The Whiteboard - 2013-03-21 (page 1 of 3)

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12:03 AM

@WorldEngineer sorry I wasn't specific, I was referring to outer joins, you practically never see the more exotic joins like cross joins. I was just trying to elucidate however something else i find people confused by: left refers to preference of the table in your FROM, right refers to preference of the table vein JOINed

user20683

@JimmyHoffa it's more figuring out what parameters I need for what thing

user20683

and then what to join and where in order to get them

12:36 AM

@WorldEngineer joins are trivially imagined as a graph that starts at your from, sequence is only necessary when a node is of greater than 1 edge away, otherwise general syntax sequence you can think of your joins as a part of your whole from clause so it's select (columns) from (data set definition including joins) where (criteria) group by (columns) order by (columns)

and then beyond that you can get into having and in clauses and all kinds of other crazy

but 90% of the time the most complex element in a query is going to be an inner join, or a left join (right joins are trivially defined in terms of a left join so you barely see right joins), you'll see more complex group by clauses much more frequently than any joins other than inner or left outer, and group by clauses get a lot more confusing than joins.

Does MySQL have proper joins now? I remember years ago you had to put multiple tables in the from clause and use your where to filter, but that's me not having so much as seen MySQL in 10 years..

12:57 AM

Pretty sure it does, I've never had problems using the joins I have on MySQL

It doesn't do full outer joins

2 hours later…

user55340

3:11 AM

@JimmyHoffa Consider the tools he has available (as a nasa type) to be able to answer what-if.xkcd.com/24 what-if.xkcd.com/25 what-if.xkcd.com/28

8:22 AM

0

Q: Downvoting "marginal" posts triggers their inclusion into Low Quality queue?

Recently I reviewed some posts using SEDE query called "Marginal short answers with links". For the record, I have been using query parameters as suggested here, with the only difference that min value was set -2 instead of 0, for I wanted to additionally review posts indicating some sort of "c...

support down-votes answer-quality review

4 hours later…

12:30 PM

0

Q: Configuration file that can be modified by user in C#

I want to create a configuration file (text file preferred) that can be modified by user. A windows service will read from that file and behave accordingly. Can you recommend a file format for this kind of process? What I have in my is a config file like the game config files, but could not imag...

c# configuration

14

Q: INI files or Registry or personal files?

I want to save the configuration of my project which includes Screen size Screen position Folder paths Users settings and so on. The standard places where you can save these are configuration values are: Registry INI files Personal files (like *.cfg) How do you choose between these places...

windows microsoft configuration-management persistence

Is the first one a dupe of the second? It seems like a diff question, but the answers are essentially the same.

1 hour later…

user41796

1:44 PM

@YannisRizos - those two questions are very closely related, but the nuance is in the end user interaction. The 2nd Q (INI Files) doesn't have a requirement for the end user to be able to easily edit whereas the 1st Q (config files) does. It's a subtle but important difference. The top answer off the 2nd Q pretty much answers the 1st Q, but it doesn't call out that expecting the end user to edit config files probably isn't the right approach.

@GlenH7 That makes sense. I wasn't going to close it anyway (I have an answer in the second q, I don't moderate posts I'm involved with)

user41796

good call on avoiding the potential conflict of interest. :-) And I went ahead and edited the 1st Q to call out the difference and avoid future confusion (aka "close as dup" votes).

2:07 PM

Thanks, that's a good edit.

...and I think none of us moderates posts we are involved with. We never actually talked about it, it just makes sense, the potential for drama is too big.

@GlenH7 @YannisRizos for technical reasons not related to the end-user, the answer to the C# question is very specific and completely different from the other question

specifically; .NET has a huge subsystem built around working with a particular form of configuration file, which is really easy to use and extend, you would basically be crazy to use any form of configuration in .NET other than the config files just because it's such a high quality system

The only time people don't use it in .NET is when they need a centralized configuration system that distributes configuration to multiple processes, at which point people end up writing a configuration service that serves up those config settings to clients which request config at startup

(just to avoid having a lot of config files since you have one per process the way the .NET config system works)

err one per .exe that is

Also you can programmatically edit them using built in .NET stuff (file->ConfigurationManager object, ConfigurationManager->set settings, ConfigurationManager->save file) so it makes it easy to create settings menus to allow end users to change settings in the UI

user41796

2:38 PM

@JimmyHoffa - wow, that sounds suspiciously like an answer. :-)

Yeah @JimmyHoffa, you are playing the rep whoring game wrong. You don't have a chance of catching up with @MichaelT if you post answers in chat...

user41796

Heck, I'd even up-vote an answer like that despite wanting MichaelT to win the rep game instead of JimmyHoffa. ;-)

To busy writing an answer about something really fun and interesting I did once, putting together a kick ass hand de/serialization system, while it wasn't protobuf because I'm no Marc Gravell, it was still a pretty awesome solution.

