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user55340
12:59 AM
Hmm... the not-xkcd anymore long compile question is once again sitting at 4 close votes.
 
user55340
(and hasn't been kicked out of the close queue the second time... might get closed yet)
 
1:13 AM
@MichaelT if that's an accident I will eat a crow
(note: I really wouldn't mind eating a crow, I fucking hate them for irrational reasons I don't intend to detail, I would be more than happy to commit crowicide in any form)
It would please me greatly knowing they're smart enough to likely understand the suffering I would be submitting them to.
 
user55340
Its probably intentional... still amusing and one wonders if the derp institute could have had a better name.
 
user15026
They probably could have had a "better" name, but not one that got them nearly the attention.
 
@MichaelT a better name? Given their intent - as you agree it was intentional - what name would satisfy them better?
@enderland I would have strongly advised this behaviour be done with the utmost caution - a howitzer or possibly a minigun would be necessary at a minimum. To commit such an action correctly one should be certain to fence, salt, and burn the area before or afterwards.
 
psr
@JimmyHoffa Everyone knows crows are evil.
 
(I genuinely hate crows in the most sincere way)
 
1:21 AM
@JimmyHoffa lol that site is great
> So in four days of actual shooting I shot 2,193 crows with an average of 548 crows per day! That’s the best I ever had it in all the years of hunting them.
 
@psr I'm not convinced. I've definitely seen a lot of C# that I could execute mentally far quicker than any computer thanks to the skill level of many folks writing .NET
 
psr
@JimmyHoffa Great backup job if you ever get tired of coding.
Or if there's a power failure you can save the day.
 
@psr I always make paper copies of all my code bases for just this event, engineering is all about preparedness after all
 
psr
@JimmyHoffa Well, sure, if you can't remember the code then I guess that would work.
 
@psr occasionally I just write down the answer and keep that handy instead.
 
user15026
2:28 AM
Hey, so, had a thought - let's say my sick day does cause some wonderful my way - is it going to ruin everything if I have to let the phone call go to voicemail because I am at work?
 
user41796
@AshleyNunn No, it shouldn't. Good folk on that side of the desk understand that other folk can't always answer their phones at any given point in time.
 
user15026
Yay, that's what I was hoping :)
 
user41796
@AshleyNunn You have to look at it from their expense point of view. They have already invested XYZ dollars in you so far. It's no longer in their fiscal interest to get huffy if you couldn't answer the phone at their beck and call.
 
user15026
RIght, that makes sense.
 
user41796
OTOH, you want to be positively enthusiastic when you call them back.
 
user41796
2:37 AM
ie. validate their investment.
 
@AshleyNunn I'm sorry.
 
user15026
@GlenH7 If they are calling to say "have a thing" I am going to be the most sunniest and enthused person the world ever saw!
 
user15026
@7Blue_Beast7 Please do not follow me from room to room. We have discussed everything we needed to discuss around your apologies.
 
user41796
@7Blue_Beast7 You hunted her down all the way to here to say that? WTF did you do?
 
user15026
@GlenH7 It's not important.
 
user41796
2:38 AM
@AshleyNunn Call backs this quickly are generally of that form.
 
@GlenH7 I'd stay out of it if I were you :D
 
user41796
@7Blue_Beast7 Sounds like you need to take a break from chat then. Honestly, go off and do something in real life. Come back when you've got some sanity.
 
user15026
@GlenH7 Cool beans, I just wanted to be prepared because I got told in both cases I would hear things "soon" so I wanted to make sure I had all the ducks in the rows.
 
@GlenH7 Well I have done that already and I have my sanity
 
user41796
@7Blue_Beast7 No, clearly you don't. You've delivered your apology. If you want it to be considered, GTFO.
 
user41796
2:41 AM
@AshleyNunn Yeah, that's actually a very good and hopeful sign.
 
user15026
@GlenH7 I was hoping that too, but I mean if it doesn't work out, well, I will just keep on keeping on and hope for more sick days ;)
 
user41796
@7Blue_Beast7 - Not kidding - leave the room. Avoid chat for a few days. Get your wits back about you. Just because you effed up doesn't mean it's a permanent stain. But you do need to show that you've realized you messed up.
 
user41796
@AshleyNunn Yep absolutely. Really good firms will let you know in the negative quickly too. But those are ones you want to keep on your list. And to follow up and ask what may have been the challenges.
 
user15026
@GlenH7 Yeah, in both these cases I will do a follow up regardless of outcome
 
user15026
Because at least I can be gracious, and maybe learn a thing or ten
 
user41796
2:44 AM
@7Blue_Beast7 Absolutely. The screener can provide invaluable information from that point of view.
 
