The Whiteboard - 2014-12-19

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12:49 AM

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11 hours later…

12:19 PM

Hi folks, new to this site. I'm looking for some advice on where to ask for help on some OO design of a new project I'm thinking about. I'm not a professional programmer, just a dabbler really. I know a bit of C++ and am learning Java. It's got me thinking about creating a project to research my new passion -- TableTop Role playing games. I'd like to encode some of the game mechanics in a program to explore the rules and how balanced they can be.

I'm not terribly good at OO design and my questions are too subjective for programmers stack exchange. Where's the best place to discuss how to approach this kind of project and what language might be best suited (one of my two preferably -- I don't have the cycles for learning another one right now)

…. Is it even possible to get good advice from someone who is experienced at OO design but doesn't know much about the 'business logic' of the game mechanics. Please note that I'm not interested in creating a game exactly, I'm interested in encoding the rules of the game in programmatic logic to see how different aspects of the game work, basically 'play testing' it using a program.

2 hours later…

2:09 PM

If you are just a dabbler, then don't worry about your OO design, just try something that makes sense to you, and run with it. Eventually, you'll probably run into problems, and as you fix those problems, you'll learn first hand aspects about good design, OO or otherwise.

2:55 PM

Ahoy matey!

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@enderland I see that you've gotten your 14th gold badge. Grats

@durron597 :) I have a few of them there...

that one was a "10k views!" one which I didn't even do anything recently for. lol

3:41 PM

TGIF...

ffs

my stale data problem caused a completely different bug this morning

SO MUCH FOR MY BAND-AID FIX

I don't understand how I can have stale data for fields that only get modified by one thread

user41796

4:19 PM

@highbandwidth chat is probably your best bet. That said, this room is generally more active during regular, US business hours. And you might be surprised at how well some of the regulars in here understand the business logic and game mechanics behind table top games.

@GlenH7 I am seriously at wits end. My logic cannot be fundamentally flawed because these stale data problems are intermittent. It has to be a threading issue somehow, right?

Not to mention I've traced through this code what feels like hundreds of times

user41796

@durron597 are we back to your bete noir of the week?

user41796

QoTD - reversing obfuscated, crappy Java code pales in comparison to chasing race conditions... :-)

2

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That was easy compared to this

This morning's problem didn't even seem to have to do anything with threads

basically what appears to have happened is that it issued a new order to the exchange, and then in the next pass through the data processing loop, it issued another new order, so it lost the reference to the first one

user41796

@durron597 My french isn't polished enough to know whether it should be 'noir' or 'noire'

user41796

4:30 PM

@durron597 oh yuck

user41796

that could get expensive in a hurry

But this hasn't happened before

user41796

Two things come to mind

the fact that this hasn't happened in the last few months means it must be some sort of threading issue right?

user41796

First is that the logic that issues the order got confused and had two pieces trying to issue the same order

user41796

4:31 PM

And whatever control mechanism that exists to keep that from happening is borked

user41796

The second thought is that whatever updates the "environment state" after an order is placed failed to correctly write, so the second order is the system doing what it was supposed to do

user41796

Not sure where to recommend looking first

the second one seems much more plausible

user41796

depends upon what the patch changed, I guess

user41796

@durron597 That would be my guess too

4:33 PM

but the problem is, that's the exact tree i've been barking up for two weeks

user41796

something locked out the completion process to keep it from updating everyone on what it had done

user41796

So the rest of the system simply repeated itself because the same conditions were effectively refed to it

when a new order gets sent to the exchange

it's wrapped in an object that represents the whole lifetime of the order

this field is actually null when the application first starts

entry = factory.createEntry(entryData, this);

that line creates the object AND submits the order to the exchange

because there's only one thread passing through the data loop

user41796

@durron597 offhand, that seems like an odd coupling

it's almost like entry was somehow null again the next pass through the loop

user41796

4:37 PM

you've bound the order object (a logical construct) to the physical act of placing an order

user41796

@durron597 only one thread handles entry?

yes

well, the conditional is actually if(isDead(entry)) handleNewEntry();

	private boolean isDead(Order<?> order) {
		return order == null || order.isDead();
	}

user41796

@durron597 But that's one of the functions you've got wrapped within a lock object, iirc

user41796

so that implies multiple threads could access that area, right?

user41796

if so, I think we're back to one of the reasons why I really like to lock on data instead of on functions

user41796

4:41 PM

And that's probably not making sense because I've said it a few times. Let me write up a quick example to explain

I think I am locking on data, so I'm probably not understanding

user41796

@durron597 Nope, you're not, iirc

user41796

gimme about 5 mins

@GlenH7 Want some rep?

