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gnat
gnat
5:48 AM
@MichaelT ^^^ your stuff seems to be in demand :)
@gnat that comment definitely helped me, you should make it an answer. — ylun 5 hours ago
not to mention that you personally have got some popularity there...
10
Q: Can we do something more useful when new users land on a protected question?

Jon EricsonIf you land on a protected question and are not able to answer (because you don't have 10 reputation earned on the site) you find this notice where the answer box normally lives: That's weird and a little hostile. The call to action assumes you are here because you're trying to solve a proble...

feature-request new-users protected-questions
 
 
3 hours later…
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
9:08 AM
repeating poster offender
0
Q: Functional problems due to localization

EugeneWith localization come various UI issues such as untranslated or badly translated strings, clipped strings, incorrectly formatted dates or numbers, wrong sorting order and more. However are there any non display related issues that cause major loss of functionality? One such example might be stor...

localization
 
gnat
gnat
9:59 AM
Unclear what help you need. Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell what problem you are trying to solve or what aspect of your approach needs to be corrected or explained. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question. — gnat 15 secs ago
blatant self-duplicate, re-posting prior closed question: Typical globalization/localization bugs — gnat 1 min ago
 
 
3 hours later…
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
12:33 PM
I don't suppose anyone here does things with JNA? I've been digging through docs for JDK8 and JNA trying to figure out if it just has support for the new statically-linked library loading in JNI or not.
I'm guessing that it should just work, since System.loadLibrary("libName") will load libName, whether it's a .dll/.so or a .lib/.a.
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
some how I doubt a .lib will work, they tend to be compiler specific
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@ratchetfreak At that point, it's native, though. It's OS-dependent.
Besides, .lib is the Windows form of a statically linked library produced by the Microsoft compilers. Does anything else make .libs?
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
that could still change depending on compiler version
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I don't see how compiler version matters with JNI. If the OS can load and execute it, JNI should be able to make the calls.
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
I always assume that static linking requires all parts to be generated by the same compiler...
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
12:42 PM
I don't think so. Sometimes, we get pre-compiled static libraries from vendors for hardware and we can just drop them in.
I don't think there's a guarantee that they are using the exact same compiler and version that we use.
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
but you can get bitten by different runtimes that way
either way I've had problems when try such things and prefer to build it all myself
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Building yourself is always good, but you don't always have the source code when dealing with proprietary hardware drivers.
 
gnat
gnat
12:57 PM
0
Q: "SO questions are penalized" in the hot list - how does that work?

gnatShog explained in this question about hot list: SO questions are penalized... if your goal is to get more SO questions into the list, you have a bit of a hump to climb. How is this achieved? Or, to be more precise, is it technically possible to establish similar "penalty" for some other si...

support hot-questions
 
gnat
gnat
1:10 PM
@ratchetfreak hard to tell, it seems to be secret. I for one imagine 10,000 little gnomes carefully counting SO questions and pushing these into the list or pulling out of it. Shog only knows — gnat 8 mins ago
 
MetaFight
MetaFight
1:40 PM
Is Shog another word for Glob?
 
gnat
gnat
1:55 PM
in The Water Cooler, 2 days ago, by Alex M.
so, shog9 was the asshole there or something?
^^^ you see, opinions differ :)
 
MetaFight
MetaFight
Is there a badge for extending a comment conversation that should have taken place in chat instead?
You've earned the "Derailer" badge.
it's a platinum badge.
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
doesn't show up in your network profile
 
MetaFight
MetaFight
Not yet. I'm starting a petition to have it added to SE.
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
I don't think they'll go for it
 
MetaFight
MetaFight
The comments section of a question can be used for petition signatures, right?
 
user55340
2:09 PM
@ratchetfreak Its friday... you never know.
 
user55340
I mean... look at how well this question did...
 
user55340
16
Q: New background for deleted posts

GlenH7Programmers has picked up a bit of a reputation as of late. We've done our best to shed the remaining issues from the NPR1 days. And we're fortunate to have users who focus on maintaining the site's high quality content, and who move quickly to get rid of the cruft. Heck, we even invited Undo ...

