The Whiteboard

Jimmy Hoffa

12:10 AM

@Weston.h It helps that Dijkstra was a genius prophet of the first degree

user20683

@JimmyHoffa This is true, he was also kind of a pain in the ass.

Jimmy Hoffa

How so? He demanded we do everything right?

user20683

not so much that as the way he demanded t

user20683

*it

Jimmy Hoffa

You gotta realize he was shaking his fist at management, not at the rest of us

user20683

12:12 AM

in any case, I had this idea for a thing: take that validator, do a "add new customer example with a name and so on and then have various validators

user20683

for credit cards and so forth and then write each record to a database

user20683

then have a short query setup

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah as a code example, yeah that would be great

tiny self contained app showing lots of different stuff

user20683

@JimmyHoffa dead simple to do even in JAva

user20683

*Java

user20683

12:15 AM

if I wanted to be really crazy, I'd do an OCR input reader

user20683

so that I could "scan" credit cards

user20683

do a Go-Fish app

Jimmy Hoffa

Heh, write the Luhn and get it right first.

user20683

simple card game and easy AI

user20683

aye

user20683

12:16 AM

@JimmyHoffa yeah, input is easy, getting the validation of the input right is hard.

Jimmy Hoffa

The luhn's not that hard, but it's a little more involved than fizzbuzz

user20683

aye

Jimmy Hoffa

There's a simple approach that let's you drop a couple steps I realized when I deduced out exactly what the algorithm was doing

user20683

I figured as much

Jimmy Hoffa

I read the Luhn algorithm in a variety of places it's explained, it always had steps not needed

Oh and the linke I gave you turned out to have a step wrong; it explains it correctly in words and then it shows step by step incorrectly or at least I misconstrued the way it was written; sounded like you do the modulus at the end and get the last number, but you add the last number to modulus 10 and get 0

user20683

12:23 AM

huh

Jimmy Hoffa

instead of the sum%10 == last digit, it's (the sum + last digit) mod 10 == 0

the way it shows it on that page looks like it's sum % 10 == last digit which happens to be true because the last digit is 5, and the sum + 5 % 10 == 0 because 5 is the midpoint

user20683

yeah

user20683

I also figure do a small website for like a restaurant or something

user20683

use Wikimedia for the pictures since there's tons of good food pictures

user20683

maybe do like a chinese ale house or something

Jimmy Hoffa

12:56 AM

@Weston.h Just remember, Kirin is japanese

user20683

@JimmyHoffa aye

user20683

Japanese Ale House might actually work better

Jimmy Hoffa

Woks on fire with sapporo pouring into them

user20683

@JimmyHoffa more like this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryokan_(Japanese_inn)

user20683

Japanese Inn food with beer attached

user20683

1:01 AM

kind of equivalent in atmosphere to a pub

user20683

one dish involves giving the dinner thinly cut strips of beef to cook however they like in a hot pot

Jimmy Hoffa

2:04 AM

@Weston.h But they don't tell you it's thinly sliced strips of beef (tendon) mmm

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Were I a beef eating person, I'd probably enjoy it

Jimmy Hoffa

@Weston.h Unlikely, I know only one other person who eats the tendon. It's yummy I swear, the texture just grosses people out. But then I eat tripe too, I really don't even count as an omnivore.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa you're just old world in your sensibilities.

user20683

I bet you'd like fried marrow too

Jimmy Hoffa

That just sounds weird. I'd imagine it having that funky iron flavor like liver or bad lamb

Organs I can do without

But I do like cigars and scotch, the old world definitely got some things right.

iCanLearn

9:38 AM

What exactly is the difference between flagging, downvoting and casting a close vote? Only users with > 3000 reputation can vote to close, which means that, for most of us, it's not an option. So what can I do with, for example, this question: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/36853/… ?

I thought I should flag it for being too localised (applies only to the US), but I couldn't find that reason in the "flagging path".

I guess I could flag that particular question as "asking for resources", but should I? I'm using this opportunity to ask a broader question because these things are still not 100% clear to me.

thorsten müller

11:08 AM

@iCanLearn flagging: send a notice to a moderator who than will take the steps necessary.

downvoting: just that, downvotes so the question may get less attention or the user who asked is reminded that his question is of low quality (and he can maybe enhance it).

casting a close vote: once the question has five close votes it is put on hold (so this can go very fast and often does).