@GlenH7 I know I have messed up that what my intent is right now
@GlenH7 I just get stressed of dealing with my mess
I have been on computers since I was 7 and all I deal with is stress
 
user41796
3 mins ago, by GlenH7
@7Blue_Beast7 - Not kidding - leave the room. Avoid chat for a few days. Get your wits back about you. Just because you effed up doesn't mean it's a permanent stain. But you do need to show that you've realized you messed up.
 
user15026
Pretty much, yes.
 
user41796
Anyway, good news that one of them called back. Don't sweat that you couldn't take the call immediately.
 
user15026
@GlenH7 They've not, actually, I was just more curious because well, I want to know what to do
 
user15026
2:48 AM
But I suspect I will hear tomorrow/friday
 
user41796
Obviously, take the call if you can. But don't panic if it has to roll to voicemail. But do follow up as soon as you can.
 
@AshleyNunn not answering your phone at inappropriate times is just professionalism, it's not expected that a professional will answer there phone at all times, but rather that they will respond in a timely manner when it is appropriate. That's how folks tend to accord themselves and as such expect the same from others. Nothing to worry about on that account.
 
user41796
Most companies are pretty good about getting back within 24, 48, or 72 hours depending upon their candidate load.
 
user15026
@JimmyHoffa Yaaaaaay
 
user15026
@GlenH7 Wicked. That's been my usual assumption (aka the point when I go, oh, okay, maybe next time)
 
user41796
2:52 AM
Yeah, post 3 days ... hard to say. Past a week, doubtful and worth pinging them. Past 2 weeks, put more irons in the fire
 
user15026
@GlenH7 I tend to keep my fires hot as much as possible
 
user15026
Yeah, me neither.
 
user15026
prepares a torch
 
user41796
I'll get the gasoline.
 
user41796
@AshleyNunn So how has the shift been with 3 hours to go? Not too horrific, I hope?
 
user15026
2:58 AM
@GlenH7 Not too bad. DDOS is happening but site is up, only the chat is being affected, so it just means my support stuff is QUIET AS HELL
 
user15026
(aka I am happy)
 
user41796
I'm trying to find the downside for you... Not finding it.
 
user15026
I am home, chatting on Skype with my boyfriend, in my pjs, and site-monitoring for whining. It's a decent night :)
 
user41796
Bueno
 
user41796
And apparently room owners have the ability to kick now!
 
user15026
3:01 AM
I could add a raspberry lambic to the mix but it's a little late
 
user15026
@JimmyHoffa Good hiring practice, perhaps (not a programmer, so I have no idea) but also I can see how it could be draining. But hey, perhaps awesome things will come soon? :)
 
user41796
@AshleyNunn Yeah, if you've got a few more hours to put in that could be detrimental
 
user15026
@GlenH7 Yeah, I got two more yet
 
user15026
but the lambic sounds so yummy :P
 
user41796
I'll have something similar in your honor?
 
user15026
3:09 AM
That sounds acceptable. Make it tasty :)
 
user41796
I think it's going to be a Mike's hard slamming cider
 
user15026
That works :)
 
user20683
@GlenH7 O_O
 
user41796
We better start deleting more messages now that @Ampt showed up. Oh, wait. Never mind.....
 
user41796
I have a bad habit recently of leaving comments that make it hard to follow up with .... :-D
 
user41796
3:16 AM
@AshleyNunn the cider is dang tasty.
 
user41796
Although it's "smashed apple cider" and they cut it down to 5% abv for whatever reason.
 
user15026
@GlenH7 But at least it is tasty :)
 
user15026
I think I might make myself some tea
 
user15026
I have some coconut chai rooibos I need to try
 
user41796
I can think of a few things to add to the tea...
 
user41796
3:18 AM
Mmmm, some dark jamaican rum should go perfect with that then
 
user15026
@GlenH7 Oooh that would work
 
user41796
Yeah, and skip the captain morgans. You need a rum that's super dark with a lot of body.
 
