The Whiteboard

user20683

12:56 AM

Oh dear G-d...Codecademy has a PHP section now...

Jimmy Hoffa

What better to teach people who just want to hack junk for >minimum wage

user20683

@JimmyHoffa true

Jimmy Hoffa

I need to write some f# or erlang tonight, something to wash my hands of the C# I've been plodding around in at the new job. I really wish people were less suspicious of what they don't understand

user20683

@JimmyHoffa if it makes you feel better there's a possibility I may have MUMPS in my future

psr

1:13 AM

@WorldEngineer - How did that happen (or might that happen)?

user20683

@psr there's a major healthcare company that's hiring

user20683

and I graduate soon

user20683

and I saw MUMPS mentioned on their site someplace

Jim G.

0

Q: when designing GUIs what are some factors

Could i get peoples opinion on What are some factors or best practices to keep in mind when designing GUI's?

user20683

@JimG. a^2 + b^2 =c ^2

psr

1:38 AM

Shoot, I was just going to ask "When not designing GUIs what are some factors".

Jimmy Hoffa

2:54 AM

@WorldEngineer awesome. You know where you want to go (location wise) when you graduate?

@psr No-GUI factor: not message pumps

psr

@WorldEngineer - EPIC

Jimmy Hoffa

3:10 AM

@psr EPIC n. def: my favorite language paradigm. Notable members: Borland TurboBrainF*** and lolcode++

psr

@JimmyHoffa - You don't have time for jokes - you need to help World Engineer by modifying a Haskel compiler to output MUMPS

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr even humans can't output MUMPS, what makes you think Haskell can?

Jimmy Hoffa

3:40 AM

some nice idiomatic MUMPS ROT13
s A="String" F i=1:1:$L(A) W $c($S($A($E(A,i))<91:$A($E(A,i))-52#26+65,1:$A($E(A,i))-84#26+97))

I'm pretty sure that was neither written by a human or Haskell, clearly some cyborg from the future (which probably runs LISP, just like everyone always predicted..)

psr

3:55 AM

@JimmyHoffa - Check my #1 tag on SO

(In my defense, check who is #1 in that tag)

Jimmy Hoffa

How do I see highest users per tag?

psr

search for [intersystems-cache] then click the top users link just above the top listed question is at least one way to do it.

Jimmy Hoffa

haha

tell me it's nothing like that gibberish I just pasted anymore

Do you actually write nonsense like that??

psr

4:11 AM

Well, that's not a bad effort if the goal is code golf.

The original built in functions all have one letter short hand that people actually use. But now some IDEs will flip them between long/short versions

Jimmy Hoffa

I can't believe there are still people programming MUMPS. Crazy.

psr

If you are lucky, someone might have written:

ROT13(String)
S Result=""
F I=1:1:$L(String) D
. S Char=$E(String,I,I)
. I $$IsUpper(Char) S Result=Result_$C(($A(Char)-52#26+65)) Q
. S Result=Result_$C($A(Char)-84#26+97)
Q Result
IsUpper(Char)
Q $A(Char)<91

Even better, they would use objects, which have been around over 10 years now. But the actual code inside the methods would use primitive functions that look pretty similar. Though it might use a while loop with brackets instead of indicating scope with leading periods.

If it is ANSI standard they would need to set the scope of the variables manually, with a line:

N Result,I,Char

If they forgot a variable, the scope would extend up until somebody actually did manually declare a new scope for that variable - or just be global.

Many MUMPS programmers deal with this issue by making everything global, and considering the resulting bugs the price of doing business.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:28 AM

The sad thing is there's undoubtedly more MUMPS code in production systems than Haskell

psr

By FAR. The Veteran's Administration medical system in the US is ANSI standard MUMPS. You can download most of it (available under the Freedom Of Information Act). Good luck with it.

Jimmy Hoffa

huh

interesting

psr

I think you covered it the first time with "sad"

Jimmy Hoffa

at my last job we communicated on medical details on this protocol called HL7 with the VA, they always had weird crap come up from the other side of the pipe, could have made a FOIA request for the code on the other side perhaps heh

psr

Though the VA system is well written in some ways, for what it is. It's like some sort of life form that survived from an earlier age and everyone thought it was extinct but there it is, living happily near an ocean vent, nearly unrelated to everything that has evolved since.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:34 AM

haha

psr

I'm (mostly) hoping they will at some point start paying a bajillion dollars an hour to maintain it. Though I'm not sure if I would take the gig anyway.

Jimmy Hoffa

What do you write anymore?

psr

Anyway, the more modern supersets of the ANSI standard are roughly like some weird form of Java 1.X

I do gigs in a few languages but sometimes I do MUMPS gigs. Almost always in the "modern" (scare quotes because language features are generally 10+ years behind state of the art) versions. So I'll often be adding functionality to an existing system or helping to wrap it, or migrate away from it (or, oddly, into it).