As long as you have not enough exp to close vote you can only flag bad questions if you find them. The mods will then look what has to happen. If your close reason isn't listed then use the text field.

In this case "asking for off-site resources" would fit. But I think if you flag them it's not that big a problem what exactly the reason is, since whoever looks for it can still decide.

user41796

12:13 PM

@iCanLearn - good question. @thorstenmüller covered those points really well. The question is now closed, but flagging would have been the right thing. You may end up having to flag with a custom reason since they've changed up the close reasons a few months back. It's arguable about the "too localized" aspect, but it's definitely a resource request which is why it was closed.

gnat

1:13 PM

@iCanLearn flags to close question put it into close votes queue for review of users having CV privileges...

6

A: Was this flag lost somehow?

No, it's not technically lost, but flags to close a question are no longer shown in the moderator only queue. Thus, it needs others that have closing privileges to act on it. Your flags were acted upon faster in the past because the diamond moderators serviced them in turn, but they should only b...

as for Too Localized close reason, its recent removal is known to cause certain issues. As far as I can tell SE team is working on how to handle these...

31

Q: Responding to your "too localized" concerns

As part of our closing overhaul, we've moved, reorganized, and renamed a number of close reasons, including too localized. While that change was informed both by widespread misuse of the reason and numerous meta posts from you, many of you have also indicated concerns about its new home in the o...

user55340

2:23 PM

getting poked on linked in recently, I looked at the blogish posts on there and saw Don’t Rely On Your Friends For Advice -- linkedin.com/influencers/… which compares the information seeking process for younger and older people.

user55340

> People in their 40s or older often seek the help of experts when they face a difficult decision. In most cases, they source the experts from friends’ recommendations. In contrast, my friends and students in their 20s and 30s seem not to value expertise much at all. When they face big decisions, they poll their friends.

user55340

This may be part of the reason behind why we get so many poll and recommendation questions.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT That's interestingly bad

iCanLearn

2:41 PM

Thanks everyone for the information about flagging, things seem much clearer to me now.

user41796

I won QGITW: programmers.stackexchange.com/a/208932/53019

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 You tempt my ire

user41796

@JimmyHoffa fine, fine. QGITW and it's the better answer. Is that less offensive? And you gotta give me props for leading with "d is for ..."

user55340

3:10 PM

o/` D is for Degree, its good enough for me o/` (sung on not getting an F in a required class for graduation)

user55340

3:27 PM

Spammer is back.

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/208942/…

Jimmy Hoffa

Damn, missed my flag chance

user55340

(and gone)

Thomas Owens

I got it.

He's affecting multiple sites.

Or they, perhaps.

Jimmy Hoffa

The sports broadcasting thing?

user55340

3:28 PM

Being completely gone, I can't go and hit the other site spam flags either...

user55340

Yep.

Jimmy Hoffa

That is just weird

Thomas Owens

Multiple accounts are being nuked every day for this very same spam.

user55340

When I see that spam, I typically look at what other sites he's on and try to help them there with the spam flags...

Jimmy Hoffa

seriously, don't they know SE is absolutely the wrong place to find good penetration for their spam? They can't hardly be getting any clicks from anywhere on SE

Thomas Owens

3:30 PM

Personally, I suspect it's a paid service to find text boxes and dump crap into them.

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm sure it is

but SE is just a dumb place to do that

they're doing a crap job for their clients

@RobertHarvey not a fan of SOA? Really?? Surely you've worked on huge monoliths before with no vertical segmentation so the horizontal layers (ui/bl/dal) became amorphous blobs causing your features to all be intermixed and jumbled together inseperably

gnat

69

Q: Recent Mass Football Spam

Is something wrong with StackOverflow's spam filter? Recently there have been huge numbers of spam topics related to football streaming. They have all been spam flagged and deleted but there are more getting posted all the time, I just flagged another 6 or so a few minutes ago. This has been goin...

discussion spam

user55340

@GlenH7 Whee! Liquid immersion in an answer!

user41796

@MichaelT You have no idea how loudly I was laughing to myself as I was writing that one.

user41796

@Ampt - you are more than welcome to pimp out the rest of my answer, please. programmers.stackexchange.com/a/208947/53019 I'd love to see if we can get that answer to reversal badge status.

user41796

3:44 PM

@gnat why does that trigger the Bouncing Souls Ole! song in my head?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa btw, I used your multi line ?: approach just now.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Reads cleanly don't it? :)

user55340

When one of the responses is long, indeed.

user55340

    return lastUsed == null
            ? ""
            : (new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yy")).format(lastUsed);

Jimmy Hoffa

ah c'mon, that's the wrong dang use, doesn't java have the coalesce operator?

oh it's a return statement not an assignment

user55340

3:49 PM

coalesce would still be useful there...

