The Whiteboard - 2015-11-28

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12:00 AM

I don't need an act of congress anymore.

user55340

0

Q: Reconsider historical lock on "How many monitors do you use? Why? How they are used?"

The post How many monitors do you use? Why? How they are used? has the question body of: Why more or less monitors is worse than your configuration? Why is important use it in this way (position)? Productivity is obvious, but what specific advantage? A picture would be nice. ...

discussion specific-question locked-question

A flag doesn't suffice? :P

in the end it's all about maximizing content quality and user happiness, even when the two may conflict

user55340

@RobertHarvey can't flag historically locked posts.

@RobertHarvey I don't see a flag button on that quesiton

12:01 AM

Oh.

I assume mod locks mean YOU MAY DO NOTHING, PERIOD

user55340

user image

user55340

Share is the only link.

File that under the very large drawer labelled "The many intricacies about SE that I've long since forgotten about."

user55340

Unless I want to annoy the mods and flag a comment... for some reason those are still flagable.

user55340

12:02 AM

Though I like that auto-correct.

user55340

I can just see Yannis with a flame thrower going through the question and cackling with insane glee while wearing that hat.

I am okay with flame thrower hat

user image

user55340

The only flagable locks are the migration rejections.

user55340

@RobertHarvey Need to photoshop the head on.

user55340

12:05 AM

Yannis ♦, Thessaloniki, Greece

28.9k 35 139 193

php web-development programming-languages history terminology open-source object-oriented

which would also be in the aforementioned drawer if they weren't highly correlated with broken windows

user55340

-1

Q: how would you compute m x n using only addition ( using while loop)?

Write a program that takes two signed integers n and m and computes n×m by repeated addition. The initial data should be placed as follows: location variable type 0x02 n int 0x03 m int Any idea how to do this i spent hours trying to figure it out. thanks

javascript programming-languages python coding platforms

user55340

sigh

user55340

Javascript and python?

there is no way it takes anyone hours to figure out how to implement multiplication with repeated addition

user55340

12:06 AM

Unless you're in 2nd grade.

I was just about to say that.

(or you haven't gone through the hassle of getting your dev environment working properly)

user55340

Side bit: in my image shack image cleanup - programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/58122/… would be nice to clean up.

What is going on there?

@MichaelT One more vote to delete.

done

user55340

12:09 AM

@RobertHarvey I've read it again and I still don't have a good answer about what it is...

the answer to "what text do I show" is always "pick something random for now, then let your manager tell you what it should be during the next demo"

@MichaelT More of "what the definition of is is."

they'll tell you even if you try really hard to get it right the first time

Oh, hell. I need to dig up that story about the duck.

@RobertHarvey as someone with a very strong interest in metaphysics, ontology, mereology and other arcane branches of philosophy, I can safely say that that is one of the most useless debates anyone can enter into

user55340

12:10 AM

Talk:Battle Chess

== Atari Jaguar == I've seen bits and pieces that say Battlechess was being ported to that Atari Jaguar. Might be something to research and confirm. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.81.94.75 (talk) 23:39, 4 March 2014 (UTC) == FutureWorld == I noted that the reference to FutureWorld lead to the disambiguation page. Since this is a link to a well known meaning of FutureWorld, it may point to the right page. Moreover pointing to the disambiguation page gives no information to the reader. Unfortunately I don't know to what FutureWorld we are referring here, so I cannot change the l...

user55340

>
Ahhhhh, the duck! The true story about the duck: It originated at Interplay before Battle Chess. It was a running joke that our Electronic Arts producer - who was fond of meddling while simultaneously being clueless about game design - needed to have his ego stroked by being channeled into harmless changes that made him feel empowered. There was no actual duck originally - that was just a metaphor for anything that could be used as a red herring to keep him distracted. Battle Chess never needed a duck since we jettisoned EA specifically because of the aforementioned (but not named) produc…

#5 here: blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon

(reads a little easier)

user55340

Parkinson's law of triviality

Parkinson's law of triviality, also known as bikeshedding, bike-shed effect, and the bicycle-shed example, is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that organisations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson observed and illustrated that a committee whose job was to approve plans for a nuclear power plant spent the majority of its time on discussions about relatively trivial and unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bike-shed, while neglecting the non-trivial proposed design of the nuclear power plant itself, which is far more important...

user55340

> A countermeasure is the duck technique in corporate programming: a programmer expects their corporate office to insist on at least one change on every presentation to show that they're participating, regardless of the benefits of that change. Consequently, the programmer intentionally adds an element they expect corporate to remove. Quoted from Jeff Atwood's blog, Coding Horror:

user55340

36

A: Developing a feature which sole purpose to be taken out?

It’s called a duck, from a legend that allegedly comes from Interplay’s Battle Chess: This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption wa...

12:14 AM

have you guys had to insert ducks in your projects?

I've never been perfect enough to need one.

user55340

@Ixrec haven't needed to yet... most of the time shipping too early is the problem.

You've had that problem?

What software project has ever shipped too early?

most triple A video games in the past few years

user55340

The one that isn't ready but has a deadline from on high that the manager is going to push it out the door come hell or high water.