feature-request design deleted-posts fun
 
user55340
50
A: The Many Memes of Meta

TheTXIMeme: Friday Afternoon Origin: Olafur Waage Cultural Height: TBD Background: Friday Afternoon is generally recognized as the period of the week when programmers like to slack off (more than usual) and begin an early unwinding from the past week's worth of not doing anything of great importance...

 
user41796
@MichaelT The deleted comment is what made that one epic
 
user55340
@GlenH7 I'd go for the mods all chiming in too... but yea, that comment. sigh
 
user41796
2:18 PM
And they have renamed "always friday in iceland" to just "fun"
 
user55340
If I have some free time, I'll ask that the icons of the top 10% of editors on a site not be used for suggested edit reviews because of the "my head will explode" factor if I ever see Peter have a vandalism edit.
 
user55340
Hey! I've got 3 more edits all time than @GlenH7 !
 
user55340
(though we're still both about 1/10th of the all time edits of @gnat)
 
user41796
I have been slacking off lately with nuking the "thanks!" signatures in questions
 
user41796
too much crap going on in my life and at work, so I've backed off some of my stuff here
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
3:27 PM
User asks where they can ask their off-topic questions, so we direct them to chat. Then they come to chat, and we realize their questions are just as vague, under-specified and uninteresting in chat as they would be on the main site.
 
VarunAgw
VarunAgw
3:38 PM
Hi everyone,
Sorry for a but off-topic post but is GoF book outdated after 15 years or is still a good read for newbie. Also does it talk about anti-patterns (whatever they are)
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
patterns are pretty timeless, some are not best practice (like the singleton) but if you understand the reason for the pattern (and why it is (not) a good idea) then it doesn't matter how old your reference is
 
gnat
gnat
@VarunAgw yes to first question (good read), no to second (doesn't talk of anti-patterns)
 
user55340
10
A: How Do I Determine the Value of a Technical book?

MichaelTThe majority of the tech books out there are hopping onto a particular bandwagon. With the rate of change of technology (frameworks, languages, cloud applications, fads of the day), many tech authors write poorly done books trying to get them out there to be sold to the masses who are following ...

 
VarunAgw
VarunAgw
>>and why it is (not) a good idea

I can't tell. That's why I want to purchase this. Will this book help me in this case?
 
gnat
gnat
@MichaelT found yet another usage for your meta post about downvotes and closures. I now refer it in flags asking to remove brainless comments "belongstoprogrammers" in crappy questions, works like a charm (before I had to point to my rep at site and refer ChrisF to ask in case of doubt, quite tedious)
> "Ask this question on Programmers" is wrong, misleading advice, see meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/…
^^^ example of a recent flag message
 
user55340
3:52 PM
FWIW, I've added Design Patterns to the examples of timeless books in my answer about value of technical books
 
user55340
 
gnat
gnat
4:06 PM
some seem to have a talent to ask particularly bad questions... programmers.stackexchange.com/users/123381/user123381
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
He'll get question-banned in due course.
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
how many deleted does the guy have?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@VarunAgw It's a good book, and you should own it. But it shouldn't be your only book. Don't fall into the trap of so many new programmers who think you can "design by pattern," copy-pasting code and stitching software patterns together to create a programmer quilt. It won't work. You still need to know the fundamentals of programming, have a good command of your chosen programming language, and understand what the patterns are for and when it is appropriate to use them.
@ratchetfreak I think only mods can see that.
 
user41796
@ratchetfreak At least one. And one more on the way
 
user55340
@ratchetfreak I know there were 2 at one point, now there's one. You can also see that the tags don't match the question - so thats another indication that there was a deleted something that hasn't had the tags recalculated. Seeing the "peer pressure" badge (not here) is another indication to look at.
 
user41796
4:16 PM
Those were good examples of where nothing could be done to salvage the question, so VTD as quickly as possible
 
user41796
@MichaelT I deleted the 2nd one you are thinking of: programmers.stackexchange.com/q/232418/53019
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
I guess I could putter around in data.stackexchange.com
 
Shahar
Shahar
4:42 PM
What's up
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
complaining about off topic questions
 
user55340
@GlenH7 The other second one is gone too now.
 
user41796
It was only a matter of time
 
Shahar
Shahar
@MichaelT whatsup
 
user41796
@gnat - did you ever flag these suspicions?
 