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah java doesn't have a coalesce.. I occasionally grieve for Java devs

user55340

But yea, and it's not my first choice as this is filtering its way back out to a webpage... I want to make taglibs for this (localization of date format), but that requires redoing the build setup... and if I do that, I'm changing to gradle or maven from ant too... and there isn't time for that.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa There are lightweight service buses out there that should serve the purpose. Every description of SOA I have read sounds like Architecture Astronomy at its finest. But no, I've never worked on a project that large.

user55340

Now, that's a neat identicon hash...

user55340

user100087

1

development java

user55340

3:54 PM

Look at all the stars!

user41796

@RobertHarvey SOA was made by consultants for consultants. They're simply trying to maximize their potential revenue.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Pfleh!

@RobertHarvey Pfleh!

I agree about architecture astronomy, but really you've never worked on anything that large @RobertHarvey ??

In all these years

user41796

@JimmyHoffa SOA certainly has its advantages and I was tempted to weigh in on that question. But it's horribly oversold by consultants as well.

Jimmy Hoffa

I like simple smart SOA for the vertical segmentation, not that astronomy bullshit. SOA ensures your BL doesn't have the account management code blended across into the report generation code and the client management code

because your account shit is in one process and report shit in another and client management in another etc

I've seen way too much of these large scale monoliths where the horizontal segmentation exists so the UI is separate from BL and DAL etc, but without those vertical boundaries the horizontal segments become amorphously interdependent from lazy people hacking fast to meet orders from crappy PMs

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa Well, I did work on an Access application that had about 100 tables, 600 queries and a couple hundred forms and reports, but I'm not sure that counts. :)

Jimmy Hoffa

4:00 PM

@RobertHarvey haha that's scary on an entirely different scale

Robert Harvey

Duct tape and chewing gum.

He eventually moved it to Winforms.NET. From what I understand, it's a pretty nice application now. His developers work in both VB.NET and C#!

Jimmy Hoffa

SOA gives a nice separation of concerns though, if you toss out all the thin-air bullocks people spout about it, vertical segmentation on process boundaries still gives you the ability to scale up per-feature portions of your application and keep things modular, that's a good thing

user55340

@JimmyHoffa And yea, it is bad... but I'm just wondering if this concept of the "poll for advice in all situations" is something that the younger generation is attached to that we (older types) don't quite understand why they keep doing this.

Ampt

@GlenH7 been in a meeting all morning but you are correct. I've never heard of heat affecting speed of conductance, and if there was such a relation, your board would be melting before you saw any difference

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey Maybe you have a different meaning of "SOA" than me, I wouldn't think of doing SOA without a lightweight service bus at the middle of it... to me SOA just means your system is broken up on process boundaries per main feature area, SOA doesn't involve writing a service bus yourself or doing anything crazy

user41796

4:09 PM

@Ampt the premise of the question is hogwash, no doubt. I was just hoping for an over-the-top counter reply in order to pull off a reversal (20 up vote answer on a -5 down vote question)

user41796

color me selfish. :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

In my book it's literally what I said in that Q: SOA = CBSE where it's component-per-process

@GlenH7 I up voted you and down voted/close voted the question

user41796

@JimmyHoffa yay! more worthless integers! :-) C'mon reversal! Just 17 more to go....

user55340

I really like the idea of trying to get him to do a CDDI vs FDDI comparison for data transfer.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa IANASOA, but... Service Oriented Architecture strikes me much like DI does... You think you need it, but most of the time you don't.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:25 PM

@RobertHarvey Whoa. Careful now; you start to sound like a populist :P I agree most of the time you don't, perhaps you have worked with better engineers than I, but in the enterprisey world I've lived with these behemoth applications, developers spew spaghetti like their name's Mario Canoli doing things like making their networking code dependent on BI reports just because they thought they needed a given piece of data, and before you know it every piece of functionality depends on everything else