user15026
Recommendations? If it isn't beer, or sparkly wine, I tend to not know stuff :P
 
user41796
pyrat is decent
 
user15026
Beer I know. Girly fruity bubbly wine, I know. The rest of the LCBO is odd and confusing
 
user41796
3:21 AM
unfortunately, the really, really good stuff is all small batch hard to place.
 
user41796
CM's spice isn't bad either, although I'd probably go with pyrat first
 
user41796
Rum is actually my least preferred liquor, so I'm pretty pathetic with recommendations.
 
user15026
It's not my most favourite (I like whiskey, I think, but I need to explore that more, but it makes me nervous)
 
user41796
whiskey shouldn't make you nervous. Honestly, rum shouldn't either but that's the kettle calling the pot black.
 
user41796
whiskey is easy in that you can either drink it neat or mixed with sours.
 
user15026
3:25 AM
@GlenH7 Rum just isn't that yummy to me.
 
user15026
@GlenH7 I just get wibbly when I am attempting to figure out new things
 
user41796
rum generally isn't drunk neat (belch!) but is mixed. So find a good daiquiri recipe and experiment.
 
user41796
"free cash flow" and what you're willing to spend on education
 
user41796
Oh, aeroplano for a tequila is wretched. Enjoy the fruits of the tuition I already spent.
 
user41796
Ridiculously heavy oak notes in all of their tequilas. In short, areoplano sucks.
 
user15026
3:29 AM
Thank you for the lesson :)
 
user41796
YW. Someone ought to benefit from the tuition I've paid.
 
user41796
@WorldEngineer - would you burn this please? I think this is the 3rd attempt from the same user. programmers.stackexchange.com/q/257827/53019
 
user41796
Ok, not the user I had been thinking of, but the question is still garbage.
 
user41796
@AshleyNunn good luck with the rest of your shift. Pretty certain I can't stay up as late as you need to. :-)
 
user15026
@GlenH7 No worries. I have appreciated the company thus far! Have a good night.
 
4:04 AM
WOOOOOOOOOOOOO INSOMNIA
This is when we talk about beer right?
 
user15026
@Ampt Why not!
 
user15026
I am still awake and working, sounds like as good a time as any
 
Currently on tap: Pumpkin Spice Latte Ale
It is so good I can't even.
work is gross
 
user15026
@Ampt I like pumpkin beers.
 
user15026
I am waiting and hoping that Southern Tier's Pumking makes it here
 
4:06 AM
I don't know how my old man did it, but he killed it on this one. just spicy enough to get the flavor, but not overpowering
Ugh, you guys were totally talking about beer without me
So.. you want to go to work for me tomorrow?
 
user15026
Nooope. I have tomorrow off, I plan to have adventures
 
but I want adventures tooooooo
And not the kind of adventures that deploying tomcat apps make
 
user15026
But if I am working for you then you get adventures and I don't!
 
ok, ok, we'll split it
that's fair right?
 
user15026
I suppose, not sure they will be happy with a canadian lady who isn't a programmer :P
 
4:14 AM
bah, they'd never notice! I'm in a cube and don't get bothered very often
If an Indian guy comes around, he wants to go get starbucks
 
user15026
Good to know :)
 
Just... say You/We/I shaved and he'll just accept it as fact.
 
user15026
This is looking like a plan
 
Alright great! In that case I need to get some sleep so that I can officially have slept in tomorrow!
Best of luck with the rest of your + my shift!
 
user15026
thanks :)
 
4:22 AM
@Ampt all things being equal, some form of dev-ops practice is good to get, it's surprising how little a lot of coders know on the topic of designing, standing up, and configuring their servers - is a skill that can make being generally productive in turning out well functioning projects quite a bit easier
 
see and they love me for that I bring a lot of programming experience to their very heavy configuration background, plus my last gig dealt a lot with linux configurations
 
lots of folks lose an entire week or more when it comes time to actually go from code in their editor to usable running service with functioning persistence and consistent behaviour
 
but its also not a position I would want full time
way too stressful
odd hours trying to minimize downtime
always worried about breaking everyone elses work
 
@Ampt nah, you just learn a ton of risk mitigation and environment isolation techniques - I did it full time, the people who don't have the engineering background don't learn to isolate and design procedures for consistency and or automation in their operations - for those people it's very stressful. Poor sys admins...
very handy skills
is why I know what I know of installers and blackbox debugging (a nightmare skill to learn best done by drinking until your cross eyed)
though I suppose you have a bit of experience trying to suss out behaviours from black boxes from your last job so you know what a miserable pain that is
 