0

Q: Locking on data vs locking on functions

In concurrent code, what is the difference between, and the pros and cons of each: Locking on data Locking on functions My understanding is that locking on data is better, and I think I'm doing it, but apparently I am not. Could anyone provide some clarification?

concurrency concepts

@highbandwidth I'm pretty familiar with both table top games and OO design. I've thought about what you are doing, and I suspect the right tool for the job might be Prolog - which isn't OO. But it's pretty much built to be given a boatload of rules and work out the consequences. Depends in part on whether you want to practice OO or you want to leverage a (fairly difficult) tool.

4:55 PM

@GlenH7 Fixed the java syntax

user41796

@durron597 How expensive was the incorrect order this morning?

user41796

@durron597 ty

user41796

But quite seriously, how much money did y'all lose because of a bad order?

$175

user41796

Oh, that's not bad

4:57 PM

last week we actually made $5000 when we submitted the double take profit and the market moved with us. but that was pure luck

user41796

@durron597 that's a feature then... :-)

user41796

locks can be expensive in that parallel operations around that variable grind to a halt

user41796

BUT the whole point of a lock is that only one thing should be changing that at a time

user41796

and the lock code is supposed to be tight like in the trivial example I provided.

user41796

Lock; set the value; release

user41796

4:58 PM

thou shall not hold locks for extended periods of time is the first commandment of locking

even if you are going to be accessing the value in 4 out of 8 lines of a method?

gotta go to a meeting

thanks

talk later

user41796

k

user20683

@GlenH7 I still recall my parallelism class. shudders

user41796

@WorldEngineer yeah, it can get dicey

user41796

one thing I don't think that a classroom environment can properly emphasize is the subtle bugs that get introduced from poor locking decisions in code that is later on modified by someone else who is essentially unfamiliar with what the code is doing.

user20683

5:28 PM

@GlenH7 given the barrage of paradigms and methods we had to deal with (not to mention the first serious use of C in the program (and the last for me)

user20683

it was also decidedly scicomp oriented

user41796

@WorldEngineer Nothing like "simplifying" an already complex subject by cramming it with lots of new-to-the-student technology vectors.

user20683

@GlenH7 I "learned" openmp, mpi, pthreads, cuda, and other stuff I can't even recall

user20683

it's what happens when you get a full professor who went to IIT

user20683

brilliant teacher, dear god the workload

user41796

5:31 PM

@WorldEngineer in one semester?!

user20683

@GlenH7 sample first test

user20683

Third test

user41796

@WorldEngineer I'm a bit speechless. (for once)

user20683

@GlenH7 the only CS class I earned less than a C in (a D and I was damned happy to get it)

user20683

though had I known C or C++ to a working degree going in, I'd have done much better

user20683

5:36 PM

bear in mind I was also taking Calc II and leading a team in a software engineering class (and working like 25+ hours a week)

user41796

@WorldEngineer yeah, I hear that. Those were some crazy tests. Not sure it would be fair to drop those on undergrads.

user20683

@GlenH7 it was a 4000 level class, they are crosslisted with grad

user20683

cs.gsu.edu/~cscskp/Parallel/root/node2.html

user20683

the term project

user41796

I guess that's fair then. But sheesh.... :-)

user20683

5:43 PM

@GlenH7 still easier on a technical level than automata

user41796

I'm going to go back to solving indeterminate problems with multiple variables then... :-)

user41796

That seems easier since I can cheat things to make it work.