The only way to fight these devs I've found that is effective is hard boundaries; and none are more so than process boundaries. If they have to make a network call to the BI reports service to get that data, they will stop and think about if they need it or not, rather than just consuming the DLL right as a reference

I've seen people approach this problem by making rules on the devs, but then you end up with rules like "No dev can create a new project or add a reference to a project without getting it reviewed by committee" and suddenly no dev can do any work and everything grinds to a halt

But this is the enterprisey world of products with 50-100 active devs working on it, behemoth monstrosities of software, maybe you haven't been in those situations

Maybe they're less common than I realize

Or maybe my definition of spaghetti is too rigid. Wouldn't be the first time I've been accused of such.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - there is definitely a correlation between the size of a project and the potential usefulness of an SOA approach. And size includes lines of code as well as overall functionality. Wherever it makes sense to setup a contract between components then it's worth looking at that to see if that could be better served as a service.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:44 PM

as an example, I implemented a soa at a previous job where we had data coming in from patient devices over phone lines, we parsed the data and stored the summarized data in the database so it could be used for reporting purposes. after much searching I found the reporting code just pulled the raw from the database, reparsed and summarized it for the reports wasting tons of time simply because the scope of the reports could just reference the parser assemblies and do it.

I created a service that exposed only the summarized data so reparsing didn't happen, the parser logic existed only in a separate service which took data in and the raw and parsing facilities were never exposed. The reports were changed to call the summarizing service to get the aggregate data it needed and much CPU cycles were saved as well as significant simplification of the code path and separation of concerns

gnat

siliconangle.com/furrier/2011/10/12/…

Amazon had transformed culturally into a company that thinks about everything in a services-first fashion. It is now fundamental to how they approach all designs, including internal designs for stuff that might never see the light of day externally.

At this point they don’t even do it out of fear of being fired. I mean, they’re still afraid of that; it’s pretty much part of daily life there, working for the Dread Pirate Bezos and all. But they do services because they’ve come to understand that it’s the Right Thing. There are without question pros and cons to the SOA approach, and some of …

user55340

@gnat I remember reading that one awhile back... refreshing my memory on it.

psr

@JimmyHoffa I'm (part time) maintaining an application that has a class which inherits from the base web page class, plus multiply inherits from a business layer class. There is a comment at the top explaining that this makes it a web UI class. Better yet, the BI class inherits from another class that makes it a data access class! The author is clearly proud of this design.

It's not really really even spaghetti code - maybe spaghetti tied into knots, then baked into a pizza.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr That sounds kind of like a good dish. I've always been a fan of spaghetti sandwiches.

psr

@JimmyHoffa Doesn't the pasta cut down on the meat quantity?

Jimmy Hoffa

5:00 PM

@psr Just cut the meat balls in half and place them on the pasta between the slices of garlic bread. Then don't eat for two days because seriously, that is enough energy to send a horse into hibernation

psr

I'm tempted to search SO for questions where the OP has a comment containing "nevermind", then downvoting if he solved his original problem but didn't post the solution. Not doing that is one of the major problems SO solves and it just ticks me off when people do it. Maybe they are embarrassed to say "I forgot to compile it" or something like that, but still. At least delete the question.

Jimmy Hoffa

> monitoring and QA are the same thing. You’d never think so until you try doing a big SOA. But when your service says “oh yes, I’m fine”, it may well be the case that the only thing still functioning in the server is the little component that knows how to say “I’m fine, roger roger, over and out” in a cheery droid voice.

This I've definitely seen first hand. I'm a fan of SOA, it comes with a host of new problems, but I feel like the problems SOA brings are solvable within the SOA infrastructure, the problems monoliths bring aren't solvable within the monolithic infrastructure

In a monolith the best you can hope for is to sweep the problems under the rug

Ampt

5:25 PM

@GlenH7 back from lunch. Let the editing begin.

user41796

5:46 PM

@Ampt I'm interested to see what you can end up doing to that one. Ought to be amusing.

user41796

and I liked @MichaelT's thoughts on CDDI vs FDDI

user41796

I mean, if you're going over the top then we gotta talk about copper and fiber.

user55340

Granted, FDDI is so '1990's...

user55340

You're more likely to be affected by rpms of the hard drive than temperature based resistance in the wires.

user55340

As it gets hot, the lubrication improves and the disks can spin faster countering any slow down from the wire...{/out of my ass}

Ampt

5:50 PM

I was more going towards some research papers talking about the effect of heat on a circuits conductivity

then conductivity versus speed

user41796

@MichaelT all valid considerations. I mean, really, if we're at the point of worrying about the thermal resistivity of the copper lines...