user55340
4:52 PM
@Shahar Lunch. Very soon.
 
gnat
gnat
@GlenH7 yup, mod said no evidence of abuse there so far, fat chance to be legitimate coincidence
 
user41796
Thanks. Still seems odd. And the lower rep user is asking some blatantly off-topic questions for progs
 
user41796
It seems odd or unlikely that a user would be sophisticated enough to use a throw-away sock puppet to ask blatant off-topic questions on the hopes of getting an answer but keep a "regular" account to hoard the precious repz.
 
user41796
But I never would have believed in voting rings for profit either.
 
user41796
last time I answered "can I used VM to develop" not only my question was closed but also deleted. In short... yes, got for it. CentOS in VM has been my primary dev environment for last 1.5 years and no issues whatsoever. — DXM 4 mins ago
 
gnat
gnat
4:59 PM
@GlenH7 I just re-checked vote splits on lower-rep account questions - no upvotes mean no attempt of fraud (no need to check higher rep account since insufficient privileges block fraud in that direction). so far so good. And likely end in Q-ban for lower rep account
 
user41796
@gnat I think one of the low rep user's Qs has already been deleted, so I suspect they have hit a qban here
 
user41796
And I don't think DXM would be surprised to know there are 3 close votes on that question already
 
gnat
gnat
@GlenH7 fine, this lowers chances for fraud even further
 
user41796
@MetaFight - I would just give up on that "I can haz androidz?" Q
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
5:25 PM
0
Q: Any way to get OWIN to host a SOAP service?

Jimmy HoffaSo as a rule we like to do both REST and SOAP endpoints on our services; currently we use IIS and the WCF restful bits to host the SOAP with [ServiceContract]/[OperationContract] attributes, and the rest is defined with [WebInvoke] attributes, with these attributes the services need no reimplemen...

c# wcf rest soap owin
I don't suspect any of you are doing anything with or have done anything with OWIN, but just throwing the Q up here in case anybody knows anything or is interested in the content
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa dunno, but enjoy the repz. Seemed like a well formed question
 
gnat
gnat
all right, what about a little bit of badge-whoring then? just two little votes up and I'll get a shiny golden badge at TWP :)
98
A: How can we motivate employees to complete IT certificates?

gnat motivate employees... to make certificates in their free time because they are on projects Above is a huge red flag, don't do this. If it's really in company interests ("so we can say we have highly qualified employees"), don't cheat about personal improvement. What serves the company, shou...

 
user41796
5:45 PM
@gnat Related to the article you link in your answer, has anyone been looking at France's productivity rates in recent years? AFAIK, they have had a <40 mandated work week for some time now. So they could be used as a study to validate some of the claims.
 
VarunAgw
VarunAgw
@gnat completed the century
 
gnat
gnat
@GlenH7 France's 35 hours may differ too little from 40 to provide reliable difference within a reasonable budget for a study. My understanding is (and this matches well with personal experience) that substantial productivity boost happens when one switches to 40h from 45-50
once upon a time I did a streak of 80-90h weeks for 3 or maybe 4 months. I was young and crazy back then. And my experience for 2-3 months after that (total apathy) taught me that it's better be avoided
 
user41796
A couple of articles I just read indicate that French productivity per hour worked is amongst the highest in the world
 
gnat
gnat
6:05 PM
@GlenH7 that sounds reasonable, but then, you have to multiply that by 35/40 to get a comparable data against those working 40h, and I think things will get slippery then
 
gnat
gnat
6:25 PM
Just imagine...

    - [company] We will pay $1000 if you pass OCJCMC-AC/DC
                certification in your free time.
    - [employee] Wow great I'll go for it!

      --- 2-3 months later... ---

    - [company] We'll cut your bonus by $2000 because you failed project X.
    - [employee] Oh but... but I was in bad shape because I spent
                 much effort preparing for certification.
    - [company] Oops.
    - [employee] WTF?!