Jimmy Hoffa

How the hell did you get into MUMPS? Were you coding back in the 80's?

psr

Starting to code, yes. There are still new systems being written it though, somewhat surprisingly.

I started in MUMPS, but for career preservation purposes I made sure to get jobs where they had never heard of it (not that hard to do...)

I think if there were a Haskel to MUMPS compiler I might really put it into production though.

@JimmyHoffa - I think I could implement a decent LINQ to MUMPS (uh, what noun do I use here - when in doubt "engine"?). Which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist. It's kind of hard to judge if there is any market though, since the fact that there is a MUMPS market at all is kind of weird.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:53 AM

heh yeah, I think the last point is the key. very weird that it even exists.

@psr you have answered 1/3rd of intersystems-cache questions on all of SO, so to extrapolate that, there is a MUMPS market, of 3 people.

psr

Er, possibly being generous

Jimmy Hoffa

is mumps garbage collected?

psr

One fun thing about doing MUMPS - all those projects that you are supposed to theoretically do to teach yourself how they work, even though writing them is stupid because there are lots of libraries? Not in MUMPS they don't. So, Unit test framework, check, DI container, check, manual recursive descent parser, check, LL1 parser generator, check. In production.

Not in MUMPS they aren't.

Jimmy Hoffa

Huh?

psr

last sentence a correction.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:07 AM

ah

psr

The ANSI standard doesn't need garbage collection because everything is on the stack. However, stack frames are on a per variable basis and only created by explicit command. I kid you not.

Jimmy Hoffa

hah that is cool

psr

I assume "ha that is cool" doesn't refer to the MUMPS way of handling scope.

Jimmy Hoffa

err, the library thing

You actually got to write your own framework because there isn't already one, neat.

psr

For objects, yes, they are garbage collected. And the scope rules are more sane. Blocks have been added to the superset of the ANSI standard.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:09 AM

mumps doesn't have data types right?

psr

Another "I kid you not". In ANSI standard MUMPS "else" is implemented by a single global flag. If you call a subroutine it can change it. (There is a usable else in the same modern(ish) superset).

Jimmy Hoffa

heh yeah I saw that global variable thing that if/else works through

psr

ANSI standard does not, though internally it probably just has lots of automatic coercion rules. Objects sort of have a type system but variables are untyped, so, basically no data types.

Current versions of MUMPS also have database features (still not kidding), so there is a system to map to ODBC data types, SOAP calls, etc.

You can do weird shit like create a database table that is implemented in hand-coded MUMPS.

Not normally prudent, though.

You can write SQL queries and they compile into MUMPS (that looks much like your ROT13 example).

Jimmy Hoffa

I thought the point is that it is a database system?

psr

The original language predates relational databases though. (Remember the ocean vent thing?)

Jimmy Hoffa

5:17 AM

right I got that

psr

SQL support added later.

Jimmy Hoffa

haskell to mumps compiler.. such a weird idea when reading of mumps claims it was an imperative-to-the-extreme language heh

psr

So is assembly

Jimmy Hoffa

True, older haskell back-ends wrote to C

but if everything lives on the stack it might be doable with a tiny version of haskell. The data types part would be strange but if it doesn't have any data types, does it effectively act like dynamic typing?

psr

Probably, depending on exactly what you mean.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:22 AM

Do you even write routines much in it?

psr

I suppose any such compiler/interperater thing is basically torturing any maintenance programmer.

@JimmyHoffa Do I, does anyone, what?

Jimmy Hoffa

does MUMPS typically have lots of routines

parameters to which basically being untyped and can be given to any other routine for that matter

psr

Yes, it's usually organized around routines or objects. It does have untyped parameters (though with objects you can have a typed function signature). No higher order functions as such - command pattern if you have objects. Otherwise eval.

all right, I'm out.

Jimmy Hoffa

Now I can claim to have had an actual conversation with someone who does MUMPS. Weird. Careful around the ocean vent @psr, you could hurt yourself. Later.

gnat

9:47 AM

typical low effort answer that doesn't add anything beyond of what was stated in prior one, why bother posting these?

2

A: Is imposing the same code format for all developers a good idea?

I do believe indeed that a format standard helps. It helps the merging problems but also makes it easier for other developers to find their way in the code.

how I wish there would be a way to flag stuff like that

Yannis Rizos

10:24 AM

@gnat A downvote and a friendly comment is the better approach for forum type answers from new users. Most of the times they are just treating the site as yet another forum, and will expand the answer when they realize that we have a certain set of expectations from answers.

And this is a bit of a problem with the system, the correct approach when you agree with an earlier answer is to upvote it, but 1 rep users can't upvote yet, and they also can't even comment. Which only leaves them with one option, to post an answer.