Ampt

lots and lots of research in those fields. I could look into fiber connections though...

user41796

@Ampt - sounds like you have an equally good angle to tackle too. Perhaps the throw-away comment is "you could always go with fiber..."

user55340

Wifi disk drives in a vacuum! Do away with the transmission medium!

Ampt

what about the heat on the antennas? you'd still have to worry about the chips heating up and messing with their conductivity

maybe quantum computing is the answer here hahaha

Jimmy Hoffa

5:53 PM

@MichaelT Air is a poor conductor though, immerse your NID-connected WPS and the hard drive in a saline bath

user55340

@JimmyHoffa in a vacuum!

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ...does vaccuum conduct radio frequencies?

Ampt

(light is an electromagnetic wave as much as radio is an electromagnetic wave)

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah I guess so; I'm an idiot for some reason I always associated radio with kinetic

but it's not kinetic at all. I'm just dumb.

user55340

(not trying to make you feel dumb... but...)

user55340

5:55 PM

Radio astronomy

Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The initial detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was made in the 1930s, when Karl Jansky observed radiation coming from the Milky Way. Subsequent observations have identified a number of different sources of radio emission. These include stars and galaxies, as well as entirely new classes of objects, such as radio galaxies, quasars, pulsars, and masers. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which provided compelling evidence for the Big Bang, was made throu...

Ampt

easy to do. Probably has a lot to do with people associating radio waves with sound and sound with kinetic

Jimmy Hoffa

yeah, I should have known. I'm fully aware we send radio waves in and out of space constantly

user55340

Though you do have a good idea... string and cup networking!

Ampt

hey, I wasn't the one who busted out wikipedia here. I figured you knew as much as I did and just needed a reminder hahaha

oh man... effect of heat on transfer speed of kinetic waveforms

if its hot enough it might get melty and deform

user55340

@JimmyHoffa everything2.com/title/Gerbil-net

user55340

5:57 PM

> The pneumatic gerbil-net accelerator necessary for connections with normal high speed networks has been put on hold until it has solved the puree problem.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT You know, the consistency issues aside, Avian carrier is surprisingly resilient.

That might be his best bet for guaranteed transmission

Ampt

yeah but what happens if the electromagnetic sphere of the earth goes out of whack.

which could be caused by global warming

user55340

@JimmyHoffa It still has packet loss - dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226203/…

Jimmy Hoffa

He'll just have to move the drive transfers are going to to remain aligned with the poles per avian expectations

Ampt

just make sure everyone knows that it's UDP and not TCP

user41796

5:59 PM

@JimmyHoffa - don't feel too bad about radiative effects. Some of the stuff can get crazy complex

user41796

Pioneer anomaly

The Pioneer anomaly or Pioneer effect is the observed deviation from predicted accelerations of the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft after they passed about on their trajectories out of the Solar System. The apparent anomaly was a matter of tremendous interest for many years. Both Pioneer spacecraft are escaping the Solar System, but are slowing under the influence of the Sun's gravity. Upon very close examination of navigational data, the spacecraft were found to be slowing slightly more than expected. The effect is an extremely small acceleration towards the Sun, of , which is equiv...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I recall that article, but to be fair it was WWII, I'm pretty sure copper in Britain had pretty bad data loss then too

you know, due to shelling.

user55340

6:18 PM

I wish I could have found it... there was a series of network maps of routes back in Desert Storm or so (I think it was back then) showing how the network was losing segments while infrastructure and communications were getting hit.

user41796

@MichaelT I'm sure that was redacted for some reason or the other and subsequently buried. :-)

user55340

Nah, just lost to history and too much other data out there to sift through.

user41796

plausible deniability is always good

user55340

The people who were doing it back then lost interest, and the modern net is absurdly large compared to those older days.

user55340

cheswick.com/ches/map

Ampt

6:22 PM

I can't get at my academic articles from work.. it'll have to wait til tonight for my mega edit. I have most of the ideas on paper though so it should be a quick edit after I have my sources

and diagrams

user41796

@Ampt Awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

user41796

I could always put a ridiculous bounty on the question for grins too

user55340

I'd poke an answer in there with what you can answer, just in case it gets closed between now and then.