This can kill any motivation faster than you say "Oops".
^^^ sometimes I am not ashamed to re-read what I wrote a while a go
 
user55340
6:37 PM
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:24 PM
Why do you need to know things like user and mmorpg? Is the game not already an MMORPG, and aren't you already dealing with users? To put it another way, is anything in your game besides a user avatar ever going to wear a skirt? — Robert Harvey 1 min ago
Arqade must be a really amusing place.
When I die, someone is going to crack open my "Interesting things to do when I get around to it" email account, and see all of the things that I was interested in that I never got around to.
Skydiving, hula hooping, falling down the stairs... What would the privacy implications be for such an API? Would users be all that wild about some company knowing when they are having sex, because they accidentally left the phone on the bed, or even on the nightstand? — Robert Harvey 11 secs ago
 
user55340
8:07 PM
@RobertHarvey "Hi, I'm Google, you seem to have a creaky bed. Can I look up mattress replacement for you? ... oh wait, Can I look up 'morning after' for you?"
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Thanks. Now I'll have an image of Creepy Clippy in my head for the rest of the day. Much obliged.
 
user55340
@RobertHarvey Google Android is always listening...
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Mmmm...
 
user55340
 
user55340
 
user55340
8:14 PM
Two neat 'subway' map styles - US highways and interstates.
 
user55340
8:27 PM
@RobertHarvey ... here, let me stream that for you to live chat....
 
user55340
9:11 PM
@GlenH7 @ThomasOwens On an Engineering question for you in P.SE
 
user55340
0
Q: Is software development really a type of engineering?

ProgI'm a hobbyist Java programmer. I have aspirations to become a professional programmer, and I don't consider myself a beginner. But I'm no professional. I hear the term 'software engineering' used a lot. I also hear the term 'architecture' and 'engineer' used very often in relation to software d...

architecture engineering development
 
user55340
If you wish to discuss this, I would suggest stopping into Programmers Chat and talking with some of the Engineers who are in there. Patterns are not part of Engineering at all. — MichaelT 1 min ago
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
9:35 PM
Software Patterns have no relevance in Software Engineering?
 
user55340
@RobertHarvey Not in the way that people think of Patterns.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Well, the way that most people seem to think of software patterns is "How can I mash these things together and get a thing (and the admiration of my peers)?"
 
user55340
(this one still irks me...
 
user55340
IMO the creativity is in finding an implementation of the pattern that exactly suits your particular problem, plus, on an application-level scale, gluing all those patterns together in a way that's maintainable and somewhat legible. — Amy Blankenship Mar 18 at 20:16
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Yeah, like that.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
9:37 PM
Patterns aren't things you use.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
It's impossible to use them in any effective way without employing some engineering principles, or at least thinking like an engineer.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
They are things that have emerged from good design, and will continue to emerge in good design.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Good engineering == good design.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
And because they emerge in design, we give them names so that way, we can be like "oh, hey, look, my design has the properties of a <pattern name>"
And anyone familiar with that pattern gets that small piece of the design much easier.
 
user55340
But Engineering has more than just "I'm using an AbstractFactory in the right way" - source code control, build process...
 
user55340
9:39 PM
... says the non-engineer
 
user55340
Ensuring the production of good software and being able to manage and mitigate the risk in developing software - being able to spew patterns into a text file isn't part of that... (or so I believe...)
 
user55340
Should start putting IANAE in those comments.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
IANAEBISBIIWL?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
PTFTFTHH
@tylerl: You just lack imagination. If I wrote a "Find-A-Taxi" application, it might be really useful to know how often my users had to run for the taxi, wave their arms, break a heel, etc. — Robert Harvey 59 secs ago
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Or, alternatively, MDSEBITLTMIO.
 
user55340
9:42 PM
But I Still Believe It Is Worth Love?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Bingo. [puts finger to nose]
Tanstaafl Constinople.
 
user55340
The place I went for lunch today with former coworkers gives a 10% discount for employees of former company... since I was sitting with two guys who were from former company that the staff knew were... I got a 10% discount at lunch too.
 
user55340
Heh... @gnat that localization question that got asked twice...
 
user55340
-1
Q: Typical globalization/localization bugs

EugeneWe are developing a medical application in C#/C++. We receive data from sensors and display the locations of the sensors in on the patient CT on the screen in 3D. We also connect with PACS network. We are now adding support for German, Spanish, French, Italian to our application. We've translate...