user20683

@GlenH7

user20683

86

Q: A math contest problem $\int_0^1\ln\left(1+\frac{\ln^2x}{4\,\pi^2}\right)\frac{\ln(1-x)}x \ \mathrm dx$

A friend of mine sent me a math contest problem that I am not able to solve (he does not know a solution either). So, I thought I might ask you for help. Prove: $$\int_0^1\ln\left(1+\frac{\ln^2x}{4\,\pi^2}\right)\frac{\ln(1-x)}x dx=-\pi^2\left(4\,\zeta'(-1)+\frac23\right).$$

calculus integration definite-integrals improper-integrals contest-math

user20683

The solution is brain esploding

user20683

5:49 PM

I particularly like the part where he just happens to know the infinite series that equals that particular log integral

@psr @glenh7 @whatisname Thanks folks. I may read up on Prolog. Or, I might just provide some facility for people to PvP things. Or, something else entirely

6:11 PM

I don't know why people don't just design their own locking semantics... Multithreading isn't really that hard unless you stick with the coarse grained tools that don't fit everywhere, any time you're doing something mildly complex it's so much easier to tie together your own locking semantics with signaling

everyone always tries to use outright lock() which doesn't fit all the behaviours people want, then they end up misusing it trying to make it fit... just use signals and data structures with fine grained locking built into them and you'll get it done far more easily with less bugs

lock() is great for the simplest scenarios but beyond those just don't bother

user55340

6:43 PM

Logtalk is an object-oriented logic programming language that extends and leverages the Prolog language with a feature set suitable for programming in the large. It provides support for encapsulation and data hiding, separation of concerns and enhanced code reuse. Logtalk uses standard Prolog syntax with the addition of a few operators and directives. Logtalk is distributed under an open source license and can run using a Prolog implementation (compliant with official and de facto standards) as the back-end compiler. == Features == Logtalk aims to bring together the advantages of object-oriented...

user55340

@highbandwidth Let me dig a bit... there was an article from the early days of game programming about how someone was going to write what amounted to a rules engine, but realized that prolog did all of that.

user55340

The core bit of an adventure game in prolog: csc.villanova.edu/~dmatusze/resources/prolog/sleepy.html and csc.villanova.edu/~dmatusze/resources/prolog/spider.html

user55340

And found what I was looking for: cs.auckland.ac.nz/~j-hamer/07.363/explore.html

user55340

> While I have since written a number of "useful" Prolog programs, I was first drawn to Prolog while I was in the middle of writing, for fun, an adventure game in 'C' on my first "personal" computer. I had started my 'C' program by building the basic tools needed for the game, which included a dynamic database to record the changing state of the game, and the ability to search for symbolic patterns in the state that indicated some action needed to be taken. The action was usually represented by a message to the user and a change of state of the game.

user41796

7:13 PM

@JimmyHoffa lock escalation and deadlock detection can be very hard problems to solve. In a previous life, we had an internal, custom DB for the application. That code was some challenging stuff. It was one of the few areas reserved for the High Priests and Priestesses.

@GlenH7 That's not the problem I'm having though. The problem I'm having is one where I set variables to certain values and it works 98% of the time. But I'm used to = working 100% of the time.

if the system weren't so latency sensitive i would just make everything volatile and see if that fixes anything

user41796

@durron597 Another question rolled through asking about lock escalation; Jimmy's comment wasn't related to your current issue

@GlenH7 oh ok

user41796

1

Q: Shared & exclusive locking

I need a "lock" that can be either shared or held exclusively, that will provide the following behavior for the following sequence of events: Process A: Requests and is granted a shared lock Process B: Requests an exclusive lock, and is blocked by A's ownership of the lock Process C: Requests a...

user41796

Is what prompted the comment of "why don't folk roll their own?"

user41796

7:19 PM

Hmmm, does Java support a shared lock?