Yannis Rizos

in 2013 Stack Overflow Moderator Election on Stack Overflow Chat, 6 hours ago, by Lord Torgamus

gnat

10:42 AM

@YannisRizos agree; I guess my frustration mostly came from feeling unable to spell an appropriate comment in this case

per my forums recollection, even there such a blatant repetition would be considered bad

user55340

2:25 PM

The "P.SE is a forum" misconception appears to be fairly prevalent, even amongst experienced SO users.

Shog9

3:21 PM

> Programmers.se has a more open topic area to support some of the “whiteboardy” conceptual questions that are closer to discussions

lotta that hanging around

Yannis Rizos

@Shog9 Classic Jeff, I can never tell if he's serious or if he's trolling.

gnat

@MichaelT sure, why wouldn't they, when our most visible questions look like forums discussions (Carthage delenda est) - and there seem to be no way to stop this madness caused by a bug in hotness formula. Programmers are probably the site that suffers most from this; concrete coding questions at SO give better chances to remove irrelevant garbage posts...

...given how things work now I can predict same issue to get to Workplace; they are currently capable to handle it due to low amount of questions, but the day they'll get from 5 q/day to something like 20-30, they will find out that fixing things after collider gone mad turns into 24x7 stormwatch...

...Wonder why Mad Scientist seems to be obsessed with similar matters at MSO, collecting data for almost 2 years now; maybe some of his top sites, Arqade or Sceptics, suffer too

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos selectors api? News to me, is this some HTML5 mumbo jumbo?

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Yes.

Jimmy Hoffa

Does it use jquery's selector syntax?

Yannis Rizos

3:34 PM

@JimmyHoffa No. w3.org/TR/selectors-api

Jimmy Hoffa

Worse syntax I presume?

Ah looks rather similar

Yannis Rizos

Hm, now that I think about it, it's pretty much the same. There used to be a couple of differences in an early draft, but they were either removed or jQuery caught up.

gnat

just look at this, hotness score 40 at an average question, collider sure gone mad after seeing 8/9 answers (most of which are just blah blah - sorry that's not a reason to flag for deletion)...

7

Q: Is imposing the same code format for all developers a good idea?

We are considering to impose a single standard code format in our project (auto format with save actions in Eclipse). The reason is that currently there is a big difference in the code formats used by several (>10) developers which makes it harder for one developer to work on the code of another ...

java eclipse code-formatting

Jimmy Hoffa

Thinking on it, it's actually a really great idea. It will allow browsers to implement the DOM seek natively for far better performance than what jQuery can provide

gnat

and the score got down to 33 in a minute after I did a trial DV of the question (it was just a test, I returned it back since question is OK) "Yet another indication of issues with current formula is how easy it is to manipulate hotness score."...

Yannis Rizos

3:41 PM

@JimmyHoffa The performance gain is indeed significant. But jQuery supports the API since 1.2.7, so if you are using a current version and your browser supports the API, you won't notice any performance difference

gnat

and it's at 52 now, only with my reverted DV and one additional upvote

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat I don't understand what makes that not a good question? I think it's a good question, brimming with me-too answers....but that can't be helped..

gnat

@JimmyHoffa it's a good question; just answers are bad, and collider brings more and more of these with unnatural hotness score. There are 2-3 good answers there, and twice of that amount blah-blah... and there are already two answers deleted, one of which is, believe it or not, "Yes!" and another is a repetition of earlier answer...

...collider counts all that crap as good answers

...ignoring the evidence obtained through votes

business as usual

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat least it's not...super-collider... what hotness score would it have then? Whoa.

user55340

4:01 PM

Wow, that looked like some impressive trimming on the "How do I recognize..." question.

gnat

@maple_shaft was that "trimming" intentional or a side effect of rejected migration? I ask because it's hard to believe one can evaluate about 15 answers that fast...

41

Q: How to recognize a good programmer?

Our company is looking for new programmers. And here comes the problem - there are many developers who look really great at the interview, seem to know the technology you need and have a good job background, but after two moths of work, you find out that they are not able to work in a team, writi...

interview recruiting

user55340

I'm confused... " I have never implemented an algorithm before"

user55340

0

Q: How to effectively implement an algorithm

We've recently worked with a mathematician to build us an algorithm. The algorithm will look at click data and will continuously update data associated with the user, the content, and the content's category and then pair the user with relevant content. With that said, I have never implemented...

algorithms architecture

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Side effect, the answers went back where they came from.

gnat

@YannisRizos fair enough... except that original SO link appears to be 10K-only, stackoverflow.com/questions/304769/… - is that their headache or ours?

Yannis Rizos

4:17 PM

@gnat Don't worry about it, I brought the answers back.

...and manually deleted the one liners.

user55340

@YannisRizos is there an "Arch-necromancer" badge for that?

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Yes there is, it looks like this: ♦

;P

gnat

@YannisRizos well done, thank you (I am not fond of historical significance but respect it, for fairness reasons). While I have your attention, what were the reasons to keep that one in?