localization
 
user55340
Got reposted on SQA.SE
 
user55340
9:47 PM
5
Q: Typical localization bugs

user3251930We are now adding support for German, Spanish, French, Italian to our application. We've translated all strings and added a big margin for them in the UI. Now I am wondering what kind of bugs to expect besides the obvious translation, text and clipping bugs. From what I've read, sorting strings,...

quality-assessment
 
user55340
Which got a comment:
 
user55340
I found the same question, could be helpful: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/233048/… — amazpyel 10 hours ago
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I should update to Windows 8.1 this weekend. From Windows 7. And maybe think about that tabtop I've wanted...
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
What does Windows 8.1 give you that Windows 7 doesn't already provide (other than pretty colored boxes)?
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
No clue. But it's newer. And it has a .1.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
9:52 PM
So it must be good.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
If I get a laptop/tablet convertible thing with 8.1 on it, there may be advantages?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Don't know. I still have an IPad I with ios4 on it, so there are some things I can't run on it. Some things are starting to get jerky, like Grumpy Cropsies.
There's a Peter Principle of old computers. They'll gradually write software against newer platforms with better capabilities, until the new software will eventually no longer work on your computer.
I can play full-screen 1080P video files on my six year old computer without problems, but not YouTube HD videos.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Wait. Grumpy Cropsies is a thing?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Farm Heroes Saga.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I thought you made that up. Like the opposite of Angry Birds or something.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
9:57 PM
Grumpy Cropsies add just enough complexity to the game that my IPAD One can't quite keep up. It actually crashes the game from time to time.
As you can see, I spend a lot of time making sure that my hardware is state-of-the-art, bleeding-edge, best that money can buy.
Although, in my defense, I do have a Samsung Galaxy 4.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Well, I should have an S5 soon. From my GNex. Almost bought an S4, but I was told to hold out for another month.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Dammit. I'm already obsolete. Again.
Probably paid too much for the phone, too.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Not really. S4 is going to be current gen for a long time.
 
user55340
I'm an apple guy... my family drank the coolaid back with the ][+ and I've been ever since... except for the occasional other machine for appropriate work/games (I had a 486dx4 for linux - AUX wasn't the ideal CS development target)
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Phones come out so frequently, the "current" and "previous" gens are pretty much current gen.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
10:08 PM
My next acquisition will probably be a Macbook, only because PC's are not the best thing for music production. I'll buy the best I can afford, and probably not buy again for six years.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I noticed how all the DJs are carrying Macbooks.
It's weird.
Artists and photographers, too. Although Lightroom is on Windows and that's good enough for me.
 
user55340
@GlenH7 thoughts... if we ever do the mod thing here, need to make a point of "I will still do 20 close vote reviews/day" as one of our campaign commitments.
 
user55340
Pulling the people who do reviews out of the active review pool because they're a mod can be detrimental to the prompt handling of issues.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
...just creating a link for myself to click...
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa Heh...
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
10:11 PM
@ThomasOwens The Dell Laptop I have seemed like a good idea, until it forgot where all my musical equipment was, because I didn't plug them into the same USB ports they were originally. That confused the multitrack software, and basically dumped the entire configuration.
 
user55340
I mean, world had ~750 reviews before modhood... not sure how many of ChrisF's 470 were before modness.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
The mac stuff just works. I can plug this into my IPad 1 with a camera connection kit, and it immediately recognizes it.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Woah. Since when did VS Express have everything and not separate apps for every language?
No F# though.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
I guess they figured out that the compilers were the smallest part of the install.
Might as well just include all of them.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I wonder when they realize that free development environments are a good thing.
They would bring more people to your platform and your other offerings.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
10:15 PM
Most folks get their VS from an MSDN subscription anyway.
Hoo, boy.
@RobertHarvey yes!! These are exactly the type of use cases we've been thinking of. We're trying to gauge developer interest and figure out which sorts of activity classifications to implement first. What do you suggest? Some other examples we were thinking of: Reckless driving, fall detection, mode of transportation (bus/train/car/bike), etc. — Andrew 5 mins ago
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
A basic editor and compilers for free. Sell the OS, more advanced development tools, MSDN, and so on.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Isn't that what they do now?
 
