

user41796

@MichaelT You may be on to something there. Yannis is well known for his SE hat in the back of his car

user41796

0

In order to find the performance bottlenecks, you need to run that code through a performance profiling tool. That's the best way to identify where the issues are.

user41796

7:32 PM

Yeah, the question should be closed. But we're going after the Yeager hat here. This is for Science!

user55340

17

Q: Our favorite mod hats

Several of our favorite MSO trolls mods wear hats or other things on their heads in their user images. In particular: (yes, Shog is in there twice) As you can see, hats and other head covering things (what is that by the way?! Is that Ylvis?) are a very important part of the identity for...

discussion winterbash-2013

user41796

And I'll update with a reference to our profiling questions.

user55340

Those are the two I'm thinking of - sorry for the large size.

@ThomasOwens okay I got me umbrella to protect from the rain of your anger

that first one... creepy

7:34 PM

@gnat Acceptable.

user55340

A note for those who may not know, casperOne is sporting the official Stack Exchange moderator cap. The eagle-eyed among you may spot other SE mods similarly adorned. — Bill the Lizard Dec 3 at 2:59

user55340

Clearly it is not a hat. I am a kitty. :P — animuson Dec 3 at 3:22

user55340

@animuson I'm still picturing you going around asking "what does the fox say?" (yes, its a link to that youtube video for those not familiar with the context) — MichaelT Dec 3 at 15:26

user41796

C'mon Yeager hat!

user55340

Need new parody song... "What does the Redd Foxx say?"

user41796

7:36 PM

And my headphones don't really show that well on my gravatar. :-(

user55340

A: beep beeping beep beep beep

@GlenH7 I just got it. lolz

user55340

Redd Foxx

John Elroy Sanford (December 9, 1922 – October 11, 1991), known professionally as Redd Foxx, was an American comedian and actor, best remembered for his explicit comedy records and his starring role on the 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son. Foxx gained notoriety with his raunchy nightclub acts during the 1950s and 1960s. Known as the "King of the Party Records", he performed on more than 50 records in his lifetime. He also starred in Sanford, The Redd Foxx Show and The Royal Family. His film roles included All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) and Harlem Nights (1989). With three failed marri...

user41796

And I just landed the Yeager hat for Programmers

user41796

Need to be first to answer. Dunno if you need to upvoted too or not. FWFD's profile should tell us. He should have a Yeager for Programmers now.

7:38 PM

I just Passed Judgement on The Workplace.

@GlenH7 no you don't, I got it for my not-first answer there

user41796

@ThomasOwens I think we've all be doing that.... :-) (bad joke, sorry)

Anyone think to tie Yeager to views?

Answer a question when it has a view count below X?

user41796

@ThomasOwens nope. Should we?

@GlenH7 No comment.

It's actually way above my paygrade

user41796

7:39 PM

@ThomasOwens :-D

user55340

Its also possible... find the lowest viewed, unanswered question on P.SE...

user41796

and FWFD now has a Programmers Yeager hat

user55340

@ThomasOwens Note that this would cause some perturbation in how one considers FGITW on SO and may work better... though there are still the crazy "one sentence answer and edit" people.

user41796

13 more rep and I'm on the front page of All /users for Programmers!

user41796

@MichaelT I specifically did a FGITW answer on the codereview question just to get it in there

user41796

7:41 PM

and to nail my Yeager hat

take shameless rep @GlenH7

user41796

@enderland always, always, always. :-)

user41796

And once the cache refreshes, I should be on the front page now!

I figure some of you folks gave me some rep for thinking of the children

user41796

So for my status report, I'm going to put down that I chased after imaginary numbers and virtual hats. awesome

2

user41796

7:45 PM

@enderland Part of our conspiracy to get you reviewing more things for the site.

lol

user55340

Martijn has the best avatar for hats.

user55340

user41796

I think Robocop is going to be a hard hat to earn with Programmers

Is that the review queue hat?

user55340

7:48 PM

5 reviews in 5 queues - we rarely get some of the queues

Also, thanks for the kitty hat.

user41796

@MichaelT That's why I think it's going to be hard.

user41796

I "reviewed" a fake edit to verify how to get the headphones. But I don't think that will count since I didn't wait for it to hit the queue

psr

@MichaelT I can do some low quality posts, late answers, and vote to reopen some crap if it will help.

Oh. @GlenH7 and @MichaelT were the ones who gave me the cat hat.

user55340

7:50 PM

@psr Late answers are only from noobs I think.

user41796

@ThomasOwens How can you tell? I thought it was just for starts on chat comments

user55340

Though vote to reopen some non-crap will also give the zombie thing if it reopens.

user41796

@psr go for the anonymous edits. Make them complete crap so they're obvious to filter out

user41796

@MichaelT Is it 3 to undelete?

@GlenH7 Except I think the only two pinned messages since Winter Bash started were my "put on a hat" and my new gravatar. One is pinned, I didn't, and no other mod is in the room.

user55340

7:51 PM

@GlenH7 It is... but you and I were the two that apparently did that Grinch one.

user55340

I pinned...