43

A: How to recognize a good programmer?

I'm about 6', 185 lbs., shaved head and a goatee. I'm wearing Chuck Taylors and a blue t-shirt over a white thermal. Please down-vote me gently - I did answer the question. :)

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I guess some people never learned what "algorithm" means. I'm reminded of the long drawn out history of the word at the beginning of TAoCP and how ironic it would be to post that verbatim to that Q

user55340

@gnat Amusingly, it appears to only have two downvotes.

Yannis Rizos

4:23 PM

@gnat Two reasons: 1) I'm also about 6' with a goatee and 2) I didn't see it.

gnat

@YannisRizos the 1st is a definite justification for it to stay... oops it looks like you went to the 2nd (not that I object:)

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Well, it was originally posted in `08, SO was a far more relaxed place back then.

gnat

@YannisRizos I think it also matters that SO was much less crowded back then. This stuff doesn't scale...

6

A: How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?

I think that if I could ask a question to a group of skilled programmers sitting around a table at lunch, and get interesting, valuable answers, then I don't care whether the question or the answers are 'subjective', I think that question should equally well be fair game for Stack Overflow... ...

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Yes, that was the main reason it was more relaxed.

user55340

I suspect that is part of the current growing pains... growing being a key word.

gnat

4:29 PM

@YannisRizos what worked well in 2008, will turn into drinking from a firehose in 2012...

user55340

@gnat 2012? That is so last year...

2

gnat

4:54 PM

@MichaelT :) well it's even older than 2012. Issues related to firehose effect have been reported at MSO since "Jul 20 '11", go figure

maple_shaft

List<SelectItem> retVal = new ArrayList<SelectItem>();
final String valueTemplate = "securityquestions.{0}.value";
final String labelTemplate = "securityquestions.{0}.label";
int counter = 0;
String valueKey;
String labelKey;
String value;
String label;
while ( (  (value = getValue(valueKey = MessageFormat.format(valueTemplate, ("" + ++counter)))) != null) &&
        (  (label = getValue(labelKey = MessageFormat.format(labelTemplate, ("" + ++counter)))) != null) )
    retVal.add(new SelectItem(value, label));

dat while loop

Honest opinions... how does this code make you feel?

user55340

Kind of dirty. The complex while loop condition... preincrements in the while loop condition for the same value...

gnat

@maple_shaft getValue(valueKey.. blah blah asks (no cries!) _please oh please extract me into separate method

maple_shaft

@gnat Hmmm... I wrote this code just now... and for some reason, I know it is difficult to read, and I know I should extract this into a seperate method...

user55340

Assignments in the parameters for a method in a while loop...

maple_shaft

5:06 PM

but I fell in love with this code for some reason? Anybody have that happen to them before?

Fall in love with overly complex difficult to read code just because of how complex it is?

gnat

valueTemplate and labelTemplate usage within while also whispers, along with extraction of said method, would you be so kind to extract us into a dedicated object...

user55340

I'm a perl programmer at heart... its part of the description of the language that you must occasionally fall in love with icky things.

maple_shaft

@MichaelT It does seem awful Perly

gnat

@maple_shaft it's not terribly difficult to read; the fact that I can see refactoring almost immediately speaks in favor of this code (I am usually much much slower)

user55340

Is that Java or C#? or C++?

maple_shaft

5:08 PM

I should ask this on Programmers and then close it as NC

@MichaelT Java

The String and ArrayList classes should give it away

gnat

@MichaelT final modifier => Java

user55340

Consider
MessageFormat.format(valueTemplate, Integer.toString(++counter))
instead of doing that ""+int format.

maple_shaft

Yes... make it even longer... brilliant! ;-)

user55340

I'm drain bead today after doing some sql + excel work and getting frustrated at people (team leads and managers) skipping the process they set up.

maple_shaft

I like how beautiful the + ++ looks though

gnat

5:10 PM

@maple_shaft nope: C# has System.Collections.ArrayList and System.String

user55340

There is that, but it takes out some unnecessary strings that float around.

maple_shaft

its almost indescernible for those with bad kearning recognition

@gnat my bad... its been over a year since I have touched C#

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft I'd use a kvp type (or just string[2] instead of a label and value string

user55340

I don't think that you need the valueKey at all...
valueKey = MessageFormat.format

gnat

@maple_shaft it's been a few weeks since I began using it :)

Jimmy Hoffa

5:12 PM

not sure what java's kvp type is (C# just has KeyValuepair<T,U>)

@gnat new job?

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa Map.Entry<T, U>

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat don't use ArrayList

(unless it's old C#)

..really old

gnat

@JimmyHoffa nope just new project. Got an offer I could not refuse :)

maple_shaft

@gnat You live in Germany correct?