user55340
@RobertHarvey There are companies that have devices that hook up to the car to detect reckless driving. Having a phone accelerometer try to detect it isn't going to detect when its out of app, or if its in app and falls down under the seat (and gives a false positive)... it also misses the "takes a corner too fast" type thing in some cases.
 
user55340
And then there was the "I want to write an app that calls 911 when someone throws the phone into the air."
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@RobertHarvey F# isn't in Express VS...so they almost do it now.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
10:19 PM
Hasn't F# always been sort of an experiment? The Haskellers don't take it seriously because it is not pure, and the OO'ers don't take it seriously because... Well, it just looks weird to them, I guess.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I know some F# fanboys.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@ThomasOwens You do? Can you punch them for me? They're screwing up their chance; the dicks.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@JimmyHoffa What chance/
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@ThomasOwens The chance to have a mainstreamish FP language- which is a chance they already shot in the foot to be sure
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
The VB'ers already have a hard enough time competing against C#. For all the sophistication that software developers toss around, they are a remarkably conformist bunch.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
10:22 PM
getting it mainstream is great, but before you get that, you need to win over the FP folk, and the tooling and issues with F# is too bungled to win them. So they've gotten effectively near no one using it because FP folks don't like it and OO folks don't have anyone pushing them towards it
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Hm. Subclassing Socket for a UDP-based protocol seems...weird.
But I do want to maintain drop-in compatibility.
And it is a streaming mode.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@JimmyHoffa The tooling is the big problem with all of the functional languages.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@ThomasOwens just beware your LSP in the meantime
@RobertHarvey untrue
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@JimmyHoffa How so?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Well, I knew you were going to say that.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
10:23 PM
Under the hood, it's UDP. But the interface exposed makes it look like a stream, just like TCP.
There's also a message-based mode, which I'm planning to implement by subclassing DatagramSocket.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@ThomasOwens So long as it could be dropped in place of a socket without failing and vice versa, then you're fine on LSP, but your description smells like a cause to find LSP errors
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@JimmyHoffa The intention is that if you are using TCP, you should be able to drop in the streaming mode connection.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@RobertHarvey Tooling is good in some cases, but F#'s tooling is effectively broken. That said; you can't blame tooling when python and Node.JS have no greater tooling
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
And if you are using UDP, you can drop in the message mode connection.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@ThomasOwens And if there's a shared interface, then LSP says you can drop either in for either case and they will work in both cases without error
(or without subtype specific errors anyway)
if one errors in a case, the other should as well, etc
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
10:25 PM
I need to evaluate the complete interface that Socket and DatagramSocket provide.
I need to make sure that they are reasonable, beyond the transmission.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Node.JS is a server technology, not a programming language. And it could be argued that Python is not really geared towards large applications anyway.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@ThomasOwens Yep. Beware LSP as I said, it's often people violate LSP because they meet 95% of an interface, and then find some dangling odd bits that just don't work for the subtype
@RobertHarvey It can be argued, but both of them are in wide spread usage throughout industry regardless of shite tooling for both
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
They managed to do it in the C++ implementation. The interface is just like BSD sockets.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
tooling doesn't make or break a language
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
So I'm hoping I can do the same drop-in replacement in Java.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
10:28 PM
@JimmyHoffa That's because both can be understood by the imperative/OO crowd. Bad tooling + language I don't understand means I'm not going to use it. Good tooling, with an OO bridge like F# has and a killer app like Rails has, and you might have a chance.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@RobertHarvey However in the case of F#, the tooling can fairly well break the language heh
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I'm trying to implement udt.sourceforge.net in Java, btw. There's a version that's not compatible with the C++ implementation as well as a JNI version.
I think it would be nice to have a pure Java implementation that works with the C++ implementation.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
This is something I've been kicking around for the last few days. We know that there are things like IronScheme that have basically zero exposure. What if you gave IronScheme an IDE that could code-generate Winforms, except that it would generate Scheme code instead of C# code. Would people become interested in it then?
Because without that, you basically just have a REPL.
 
tylerl
tylerl
@RobertHarvey I think you're missing the whole reason why people don't want to use IronScheme
(hint, it has nothing to do with the IDE)
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
I'm listening.
 