@GlenH7 what do you mean by shared lock?

like a CountDownLatch?

user41796

Not sure about CountDownLatch. A shared lock is useful when you have an actor that says "I need to read this value, but I can't have anyone change it while I read it"

user41796

and you can have multiple actors holding the same shared lock

user41796

It's safe because none of them are changing what's being locked

user41796

The wikipedia articles are kinda weak on the subject, so I won't link them

7:24 PM

i'm sure it does, but probably via something in java.util.concurrency, not at the keyword level

user41796

You can have a shared lock; shared intent lock; and a exclusive lock.

user41796

shared intent basically says "I may escalate my lock status and request an exclusive lock"

user41796

@durron597 Yep, looks to be in the concurrency library: docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/locks/…

user41796

In your case, the shared and exclusive locks may be of interest

user41796

although I think you have other constructs in place to make sure the reads are atomic

user41796

7:26 PM

but it's not too much of a stretch to see where your app could take advantage of shared and exclusive locking

the application is honestly barely multithreaded

one dedicated thread to process market data

user41796

Those threads that need to just check current state could use shared locks. Those updating state through placing orders would want exclusive locks. And in theory, you could have some taking advantage of shared-intent locks

and one thread that reports fills

user41796

@durron597 You may be better off using a queue mechanism of some sort instead then

there are other threads in the system, obviously, but it's pretty highly encapsulated imo

user41796

7:28 PM

the queues would decouple your periphery operations from the main processing thread

so i don't really care what the async io thread pool that reports updates to my client does, for example

user41796

And I'm mostly just throwing ideas out to see if any stick; especially since I don't have to pay their implementation cost. :-)

@GlenH7 I definitely considered that, but it would be quite a painful refactor right now

user41796

@ratchetfreak - your "you need a read-write lock" ~~comment~~ got bumped to the VLQ queue. programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/87415 And yes, I skipped the actual review.

user41796

We've had a couple questions today where the question essentially invites one line answers. I don't feel comfortable casting a VTD on those answers because they do answer the question. But one liners don't contribute to the site as much as the community would like.

7:36 PM

@GlenH7 VTD = vote to delete or downvote?

user20683

vote to delete

user55340

You know, its nice to know you have a job when there is a Steam sale on.

@GlenH7 You can just downvote those answers

user20683

@MichaelT Did you get the Scala shop?

user55340

@WorldEngineer the first one offered - I'm just waiting to hear from the scala shop.

user41796

7:37 PM

1

Q: Shared & exclusive locking

I need a "lock" that can be either shared or held exclusively, that will provide the following behavior for the following sequence of events: Process A: Requests and is granted a shared lock Process B: Requests an exclusive lock, and is blocked by A's ownership of the lock Process C: Requests a...

user41796

Read the question and then Ratchet's answer. His answer is correct.

user20683

@MichaelT ah

user41796

so it's not quite down vote worthy, nor delete vote worthy. The problem is with the question

user41796

@MichaelT You, of course, gave them the professional courtesy of letting them know you had another offer, right?

When should I vote down? Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.

user20683

7:39 PM

it's the phenomena of open-ended versus close-ended questions

user20683

the first you can't answer with yes/no or similar

user20683

the second you can

user55340

@GlenH7 Yep (hoping to hear back soon).

user41796

Given the nature of both organizations, it's not likely you could play the offers off of each other. But it would be nice to be able to compare pros / cons and pick the one with the best appeal

user20683

or as I like to call them: The "AMIRITE GUYS?!" questions

user41796

7:40 PM

@WorldEngineer yes, locking is hard. :-D

user55340

They're both state agency, pay scale is rather fixed for each. They can't do favors with trying to get people like the private sector can.

user20683

@GlenH7 Locking is easy, knowing where to lock is hard

user41796

@MichaelT That takes some of the fun out of the game. :-)

user55340

So the choice (if there is one) becomes one of the challenges for the position (I think that while scala shop is more interesting technology, the DoC one has the possibility of more impact for me)... commute (scala shop is 15m one way, DoC is 30m), lunch options (scala shop is great, DoC not so great)... though I've still got to hear back from them.

user20683

plus you can then lord the fact that you know and use Scala over the likes of us

user20683

7:43 PM

:p

user55340

@WorldEngineer one has to hope the Haskell tax doesn't kick in though.