0

A: How should I structure a C# application that reads & writes binary data?

I once had to implement a versioned de/serialization abstractions similarly to what you're describing before, I'll detail what I (can remember I) did: I created an unversioned form of the objects that were to be serialized/deserialized which just decorated the latest version so all consuming cod...

So, earlier today after 13 months of moderating chat.se I realized that if I validate a chat flag, the user is automatically kicked from chat for 30 min.

user55340

@YannisRizos If you look at recent chat logs, I think I'm even besting him on the chatstarwhore game.

2:52 PM

...and it was a flag I shouldn't had validated in the first place...

@JimmyHoffa Not an answer, deleted.

(I made you all go and look, didn't I?)

user41796

@WorldEngineer - would you mind suspending one of your fellow mods, please? ;-)

user55340

@YannisRizos BTW, if you want to clean up Programmers careers" so that we can make it less obscure and those questions that 'a way...

user41796

@YannisRizos - not sure it's fair of you to miss with their rep games that way. Or another mod needs to randomly delete MichaelT's answers too just to keep it balanced... :-)

user55340

@GlenH7 I delete my own answers... and get badges for it!

@MichaelT you get badges for deleting answers?

user41796

2:58 PM

@MichaelT - I did the same with one of mine solely for the badge. Kind of pathetic...

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/badges/19/…

@ChrisF I wonder, how does it feel like to moderate at SO - compared to Programmers?

user55340

I thought I had the right answer (and it looked right too... made some sense and all), it was wrong, when someone posted the right answer and I realized I was wrong, I deleted mine.

@MichaelT Crap... I deleted some questions last week where I had upvoted answers (old NC stuff). If I had deleted my answers first and then the questions, I'd get the badge...

@MichaelT ah, yeah I got that one too I guess. I usually delete my answers if a different one is chosen, only time I don't is if I'm still certain my answer is valuable (in which case the community is wrong not me, shame on them)

3:03 PM

The community is never wrong. Except when I say it is. /drunk with power

user55340

.-1 s/with power//

.-1? When did you learn Lens?

Gave me an idea to go clean up answers of mine, working through all my 0 scored answers, some are good and nobody noticed or guy never came back, some are questions needing deleted

@JimmyHoffa By "clean up" you mean make minor edits to bump them to the frontpage in hopes of a cheap upvote or two?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I've known ed since the late 80s.

@gnat In one way it's easier - the calls are more black and white. Most things are clearly off topic/on topic, not an answer/an answer etc.

It's harder in that there's a lot more to do (though it's forcing me to be more careful with my "SE time" - so that's a good thing)

3:15 PM

Real programmers set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want.

@MichaelT ironically I just read an answer with that comic, and came back to this tab to see you talking about ed..

@YannisRizos I mean delete 0 voted answers where the Q has better answers or my answer is wasteful

user41796

emacs FTW!

@GlenH7 I just discovered emacs last year, I feel like I'd been missing out for so long..

@JimmyHoffa I wasn't being serious. That said, I wouldn't really mind if you rep whored a bit (just a bit), we need more delete voters.

@YannisRizos I just can't be bothered to care about rep. I'm here to write up answers like this, just because it's fun and interesting:

6

A: How to get rid of my "Factory" class' countless else if statements

You've got a key and you're trying to match it to a particular module using ifs, this is a key-value problem which should be solved by a dictionary or hashtable. Not familiar with Actionscript, but it must have dictionaries or hashtables. Does it have polymorphism or is it even strongly typed? Id...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

3:21 PM

The rep game never mattered to me, though I do enjoy the competition on a Q when I actually write an answer to try and come up with a better answer than anyone else