Ampt

oh I'm just going to edit Glen's I think

just one, giant, all encompassing answer

gotta watch my rep. If I get too much you guys will expect me to do close reviews and actually have to clean up around here

user20683

6:45 PM

@Ampt Yeah or one of the mods might resign and who'd be first in line... :)

user20683

not that I'm resigning or anything

Jimmy Hoffa

Guess that top school didn't teach you to do your own research before asking questions... — Jimmy Hoffa 7 secs ago

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Or how to not be a brainless twit.

user55340

The problem with "apply at top tech companies" is partly "everyone is doing it" and also "do what is fun"

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa I upvoted you there but you also get a star here

user55340

6:52 PM

Also, if you want to go to the 'best place', just give your info to a head hunter.

Ampt

or, Idk, do some research?

I've got a list of different companies I wouldn't mind working for, and google and facebook definitely aren't on there

from what I've heard the culture is... less than desireable

user55340

I've been in companies of every size. I'd have to say I like midsized the most.

Ampt

if you're going to do something for 8 hours a day and you don't at least make an effort to make it something you at least like you're just setting yourself up to be miserable

user55340

Out of startup scramble, a bit of discipline, but not bogged down by corporate governance.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt I would kill for the free child care

user55340

6:54 PM

(And yea, I know I'm pimping Linked In articles - linkedin.com/today/post/article/… )

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa ever looked at Valves culture? Just a really, really cool way to do things

and apparently it works if their success is anything to go by

user55340

Having known game programmers, I'd stay away from any game company. Sure, you're creating the product and revenue... but the pressure is a bit different than most sane people consider reasonable.

user55340

And while Valve may be different... I'm not sure how different.

Ampt

@MichaelT That just went on my short list of articles to read.

user55340

@Ampt As opposed to everything else I tell you to read?

Ampt

6:56 PM

valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt Read everything Dijkstra has written before any of this other nonsense

user41796

@MichaelT he said it was a short list - he's doing his best to keep up with your recs

Ampt

@MichaelT of course not Sensei. I read all things you profess with great care and understanding.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Have you read the nonsense that Dijkstra wrote?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra#Writings_by_E.W._Dijkstra

@MichaelT I've read a good bit of his writings, I think they're pretty spectacular.

user55340

6:58 PM

> One of Dijkstra's sidelines was serving as Chairman of the Board of the fictional Mathematics Inc., a company that he imagined having commercialized the production of mathematical theorems in the same way that software companies had commercialized the production of computer programs.

user55340

cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD443.html

Ampt

That sounds..... a little out there

He actually thought that that was possible? To monopolize epiphanies?

user55340

> As Chairman of the Board of “Mathematics Inc.” —now the world’s leading mathematical industry with a firm grip on more than 75 percent of the world market— I am in a better position than anyone else to give you all the inside information about the refreshing breeze that has blown new life into the mathematical science, at a moment that it was getting stale and in danger of dying of old age.

user55340

He was writing it for fun.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt read some of his stuff, he's a really down to earth working joe type of guy, who just happens to be smarter than the rest of us and painfully aware of the fact that everything he was seeing wrong was going to be the same things we would continue seeing for decades

user55340

7:00 PM

> We have provided the link and, having the Proof, besides claiming all previous results based on Riemann’s Hypothesis, we insist on substantial royalties for all future use of it. That is fair, isn’t it? You cannot expect a huge company like Mathematics Inc. to distribute its goodies like Father Xmas, can you? But, reasonable as our claims are, we experience the greatest difficulties in getting our rights recognized.

user55340

from cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD475.html

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/transcriptions.html

@MichealT Trying to remember the name of the one he gave to a group of business leaders basically decrying the way people approached managing software, great critique that stands just as accurate almost 40 years later

user55340

cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EWD1165.html ?

user55340

> The 20th century has created new battlefields for this old conflict in the form of the high-technology industries; there, the battles are between the managers/beancounters on the one hand, and the scientists/technologists on the other. As a service to my younger readers I point out that these battles are fierce and that no quarter is given.

user55340

> We regularly have to be reminded of these battles because the scientists have a tendency to lose them: firstly, they are a minority, and secondly, their primary interest is their science and not these battles, this in contrast to the manager, who considers this battle his main challenge.

user55340

7:04 PM

cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD648.html ?