user55340

"i almost get sad at how some orgs use ’you get to use haskell‘ as a way of getting cheap smart engineers"

Tweeted by bitemyapp on June 3, 2014 at 1:29 AM

user20683

@MichaelT I'd think less so than Haskell given the Tumblr and Twitter both use it

user55340

And Why programmers can’t make any money: dimensionality and the Eternal Haskell Tax

user20683

If all you can do to sell yourself is say "you get to use Haskell", that's a red flag

user20683

7:45 PM

If you want cheap, smart engineers, offer co-ops to grad students

user41796

@WorldEngineer we're using it on my team. Shhhhh.

user20683

@GlenH7 I've got it installed on netbeans shhhhh :p

user20683

@GlenH7 You'd force a certain cupcake specialist to visit though

user41796

One of my winter break activities is to help provide bus tolerance for the scala work we have

user20683

:p

user41796

7:49 PM

@WorldEngineer That's one heck of a good conflict of interest

user41796

And honestly, I could probably sell that proposition all the way up to a high enough level of management that it would be a non-issue... <starts pondering...> :-)

user20683

@GlenH7 that would require me to move to redacted. I'm not so sure I want to move to redacted. Kitchener is a really nice town.

user41796

@WorldEngineer 3 letters: BBQ

user20683

@GlenH7 not a draw for me

user20683

I don't eat red meat

user41796

7:53 PM

Then I got nothing....

user41796

smoked salmon? Turkey? Chicken? And how about the other white meat (pork)?

user41796

We can leave brisket & beef ribs out of the conversation, quite easily....

user55340

@GlenH7 It's a neat language... its one I'm going to try to keep up with in the event I go for the DoC position instead.

user20683

@GlenH7 chicken on occasion, fish, sometimes other birds. I'm a Californian son of a granola lady as it were

user20683

was vegetarian outside restaurants for huge chunks of my life

user20683

7:57 PM

in any case, I've got to run. Holiday related what nots beckon

user41796

@WorldEngineer enjoy!

user41796

@MichaelT I'm looking forward to studying it

user55340

@GlenH7 The euler bits for me are interesting enough... when you get into the type system, there's quite a bit of power / neat stuff in there too.

user41796

In an ideal world, I'd spend a fair amount of time over the break brushing up on HTML and Javascript fundamentals too

@GlenH7 where is the BBQ?!

user41796

8:05 PM

@MattGiltaji The town where I currently live

user55340

-2

Q: Where do programmers look for reference/documentation about Java's features/libraries/functions?

Rookie programmers learning the language usually use a book or online materials.They are introduced to the language's syntax, common used functions for text processing or math operations. Only a small subset of the language is usually presented. Where do programmers, and developers, look for whe...

java learning documentation reference

user55340

I see that the question got downvoted. Allright, I'm asking specifically for Java. — s.brody 52 mins ago

user55340

@s.brody if the answer would be a link to Oracle's website, the question falls into the 'resource request' area which really amounts to "google something for me" (see Why was my question closed or down voted? "Asking for a link to something or statistics" section). We are looking for questions that don't boil down to "type this in google and copy the links there". This also doesn't touch on the extremely rich third party library documentation that exists out there that isn't something that Oracle hosts. — MichaelT 13 mins ago

user55340

@MichaelT: Well, I'm asking what are the usual practices when looking for Java reference. — s.brody 4 mins ago

user55340

I don't quite get what he's after.

user41796

8:07 PM

@MichaelT me either, but two more votes and it's done. :-)

I think he was looking for docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api

@ratchetfreak is that not a google search away

true but you need to know what to look for for it not to get burried in "tutorial" sites

MSE election started

@GlenH7 lol how so?

user55340

@durron597 Math.SE has a remarkable preservationist streak to it.

user41796

8:11 PM

@durron597 Actually, I was thinking of Meta-SE. Nevermind me... :-(

@MichaelT by that you mean, refusing to delete crap?

user41796

HINT: I should probably click through before saying anything.

