The Whiteboard

12:01 AM

@RobertHarvey Oh. If you recast differential equations in terms of the temperature of alligator eggs it all falls into place. But for type systems it's useless.

Robert Harvey

The temperature of alligator eggs?

psr

Actually, I'm not sure why alligator eggs is supposed to help in any way.

Robert Harvey

It's an animation illustrating some seemingly random rules.

psr

@RobertHarvey Joking. I think the alligator thing is not helpful.

@RobertHarvey I fully agree.

If anything it obfuscates why the rules are as they are.

Robert Harvey

Ahem. All roads lead to SICP.

Jimmy Hoffa

12:04 AM

@RobertHarvey The best way to get there from what I know is the little schemer book

Robert Harvey

OK. I'll read that.

Jimmy Hoffa

there's a javascript version too crockford's done being the lisper he is

Robert Harvey

Thanks.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey here read this article:

crockford.com/javascript/little.html

If you haven't before. It's Crockford talking about how great that book is and mentioning how easy it is to relate JavaScript to scheme to follow it in JavaScript

Robert Harvey

Wow, that's really cool. S-expressions ==> curly brace syntax.

Jimmy Hoffa

12:07 AM

@RobertHarvey yeah; as I've said before, I prefer ignoring the type system in JavaScript and writing it as untyped lambda calculus which is what scheme is

psr

I find the example of doing factorial via a Y combinator quite helpful. I've seen some blogs that sort of step through it, which helps too. And no alligators are harmed in the process.

Robert Harvey

lol

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr I got the best grasp on the Y combinator from working with composition and coming up with ways to compose functions into loops with recursion to make steps repeat in data pipeline type code

psr

Following along in The Little Schemer with JavaScript in a browser might actually be fun enough for me to do it.

Robert Harvey

Holy crap.

function Y(le) {
    return (function (f) {
        return f(f);
    }(function (f) {
        return le(function (x) {
            return f(f)(x);
        });
    }));
}

psr

12:12 AM

@JimmyHoffa I'm having trouble figuring out how that would come up naturally. Probably not enough time with Haskell.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey and that's why the imperative syntax, even used functionally, is too bulky to create the abstractions so much cleaner in FP languages

4

Q: Is this an implementation of a fixpoint combinator?

I presumed this couldn't be called "fixed point recursion" because it was too straightforward. However, I recently realized it actually might be. Have I effectively implemented fixed point recursion? Here's the function in question: /* recursive kleisli fold */ var until = function(f) { r...

what I did there in JavaScript was the culmination of a lot of playing in Haskell I'd been doing with similar composition stuff and trying to translate the concepts to JavaScript just to see how they worked

psr

@RobertHarvey Stepping through the example helps. It is a lot to pack in short term memory and the same terms coming up in different contexts doesn't help that situation.

Robert Harvey

Ack. The Y Combinator company has made Googling for the Y Combinator virtually impossible.

Ah, here's a good one.

The Y Combinator explained with JavaScript

user55340

12:39 AM

@RobertHarvey neat magic link for you: [help/on-topic] - paste that into a comment and it becomes help center

Robert Harvey

12:54 AM

Awesome.

Johan Larsson

5:44 AM

@RobertHarvey Prolly faster than Java :)

gnat

11:07 AM

0

A: Are we using NAA and VLQ flags correctly?

Look ma, it scales For what is worth, below is what I learned by studying how Low Quality review queue works at Stack Overflow. Per my understanding of recent feature changes, NAA and VLQ flags push post into this queue unless it has been already reviewed there. Side note it's not the first tim...

^^^ happy VLQ/NAA flagging at Stack Overflow!

First round: light as the breeze

Overall, it looks like no risk and no pain are involved for all the parties in the initial phase of dealing with VLQ/NAA flags. Worst case for flagger is they get painless "disputed" flag. Worst case for author who noticed deletion of their answer is they click undelete.

Bad answers are easy and quick to delete, and when deletion mistakes happen, it's easy to revert for post author.

Interesting that per my observations, SO hot questions look like carrying less of trash answers than it was before. Not having 10k over there, I can only guess, but it's quite…

ratchet freak

12:06 PM

remember that criminal activity question a while back?

now we have an xkcd ref for it

I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.