2

Jimmy Hoffa

this was in the form of a system design retrospective type thing

user55340

> I hope that the above gives you some feeling for the programmer's task. When dealing with the problems of software design, I must also devote a word or two to the phenomenon of bad software manager. It is regrettable, but bad software managers do exist and, although bad, they have enough power to ruin a project.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT This one yes

@Ampt read this cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD648.html

(and then everything else Dijkstra wrote)

Ampt

So much reading.... be back in a few decades

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt Nah, just 1

@Ampt Get used to the reading, entering this industry if you ever stop you'll die.

Ampt

7:18 PM

I have no problem reading but with all the reading you guys would suggest to me on a hat drop is enough to keep me out of industry for the next 12 months

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt That reminds me, you should also make sure and read this mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

user20683

@JimmyHoffa stop trolling the poor boy :P

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa Nope, you're over your limits of articles for the day. Better luck tomorrow!

Jimmy Hoffa

@Weston.h but I haven't told him about c2 yet

user20683

@Ampt if you feel up to the challenge, I do know someone at Raven

user55340

7:23 PM

@JimmyHoffa Gah, when I pointed some co-workers there, they lost a week of productivity.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT All the more reason he should get lost in c2 before he starts working! :)

user55340

c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsPayrollHard - That will keep/scare you out of internal IT development.

user20683

Sounds vaguely interesting

user20683

but yeah, internal = no thanks

user55340

Internal IT development is actually where most jobs are.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:25 PM

Sadly true

user55340

And most consultants are working in that domain too.

Jimmy Hoffa

Doing builds is closest I ever came, but even then it's building products for a public customer base

user55340

In that the company doesn't want to hire their own developers, so hires consultants to build/customize the software they want.

Jimmy Hoffa

internal IT is a scary scary world where hacks are the name of the game and all semblance of logic and rationality have died

user20683

Where the inventory system breaks because they mailed the server to New York.

user55340

7:27 PM

Its not all quick and dirty... but it is about gluing different systems together and reports.

user55340

@Weston.h wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/09/pluto-switch

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT and it's mostly quick and dirty

user55340

(btw, that 'small town iowa' was a concrete company / local distribution center for the company I used to work at)

Ampt

@Weston.h That sounds interesting, but it wasn't really game development that had me looking at Valve, it was their claimed super flat hierarchy. TL;DR everyone at the companies are equals. You choose the projects to work on, roll your desk over with the group and work on it.

that said, I might take you up on an introduction. How does he like it?

user20683

@Ampt He's a hardcore tools programmer

user20683

7:29 PM

he likes bit twiddling for fun

user20683

I know he's worked on Call of Duty and the like

user20683

he's also simultaneously really, really good at math and really, really good at C++

Ampt

Interesting

Jimmy Hoffa

@Weston.h Kind of describes the majority of game dev types

user20683

@JimmyHoffa sorta

user20683

7:33 PM

he's a tools specialist, so he's hard to get rid of

Ampt

dont forget the people who design levels and whatnot

user20683

because what he does is make everyone else's lives easier

user20683

@Ampt those positions are harder to get, you need art skills for one

Jimmy Hoffa

@Weston.h those are rarely CS types; almost always people with digital arts type degrees, CAD and whatnot

user20683

Valve is apparently really hard to survive in

Ampt

7:35 PM

oh I'm not very artisitic so I wouldn't gun for one of those

@Weston.h really? How'd you hear that one?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa right

user20683

an Architecture degree is good

user20683

@Ampt think about it, a flat hierarchy where there's still ego and skill

user20683

I remember a place like that, it was called High School.

user20683

everyone is a student, people with sports skills rise to the top, ego ensues...

user20683

7:37 PM

except Valve is a private, magnet school

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Just wondering... where isn't it mostly quick and dirty?