3

user55340

On SO, there's a mod or two with notable preservationist tendency, but much of the site doesn't seem to have that culture. On Math.SE, its most of the site is preservationist and there's one or two 10k+ users who aren't (and are vocal about it).

user55340

@durron597 refusing to even close crap much of the time... and being completely supportive of answers that are "hint: use the trigonomic identity for tangent"

user55340

3

A: Solve for $\theta$: $a = b\tan\theta - \frac{c}{\cos\theta}$

Hint: $$ \tan(\theta) = \frac{\sin(\theta)}{cos(\theta)}$$

user55340

8:14 PM

And while I know I pick on Ampt, there, that's just an example. He got more flack for giving a complete answer.

rep farming is easy on Math.SE

user55340

(glance at the answers in this one)

user55340

13

Q: $ \tan 1^\circ \cdot \tan 2^\circ \cdot \tan 3^\circ \cdots \tan 89^\circ$

How can I find the following product using elementary trigonometry? $$ \tan 1^\circ \cdot \tan 2^\circ \cdot \tan 3^\circ \cdots \tan 89^\circ.$$ I have tried using a substitution, but nothing has worked.

algebra-precalculus trigonometry products

@ratchetfreak but you have to do math...

user41796

@MichaelT I thought they deleted some of his ~~non-hints~~ answers too

user55340

8:16 PM

@GlenH7 comments where purged... don't recall any answers being deleted.

user41796

@MattGiltaji no, because you can't actually answer anything. Just hint about it.

@MattGiltaji not really just look for a generaly formula that is likely to be needed and add that as a hint

9/10 you get upvoted

user55340

-1 for "No hint answers". If you're not willing to follow a good hint, you don't deserve an answer in the first place. Also the question is poorly worded: by "single sine wave", you probably mean to say that you're looking for points of the form $(x,\sin(x))$ for $x\in [0,2\pi)$. Otherwise, the question is rather trivial. — tomasz Aug 31 at 20:24

user55340

(on one of Robert's questions)

@GlenH7 I did edit the link in afterwards

user41796

8:18 PM

6 mins ago, by GlenH7

HINT: I should probably click through before saying anything.

user41796

:-)

@GlenH7 What I'm saying is that the link didn't exist at first

good luck clicking through plain text

user55340

@GlenH7 I'm so tempted to find links that look like risky clicks that aren't.

user41796

@durron597 You underestimate what room owners are capable of

@GlenH7 lol

user41796

8:19 PM

@MichaelT or some rick-rolls.

did you read today's what-if.xkcd.com?

I think such a high percentage of Math.SE questions ought to be homework that they have to allow a hint policy

user41796

HINT: too many Rick-rolls will get you kicked from the room.

meanwhile SO often helps people with actual problems where they just need answers

last link is a reverse rickroll

8:20 PM

@ratchetfreak Awesomeness!

user55340

@durron597 but to down vote someone for asking for not a hint?

@MichaelT tomasz isn't a ♦ though

functionalworks.ghost.io

3

Q: Is voting up supposed to be so subjective?

What does it mean to vote up? The documentation, IMO, is not clear. This results in questions like: Why should I upvote a question? What is upvoting questions supposed to be for? Why don't people upvote questions they answer? If you notice, those questions are full of things like "Well, what...

discussion voting up-votes community-standards

user55340

@durron597 indeed... but to have the "hints are ok" that institutealized in the site that someone would suggest down voting for asking for no hints and three people uprooted that comment?

8:26 PM

@MichaelT You can't downvote comments. It might be one of those +3/-100 things

user55340

@durron597 you've read their meta?

hallo!

Finally back

17

A: Old questions with hint-only answers. Can we provide whole answers?

I argue that hints are just as useful for future readers as complete answers are, and we should strive for better questions to be asked, rather than modifying the hints into complete answers. Hints can be useful to others. If the OP posts into the question their attempts, and some of the releva...

Ah are we talking about the math.se election?

I'll admit that's where I got this snazzy hat

user41796

@Ampt you pulled a silver badge from math.se?