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat cool. System.Collections.Generic, stick with those heh the old ArrayList is nonsense

gnat

5:14 PM

@JimmyHoffa I didn't: just typed it and VS has shown it to me, pretty much like IDEA on good old Java days (things don't change much)

@maple_shaft nope just going through German proxy

maple_shaft

@gnat oh that explains that

is that Ukranian in your profile?

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat first time in VS seriously, how do you like the monster that tries to write all your code for you?

gnat

@JimmyHoffa I don't know what to stick with yet, but i don't worry; there are a couple good babysitters around to keep me from making wrong first steps :)

@maple_shaft nope, I just flipped font: revfad.com/flip.html

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm always curious what new people think of Visual Studio, it's such a behemoth compared to most other IDEs out there, I've been in it since '00 so I can't look at it with fresh eyes heh

gnat

@JimmyHoffa not the first time, but it's now much much much smarter than my prior encounter... and, incidentally close enough to Intellij to keep me feel comfortable. As for it being the monster I heard about this but upgraded PC did not let me feel this: builds and unit tests take few seconds to run, what monster? :)

maple_shaft

5:20 PM

@JimmyHoffa Honestly... I think VS is pretty nice... but I don't necessarily like how builds are fundamentally tied to it

Eclipse however does most of the same things

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Alas, I'm a Java/Perl/MiscScripting person so I've never touched VS... my choice IDEs are Eclipse (trying IntellaJ) and bbedit/vim.

maple_shaft

it comes prebundled with the most awesome plugins so I have just about as much productivit

@MIchaelT IntelliJ is awesome

user55340

I bought it when it was on sale recently, but haven't used it for anything yet... I might work on it with the Idle Game I'm thinking about in my idle time.

maple_shaft

@MichaelT How much did you spend if you don't mind my asking?

Jimmy Hoffa

interesting, I'd always heard Eclipse and IntelliJ were lagging behind VS as far as amount of features, but I suppose that's just due to the environments I've been in. Either way, having recently fallen in love with emacs I find myself uncertain whether the huge ultra-ide approach vs. the simple-extendable ide approach is better.

user55340

5:23 PM

I think it was on sale for $20...

user55340

it was the end of the world sale.

user55340

blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2012/12/20/…

user55340

75% off on $200, ok, a bit more than $20... it was $50.

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft and builds are actually not tied to visual studio at all, the build framework comes with .NET as the msbuild executable in the .NET framework folder, project files are msbuild scripts

visual studio just executes msbuild

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa I don't really think IntelliJ is missing anything important, even the community edition (free) is pretty full. As for Eclipse... Well... Eclipse has every feature you can imagine (but good luck making it work).

Thomas Owens

5:26 PM

@YannisRizos Eclipse works really well. At least, the last two versions do.

Yannis Rizos

@ThomasOwens For Java, perhaps.

user55340

And I even was told of the sale in here back then...

maple_shaft

@YannisRizos I will say that it gets annoying when Eclipse mysteriously stops publishing changes to the integrated server environments

user55340

Dec 20 '12 at 15:22, by Brant

Everything JetBrains is 75% off today! It's like a Steam sale -- Now I own tons of IDEs I'll never use.

Thomas Owens

I use it for C.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:27 PM

@YannisRizos I just meant, I'm curious about the opinions of people coming from text editor IDEs like vim/emacs/sublimetext/etc to VS because I've recently come to wonder myself if the ultra-ide approach is the right one

Yannis Rizos

@ThomasOwens Never used it for C.

maple_shaft

I knew a developer who only worked in emacs and he was awful

Jimmy Hoffa

that's because he only wrote lisp and who writes lisp?? ;)

Thomas Owens

The problem is doing C development on Windows.

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft in what language? I've heard it's pretty well used in python

user55340

5:29 PM

I've known two emacs people... one was a lisper who made emacs sing... the other was... not.

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa all languages, even C#

did builds through msbuild

Jimmy Hoffa

I suppose bad developers can come from any IDE heh

maple_shaft

he was an old grey beard progammer who was incapable of understanding things like Linq, closures, and generics

user55340

Back in the days of 8 megs being a lot of memory on a unix system, he would fire up emacs (and get paranoid about other processes running that might make emacs match its name of "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping"... he would kill those processes. So someone did a nice forkbomb (fork 1k copies, nice self to +19, sleep(0), exit) of the system that freaked him out...