4:37 AM
The RMA guys had it way worse than we did, but yeah, I had lots of fun going "How did we communicate with this 12 years ago when we didn't use SVN and no longer have this code
the client has 4 dozen that are now useless after they updated and blew away the old code
 
unfortunately well-roundedness like that really can't be put on display in interviews or in a particularly marketable way - but it pays off in spades in your overall job performance, people tend to notice then
 
 
5 hours later…
9:49 AM
Could somebody explain to me why this question is and remains closed? programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257286/…
 
10:03 AM
discussion topic and opinion based
for example should numbers be interpreted (should S1E2 be before or after S1E10)
 
10:15 AM
Perhaps we interpret the question in different ways, but I don't see the discussion and opinion-based aspects. Or is it the fact that the question asks "is there an X" that works like a red flag similar to the phrase "best practices"?
 
 
4 hours later…
user41796
2:42 PM
@BartvanIngenSchenau It read to me as an off-site resource request. I could see a transformation that says "How should I approach this from a language agnostic point of view." My worry then would be that it's too broad to properly answer, so some measure of scoping the question down would help.
 
user41796
FWIW, I don't really agree with the "primarily opinion based" close reason, but I could see an argument for an implied "one true way" to really just be an opinion fest. I'd argue Off-topic => off-site resource request would be a better close reason.
 
Ugh...
 
user41796
well said?
 
I never thought I'd honestly say this, but I think I'd rather have svn with some of the people I'm currently working with
it's like they don't even version control
 
user41796
There's something to be said for using a tool that's well known and whose semantics are understood. And any form of VC is better than no VC.
 
2:49 PM
example: saltstack, a large Python based repo found on git is about 65 MB
 
SVN gets a lot of hate on the likes of joelonsoftware and many places, but SVN is still a good model for a lot of software shops
 
contains about 250kloc
we have two git repos that top out over a gig
because people are dumping .jar and .war files in them
entire development branches of javascript libraries
like... not jquery.min.js
 
lol, sounds familiar
our old source safe repo is something like 9-10 gig
 
seriously - I ran cloc and got a difference of 250kloc of javascript libraries
then we get fantastic commit messages like "check-in"
"razorbacks"
(we're in Arkansas, go hogs!)
 
user41796
@WayneWerner take away the requirement to add a check-in comment then. Crap comments are worse than no comments.
 
2:52 PM
There is no requirement
the problem is really that they're checking in at all
 
user41796
And add in a healthy dosage of public shame before educating them on what a good, short check-in comment is like.
 
user41796
@WayneWerner No VC can solve that problem.
 
lol, true story
We're a small shop - and the biggest offender happens to be friends (attends church, has worked at the company for over a decade) with the CEO and is the head of IT
I'm still not entirely sure what he's good at, besides making a lot of work for the dev team
 
user41796
Some fights just can't be won and are best avoided.
 
user41796
@WayneWerner Someone who helps to keep me employed is an excellent attribute in my book.
 
2:55 PM
Indeed. I'm just trying to help our CTO correct 20 years of terrible development.
Our deployment process takes ~30 minutes per client (if we're lucky)
 
user41796
So if you enjoy the job, that sounds like wonderful job security.... :-)
 
we used to have a specific build per client
 
user41796
That might be a little too much job security...
 
lol... I don't enjoy where we are now - I enjoy where we could be
 
user41796
Meliorism is an idea in metaphysical thinking holding that progress is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which is an improvement over the aforementioned natural one. Meliorism, as a conception of the person and society, is at the foundation of contemporary liberal democracy and human rights and is a basic component of liberalism. Another important understanding of the meliorist tradition comes from the American Pragmatic tradition. One can read about it in...
 