tylerl
tylerl
10:30 PM
Because it's Scheme.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Because it's Scheme without a safety net.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I liked Scheme when I learned it. Unfortunately, there's not much demand for Scheme in the kind of work I do.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Right. Popularity begets use. No use, no popularity. No popularity, no use.
 
tylerl
tylerl
Think of a venn diagram showing all the people who enjoy programming in scheme, and all the people who program .NET code. The intersection is.... not huge.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
The intersection is not much larger for F#.
The question is why.
 
tylerl
tylerl
10:35 PM
@RobertHarvey That brings up an intersting point; why would your average .NET user prefer scheme over F#?
since F# is more closely tied to the way .NET works
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Presumably you can write applications using about 1/3 of the code that you would need in C# or VB.
At least that's what I've been told by people in the know.
Oh, I thought you meant F# over C#. But my answer is pretty much the same.
Less code. More filling.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@tylerl That's a bit of an assumption me thinks
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Leppie seems pretty adept at compiler construction. He even modified the DLR to make IronScheme, and claims faster performance over IronPython.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
none of it matters though, MS screwed up on F#, it's done and it's too late to be saved now
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
So you claim that the tooling torpedoed F#? Does your definition of tooling include a Winforms Codegen?
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
10:40 PM
1
Q: How can you estimate time for tasks which primarily consist of figuring out a problem?

AJ HendersonWhile it is relatively possible for an experienced developer to estimate how long it will take to implement code when the pattern and problem the code is solving is well understood, how can you make a good estimate when the task is 95% theoretical/problem solving and has very small amounts of imp...

estimation concepts automation
That's what I call a hard problem.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Those are the kinds of problems I have. It's very difficult to put a time estimate on research.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
In general, applying firm processes to research is hard.
In fact, beyond hard, it could even be detrimental.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@RobertHarvey If only it were so comprehensive. The tooling I refer to is just having F# projects and making them able to compile and work on them easily
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Seems like Microsoft created F# for some of the same uses that FP'ers use Lisp and Haskell for... To make libraries that do number crunching and analyses, called by more "traditional" languages like C#. The OO'ers look at F#, and regard it as not a complete toolset.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
I've written this rant multiple times in the past, I don't care to go over it again; suffice to say just working with F# projects is painful due to failures in visual studio
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
10:44 PM
@MichaelT hi
easier than comments and then I can update the question :)
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I was just thinking about that question.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@RobertHarvey Which would be fine if the projects even for simple class libraries were not a huge pain to work with
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@JimmyHoffa Alright, point taken. Still gotta learn me a Haskell.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
I actually theorize that there isn't really a good way to get closer, but I want to make sure I'm not crazy before I make that argument to my boss
 
user55340
@AJHenderson I've got enough info to write an answer now...
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
10:45 PM
cause I'm the only one that really works in the way I work at my company
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@AJHenderson Normally the way you do this is to ask for a specific period of time to research the problem so that you can make a firmer time estimate. By firmer, I mean one that only varies by "six to eight weeks."
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
@RobertHarvey yeah, problem is my research (since I do code automation and analysis tools) is the same as implementation
 
user55340
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@AJHenderson Can you map your tasks to requirements (understanding the problem space), design (coming up with how to solve the problem, the known inputs, creating possible edge-case inputs for testing), implementation (building the solution), test (running sample inputs through your tool)?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@AJHenderson I feel you, brother.
 
user55340
10:47 PM
I've cracked open my epub version of it to reference it...
 
user55340
And then there's also...
 
user55340
93
A: How to respond when you are asked for an estimate?

Thomas OwensFrom The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master: What to Say When Asked for an Estimate You say "I'll get back to you." You almost always get better results if you slow the process down and spend some time going through the steps we describe in this section. Estimates given...