@JimmyHoffa Good. And I'm here to make sure no one's having fun. ;P

@MichaelT I was making a horribly nerd styled nobody-will-know-what-I'm-talking-about joke... .-1 is I think the syntax to pick the value from the first member in a data constructor in Haskell with the fanciful new Lens package that's all the rage in Haskell lately

user55340

On a real anecdote of editor wars... a friend of mine back in college was using pico for writing C code. Things like "go to line 400" meant exiting the code, and relaunching it with an argument. We eventually persuaded him to switch to vi, but he had the muscle memory of typing 'pico foo.c'

user55340

So he wrote a c program and put it in as ~/bin/pico -- it would beep the terminal 5 times, print out "Use vi" and then sleep 10 seconds, beep again and exec vi. He told us to laugh at him when his terminal beeped 5 times.

hah, most people just ln pico to vi

user55340

3:26 PM

But that wouldn't cure his muscle memory... he would just keep typing it.

user55340

Incidentally, the program he wrote was freesweep - text (curses) based minesweeper implementation.

user55340

The original code for freesweep, he didn't realize you could have 2 D arrays... he worked from a giant 1 dimensional array with all the array math by hand.

user41796

@MichaelT - and you guys didn't tell him about alias? Fo' shame on you. :-)

@YannisRizos wth

> You have already deleted 5 of your own posts today; further deletes are blocked

user55340

The code for "click in a spot with no bombs around it, flll to the edge" was written before he had any knowledge of the well known algorithms for that.

user55340

3:31 PM

@JimmyHoffa Limit rage quit.

user41796

Yes, @JimmyHoffa, please don't rage quit on us. ;-)

@MichaelT Wouldn't that just make someone in a rage, uhm, quit?

> Possible vandalism of own posts; multiple deletions in a short time

@ChrisF interesting. That sounds like sort of exercise in time management does it?

@JimmyHoffa You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave...

3:33 PM

@gnat The latter bit does, yes. I have to make sure I don't get sucked in to clearing flags.

@YannisRizos SE's attempt at enforcing their content rights? The IP whores..

@ChrisF Understood. By the way did you have a chance to check whether one of your new colleagues - casperOne - really has Delete-post button implanted in a finger, to save time it would take to reach out for a keyboard/mouse? :)

@JimmyHoffa More or less. But it's the community's content rights, not SE's. You should ask on Meta about it (so we have an easy reference for the next one that stumbles upon the limit).

@gnat I can ask :)

@YannisRizos I'll get right on that after I post the configuration answer to that C# config question (note: I'm not posting an answer to that question, I just can't be bothered, somebody else go get the rep)

I'm off to hack up some sort of configurable generic service client with fault tolerance or something now...woo

user55340

3:40 PM

Oh, that CASE question I had ~16 hours ago or so... I had the test backwards.

user41796

@MichaelT - I had wondered when I read it, but I'm not DE.SE savvy enough to where I felt comfortable pointing it out

@RobertHarvey ping. You should go tell this person to use the System.Configuration subsystem for all their config needs programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/191419/…

user41796

but my initial thought had been "don't you have that backwards?!"

user55340

I just tossed a quick "What data is there" query...

user55340

select
  *
from
  Posts q
where
  q.id = ##ID:int##

user55340

3:42 PM

And saw that yes, the data is there... looked at it again and went "Doh!"

It Boggles the Mind that MS did not yet implement an Inline SQL IF

user41796

@MichaelT - if it helps, I'm arguing with myself about finding the correct SQL syntax to create a new data set from an existing data set instead of yanking it all back and churning it out programmatically

user41796

@Morons - you may have just answered my dilemma

@GlenH7 you know how to use table variables?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - nope.

user41796

3:44 PM

SQL Server 2008 (to limit the feature set)

@GlenH7 they're great; in memory structures (MSSQL will automatically page them to temp like a temp table if they're extremely large)

2008 has them

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - I'll have to look into that then, just so I can learn something new today

user55340

@Morons Yep. I am familiar with a MySQL and Oracle dialects... when going to a new SQL dialect its a bit of a pain trying to figure out the variations.

user41796

essentially I'm down-sampling a data set. I have a per-minute data set and I need to re-sample that to hourly using an average of that hour's values for the new value

declare @IdsToFilter TABLE
(
PersonId INT
)

insert into @IdsToFilter
select PersonId from Person where PersonId < 2000

select Name from Person p join @IdsToFilter i on p.PersonId = i.PersonId

3:47 PM

@GlenH7 that should be a simple query...