2:58 PM
Right now it's just too much manual intervention where it should be completely automatic
Yeah, that sounds like me, lol
We have several real problems - turnover being the main one
There's one dev who has been there for more than 3 years now
Friday is the last day for a guy who's been here slightly less time than me (almost a year)
 
user41796
Small shops can be like that
 
Only problem with the greybeard is that he's content to do some uh... questionable things
like have queries in his JSP o.O
Tried to adopt semantic versioning and he hijacked it - version numbers are created as a product of whatever the previous one was, at the time the previous one is released
 
user41796
One way of looking at it is that you're being served up softballs in order to make the company better and to look good. If things are mostly tolerable, then it's not a horrific situation. Also depends upon the culture / environment.
 
i.e. the process goes like this: tag release 1.2.3. Create new release/1.2.4 branch
 
jisp.io because prefix notation is just fun
 
3:04 PM
then typically we get a bugfix that needs to get released
so we have 1.2.3v2 (facepalm)
@GlenH7 Good point. Our CTO is amazing, and we have a pretty solid team with probably the usual idiosyncrasies
 
user41796
@WayneWerner Honestly, I'm not hearing anything outside the norm. Granted, that doesn't speak very well for the norm, but hey, it keeps us employed.
 
user41796
@WayneWerner make it a game and see if you can v# up past 9 so you can jack with the ordering of the version numbers. :-)
 
user55340
At Netapp we had Major.Minor.Rev... and then R/P/D.
 
user55340
We did have a release that was 7.2.1R2D2
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa Some folks need to stay busy apparently....
 
user41796
3:08 PM
@MichaelT And the celebrations were epic?
 
Biggest issue(s) are that the CTO has to keep (VP of IT?) from convincing our less-technical (but incredible entrepreneur) CEO that we should do moronic things
like the IT guy claimed he could program 2x as fast in .NET
...
 
user41796
@WayneWerner Best thing I learned in my career is when to accept that some things are simply outside of my purview.
 
user55340
The numbered releases were engineering releases... R was an engineering bug fix, while P was a sustaining engineering (customer service department to fix bugs in code) and D were their point (one customer) fix or debug releases.
 
@BartvanIngenSchenau I would say "yes" - that is a bad pattern, though the idea of asking "is there a spec" makes me slightly partial to thinking it could go either way... specs/rfcs/etc are things I would like to say people can ask for - but at the same time it is still technical a resource request and specs/rfcs get obsoleted all the time so it suffers from the same problems as any resource request...
 
@GlenH7 Change where you work or change where you work, if things get too bad... I'm trying to change where I work before I have to change where I work, lol
 
user41796
3:10 PM
@JimmyHoffa I'd vote to re-open with a decent edit. That said, writing up that edit is below the cut line on my priority list of the day.
 
user41796
@WayneWerner absolutely. And some of the time, you just have to let stuff go. I try to ask "does it really matter" if something is done one way or the other. And if there's no real difference, then I try to let it go.
 
@WayneWerner is this a problem though? I never understood the peoples complaints about putting binaries or other such things in source control outside of: It corrupts them. This used to be an issue with older source controls but really isn't with modern ones so much (though I've heard SVN can choke on them still sometimes...). I don't really understand the problem with it - one shouldn't be getting an entire source control server's repo, you should just grab what you need...
I mean, how does it present a problem if no corruption occurs?
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa cvs had a hard time with diffing binaries, svn did a better job at that.
 
@GlenH7 who puts binary files into source control so they can diff them??
why would anyone diff binary files??
 
user41796
biggest complaint I have heard is bloat. But when a project changes versions faster than some people change clothes, it can make sense to cache a specific binary version in the VC
 
3:12 PM
@JimmyHoffa putting binaries buys you nothing? And costs you everything?
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa svn does it to save space
 
user41796
@WayneWerner work with a dependent project that breaks periodically with minor updates....
 
@WayneWerner what does it cost? And it buys you tons: It keeps them in a version line with the source that was meant to work with them
 
user41796
storage space is much cheaper than developer time hunting down errant issues caused by a dependent library.
 
hahah.... we have some history of making silly choices - like taking nightly builds of dependency X, building that binary and forgetting the source
 
3:14 PM
but again I ask: what problem does it cause?? the only answer I've ever heard on this is either corruption (no longer a problem) or "You shouldn't! It's wrong! It gives me the willies! It's terrible!"
 
bloat - every time I have to clone the repo I get all these dependencieds
*dependencies
 
@WayneWerner clones cost nothing - they're just a pointer
and you shouldn't be grabbing an entire repo, you should grab what you need - if those binaries are placed intermixed in bad locations that's just because people are organizing shit stupidly which is a constant problem and has nothing to do with the fact that they put binaries in source control
they probably organize their code shittily too if they organize their binaries shittily
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa scroll back through the transcript. This all started as a mild rant. In other words, yes, you're right.
 