Jimmy Hoffa

ironically closures and generics predate lot of things

user55340

5:31 PM

so he tried to kill them all. "# ps -ef | grep macs | cut -f1 | xargs kill -9" -- killed his emacs too. We were laughing so hard...

maple_shaft

lol

user55340

Later we did it with his name (he killed all of his own processes) and then later did it as the name "et". Rebooted the system (hint: "/etc/initd")

Jimmy Hoffa

lol, that's just weird

that he would do that to begin with

user55340

These were student used, and administered systems... we all were quite immature. Things like "hey, there's a guy running a mud server here... kill it." was common.

maple_shaft

I have seen a developer freak out when they realized they were connected to the production system and drop the battery from his laptop

such an idiot

Yannis Rizos

5:34 PM

@maple_shaft "I have seen a developer freak out" sounds like the start of a story about moderating Programmers...

gnat

@JimmyHoffa MSBuild yes! I remember that, part of my recent "newcomer exercises" included out-of-IDE builds with it; didn't feel much different from ant

user55340

Btw, fun bug for people who like numbers to line up...

user55340

int foo = 001;
int bar = 010;
int qux = 100;

maple_shaft

@gnat You will find that everything in .NET is like a ripoff of something Java has already done... except better quality

except for maybe ASP.NET

gnat

@maple_shaft well I am not yet qualified to judge. One thing I couldn't miss when studying Richter is that in early times MS had rather mediocre compilers (compared to eg Sun) so they kind of implanted a lot of stuff into framework to help it... now that their compilers are decent, this feels... somewhat odd

maple_shaft

5:39 PM

@gnat What is odd about it? They stood on the shoulder of giants and put out what I feel is a superior product suite

gnat

@maple_shaft maybe; as I said I am not yet there to judge

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat With the functional portions I think .NET really catapulted ahead of Java, there has been catchup now but still not complete from what I've heard. (though I can't judge, I don't even know Java)

Have you touched lambdas/linq yet?

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa Java isn't even close as far as functionality. This is why I plan on my next project being Scala, no matter how painful and awkward that might be at first

I can utilize Java libraries that I know and love

user55340

Java had a period of perceived stagnation after 1.5 for awhile... It was during this time alternate jvm languages got quite a bit of attention.

gnat

@JimmyHoffa not yet... I think :) baby steps, little by little, most stuff like in Java

Jimmy Hoffa

5:47 PM

baby steps nothing, anytime you have a collection of sorts you want to fiddle with don't type foreach, just go ask one of your baby sitters how to LINQily do it. LINQ is the good habit approach to things you would otherwise be practicing bad habits with

user55340

Of note, in Java... a someString.replaceAll("pattern","replacement") inside a loop is... far less than optimal. string.replaceAll() hides a Pattern.compile in it that isn't cached.

user55340

while (comment.indexOf("  ") != -1)
{
	comment = comment.replaceAll("  ", " ");
}

gnat

@JimmyHoffa good to know that, thanks. I can recognize when I am using foreach => will know when to ask them for guidance

gnat

6:25 PM

I find it kind of unfair to waste DV on an answer like that, where author doesn't even try to "play by rules", doesn't even attempt to back up their claim...

-2

A: When not to use ORM and prefer stored procedures?

Disagree. ORM query only simpler if you know ORM better than you know SQL. ORM results in far more code, far more-difficult to maintain IMO. The only people who benefit from ORM are the shareholders of the company selling the ORM (e.g. Microsoft).

"The only people who benefit from ORM are the shareholders... blah blah" not just idea of benefits lacks an explanation, but even simple stuff like only shareholders - why not company management? why not company employees / programmers? I typically feel OK seeing wrong stuff not deleted but "just downvoted" but this one is different; it's worse than wrong... it's void, not useful at all, just a broken window "why can't I post crap X when crap Y is there"

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Yet, someone upvoted it. <sigh>

maple_shaft

@gnat > flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer

> flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer

gnat

@YannisRizos upvote doesn't surprise me: that's typical "gitisfantastice", exactly following well known recipe for successful populist garbage - would it be in hot question, it would be even at positive score

@maple_shaft sure no problem I am not insisting on this being a flaggable offence

Yannis Rizos

@maple_shaft It's not really an answer though, is it? I've already declined a flag on it, but it was an "offensive" flag, not a "not an answer" one.

maple_shaft

@gnat We should have a TDD code dojo using NoSQL databases for everything... and check all of our code into Git

because it is the Right Way

gnat

6:38 PM

@YannisRizos formally, an answer "when not to use ORM" => answer is in this case, "never", it is just not backed up

unless there was a protection notice on the question... but there isn't

maple_shaft

I find Git fanbois offensive so I can understand that

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Yeah, I'm on the fence on this one.

I don't care, as long as it's negatively scored.

maple_shaft

> Election closes in 1 hour.

Very shortly our sadistic group of cruelty will have a new initiate

I will no longer be the freshman

hahaha

user55340

And I'll go flag a few dozen comments for you to let the new guy deal with.

Yannis Rizos

Meta Stack Overflow gets the best questions.

gnat

6:42 PM

@YannisRizos the way I see it, violation of community quality control definitely applies, but that's hardly a flaggable case...

> [...] real questions have answers, not items or ideas or *opinions*.

maple_shaft

@MichaelT Thats nothing... we will let him respond to the next "WHY DID YOU EVIL NAZI MODS CLOSE MY QUESTION THAT WAS AN UNQUESTIONABLE BEACON OF TRUTH AND ALL HOLINESS!"