Group by Hour()

@MichaelT stick with ANCII :)

@Morons Group by DATEPART(HOUR, column)

user41796

@Morons - yes, should. My SQL skills aren't the greatest primarily because I struggle with visualizing the set manipulations. Not enough practice is the real culprit

but that would put all hours together

user55340

I really miss the "MINUS", "INTERSECT" and "DIFFERENCE" in Oracle that aren't in MySQL (just UNION there)

no

group just Hour()

user41796

3:48 PM

well, I have a year's worth of data at a minute timescale. And I need to recreate the year's worth of data at an hourly timescale

if you are spanning days then group by year(),day(),hour()

@Morons not familiar with that in MSSQL... I've always downsampled with DATEPART's

or dateadd tricks

DATEADD(second, -1 * DATEPART(second, column), column)

user55340

gads... working on a query and found this question...

user55340

20

Q: My coworker created a 96 columns SQL table

Here we are in 2010, software engineers with 4 or 5 years or experience, still designing tables with 96 fracking columns. I told him it's gonna be a nightmare. I showed him that we have to use ordinals to interface MySQL with C#. I explained that tables with more columns than rows are a huge sme...

@MichaelT Too much work deleting all the messages in the careers chat room. Instead, I'll freeze it and make a new one. The old one will be removed automatically after a few months.

3:51 PM

haha

sorry datepart (Now i am mixing up my db's)

one sec

select GETDATE(),DATEPART(YEAR,GETDATE()),DATEPART(DAYOFYEAR,GETDATE()),DATEPART(HOUR,G‌ETDATE())

@GlenH7 the dateadd I just spit out should work

err, minute not second

select GETDATE()
,DATEPART(YEAR,GETDATE()) as yt
,DATEPART(DAYOFYEAR,GETDATE()) as DOY,
DATEPART(HOUR,GETDATE()) as Hr

and if it already has second just CONVERT(smalldatetime, column) will clip it down to minutes

user55340

@YannisRizos Whatever is easiest for you, by all means... and thank you.

user41796

3:53 PM

@JimmyHoffa - thanks. I figured I would have SQL Server specific machinations to hop through based upon @Morons suggestion. Starting to cobble that query together now.

user41796

@MichaelT - that's scarily close to home. Recently refactored a table like that

user55340

I'm still working on that "Find questions with lots of answers, that have answers with a low median size and a low median score"

you guys are playing with data.se?

its fun stuff!!!

i wrote a buch of querys a while back and posted them on meta

they should help you out

user55340

I've got my marginal answer queries... and now looking for the broken window questions that attract new people.

19

Q: Are we Going down hill?

From what I was seeing overall question quality is going downhill, so on that hunch, Using Stack exchange's Data explorer ran the Following Query: Select CAST(year(p.CreationDate) as char(4))+'-'+CAST(DATEPART(wk,p.CreationDate) as char(2)) as week ,count(1) as Cnt ,avg(score) as Avg ,avg(...

3:57 PM

Careers questions chat room

@Morons You don't know how hard I'm resisting the urge to post an answer there saying "Guess what, we're still here, and growing rapidly"...

user55340

You need to find Jimmy's spike graph... we're growing more rapidly than we have been for the past year.

@GlenH7 simplest:
SELECT
AVG(columnWithDataPerSecond) [Average],
DATEADD(MINUTE, -1 * DATEPART(MINUTE, dateTimeColumn), CONVERT(SMALLDATETIME, dateTimeColumn)) [HourOfOccurrence]
FROM Whatever w
GROUP BY DATEADD(MINUTE, -1 * DATEPART(MINUTE, dateTimeColumn), CONVERT(SMALLDATETIME, dateTimeColumn))
ORDER BY [HourOfOccurrence]

@YannisRizos are we growing? I was just posting that as an sql example in data.se

@MichaelT Yannis says that's to be ignored as it doesn't count deletions yet

4:01 PM

@Morons Of course we are growing, all the time. And we were growing back when you posted that.

user41796

@Morons - yes, user #'s are up, views are up. Would be interesting to re-run your queries and see what's happened to those curves

I'm not sure how much Yannis is just a horrible cynic

will do!

data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/…

@Morons Lots of the data posted there are open to interpretation.

For example:

> Our Average Question Score is Down a full point over the last year, whats going on?

user41796

4:02 PM

@JimmyHoffa - thanks! That gets me closer!

People finally stopped massively upvoting crap is one possible explanation. And that's a good thing, and a sign of both growth and of maturity. Because just growing alone isn't particularly interesting or useful.