 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
@ThomasOwens not really, it isn't that kind of development
that kind of development is easy to estimate
because most of the time is development rather than design
my work is far more iterative and far more theoretical. It's analysing large bodies of codes for patterns I can utilize, quickly (maybe 5% of my time) implementing something that will match that pattern and then analysing the result to see what further refincements are needed
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Are these things that are best done against a deadline first, and then a response if that deadline is reasonable or not?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Sounds like it's "bottom-up development," the kind you would do in Lisp. The kind where you don't really know what you have until it's done.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
10:49 PM
Your boss is like "I need this by {date}", you can run off, spend some time seeing if that's reasonable or not, and then responding?
It's not estimation, but perhaps estimation isn't appropriate for this?
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
@ThomasOwens yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking about pushing back with
because I think it would work better if he told me what he thinks it is worth time wise and I answer if I think I can do it in that
 
tylerl
tylerl
@RobertHarvey The F# project came almost immediately after Google released their map-reduce paper and showed how they were using FP concepts to get massive parallization across entire datacenters, and people were looking at their shiny .NET tools with a little buyer's remorse.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Alternatively, saying what you can do in that time. It may be a partial solution.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
I'm usually pretty good about estimating the long side of it
 
user55340
Chapter 23 is dedicated to politics.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
10:50 PM
but if I always did that, I'd always be over-estimating drastically
and even then, it's more just gut feel from doing a lot of this kind of work
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Your boss wants something in one week? Well, what can you deliver in a week? Maybe a memo type writeup on approaches? A partial solution? A complete solution? And then deliver that, if they accept.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
No software developer ever overestimates. The project always consumes the time allotted.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
@ThomasOwens thing with my work is I build tools that do coding. If the tool doesn't work there is nothing
so it's mostly all or nothing type things
analysis tools are a little more partial
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
You can deliver an estimate in one week. Is that what he wants?
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
but the amount of usefulness is drastically reduced if they have too many false positives or false negatives
@RobertHarvey hehe, I do. I was estimating something for 4 days for the next step to be done and maybe another 2 weeks after that to finish. I ended up getting lucky that there were no additional problems and finished in 3
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
10:52 PM
@AJHenderson Is delivery of the tool mandatory? Is there any value in spending time to determine a high level approach and how long it would take to implement that approach?
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
@ThomasOwens most of the things I do are impractical without a tool
I'm working on a code base with millions of lines implementing system wide changes
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
I can tell you this. In retrospect, I would have been a lot better off in my current project if I had broken it down into smaller projects. The smaller each project is, and the more relevant detail that you can specify for each one, the more accurate you can make the individual time estimates.
That way, it's not an all-or-nothing proposition anymore. If the company loses their will, at least you got one or two smaller (but useful in their own right) projects completed.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@AJHenderson Would spending a week to document how you would build the tool and a more detailed estimate of how much effort it would take be useful to your boss, though? To determine if they really want the tool?
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
@RobertHarvey I do that whenever possible, but it isn't always possible. I get lots of things where it requires adapting all code to a low level change. If I can't get everything, then we can't make the underlying change that was the goal of the whole project
@ThomasOwens the problem is that the tool's level of effectiveness can't be estimated without first building it to see what the results are
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Oh. That's...problematic, then.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
10:56 PM
@ThomasOwens yes, that would be my problem
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
You need to get better at articulating the benefits of your projects (so do I). If a utility you write takes a month to write, but it touches 10,000 lines of code and people use it 10 times, it's probably more cost effective than doing those 100,000 changes by hand.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
@RobertHarvey my tools are one off things
they exist only to mutate the code base
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Then one time.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
and then they go away
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Typically, how long does it take to write a tool?
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
10:57 PM
anywhere from 2 hours to 8 months
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@MichaelT @ThomasOwens: Skate or die (is this a good question for Programmers)?
1
Q: What is the history of the Python term "pickle"?

Michael KrebsIn Python the term "pickle" refers to the serializing of an object. I was curious as to its etymology. For example: Why not just say "serialize"? And why the word "pickle"? Who first coined it? Etc. The only reference I could find to its origin were slides from a PyCon 2011 presentation, wh...

python terminology history pickle
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
the 8 month one was a tool that automatically could split an entire code base hierarchy. doing the work by hand would have been impossible even with multiple man years without the tool. So they always work out to be more effective than without the tool
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@AJHenderson That is your argument to your boss.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
but also none of the tasks I'm assigned would be attempted if I couldn't build a tool
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
That's also a valid argument.
 
AJ Henderson
AJ Henderson
10:59 PM
the entire reason my job exists is to try and accomplish things that would otherwise be infeasible to do
 
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