The Whiteboard

user15026

12:06 AM

Now I wanna make popsicles of awesome

user55340

@AshleyNunn what about cupcakes? or is too hot for baking?

user15026

Not too bad, actually. :)

user15026

I would need to pick up a few things, though, and I am stuck on support tonight til 10

Shahar

12:45 AM

For previewing images

would you guys prefer 200 x 200 images or 250 x 250?

rwong

1:23 AM

Back to the polynomial interpolation issue, I eventually found that a factory object approach might be better, because a certain part of the code is likely to reuse the same settings over and over again. (If the user is a programmer, or is a automated process.)

Robert Harvey

1:37 AM

@ThomasOwens How many custom close reason slots does Programmers make available?

user55340

@RobertHarvey we're full.

user55340

13

Q: Can the number of custom close reasons on Programmers be expanded?

Right now, we are limited to three custom "off-topic" close reasons. I wrote a fourth this morning to address a number of recent closures, but it's not possible to even turn it on without turning off one of the other three. This new reason reads: Questions must demonstrate a minimal understa...

Robert Harvey

Pssh.

user55340

Your argument about the number of options doesn't seem compelling. Sure there are a fairly large number of them in total, but adding one to the site-specific close reasons (when there are currently only three, if you don't count the "other" option) doesn't seem particularly onerous. I think you could get the count to five, or maybe even six, custom reasons without breaking the bank. — Robert Harvey Sep 23 '13 at 22:44

Robert Harvey

That was ten months ago. My memory is not nearly that good.

user55340

1:46 AM

And then there is my take on it...

user55340

13

Q: close reason (and associated expand the close reason count) request

I really don't like migrating crappy questions to SO. This is really the only place where its an issue because of the migration path (no, taking away the migration path would mean more suggestions to repost - there are enough of those for the workplace). The past 90 days, we did 206 migrations ...

discussion feature-request close-reasons

user55340

And at times, I really think we should implement Jimmy's: meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5996/40980

Braiam

4:14 AM

if it's a question about "should I do this this way?" it's here that should be asked, right?

Ampt

12:02 PM

@MichaelT I'm lucky that the nearest menards to me is an hour away then!

user55340

2:19 PM

@Ampt Explain to your GF that the ones on amazon prime are 3x more expensive than the ones at Menards... and then pick up some power tools while you are there too. That said, I can't seem to identify where you such that you are within train distance and Menards is 1h away - ChicagoLand is fairly densely populated (they've even got their own mini DC)

Yannis Rizos

2:36 PM

Least helpful error message ever: segmentation fault.

user41796

@YannisRizos The comedian Denis Leary probably explained it better with "You fucked up!"

user41796

If you ever need a gut busting hour of laughter, check out his CD "No cure for cancer."

user41796

Some of the humor is US centric, but still pretty funny

user41796

Definitely NSFW, but quite hilarious.

user41796

►

Ampt

3:22 PM

@YannisRizos Have you even read the BSOD error codes?

user55340

3:35 PM

Trick from days of old when disk space quotas were measured in single digit megabytes - mkdir core

Ampt

I'll bite. what does that do

user41796

Seriously, what do you need a meg of space for anyway?!

user55340

Well, when you had a segmentation fault, it would dump core. "here's all the memory your program was using and stuff"

user55340

Sometimes that would completely consume your disk quota and you'd be sad. Or worse, almost, and you'd forget about it and then when you try to down load some po.. ahem... images, you'd be out space.

user55340

The simple thing would be touch core; chmod 000 but the system would still remove that file to dump the core in it.

Ampt

3:38 PM

so this just stopped core dumps from happening?

user55340

But it did an unlink call... and that fails when the thing is a directory. At that point, it still wouldn't be able to open up a file that was already there as a directory.

Ampt

or were you trying to pre-allocate space for the dump?

user55340

Keep them from dumping.

Ampt

so you have more space for po... images

user55340

Yep.

user41796

3:40 PM

Uesnet was invented for images....

user55340

If you had the permissions, sometimes you'd do things like write a crontab entry that does a find -name core -exec rm {} instead.

user55340

@GlenH7 Oh, I did some usenet research last night.

user41796

@MichaelT You know there's easier ways to find images, right? :-)

user55340

Ah... the days of old... Lets look back to comp.lang.c from October '93. Not that that one is unique there are lots more - some read just like SO comments. — MichaelT 12 hours ago

user55340

In article <2am9ge$j...@tamsun.tamu.edu> gke...@tamsun.tamu.edu (Garen Keith Evans) writes:
>In article <2aknf5$p...@news.delphi.com>,
>PWPA...@DELPHI.COM <pwpa...@news.delphi.com> wrote:
>>wsg...@cislabs.pitt.edu (William S Gillingham) writes:
>>
>>>Help! I am trying to do a program in C to find all the prime #'s from
>>>1 to x (say like 3000 or so) I have no clue as to what to do first,
>>>could someone please post one, or send one via E-mail to me? I am just
>>>beginning & it seems so difficult!

