The Whiteboard - 2015-11-25 (page 2 of 2)

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9:01 PM

Programmers seems like a better place for this. — the Tin Man 30 secs ago

that question. IT BURNS MY EYES

@theTinMan career advice is off topic on programmers! — amon 26 secs ago

@Snowman Firefox, from what I can tell.

9:29 PM

> return a > b ? a - (a/b) * b : (a < 0) ? a + ((Math.Abs(a) / b) + 1) * b : a;

proof positive of how valuable proper formatting for readability is:

return a > b
    ? a - (a/b) * b
    : (a < 0)
        ? a + ((Math.Abs(a) / b) + 1) * b
        : a;

I'm more amazed by the subexpression (a/b)*b which seems pretty pointless

Ah no, integer math :(

what on earth is the purpose of that? It looks like it returns 0 no matter what...

I gave up parsing it pretty quickly

@Ixrec pretty sure it just returns zero for all values of a or b so long as the language is not rounding the result of the division there.

9:40 PM

@JimmyHoffa (a/b)*b is the multiple of b next smaller to a, so a - (a/b)*b would be a % b for positive inputs.

integer division truncates (=floors for positive inputs) in most languages

(6 - (6 / 2 -> 3 * 2 -> 6)) -> 0 was what I got. But yes, if you're relying on the truncation then you're going to get different results.. (3 - (3 / 2 -> 1 * 2 -> 2)) -> 1 so yeah a%b

oooooh, modulo

@enderland someone feeling feisty on FizzBuzz?

The last time I wrote something like that it went: while (a > b) a -= b; // O(1) because a is bounded by INT_MAX

I guess that's technically correct

9:50 PM

-2

Q: Simplification of Math Expression (C#)

I would like your opinion on how I can simplify (if possible) the following function; "Wrap" for clamping and wrapping a value between 0 and 360 degrees: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; namespace Rextester { public clas...

Well now i feel like complete idiot LOL but thanks for your help. Was never good at maths... — Alexander Hunt 7 mins ago

user41796

@enderland it's okay. 2 more VTDs and it's gone.

the real irony of that code is if he'd written it in a less cryptic way, it would've been instantly obvious to us that % does it in one line, without ten minutes of arithmetic to figure out how it works

10:05 PM

OK, I'm no meta expert when it comes to StackExchange, but that this question belongs on SO and not Programmers is painfully obvious

yup

that's why it got closed with our "this is an SO question but we'd rather not risk voting to migrate" reason

not risk voting to migrate? what exactly is the risk?

that the question is not good enough for either site

rather, what would go wrong if it was migrated?

ah

most of the time when someone asks a terrible debugging question it's on topic at SO, but nowhere near good enough (and probably a dupe)

and the last thing we, the toilet bowl of SO, want to do is turn around and start proverbially dumping back on them

10:08 PM

"toilet bowl"...lol

so until very recently we'd always close debugging questions as "unclear" because that's the closest we could get to an "SO question" close vote that wasn't also a migrate vote

Yeah, I understand

gotcha

@daOnlyBG reference to the classic meta question: meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/73382/7

looks like the new SO mod changed it to a "Slightly more constructive title."

I see

for some reason PSE has a lot of classic meta posts

or gnat links them too often, one or the other

10:13 PM

A cool addition to any sort of "which SE site do I use?" guide would be to feature some single general problem, and then have different aspects of that problem turned into questions- an appropriate question for SO, an appropriate one for CS, PSE, etc etc

but then again, you're still stuck with the same problem regarding whether people ever read said guide or not

@daOnlyBG thecodelesscode.com/case/215

Haha, yeah..

...yeah.

personally I believe the only way to significantly reduce the influx of junk questions from first-time users is to improve the software to provide more hints, warnings, guesses, etc on the question-asking screen before the asker finishes asking the junk question

tl;dr make Triage a network-wide thing

you could always feature a question before the "submit question" button that asks "Are you sure your question belongs on this site?" for people with reputation below 100 or so

and on that alert, include a link that explains which questions go where

I'm actually not that concerned about on-topicness, if the question is good but on the wrong site we can just migrate it

it's the large amount of totally unsalvageable junk that worries me

or things like this which are just pure opinion polls, unsuitable for any SE site

10:23 PM

@daOnlyBG people aren't exactly known for reading those sorts of things

;)

@Ixrec, gotcha.

the CSS sprites on the HNQ are busted

@whatsisname you mean meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7764/… ?

@enderland Too bad, I guess! Wouldn't they want more rep for their good questions? Maybe not if they're just here occasionally, perhaps

yep

10:25 PM

Most people posting that don't care about anything other than an answer to their question though...

and there's plenty of users who care, but haven't realized that we don't do discussions/polls/tutorials/etc, or who can't even realize that "Should I use X or Y?" is an extremely complicated question

I think I could fit into that category every now and then

(i.e., "should I use this or that?")

the rational thing to do would be to literally list your interests and intentions and then read online about parameters that affect your interests, coming to SO only to ask detailed, objective questions about said technology, prog language, etc

which I'm sure you all know

(of course)

but I imagine people would much rather just be told what to use

pretty much

there's a reason "minimal understanding" was a close reason in the past

oh man, I don't think I was around then to see that option

I wish it was in Math.SE

There are questions asked that a simple Google search would answer more quickly than SE sites could

we get some of those too

I usually close those with either a custom close reason ("you can just google X") or "unclear" because it really isn't clear what help the OP needs in those cases

10:32 PM

If you were to hypothetically use lmgtfy.com in the comment to such questions, would your comment get flagged? lol

the weird ones are where we do that and the OP goes "Yeah I know that, but it doesn't help" and all we can say is "...how does it not help?"