@Morons I didn't solve for edges in that query so the last data point where it drops is a partial week in DE being counted as a full week

so ignore it

user55340

Consider that for "Answers per question" we are second only to RPG.SE when last I looked.

@MichaelT That's not necessarily a good thing, and it's a stat that has been (slowly) declining (but I haven't checked lately). Lots of answers per question point to a discussion forum, not to a SE site.

@YannisRizos i just re-ran it.. You are not going to like the results

user41796

4:06 PM

@JimmyHoffa - frak "closer", that nailed it. Nice job!

@Morons Why I won't like them?

user41796

Now I'll use a table variable as my temp storage and re-insert into the table I selected it from

user55340

@YannisRizos Yep. And thus the slide in the "answers" part over time in Jimmy's graph I see as a good thing.

user41796

I always feel sad when I see the icon float away as someone is leaving the room. Makes me think they've fallen off of a cliff or something.

data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/102122/…

^-- Accounted for the edge

4:09 PM

@JimmyHoffa Already answered here: programmers.stackexchange.com/a/191420/1204

user55340

@GlenH7 But then @RobertHarvey slides in, and you feel happy again?

Yeah, right. :P

@RobertHarvey no, he's referring to that arcane settings framework there I think which died on arrival, which uses strange Settings files which people usually embedded, not the appConfig

AppSettings is not ideal for this. I have some helper classes that I use to serialize arbitrary object to and from XML, and I just write my own custom DTO objects.

how do you get the graphing option?

user41796

4:12 PM

@Morons - it's one of the tabs in DE.SE

user41796

@MichaelT - the world is a better place (including this chat room) because of @RobertHarvey. And yes, I'm playing off of your riff, but he's tireless in keeping the site quality up.

@RobertHarvey not a fan of custom configsections? serialized Xml is usually not easily parsed and altered by an end user

With a few tweaks, it can be made very readable.

@YannisRizos in 2011 we averaged 900+ questions a week

in 2012 -600+

<SourceFile
Foo="bar"
Bax="qux"
/>

4:13 PM

2013 - 514

@GlenH7 i see it for his query but not mine,

it no big deal

i can graph it in excell

and the Settings files are not meant to be changed by end users but changed by devs

@RobertHarvey you'd really rather tweak a serializer than use a configsection? Do you find configSection's that cumbersome?

I get better control with my own classes.

custom config sections are your own classes, and with your own format you lose portability

Are you talking about AppConfig?

yes

plus you have to do the file management on your own when you use your own config file that's not the process scoped config file

4:17 PM

OK, but there's other stuff in there besides my stuff, isn't there? How do you expect a typical user to hand-modify that thing?

@RobertHarvey You can have configsection's in an outside file with nothing but your stuff

the System.Configuration subsystem will automatically merge all the configsections from other files for you, all you have to do in the main app.config is specify Source="whateverOtherFile.config"

plus config sections come back as strong typed to your custom type

@Morons So? Why is that necessarily a bad thing? As time goes by, we got a lot better at deleting crap.

and the system.configuration subsystem makes it easy to write modifications to your config files programmatically (if you want)

doesn't require you to write the file handling code for read or write yourself

@JimmyHoffa I'll have to take another look at it. :) But it sounds like what I'm already doing, wrapped in a half-dozen or so additional layers of abstraction.

I like simple.

@YannisRizos Sorry... that was counting questions AND answers

@YannisRizos by what metric are you saying me are growing?

4:22 PM

@RobertHarvey more or less yeah sounds like what you're doing, it's all abstracted through the ConfigurationManager for you so it's quite simple to use. You just make your strong type inherit ConfigurationSection, register the type in the app.config and voila

@Morons Traffic mostly.

You just then say ConfigurationManager.GetSection(name) and it sends it back in the type you specified

user41796

@Morons - Average question score is an interesting metric, but I think it reflects the maturity of the site. "Growing" would be answerable with # of views; # of users responding / performing some sort of action; # of questions being asked; # of answers presented (raw total, not per Q)

@YannisRizos but isn't;t that mostly due to organic growth.. more content= more traffic from search engins

@Morons More by itself is meaningless. The site is mature, it's growing, and it's growing rate is increasing. What we are looking for is quality, not quantity. Sites like Skeptics are sustainable even with 2 questions per day, and we get 35+. Until we drop to 5 or something, we should be striving for quality not quantity.