user55340

3:44 PM

@GlenH7 does that post sound at all familiar?

user41796

Nope, never seen anything like that all.

user41796

Nothing new under the sun...

user55340

Incidentally, I chose '93 because that was actually the second month of September that never ended.

user55340

> >>I need help with a top 10 scores list.
...
> > People will probably help if you show your analysis of the
                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >problem so far and try to pinpoint where you are stuck (i.e. have made a
> >clear effort). Do you have a problem working out an algorithm or coding it?
>
> Yeah ... I got shit from an IAN character sending me about 5 k of messages
> about that damn prime number bit.
>
> This is not a homework assignment.  This is for a game that I have been worki

user41796

I remember back during my undergrad helping my friend pass his intro to programming class. Despite being a chem major, his adviser was of the belief "everyone should take a programming class." I think he ended up dropping the class on the last day possible to do so.

user55340

3:50 PM

I'll admit to some of my early coding getting help from more experienced coders... I was a wizard (read coder) on an LP mud and there were some very knowledgeable people on there... I'd upload my code into my home directory and then get a tutoring session...

user55340

One time I got a point marked off when I left in some Swedish comment.

user55340

Note that coding on an LP mud during college did help my programing ability... I was writing code that had to work with other people's code in a hostile environment (people trying to find bugs and exploit your code).

user41796

There's no harm in getting help in understanding / crafting the code. In essence, that's what all trades do in order to train apprentices. But there's a difference between getting guidance versus getting someone to do your work for you.

user41796

hostile environments make for the best test cases ever. It means you've got motivated testers.

user55340

The mud appears to be still up and running (just poked it)... I wonder if the code that I wrote is still around.

user41796

3:54 PM

my $1 bet says yes

user55340

@GlenH7 I suspect so too...

user55340

I had rewritten the mage guild code from a single monolithic item with all the 'spells' in it to what I considered an elegant object oriented system.

user41796

And everyone else has been afraid to touch it since then....

user55340

You had Spell.c which had the core functions for spell casting, and then BattleSpell.c which had the combat spell functions which inherited Spell.c, and SingleTargetBattleSpell which had code for just one target (rather than area of effect)...

user55340

and when you got down to it, things like 'lightingbolt' was about 10 lines long with 5 of those setting up the parameters for the spell (level, damage, delay, cost, ...)

user55340

3:56 PM

@GlenH7 actually, the reason I suspect its still around was that several others decided to copy it and use it in their code.

user41796

copying is the sincerest form of flattery in programming

user55340

One neat bit was that you could create spells and fix bugs right away. The 'staff' which looked up spells looked up the singleton instances of them (didn't know they were at the time) and invoked those.

user55340

The old code, if you fixed the code you'd have to reload all of the instances of the staff for the bug to get fixed.

user55340

And that meant either the bug persisted until everyone logged off and back on, or you had some seriously funky code that hunted down the instantiated objects and reloaded them.

user55340

(this goes to the 'patterns existed before you know what they were' bit)

user55340

4:00 PM

The thing that makes me sigh is wishing that I stuck around there long enough to write the maze code to 'beat' the scripted players (enter in all these commands and in 30 seconds you've got a bunch of stuff).

user41796

I'm sure greater and more pressing pursuits were calling at that point

user55340

Each reboot, a dynamically generated maze... complete with monsters that confused you (I was working on a moving wall monster that pivoted from exit to exit and looked just like a wall... unless you started attacking it)

user55340

Anyways... nostalgia.

user55340

The days before multiplayer games with graphics.

user41796

graphics just suck up bandwidth

user55340

4:06 PM

Heh... the other one that I used to play is still kicking (and apparently thriving - MUME mume.org - gets a kick each time a new movie comes out)

user55340

Speedy close please:

user55340

-1

Q: Senior JavaEE Engineers: What would you wish you wouldn't have to tell every junior developer that starts working under your supervision?

I got this amazing job as a junior JavaEE developer I will start in two weeks for a trial period and I don't want to mess up this opportunity. Everything on the interview was a check from my experience working alone as a freelancer but, unlike what I've learned doing my Masters degree, I've lear...

teamwork enterprise-architecture java-ee enterprise-development

user55340

> I know the question is too broad, but I really can't be more specific (I don't know what is it that I don't know :-) ): What are the common pitfalls a junior software developer under these circumstances should be aware of?

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