@WorldEngineer Good luck

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Yeah, but I think as long as opinion heavy answers are negatively scored, it's a lot better to keep them than to delete them. As a warning.

maple_shaft

you were my #1 vote

gnat

@maple_shaft you better let him decline one of my flags (flogs) then see what happens

user20683

@maple_shaft I won't know till after my Automata Midterm but thanks for the support

maple_shaft

6:45 PM

@gnat Be nice

gnat

@maple_shaft ...Everyone loves to quote from the FAQ’s etiquette section, particularly the first “be nice” bit. But it’s the last section that has all the action items: Be honest. Above all, be honest...

Blog - Stack Exchange: Stack Exchange is not a forum: the role of “niceness” on a Q&A site

Shog9 on August 08, 2012

It’s been a few weeks now since Joel kicked off our “summer of love”. There’ve been some excellent discussions in the blog comments and on Meta, and we’ve tried to present some hard data on how objectively “nice” we are. But it’s high time to talk about what place “niceness” really has on Stack Exchange. And to do that, we need to start by talking about you:

You, sir, are a jackass.

And that’s ok.

Stack Overflow wasn’t created to be some utopian ideal of peace and love. When Jeff & Joel set out to create this system, they knew full well the sort of problems that face online commun …

am I a jackass? :)

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Yes, you are a programmer.

user20683

@gnat tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadpanSnarker

maple_shaft

I wouldn't say programmers are necessarily jackasses but they are most certainly all rented mules

user55340

7:10 PM

Politeness is the lubricant of the gears of society. That said, sometimes you still need to get a hammer out and give a particular gear a good whack to get it back into place.

2

maple_shaft

interesting analogy

gnat

@WorldEngineer countdown ticking, how does it feel?

user20683

@gnat anxiety over midterm overwhelming any possible anxiety over the election

user20683

class is at 2:50

user20683

so 30 minutes

gnat

7:14 PM

@WorldEngineer think of what you are going to drink when it's over, whatever it will be :)

maple_shaft

@WorldEngineer OMG! A MIDTERM!! YOU ARE SCREWED!!!

WUT R U GOIN TO DO?!!!

user20683

@maple_shaft have better grammar than you

user20683

:P

maple_shaft

am I helping?

user20683

@maple_shaft I'll get back to you on that

user20683

7:37 PM

alright, time to do this thing

Yannis Rizos

8:02 PM

Congrats @WorldEngineer!

2

Welcome to team diamond.

user41796

too bad he's stuck in a mid-term right now....

psr

WorldEngineer is too unavailable. We need a new mod.

Yannis Rizos

My thoughts exactly, 5 minutes as a mod and he's already slacking off.

user41796

ooooooh, and let the comment flagging begin!!!! See ya "old-hat" mods in a couple of weeks....

user41796

FWIW, looks like participation rates in the election went way up

Yannis Rizos

8:11 PM

@GlenH7 Not yet, World Engineer hasn't accepted the mod agreement yet, so he can't access the mod tools.

user41796

last time, it was ~30% carry through to the election page from those visiting the site. This time, it's ~60%

user41796

looks like voting percentage doubled this time around too

user55340

@maple_shaft I was merely paraphrasing and adding my own interpretation to that of Lazarus Long...

user55340

> Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.

Stack Exchange

8:26 PM

3

Q: 2013 Community Moderator Election Results

Programmers' third moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderator is: He'll be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank him for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice as he learns the ropes! For details on how the voting played o...

discussion featured election

Jimmy Hoffa

weird how close mike brown and dynamic were

user55340

Is there any data that can be presented on "How many people voted for only WorldEngineer"? and how many voted for "all three"?

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT You can download the election data from the election page

user55340

Actually, I think I can figure that out. If everyone voted for all three, then all the votes counts would be the same. (I wonder how an instant runoff handles that)... and than Yannis says "here's the data..."

user55340

"1 1 2 3 0" -- I believe that this translates to "election 1, voted for 1, 2, 3, some extra data"?

user55340

8:36 PM

(it does give me close to the results that I was expecting having seen the 'exhausted' set at 20 - I count 18 of the form '1 3 0 0 0')

maple_shaft

@MichaelT The elections are kind of weird... basically they count first choices to eliminate the lowest ranking set, then repeat this until one remains only using second and third choices

user55340

Actually, gives me the expacted result when I look at '1 3 0 0 0', and '1 0 3 0 0' and '1 0 0 3 0'

maple_shaft

wait... that didn't make any sense... I can't haz think.. my brain haz the dumbz

user55340

@maple_shaft Which doesn't?

user55340

And its the same type of format that is used for the Hugo award...

maple_shaft

8:39 PM

my explanation doesn't make sense... I must not understand it

Yannis Rizos

8

Q: How does Single Transferable Vote work?