4:30 PM

@YannisRizos so by what metric are you measuring quality

?

@Morons By coming back to the site every day and seeing less and less crap.

user41796

Sorry, had to throw that one out there for a second....

My point is not to argue with you.. But just to say that we don;t really know what is going on. We have metric

we have no baseline

all we have is Gut!

...and by not having SE intervening and making drastic changes to the scope.

does SE have metrics ??

Ad revenue! LOL!

user41796

4:32 PM

@Morons - if you manipulate @JimmyHoffa's query and extend it past the most recent 50 weeks, I think the question volume becomes interesting to look at

@GlenH7 the problem is that recent data alwasy skews positive becuse that stuff has not been delted yet

so the most recent 2 weeks are always great

but look at those same 2 week a few month from now and it is a different story

user41796

@Morons - agreed. And after digging into it some more, it appears that we're mirroring the seasonal trend that Jan - Apr of 2012 had.

user41796

as did 2011 to a degree

user41796

although 2013's Jan was worse than those two

@YannisRizos its funny because on latest blog post (not yet published) a complain the interviewers just basically go with there gut too. (Gut is really not a bad metric - its just controversial!)

user41796

4:35 PM

I don't recall when the various scope changes had rounds of enforcement, which has to be kept in mind when looking at trends

If you average out gut feelings across a large group, its one of the best metics there it.. Beating out and single individual!

user41796

I'll add to the average; I'd say P.SE is growing and getting better. I see more and more quality participation as time has passed. Quality being defined as "not crap Q&A based upon my biased perceptions"

user55340

4:56 PM

co-worker's typo: "MAVENFEST" instead of "MANIFEST"

user41796

not-so-subtle evangelizing

haha

user55340

Well, its trying to get people to use modern tools... we've still got people writing Makefile for java code in places... I mean, sure, make is nice... I love it... but... isn't ant slightly better for that? Oh, and your make file for pulling in spring dependancies is kind of a nightmare to upgrade versions for...

I'd love to see somebody using MSBuild as the build files for java... just out of irony (and because MSBuild is pretty nice)

user55340

I admit that maven irks me some... ok, quite a bit... I like ant, but yea... dependancy management in today's java world is a nightmare if you don't have a modern tool. I'm trying to learn gradel... but trying to introduce gradel to people who are still stuck on ant (with nightmare class paths) and don't see why one should upgrade to maven... not a good idea.

5:05 PM

@YannisRizos are you still here?

5:18 PM

@JimmyHoffa Why are you deleting your answers?

You set off a system vandalism alert

user41796

@maple_shaft - see earlier chats. In short, he's rage quitting. ;-)

@maple_shaft I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE OH NOES AHHHHH

user41796

@maple_shaft - see the chat transcript around this timeline: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8614778#8614778

Just windexing unnecessary posts

user41796

Sorry, this is a better jump link: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8614025#8614025

5:20 PM

I mean, I'm a vandal! That's right! Destruction arrr! (a pirate too?)

@JimmyHoffa Ahhh ok!

I get embarassed by some of my older answers too

Well that sounds like a personal problem

50

A: What are the advantages of showing line numbers in a text editor?

Nobody mentioned being able to quickly look at an exception stack trace to find out where an exception occurred.

btw... if you flag it as NAA I will decline it and suspend you

user41796

Personally, I think @JimmyHoffa was trying to eliminate extra opportunities for others to give MichaelT an edge in the rep-race. (aka, by down-voting his answers)

@GlenH7 I reversed the race, I'm chasing 0 (and winning)

user55340

5:24 PM

@GlenH7 Apparently now, I need to cast more downvotes than gnat to win this race.

@JimmyHoffa I deleted your answer for you

user41796

@maple_shaft - how is that question not closed?

@maple_shaft I hit flag post filled in a note why to delete it and then cancelled on your answer there twice, I'm going to have to close that tab...