3

user55340

1:58 PM

@ratchetfreak Something I found recently on MSE: gemsfromstackexchange.tumblr.com

user55340

It provides image captures such as:

user55340

user15026

@MichaelT Yeah, that tumblr is pretty good

user55340

It makes me feel sorry for the gaming mods.

user15026

@MichaelT If it makes it any better, I suspect most of the content comes from gaming because, if I recall right, one of the main maintainers is a gaming regular.

user55340

2:20 PM

btw - on heartbleed and static analysis... Eric Lippert works at Coverity which is a company writes static analysis tools: ericlippert.com/2014/04/15/heartbleed-and-static-analysis

user55340

@GregRos you might want to poke at that too as it is related to what I was saying earlier about sanitizing data and taint checking: ericlippert.com/2014/04/15/heartbleed-and-static-analysis

ratchet freak

that second to last paragraph...

the core cause was a buffer overrun, C doesn't encode lengths of buffers in its pointers so to fix it you need to rewrite the C standard significantly

Jimmy Hoffa

3:26 PM

@MichaelT sometimes you're just not sure if a troll is really causing trouble, or just spreading joy while making work for the mods...

ratchet freak

3:41 PM

@JimmyHoffa he could be both...

user55340

1

Q: On which of the websites of stack exchange one can ask about career options and expert advice from software professionals?

I am a software developer and have started my career recently. I want to decide how to steer my career and to get some advice from experience people in this field. I looked through the list of all websites under stack exchange and could only think of programmers as my best option. But I am not so...

discussion site-recommendation

user55340

> But I am not so sure after reading about it in the 'about' page.

user55340

You're right, Programmers is not a good place for such questions. Glad to see that the About page is not in vain. — mmyers 2 mins ago

user55340

@ThomasOwens mark that as a "it has paid off"

whatsisname

Anyone know how to make that news feed items thing disappear from chat forever

user55340

3:54 PM

@whatsisname haven't looked into it because thats something that I use... it would involve some serious selective user scripting of the page.

Thomas Owens

@whatsisname You mean in the top left corner?

I can disable it, but it would disable it for everyone in the room. Room owners can also disable it.

user55340

I think that Doorknob (likely in the tavern) would be the one to ask as he's done a fair bit of work with chat scripting.

user55340

24

Q: I'm seeing stars! (I can see who starred a message and so can you)

So I was making a chatbot in Ruby for SE chat, and I discovered that I could find out the starrer of a message. I'm pretty sure stars, like votes, are supposed to be anonymous. Although this knowledge would help for cases of star trolls like this. Here's the specific slice of code that do...

support bug chat chat-stars

whatsisname

weak

it constantly pops up and blocks everything

im surprised I'm the only person annoyed by it

Thomas Owens

@whatsisname You're not.

user55340

3:58 PM

While others have mentioned some annoynace at it before, I think Thomas is only annoyed because he's not fast enough to get to the awful questions to close before Oded gets them.

Thomas Owens

Unfortunately, there's not enough people to convince me to turn it off. In fact, some people objected to turning it off last time I asked.

Oh sweet, sweet Meta.SE rep.

user55340

But yea - ask Doorknob about a user script to disable that activity on the page - he'd be the best to ask.

Thomas Owens

Or I could ignore the wishes of all y'alls and just turn it off for everyone, going evil moderator.

Robert Harvey

I like the feed, dammit.

user55340

I like the feed, double dammit.

user55340

4:01 PM

And I still think Thomas is just bitter that its slower than the Oded mind link for closing questions.

Thomas Owens

I like the idea. I just wish it was implemented differently.

Robert Harvey

There's this thing called a mouse. Move the pointer up to the feed window, and dismiss it.

Thomas Owens

It's too high volume to be chat messages, IMO. But the top left corner is annoying.

whatsisname

why do you need the feed

don't you just hit F5 on the main page every quarter second

like everyone else

Robert Harvey

No, I have the feed. :)

Thomas Owens

4:03 PM

@whatsisname If you use a real browser, you don't need to F5 any site other than SO.

user55340

But I don't want to have that window up... I like this one.

Thomas Owens

If I see (n) in the tab title for the main site, I can bounce over and click the banner.

user55340

And through all this discussion we haven't had anything pop up...

Robert Harvey

Is DDD a programming technique, or just a philosophy for gathering requirements?

Everyone asks questions like it's a programming thing.

user55340

debatably, our new answer and meta feeds are slow enough that we could even messageize them... but that would be more annoying to some.