8:29 PM

@GlenH7 Constituent

;)

user55340

IIRC there was a moderator candidate who had a comment on the nomination page about not flagging because it wasn't nice... (really makes me wonder about what the moderator would do with the flags there)

@MichaelT script to auto decline all flags?

user41796

@MichaelT wait, what? "Don't flag things 'cause that's not nice." ?!?!

I voted for the candidates who were furthest from the status quo

user55340

8:32 PM

@GlenH7 Look at the helpful flag counts and review counts on the Math.SE site. Many candidates have less than 50 helpful flags.

especially the ones who said they weren't active on any site but Math.SE

user41796

@MichaelT flags === answers then?

@Ampt probably because they couldn't get away with hint answers elsewhere

user55340

@GlenH7 Can you imagine a 10k user with "21 of 22 helpful flags"?

user41796

@MichaelT HINT: That's atrocious.

user55340

8:34 PM

8k with 10 of 12 helpful.

user55340

37k with 15 of 21.

I'm 25k on SO with only 8/9 helpfull flags...

I'm 10k on SO with 112 helpful

user55340

@durron597 960 on SO for me...

you guys aren't running for mod though either

user41796

8:36 PM

@durron597 73 here, but only ~1k rep on SO

@MichaelT fwiw my 1-2-3 are the three people with the most helpful flags

some people aren't interested in running the site and don't participate on meta/flag content and thats fine

user55340

I'd be tempted to run for SO... but that would mean I'd have to learn some Haskell.

but if you're saying you can moderate a community and only have a handful of flags...

then again I don't go near the php/C++ cesspit

8:38 PM

@MichaelT It's a lot easier to get helpful flags when you don't have 3k rep

true as you can flag as off-topic and get a helpful flag

user55340

@durron597 true... though 211 of those are comment flags.

I found it significantly more difficult to get the last few flags I needed for Deputy after I hit 3k

or you hire some spam bots for spam flags

I also never flag comments unless they're really really egregious because someone (probably @RobertHarvey) told me once that moderators really don't care about comment flags

8:41 PM

and (from what I heard) comment flags can only be marked helpful if the comment is removed

ha! Community has 10 hats.

meh I turned hats off

one of them is "Not a cherry" lol

user55340

@durron597 see the bit about automated comment flagging?

user55340

103

Q: Can a machine be taught to flag comments automatically?

TL;DR: Yes it can. Background On June 27, 2014 Skynet awoke. It looked at Stack Overflow and thought "Why are all these people being so chatty and talking about obsolete things? I should nuke them all!" Fortunately, Skynet was a baby and only had access to my 100 comment flags a day. Prior ...

discussion flags comments

user55340

8:55 PM

> 26885 comments flagged
26714 deemed helpful
171 declined

@pnuts generally speaking, the only known legitimate reason to vote down is that Tim lost his keys — gnat 8 hours ago

^^^ applies to upvotes too

I'm torn on whether I like pair programming or not

user41796

@MichaelT Isn't that basically the same tack that Undo took? Or is that Undo under a new name?

user41796

@enderland count me firmly in the "no thanks" camp

user41796

But I'm a dinosaur who doesn't like other people. :-P

9:00 PM

@GlenH7 I don't think as well when working with dialog, but it's good to learn from people, so I'm torn

user55340

@GlenH7 similar.

@MichaelT "Thanks, that worked" comments are helpful flaggable? seriously?

Who cares?

SE has such a broken system for comments its not even funny

user55340

@enderland the older system was worse.

@MichaelT Probably. It's a pain in the rear end to try to moderate comments, too

user55340

9:02 PM

@enderland the older system was "no comments" and "people post comments as answers" which still has some awful examples when you dig into history on SO.

user55340

You need to clarify the question? That's an answer saying "could you clarify the question a bit more?"

user55340

@durron597 I've done some comment flagging on questions where there are 2 comments... and if one comment is deleted, the roomba eats the post.

Yeah I guess that's better, marginally

user55340

The abandoned open question script.