;P

5:42 PM

ughh sorry guys... wish I could chat more but I am under the gun

CEO threw us under the bus by signing us up for an expo in 6 weeks and there are NO GRAPHICS

I feel like everybody is just hoping I will suddenly grow artistic skills and save them because he didn't give us money to hire a graphic artist like I told him we needed

he is bound and determined to make himself and everybody else here look like fools despite my desperate efforts

user41796

@maple_shaft - good luck! Of course, I've never been in a similar situation as that... ;-)

@GlenH7 sound's like a totally novel scenario in software development after all for all that I can tell..

user55340

If you get comments on a question that is migrated to another site that you don't have an account on, do you get notifications?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I'd have to agree. Quite atypical. But other descriptions have indicated that his boss is a bit atypical as well.

user41796

I actually use that as a reverse-litmus test while interviewing

user55340

5:50 PM

If not, would some mod ping Longeyes to have him create an account on Stack Overflow? - his question is getting comments trying to clarify it.

user55340

0

Q: BucketSort Algorithm in C++

can somebody help me fix my code? I've been trying to write the BucketSort algorithm in C++ code, but it doesn't seem to be able to output the correctly sorted array and I can't find my mistake. This is what I've got so far: #include <iostream> int main () { unsigned int n; std::cout &...

Software Developers can write code, unit test, code review, design systems, architect solutions, provide detailed technical estimations on everything, QA test, load performance test, systems analysis, production maintenance, on call 24/7, write technical documentation, requirements engineering, web design, graphic design, run ad-hoc reports for sales people ....

... but are apparently incapable of entering numbers into Microsoft Project

because thats where the real money is

@maple_shaft they also have to do all of that with an eye for the bottom line, can't have them making frivolous decisions after all!

hello everyone, today I bombed an easy interview and now I am completely destroyed by it.

@StanR. happens to the best of us

5:52 PM

@StanR. that sucks. Been there

user41796

@StanR. ditto to all the above

performance anxiety has gotten me 3 times now

Factorial question ate my lunch one time... I looked it up afterwards and realized how bloody easy it was

user41796

take some note on what went wrong; figure out ways to overcome that

and I am not stupid, have a fairly large SO reputation

but when it comes to coding in front of someone in a notepad

im like a deer in headlights

5:53 PM

> performance anxiety ... I get the same problem in the bedroom

make little mistakes... off by one errors..etc

user41796

one tip that I really like involves thinking of yourself at your best just before the interview

lol maple_shaft

user41796

when you walk into the interview, that mental imagery will carry through for you

yeh unfortunately they've all been skyp interviews

user41796

5:54 PM

@maple_shaft - you shouldn't be playing online games in your bedroom then. ;-)

which i find even more uncomfortable to be honest

user41796

any sort of phone interview is rough, but it's a necessary element in the screening process

user41796

best thing you can do is acknowledge the difficulties it creates

I'm lucky; both my parents worked in software shops so I grew up spending lots of time in them, the office environment has always been very comforting to me because of that. All offices are the same so I'm always nervous before itnerviews until I get into the office and realize it's just like every one of them

user41796

be sure to repeat back to the interviewer what you thought you heard them ask. And don't be afraid to point out when the connection is lagging

5:56 PM

I think I'd be screwed if I tried to interview in an office that was vastly different than any other office environment I was used to

the thing is i can argue with the best of them..algorithms, running time complexities, data structures..etc

but ask me to write a bit of code..and it's like..what the f am i looking at here

user41796

so is it the interview itself that causes you to choke?

exactly

its not my lack of understanding

user41796

practice is the solution to that as well

unfrotunately

5:57 PM

@StanR. write a lot of code the days leading up to the interview

user41796

especially beforehand so it's in recent memory

@maple_shaft here you go, under the gun art from asciiart.en.utf8art.com/arc/gun_6.html

_,､＿＿＿_＿＿＿___,,,､
｀y__////＿jニニニニﾆfi
〈_ﾌｿ￣ﾌ ,=-＿,,,,-┴─'
//o　/rて__/
,//三/ /￣"
〈｡ニ___/

@JimmyHoffa that was actually my downfall

user41796

ripping through project euler tasks is good for that

let me explain why

when i was asked a question, my brain was solving a different question all together

user55340

5:57 PM

@psr you might try editing that and tossing it into a fixed font...

my mind was filled with binary heap or dictionary...

etc..

the question was too simple for my own good

because i've been wtriting a ton of code for days before the interview

ton of complicated algorithms

@MichaelT - can you control the font here?

user41796

did you ask and clarify during the interview? :-)

when i was asked a simple one, i choked...

even when i clarified, my brain was like NO MUST SOLVE THIS PROBLEM THAT I THINK WANNA SOLVE

user41796

i start my whiteboard exercises with a variant of fizzbuzz

5:59 PM

easy

i can do fizzbuzz in like 100 different ways

user41796

you'd be surprised at the # of folk who have choked

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