Indeed
 
@GlenH7 I know, which is why I'm ranting back - I've had folks give me this rant when I wanted to check in 3rd party libraries too many times where the result is the 3rd party libraries aren't held in version line with the code and deployments end up with mixed versions of them
 
3:18 PM
I don't have a problem with including binary dependencies if you can't somehow pin dependency versions of your code
 
it's an ancient line like "single entry single exit!" that people stick to regardless of not having the knowledge of the original reason for the complaint
 
But every tool that we have available allows you to say <this code depends on FooBar.v.1.2.3>
you download it once
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa Duh, we obey that because the masters told us to obey that. What more do you need?
 
it's outside the repository
because it's not part of your application
it provides a service that your application consumes
I mean... nobody stores /twitter/ in their repository - they just reference the api version of twitter they require
 
@WayneWerner but it should be kept with the application so that everyone touching your application code or deploying your application has it right there when they go to build and deploy it, they don't have to search and find the wrong version - as for fixed versioning, that causes more errors than it solves by a long shot
 
user41796
3:21 PM
@JimmyHoffa This actually ties into you comments about devops earlier.
 
who doesn't love being told they have to go find some code that's not been seen for 5 years, and rebuild it to point to this new version of a 3rd party assembly because they just released a new version that fixes a massive security hole
@GlenH7 precisely. I've done enough source control management, builds, deployments, all of that shit to have seen a very large sample size of what things do tend to cause issues and what thing's don't. I've seen the 3rd party library network share drive die. Then had to sit there and hit build, watch it fail looking for 3rd party lib BLA.dll, go download it and put it on the new 3rd party network share, rebuild now it's missing FOO.dll, and on and on...
I'd rather see my whole application disappear with my 3rd party libs...
 
user41796
I think there's a strong correlation with a developer's style and with the amount of maintenance / support / operations type work they have done.
 
If your build process depends on 3rd party libs, I would argue you should keep your own copy of them around. Not inside your application source repository, though.
 
user41796
@WayneWerner why make yourself go to two separate areas to get what you need to build one application?
 
user41796
Create a new project within the repo and be done with it.
 
3:26 PM
@GlenH7 Why bother even having one area to get what you need? Shouldn't you just have the internet on your machine? :P
 
user41796
Only the good parts.
 
There's a difference between environment setup and development
As long as the former can be automated
then it allows you to focus on the latter
and heck, maybe that's my issue
I'm a vim kinda guy
I like modality
when I'm doing development, I like to be /developing/
when I'm doing operations, I like to be doing operations
when I'm editing, I like to be editing
when I'm inserting text, I like to be inserting
When I have a clear separation of each of these pieces, I can compose them and replace them and adjust them as necessary
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa what do you think of a 100 line anonymous function?
 
instead, the current state of my reality is that I have a repository that should take 20 seconds to clone but takes 10 minutes instead
 
user41796
How often do you clone?
 
3:30 PM
even on a local machine, 1.5gb of links ain't free
 
user41796
@WayneWerner really? Upgrade everything local to at least gigabit.
 
user55340
Just noting that the CSS bug is reported:
 
user55340
3
Q: No CSS on any *.stackexchange.com sites, except meta

jrg So that's programmers. Chat is broken the same way.

 
user41796
And if that's truly a bottleneck to your development time, get faster hardware along with a faster network. Your lost time is far more expensive than hardware.
 
I guess it's not that bad (tried out just now)...
 
user41796
3:32 PM
@MichaelT this time I'm not blaming caching. :-)
 
@GlenH7 The bottleneck to my development time is all the things I've been ranting about before ;)
 
user55340
@GlenH7 Its always safe to blame caching... unless you want to blame a dev.
 
user41796
@WayneWerner don't get me wrong, I'm all about killing off the inefficiencies. But I focus on the things I deal with daily. Many of us upgraded to hybrid drives because our disk access times were getting ridiculous. (We run a lot of apps at once).
 
user55340
Btw, if anyone else wants to chime in over here:
 
user55340
1
A: What happened when a question I edited was deleted?