191

Q: Ban LMGTFY (let me google that for you) links

I've just asked a question on Stack Overflow which was a prime candidate for googling. I admit it was a poor question and with a little bit of research I would have found the answer. It annoyed me that someone put a let-me-google-that-for-you link in the comments. It got right up my nose. I find...

discussion feature-request status-completed hyperlinks lmgtfy

aw, poor guy

I had an opinion on lmgtfy links until I spent ten minutes reading this, now I am quite indifferent

ah

what was your opinion?

I think it was negative

not sure anymore

10:34 PM

(and why did you change it? just exposure to many peoples' opinions?)

never really been an issue on this site

ah

I'm referring to the fact that seeing that much in-depth debate on all the possible sides of a (relatively minor) issue tends to make one feel their own opinion is significantly less important than it previously seemed

Mhmm

@daOnlyBG I see no contributions to our recipes, empty promises..

10:38 PM

@JimmyHoffa I didn't say when I'd contribute :D

nevertheless, I'll add a recipe tonight if you like

any style of drink that interests you?

@Ixrec diluted by the perception of your effort compared to the apparent effort analyzing the concern contributed from others

yes

speaking of overly broad questions

10:57 PM

more suburbs need indie-style coffee shops

Jul 8 at 18:40, by amon

♫ 𝄆 Close, close, close this crap
Flowing down the screen.
Down-vote and close-vote, delete it and flag it,
Now the site is clean. 𝄇
— “a 10k-er's song”, to the tune of “row your boat”

wow, I have to press “page down” 11 times to get to the end of it

Is there a question buried in there somewhere? — Morgen 5 mins ago

@daOnlyBG a majority of folks living in suburbs don't spend that kind of money on coffee; that's why indie-style coffee shops are always in down town areas near large wealthy populations. Starbucks survives in suburbs because they're an economy of scale and more fiscally efficient than any small-scale place could ever be

unfortunate, starbucks coffee stinks compared to small craft shops, but that's part of how they're more efficient... c'est la vie.

11:12 PM

You know, intuitively I could agree with that, but the numbers don't really add up

menus at craft coffee shops aren't inherently more expensive than ones at starbucks

...er, at least in chicago vs chicago suburbs

rent is cheaper out in the burbs, compared to indie coffee houses in hot neighborhoods like Wicker Park or Logan Square

both cater to high volume of customers

unless you're referring to different aspects of a coffee shop that is run to economies of scale?

@daOnlyBG I would wager the volume is actually rather distinctly different

not saying a starbucks downtown doesn't do better volume than in the burbs, but my money's on both do better downtown, and the lower volume in the burbs isn't enough volume for small craft joints

Hmm..

This sounds like a pretty good topic to study

I used to work at an independent coffee shop in Chicago's suburbs, I'm aware of the ways to get data

If I find anything noteworthy, I'll share my results here

what I'd be curious about is whether the downtown consumers or the suburb consumers tend to spend more time looking for decent coffee places

11:28 PM

hmmm... I'd be more interested how one would develop an objective way to collect that data

@Ixrec true; there's a distinct behavioural difference in how far they're willing to travel for things...

downtown folks are often a captive audience for the shops that are near them, partly due to the difficulty of using a vehicle in such places (traffic, lack of parking)

and I'm guessing lunch break is a bigger thing in that region

I'm not sure if "amount of hipsters" would be an objective parameter to study. Cities tend to have more of those, and they tend to congregate at coffee shops more often

"nonconformist attitudes" might be the more scientific term

downtown chicago: 11,864.4/sq mi
archer heights: 6,700/sq mi

population density

11:32 PM

hmm... why archer heights?

So it's a chance of twice as much volume

@daOnlyBG my wife grew up there and I don't really know other chicago suburbs to look up :)

haha, it's not really a suburb though

@daOnlyBG well it's not rural; perhaps more dense than a typical "suburb" but that just goes to show my point

moral of the story: @daOnlyBG is from the northside :P

Oh, I meant that it's an actual neighborhood in chicago

a la Lakeview, Pilsen, etc etc

haha, not quite northside

but anyway, that's beside the point

I understand what you're trying to do

right; like I said, more dense than a typical "suburb" which means 2-to-1 with that shows my point about available patrons

11:39 PM

One cool thing that the Thrillist publication did was create a map of the Chicago subway/"el" train system and list all nearby independent coffee shops close to the stops

sorry, I sound obsessed

11:57 PM

@JimmyHoffa: downtown restaurants hardly have captive audiences

because there are 9001 one of them and so people have plenty of ability to pick and choose

@whatsisname oh I agree that they have to compete with eachother, but their competition sphere is smaller in size. Perhaps greater in population though...

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