Ampt

I guess. I feel that one of my assets is knowing a decent amount about a wide range of things which should help in an environment like that one would think

user20683

@Ampt yes and no

Ampt

If I end up writing banking software wearing a tie at a 9-5 job I don't think I'll survive

user55340

9-5 isn't to be underrated.

user20683

7:44 PM

e

user20683

*aye

user20683

I'd love a 9-5 in a sane environment

Ampt

it's not about the hours, its about the inflexibility

user20683

the trick is to wear a bow tie or an ascot

user20683

:)

user55340

7:45 PM

Bolo tie.

user20683

not Texan

user20683

:)

user20683

though I guess Californian is probably close enough.

Ampt

Not doing it
:)

user20683

Georgian too

user55340

7:46 PM

And by Bolo tie I mean a tie based on the video game bolo...

user55340

user55340

Bolo (1987 video game)

Bolo is a video game created for the BBC Micro computer by Stuart Cheshire in 1987, and later ported to the Macintosh in its most popular incarnation. Most recently a Windows clone named Winbolo was developed by John Morrison. Cheshire's Bolo is a networked multiplayer game that simulates a tank battlefield. A similarly named tank game was created for the Apple II in 1982. Cheshire claims this was "an unfortunate coincidence", and that his Indian wife inspired the name. As Cheshire noted in his original documentation for the game, "Bolo is the Hindi word for communication. Bolo is...

user55340

Early multiperson game. Had a ring network topology for the game (A sends all updates to B who sends the updates to C who sends the updates to A, who removes his first updates and sends updates to B...)

user55340

Which also meant that hacked clients could just say "oh yea, I didn't take any damage, pass on that update"

Jimmy Hoffa

1

A: What non-toxic non-water substances have a freezing point very close to water's?

I tried to use the curated dataset from Mathematica to answer this question. You can ignore the following if you have no interest in Mathematica and just jump down to the end for my ideas. The following code gets all of chemicals currently in the curated dataset and grabs the melting points and...

Got a pretty cool answer! @GlenH7 @MichaelT

Ampt

7:51 PM

Olive oil.... interesting!

does it expand when frozen?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt btw you should read quanttec.com/fparsec/tutorial.html

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa shut up

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt Only water does that

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Whee! got a good answer too.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa keep linking stuff and I'm gonna have to conscript you to write a blog article of "Stuff every junior programmer needs to read, ideally right now"

Ampt

7:53 PM

Specific heat of 1.97 KJ/Kg

not the greatest

van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1606

milk has almost the exact freezing point of water and almost as much specific heat... could that be an option?

user55340

@Weston.h Jimmy keeps getting drafted for things. Yannis also made him the test subject awhile back.

Ampt

Milk expands when frozen. Not milk.

user55340

Jul 13 at 4:13, by Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Thank you for volunteering to write our canonical "Programming with Kids" post.

user55340

Mar 19 at 21:33, by Yannis Rizos

btw @JimmyHoffa did I thank you for volunteering to be my guinea pig every time a new mod feature is implemented?

user55340

Apr 10 at 14:48, by Yannis Rizos

Thank you for volunteering to write the post for our blog @JimmyHoffa ;)

Jimmy Hoffa

8:01 PM

@Ampt btw this might help with understanding the parser combinators I linked en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus

Ampt

Not finding any Enthalpy of Fusion numbers for olive oil...

user20683

@MichaelT we require better methods of disciplining him for his failure.

Ampt

Oh, did I mention that I wrote that python application finally? Ended up settling on a singleton for the CAN connection whos behavior is swapped out with a strategy pattern. I use a decorator pattern to add information to individual messages.

I was thinking about using a visitor pattern to handle changing states for multiple messages. thoughts @JimmyHoffa ?

I'm torn between that and an observer then just changing them individually with a mediator pattern

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt I'd use a manager factory, but that's just me

Ampt

yeah but the book said that that pattern wouldn't work well with the decorator pattern

I don't think those patterns go together

user20683

8:11 PM

facebook.com/photo.php?v=10153173902855228

user20683

Who says Engineers can't give presentations.

user20683

@Dynamic we need to talk about the blog.

Ampt

8:48 PM

@JimmyHoffa What about a singleton pattern for every message? Any other pattern suggestions?

user55340

in the past 6 weeks, we've had 4 beer tastings.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT make me want to work there, we only get beer in business day once a month

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