MichaelTWhen a question is edited it shows back up on the recently active questions. People read it again and it takes time from people. Deleting a question removes it from view and allows the OP (if he or she should desire) to be able to edit it (you can edit deleted posts if you can see them - such a...

 
user41796
3:34 PM
@WayneWerner ask for a toy hardware budget so you can ignore some of those other issues. :-)
 
@GlenH7 Indeed. Most of the hardware problems are gone. I've got a hybrid drive (lenovo w530) with core i7, 32gb ram I think it is...
A faster network would help some things when I'm working remote (like today)
 
user41796
@MichaelT My initial comments to that OP need to be toned down. :-)
 
user41796
@WayneWerner we run gigabit as standard between all of our devices. In a previous life, we'd run the servers with an even faster network connection.
 
the rest of the bottlenecks... are crappy repositories with crappy histories, filled with crappy code using crappy libraries in crappy ways, and crappy deployment processes, and some crappy application designs </rant>
My favourite is an application we have that uses the Eclipse SWT to embed Microsoft Word and a web browser side-by-side
Even better is communication under the hood (not to mention the Java code that's injecting javascript onto the page)
where typically you have some kind of communication where as a function you just return values
 
@GlenH7 ?
 
3:39 PM
and as a class you raise events, or perhaps your functions just return values...
nay nay. In this app, you have communication call down and call back up
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa I'm from the school that believes if the anonymous function scrolls past the bottom of your screen then it should be broken out into a normal function.
 
@WayneWerner or call a continuation
 
So you'll do something like Me.A.call(Me, stuff) -> A.B.call(A, other stuff) -> B.C.call(B, more stuff)
and then C
C will either do B.A.Me.call(some return value)
or it will do B.return_path(C)
it's atrocious
At least you can follow the logic, even if you can't do anything with it
 
user55340
Sometimes, I wonder why mods hang out here on occasion...
 
user55340
-7
Q: Help! An evil room owner won't let me have a shouting match about feminism in their room!

R. Martinho FernandesWhat should we do if we want to continue a shouting match about feminism in a room and a room owner threatens to kick us if we continue? What should we do if we continue and said room owner makes good on that threat?

 
user55340
3:42 PM
Sometimes, I don't wonder.
 
Why not take it to somewhere that's not Stack Exchange? — ChrisF ♦ 1 min ago
 
@GlenH7 I'm of the school that believes a function should be 25 lines or under - of any sort.
 
@JimmyHoffa I like Uncle Bob's 4 lines or less.
Though I've heard of some interesting studies that suggest longer functions are better (150-200)
 
@WayneWerner sometimes they happen to be 300 character lines, but by george it's less than 4 lines!
 
user55340
Hey, every befunge program I ever wrote always fits within 80x24.
2
 
3:46 PM
@Ampt Even better if its this.that.the_other.some_new.thing.we.know.all.the.internals()
 
@WayneWerner Not enough arbitrary parameters
 
c2.com/cgi/wiki?LongFunctions <-- apparently Code Complete cites some empirical studies
 
user55340
Something to play with: stared.github.io/tagoverflow
 
4:06 PM
If by play you mean drag the web-technologies tag group through the other ones destroying their delicate eco-system in a representation of what javascript is attempting to do, then I'm 100% behind you!
They got the viscosity just right
it's so fun
 
user55340
 
leora, New York, NY
6.4k 149 480 904
wow
 
user55340
No one likes php.
 
the jon skeet of asking
at least for the C# tag
 
user55340
(btw, you can select Programmers.SE for the site)
 
4:08 PM
how?
 
user55340
 
aaaha!
 
user55340
Productivity, teamwork, and work environment have this little triangle going on of old, high rep, questions.
 
AKA NPR
 
user55340
And interview, linking work-enviroment to algorithms.
 
4:13 PM
@WayneWerner those stats are all totally trying to argue a point and failing miserably. They're all about error rate per line - yeah of course when you bloat a bunch of extra lines of code that don't have semantic meaning you're going to have less errors per line. The only real indicator that doesn't just speak to the fact that percentages go down as totals go up (which doesn't mean total errors goes down, just percentage of them to the line count) is: An empirical study of 450 routines found that small routines (those with fewer than 143 source statements, including comments) had 23 percent more errors per line of code than larger routines but were 2.4 times less expensive to fix than larger routines
 
that's fascinating
 
all of the percentage statistics or per line of code are totally irrelevant because it's apples and oranges: you can't look at percent of lines when number of lines is your variable. Though the idea that smaller routines are cheaper to maintain is fit with a controlled point that is not the variant (the cost is not the variant so it's the control where the line count is the variant)
> Another study found that code needed to be changed least when routines averaged 100 to 150 lines of code
^-- that one actually is a well fixed statistic against the variant, but I would say I can see a clear outside variable here:
 
user55340
 
need to be changed is very subjective insofar as engineers are likely saying they won't and don't want to change them because of the risk, so they go unchanged and are therefore assessed as not needing change
People are more than happy to change 10-20 line functions because it's easy to fit the whole thing in your head, so they likely do change more often.
 
user15026
@MichaelT There goes my morning
 
user55340
4:21 PM
TagOverflow - a visulization of the tags on an SE site, how they relate and various stats about them.
 
psr
4:31 PM
World Building site is strange. I predict Eric Lippert will start to rack up huge reputation there when he starts implementing some of the designs.
 
user41796
@psr Which site is that?
 
user55340
 
user55340
Worldbuilding of course.
 