Robert Harvey

4:05 PM

I hear it's a way to talk intelligently to customers. Then I hear someone use the term "Aggregate Root." WTF?

whatsisname

DDD sounds to me like just another rewording of iterative/agile processes

Robert Harvey

Agile is in there somewhere, but there's this notion of a "ubiquitous language."

[sigh] Another book I'll have to read.

user55340

XDD is just people pushing the problem around and never really trying to solve it.

user55340

DDD, BDD, TDD, WTFDD...

Robert Harvey

Yes, but then you get questions like "Should my Aggregate Root hold a lock on the domain object?" Really?

whatsisname

4:08 PM

thats just a fancy way of trying to processify Tom Smykowski's job

the ubiquitous language thing

Thomas Owens

I think we should do XDDDD.

Robert Harvey

XKCDDD - Programming with cartoon swords.

whatsisname

"Talking so you understand each other" is hardly a unique concept to DDD

Robert Harvey

Oh, look. A new post.

Thomas Owens

The pop up notifier is really laggy. It was posted a few minutes ago

Robert Harvey

4:11 PM

Delete votes away.

user55340

In that mentioned "I wish, as a mod on site A with close votes on B, that I could force a migration or prevent a migration from B to A" - often its just a "steal a question" but the other would be useful too.

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa Didn't you say you used to work for Respironics before they were bought out by Philips? They have an interesting job posting that I was looking at.

... or was that @MichaelT?

or was it @GlenH7

user55340

Not me.

user55340

I'm guessing Glen over Jimmy... but that's a guess.

maple_shaft

@MichaelT You three are always in here and I feel like I am imagining this

not sure who told me that

Well.. anyways ... I wanted a reference

:)

user55340

4:22 PM

It sounds like something thats more "engineering" based and thus my guess of Glen if anyone said it.

user55340

Search says that Jimmy is the one to talk to though: chat.stackexchange.com/…

Thomas Owens

People are going a little nuts with this new employee recognizition/award thing.

Robert Harvey

Gift cards?

Thomas Owens

The ones I get I redeem as Amazon gift cards, yeah.

Robert Harvey

Flash mobs?

Thomas Owens

4:25 PM

I want to be part of a flash mob.

Robert Harvey

Just freeze for a few seconds. We'll freeze with you.

(works better in a train station, though)

Thomas Owens

Oh. Did I tell everyone here that my lens is being delivered today? I bought the 85mm f/1.8 and had it overnighted.

Robert Harvey

The first picture you take with it will happen in the next 24 hours?

user55340

@ThomasOwens ever read Niven's "The Alibi Machine", or "Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club"?

Thomas Owens

@RobertHarvey Probably not. I'm going to be in Boston from after work until Sunday morning. I'm running a 5k first thing tomorrow morning, so I'm crashing in the city tonight. And then I'm going to hit the bars with friends tomorrow night, so I'm crashing there again tomorrow night.

maple_shaft

4:28 PM

@MichaelT Oh yeah it must have been him. He is the only person here who used to live in Pittsburgh

user55340

The 85mm f/1.8 is a beautiful lens for portrait work on a croped sensor... and not bad for a full frame sensor either.

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Yeah. My friend has one. If mine didn't come on time, I would have borrowed his. I think my last profile pic on the site was taken with that lens on a cropped sensor.

user55340

If you ever find yourself with a excess of money you want to spend on another portrait-sports lens look at the 135mm f/2.0 - would get a cropped FOV of about 200mm which is a nice sports length. On a full frame, the 135mm is in the classic range of portrait lenses.

Thomas Owens

I can't drop too much money. I'm going to Seattle on vacation in June.

user55340

135mm f/2.0 (nice and fast), 9 aperture blades (circular bokeh with no diffraction spikes), ability to "throw" the out of focus around.

user55340

4:33 PM

(that said, its a $1300 lens too... which is quite a bit more than the 85mm f/1.8)

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT That's over double the cost, even post overnight shipping.

user55340

Yep. But its a beautiful lens.

user55340

You'll likely get more use of the 85mm f/1.8 though... its just a "if you ever find that you want a longer fast lens..."

user55340

I don't particularly recommend the 105mm f/2.0 because it would likely cause you to shy away from getting the 105mm f/2.8 micro lens - which is also a very good lens.

whatsisname

ugh windows 8 ruining my life

user55340

4:37 PM

Just remember... it could be XP instead.

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