So one of you, by pinning, gave me the stars.

Pinning is a star of a message.

user41796

@ThomasOwens excellent sleuthing

I would put Sherlock Holmes to shame.

user41796

@MichaelT oh, I'm sure we could persuade a mod to undo the damage we cause in the name of Science!

user41796

7:52 PM

and do all the reopen / undelete voters get the hat? Or just the last one in?

psr

@ThomasOwens nice indirect hat reference.

user41796

See, now we have a scientific question!

user55340

@psr I was thinking more of the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes. He totally rocks the scarf more than the hat. I wish I could rock a scarf that hard.

user41796

@MichaelT - you know that @FrostEngineer would be totally down with cleaning up whatever mess we make

user55340

7:53 PM

And if we flag it right, we could get the tinfoil hat too...

user20683

@GlenH7 >.>

user41796

(it's all in the timing....)

OK. Meeting time. Last major meeting before the holiday vacation.

user41796

@FrostEngineer but it's for Science!

user41796

and hats

user41796

7:54 PM

but mostly Science!

nuke the children for science?

user41796

@enderland Let's try to keep things within reason

user55340

@GlenH7 Kingdom of Loathing... it acknowledged the types of players and made sure to cater to each one. Socializers, Achievers, Killers, and Explorers... the last group (Explorers = Spades) were the ones who ferreted out game mechanics.

what's wrong with nuking children.... :(

user55340

Things like writing greasemonkey scripts to collect data and pool it...

user55340

7:56 PM

At times, we (back when I played) were asked not to spoil the game mechanics too quickly... and on one occasion, when the devs forgot how something worked, they'd check with the spades about it.

user41796

@MichaelT That's hilarious

user41796

"Hey, the codebase is really, really jacked. Can you guys poke around and give us some hints?"

user55340

forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=172965 & forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=183708 forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?t=176656

user55340

Its not a "codebase is jacked" its more a "what is the actual chance of some event happening?"

user41796

@MichaelT - I'm so dumb. We just need to find a roomba deleted question. We can vote to undelete and then vote to delete

user41796

8:01 PM

@MichaelT I think my version is funnier. :-)

user55340

@GlenH7 can't undelete mod (community) questions.

user41796

@MichaelT even if it was just roomba?

user41796

Stupid Community mod. I'm going back to anti-Community for my mod campaign.

user55340

Don't think so. Those are the ones that often require a mod to clean up for because it takes -1 votes.

user41796

/tools recently deleted doesn't show how many votes to bring back. :-(

user55340

8:05 PM

I recall one spading before the NS-13 upgrade where people found a bug in the algorithm used to distribute the monsters in the tower (the probability of a cow in the top level was significantly greater than any others...)

user41796

@MichaelT that could be disconcerting. Expecting to find monsters and dealing with a cow instead.

user55340

It was an enraged cow.

user55340

user41796

If I were a cow, I would be upset too. Stuck in a tower? No grass to chew? Sprites trying to kill me?

user55340

You also had things like a globe...

user55340

8:08 PM

user55340

> This is a massive, full-color rendering of the entire planet, made to sit on an equally massive desktop. It spins menacingly, perpendicular to its shiny metal axis. Certain continents look much more threatening than others, but the overall effect is startling.

@MichaelT enraged. different than engaged, gotcha.

user55340

The tower monsters were each defeated by a special item... the globe by an 'ng'.

user55340

> Make a hole with a gun perpendicular
To the name of this town in a desktop globe
Exit wound in a foreign nation
Showing the home of the one this was written for
-- Anna Ng (They Might Be Giants)

user55340

The victory message was:

user55340

8:11 PM

> You wind up the NG and let it fly. It makes a hole perpendicular to the name of The Seaside Town, with an exit wound in a foreign nation. It splits cleanly into two halves. You don't want the whole thing, or even your half, so you leave it and continue on.

8:23 PM

I want that question to go nuclear hot

user41796

@enderland which one?

Q: What can go wrong with composing a method name out of a string?

3

I have a piece of code that composes method name to call from a string parameter. I don't feel it's a good thing to do but I'm not sure what can go wrong with this. Here is a simplified snippet of that code: switchToFilter = function(filter){ var filterMethod = 'switchTo' + filter; myOb...

code-quality code

user41796

@enderland Nice, you're already at 9 up votes

yeah lol.

user41796

random Q - can you dump all 40 up / down votes of the day into question votes only?

8:29 PM

yes

user41796

woo hoo!

user41796

Gonna burn through some votes then

user55340

@enderland anyone coding nuclear missile controls in javascript is demonstration of the necessity of cleansing the world.

I'm about 100% sure I did that a while on WP because I wanted the badge requiring 600 votes with 25% question votes

user41796

@MichaelT This is rather elitist for you to say. But I'm in full agreement.

user55340

8:30 PM

@GlenH7 That's even worse than php for greek economic websites.

user41796

@MichaelT awwww, pssshh. Their economy is just fine now, right?