@gnat and here I thought the only legitimate reason to upvote/downvote was popularity... because there are no troubles with popularity

user55340

9:10 PM

btw, I've been out of close votes for awhile today...

user55340

-3

Q: Why are they still using C program

Why are they still using C even though not OO (object oriented)?Are they using Windows or Unix Environment? If either, what are the advantages or disadvantages? What it takes to move from procedural to OO languages? Is it possible? What is the cost?

c++ object-oriented c project

user55340

(hmm... need 700 rep to get to the #2 spot for the year reputation league... not too much hope to get to #1 where Robert sits)

user55340

9:24 PM

So, nope on Scala (if they had a stronger functional programming candidate that would be a better choice than me). Accepted the DoC.

@MichaelT So what'll you be up to? Still in Eau Claire or is this a move?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Its a move.

10:07 PM

@MichaelT what's the work?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Java development. Little bit behind the times - but thats also what they're looking to move into. Web services (both soap and rest), secure coding.

Modern stuff no longer seems to support soap for shit... growing to think it may not be worth meddling on just because you attach yourself to a tech that newer libraries won't be able to mesh with... running into that in .NET, none of the newer service libraries or code have any support for SOAP so I'm stuck with WCF to do SOAP and none of them are built for WCF so... basically they're off limits.

Sucks. Losing out on upgraded ORM stuff, upgraded serializers, upgraded security libraries, all because none of them work with the older tech that supports SOAP

I recognize the benefit of having a service description and standard extensions, those are all great things, but if modern libraries don't support such...you're a bit up a creek just choosing between those benefits vs. others

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Its still around. I recall doing some with Netbeans at Employer^... twice. Once the WSDL was too complex for Netbeans to handle (or jaxb) to handle nicely - had to use Apache Axis.

@MichaelT I know it is, it just seems less and less support is available

user55340

Its still around, and if you're doing Java to Java internal communication, I'd rather do soap with xml than json.

user55340

10:20 PM

Its not the 'new' thing... though part of that is also you don't see it as much.

user55340

You see REST all over with java script <-> backend and single page apps... soap and xml tend to be hidden in the backend where you've got message queues and the like.

@MichaelT wait... you accepted an offer??? CONGRATS!

Apparently I've been MIA for too long

user55340

3 hours ago, by MichaelT

You know, its nice to know you have a job when there is a Steam sale on.

Wait... Steam sale?!

@Ampt you need to hang out on the bridge more. we knew about the steam sale the nanosecond it hit

user55340

10:27 PM

user image

@MattGiltaji unfortunately I'm not brave enough to join the bridge from work, much less a very tightly monitored client internet connection

user55340

Borderlands pre-sequel -- 50% off.

@MichaelT heh... I got a copy with my graphics card and gave jimmy the one that came with my second one

if you grab it, we'll have to do some 3 player

oooh.... deadspace

Has anyone played Crusader Kings 2? I saw an arqade post about it, looked very cool

I had never heard of it before though, didn't play the first one etc.

The original Crusader was great

I played Stronghold 2 and it was ok....

kinda gave up on the series after that

10:30 PM

Note about my taste in games: Star Control 2 is still my favorite game ever

i think I played the crusader kings 2 demo, but couldn't get into it. I hated the dynasty thing but apparently that is a major component of it

@MattGiltaji Yeah. Crusader was stupidly simple. had a few different resource types, a stockpile that held literally everything, and then barracks to train troops

so it was easy to pick up but there were a few different strategies

plus the 3 level wall system was awesome for building sweet castles

the new ones seem to think that more features == better but I disagree

@Ampt i find i get along better with the total war and civilization series. granted i am pretty bad at them but i have a lot of fun with it

10:46 PM

@durron597 I really like that one.

11:24 PM

@psr I have yet to find another game that really captures good game play at all levels like SC2 does. Plot, resource management, fighting that requires dexterity

xcom (both the original dos one and the new one) comes close

hai

if i have a java servlet that executes business logic and throws a business logic checked exception, how to i pass it on to http client(say java swing making http requests) that can know this exception, so that swing client can take this exception and display the user to notify the product owners?

are java exceptions have a limit to pass around within a single running jvm?

11:41 PM

@overexchange how are the http client and the java servlet the same jvm?

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