@JimmyHoffa That was basically my thought, too. I also wondered if in those larger functions people just said, "I don't ever ever ever want to come back and touch this POS"
 
user55340
0
Q: Tactical influences of an entirely electricity-based arsenal on starships?

ivy_lynxAssuming a world where starships don't use missiles and bullets in combat much. They only carry those as a final strike or for convenience. Their arsenal is almost entirely composed of electricity-based weaponry and tools: Arc generators to scar opponent ships with lightning bolts, field generato...

 
psr
4:33 PM
@GlenH7 Sorry, should have linked to it.
 
user41796
Oh My! There goes my day now...
 
user55340
11
Q: How do I drug a population in the most efficient way?

FulliI want a whole city to be on drugs secretly, so they don´t know they are drugged by their government. The city is about 2 billion people and roughly structured like a Makropole from the Warhammer 40k universe. This means: Many levels 4 classes (Lower, higher, worker, and government class) L...

 
@JimmyHoffa I thought something might be fishy about that - I mean empirically I've seen my own code have much less problems with smaller functions, but I wasn't sure what it was
Worldbuilding is fun. I sorta participated in the beta on that one
A couple of dragon questions
 
4:48 PM
@WayneWerner 9 bugs in 100 lines is <10%, 3 bugs in 12 lines is 25%, but overall the 100 line function has 3 times as many problems. Percentages of your variant is a marketing trick to skew your control into the background by tying it to your variant
plus the 100 line function takes significantly longer to modify which is why it will cost more, however getting the semantic value of 100 lines into 12 lines likely takes just as long or longer as getting that semantic value into 100 lines which is why the cost to create is not really effected by function size
cost to maintain however is plain to recognize: writing may not take longer for 100 lines vs 12 lines, but reading will always take significantly longer for 100 lines vs 12.
 
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A: Should I denote that a method satisfies an interface?

Robert HarveyPut the methods that satisfy the interface into a #region. #region IMyInterface Members // methods that satisfy interface #endregion Visual Studio even has a shortcut for creating this region and method prototypes for each method in the interface, available by right-clicking on the "inherits...

 
user55340
@RobertHarvey I'm guessing people don't like regions.
 
user41796
@RobertHarvey Haters gotta hate.
 
yeah.
 
user41796
@MichaelT Some equate them with goto
 
user55340
4:54 PM
58
Q: Are #regions an antipattern or code smell?

CraigIn C# code it allows the #region/#endregion keywords to made areas of code collapsible in the editor. Whenever I am doing this though I find it is to hide large chunks of code that could probably be refactored into other classes or methods. For example I have seen methods that contain 500 lines o...

 
user55340
@GlenH7 I am pro code folding when it makes semantic sense.
 
user41796
Do we need to do anything about the Matlab question with the image of what is likely copyrighted material?
 
user41796
@MichaelT I wish VS had better code folding abilities.
 
user41796
Makes me miss eclipse.
 
user55340
I hated seeing a '(g|s)etter' code fold, though I could understand it.
 
user55340
4:55 PM
As long as they were just simple getters and setters.
 
user55340
Sometimes though, people would stick logic in there and the code fold would hide that from me.
 
user41796
@MichaelT right - a lot of the time they're just boilerplate for a function that works with a private variable.
 
user55340
On the other hand, when working in some large 'generate an excel spreadsheet functions' that I worked with, I had a code fold for 'header' and 'normal row' so the folded code was screen full when compressed and I could see the section I was working on quickly and pull that out.
 
user55340
@RobertHarvey I do feel sorry for you over on MSO sometimes... (I even made mention of it here... kind of: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/17961506#17961506 )
 
user41796
Speaking of Robert's misery, I've pulled in 100 rep off of that assert stdout question so far.
 
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