I've heard that some elections use single transferable vote. What is this and how does it work? How does it differ from a standard majority vote election?

voting-systems electoral

user55340

If no canidate meets the threshold, then the lowest counted canidate is elimiated and the votes that were cast for them are then assigned to their next highest prefrence.

user55340

There were 20 people who only voted for Mike Brown - those became the exhausted votes on the second round.

Thomas Owens

Congratulations to our new moderator, @WorldEngineer.

I'd also like to announce that myself, @Yannis, and @maple_shaft will be taking the next month off from moderation duties (not really...I don't think...unless they all want to...maybe we should?).

2

user55340

Time to flag all the comments!

Yannis Rizos

8:41 PM

@MichaelT 1 1 2 3 0 == 1 voter - candidate 1:1st choice - candidate 2:2nd choice - - candidate 3:3rd choice - EOL

The first column (1 voter) is obsolete, it's only there for compatibility reasons (some versions of the .blt format group the votes, so that first number changes)

user55340

There were 40 people who only voted for WorldEngineer.

user55340

@YannisRizos Might it have been used in cases where votes are weighted?

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Hm?

maple_shaft

@MikeBrown @Dynamic You guys gave it a good run! Better luck next time :)

user55340

And 748 voted for all three.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:48 PM

I presumed I was supposed to vote for all 3

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa You didn't have to.

I did, in order of my preference.

Jimmy Hoffa

same, but it sounds like I wasted my vote?

user55340

If everyone voted for all three in a instant runoff on a set of 3, I think things might break.

user55340

Might be a fun question to ask over at Politics...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa its a vote, a vote for "none of the remaining"

Jimmy Hoffa

8:50 PM

I thought I was only casting one vote, but if who I voted for didn't win, then my vote would be instead given to the next person down

but instead I voted for all 3 of them

which is crap heh

user55340

In a instant run off of 3, with select 3... yea. It makes quite a bit more sense in an instant run off of 10 with a select 3.

Thomas Owens

Hot damn not using the network drive is brilliant. Damn ClearCase dynamic views residing on the slowest machine ever.

Admittedly, I'm going to have to resync up, but it's new development. I'll use a local version control and then sync up with ClearCase later.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Read the "Final vote" section on the bit about the Hugo Award which uses the same process.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - not crap necessarily, but not very beneficial in this case either. 2 votes would have been sufficient to express your intent. I want A, and if not A then B. And if not B, well then I quit and I'm taking all my toys with me.

user55340

Casting all three votes say "I want A, but if not A then B, and if not B, then C is ok too."

user55340

8:56 PM

There were 52 people who only voted for two of the three.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT no, casting all 3 is saying "I like all 3 of them", the order you chose them in is irellevant

if I used a reverse order, the vote tally would be the same

it shouldn't have called it first 2nd and 3rd choice if the order was irellevant

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa No, the order isn't irrelevant. 2nd & 3rd choices aren't always counted

Jimmy Hoffa

oh

good then

Yannis Rizos

19 mins ago, by Yannis Rizos

8

Q: How does Single Transferable Vote work?

I've heard that some elections use single transferable vote. What is this and how does it work? How does it differ from a standard majority vote election?

voting-systems electoral

> Your vote is first allocated to your first preference but if that doesn't meet the threshold for the next round is then allocated to your next-highest preference that is still in the run.

Jimmy Hoffa

ok then it is how I thought it worked

nevermind, @MichaelT and @GlenH7 were just confusing me

I think I flagged like 10 comments, your turn @MichaelT

Yannis Rizos

9:01 PM

@JimmyHoffa Oh crap, you aren't lying

Dynamic

Congrats @WorldEngineer!

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - I excel at confusing others. You are more than welcome.

user55340

On all voting all of the above in an IRV...

user55340

Reversal symmetry criterion
The reversal symmetry criterion states that "if candidate A is the unique winner, and each voter's individual preferences are inverted, then A must not be elected". IRV does not meet this criterion: it is possible to construct an election where reversing the order of every ballot paper does not alter the final winner.[35] However, this is essentially an academic exercise.

user55340

9:22 PM

Looking at the chart and the data, vote order does matter. Its not "all votes are cast for everyone" - it is "everyone's highest vote is cast for one person" to start with.

user55340

Hmm... that question is gone...

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Closure rejected the migration, which automatically deleted all answers (as they were all posted on SO before the migration). There wasn't much value in keeping just the question here (not that there was much value in the answers anyway).

gnat

9:39 PM

note to new mod: please ignore my most recent flag, I think I figured how to handle the issue without mod intervention... :)

quite a pity that opinion expressed in this answer isn't backed up neither by references nor by experience. As a result, it will be useless for a reader who may stumble upon an "inverse" claim like stored procedures benefit only DB vendors. Makes one realize why guidance in Real Questions Have Answers states: "real questions have answers, not items or ideas or opinions..." — gnat 12 mins ago

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