12:16 AM

Oh, that kind of "shipping too early."

I thought you meant "We got done before the deadline, and under budget."

Never happens.

user55340

There's no reason to put a duck in there because there are more than enough bugs that actually need fixing.

Yes.

yeah, it's common for us to finish features/sprints ahead of time, but there's always more bugs to fix or design choices to revisit

So apparently ducks have multiple uses.

@MichaelT maybe it only made sense back in the day when you had a guy whose job was to write "the chess game" for some new OS

user55340

12:18 AM

Employer^^^, actually had involved business or managers at the start, so no need of ducks. Ducks are only needed when the business is uninvolved until they want to be.

same, our business is all over this project

there was even one time our manager had to tell us programmers to stop bikeshedding, which I found amusing

user55340

One project had 10+ revisions, and no need of ducks - it was all "lets make it work this way" (ok...) 3 days later... here it is... "ok, that looks good... now this page..." All valid UX things.

user55340

Employer^^ had the "too early" or "completely uninvolved and don't care at all" business.

there's a thing I don't get

the business is the thing that pays you and tells you what to make

how could they possibly not care what you're making

user55340

Current employer, the dba team lead will find ducks wether you've put them in or not. Its not useful to put a duck in there when you'll get a list of 10 minor tweaks to make to the UI.

12:21 AM

@Ixrec Because they don't actually know what they want.

They think they know what they want. Then you build it for them, and it's "That's not actually what I meant."

user55340

"Here are the specs at the start" which are horrendously broad... then you spend a week or two trying to get them in a room... get it a bit more specified, spend a week or two or month or two depending on complexity writing it... ask if they're ok with it.. and they don't want to see it.

that seems more like denial than not caring

user55340

Part of it is that if they said "yes, we're ok with it" then there's a stamp of approval on it and it makes it harder for them to come back later and say "no, we don't like this feature"

which is also really bad

user55340

Welcome to Employer^^.

12:23 AM

@MichaelT Oh, hell. You're describing Employer^s process exactly. Or, at least, their process in my small little corner.

@MichaelT but we're all agile now! You can un-re-change anything you want because we keep the code flexible!

Pfleh.

user55340

QA didn't want to test anything other than the script the devs wrote for them. Business didn't want to test it because accepting it would mean that it was harder for them to justify changes later...

hell, I like it when they ask me to change little random things in the UI

@MichaelT Did you train my branch chief?

user55340

12:24 AM

Oh, they knew they weren't agile... and the one time they tried to pretend that they were, it failed horribly.

those are easy 5 minute changes

user55340

That whole "business involved" thing.

@Ixrec Ack. There's no such thing as a 5 minute change.

not like adding a new database or implementing real-time partial sharing of some content

Not like building a car.

12:24 AM

@RobertHarvey not counting deployment time, sometimes there are

Only like changing the engine.

there was one today where my team lead said this thing doesn't work and I said "well no one ever asked us to make it do that...but it takes five lines to make that work so here's a PR if you're sure we want it"

user55340

The project managers liked to pretend they were conductors of an orchestra... sitting up there with the batton and making everything follow the tempo set forth in the gantt chart.

user55340

When they tried scrum, the project managers wouldn't go and block for the scrum team.

user55340

"Oh, you have a problem with this other team not getting this done on time? You should fix that."

12:26 AM

I've yet to see an gantt charts in the wild

user55340

Employer^^ was all gantt charts all over.

the images I see online strike me as the kind of planning that's inherently doomed because it requires you to know the exact requirements and interdependencies of everything up front to fill in a chart like that

user55340

Microsoft project up the wazoo.

in which case, you might as well just use the open source project that's done it already

user55340

Let me find that fun quote for you... it does work for things like building houses and planes where its a reputable process.

12:28 AM

yup, that's what I was thinking too

the real engineering disciplines

user55340

Saw a post on reddit where one mom had a gantt chart of thanksgiving. All the rooms, all the food...

nice

user55340

user image

user55340

reddit.com/r/food/comments/3t6upb/…

that looks entirely sensible

user55340

12:29 AM

> [–]Brave_Men_Run 865 points 10 days ago
May I ask what she does for a living?
[–]alanpep[S] 2285 points 10 days ago
Logistics Analyst
[–]anillop 811 points 10 days ago
Well that explains it.

lol

Current employer was doing Gantt charts for about a week, and gave up on them.

user55340

> What about Microsoft Project?

Software development guru Joel Spolsky puts it this way:

“The trouble with Microsoft Project is that it assumes that you want to spend a lot of time worrying about dependencies… I’ve found that with software, the dependencies are so obvious that it’s just not worth the effort to formally keep track of them.” [see also: critical path in agile projects]

Joel continues:

“Another problem with Project is that it assumes that you’re going to want to be able to press a little button and “rebalance” the schedule… For software, this just doesn’t make sense [in pra…

user55340

agilekiwi.com/earnedvalue/agile-charts

Now we're using Trello to track everything, which actually works pretty well for a small group.

user55340

12:32 AM

That '[1]' is: "[1] Chris Peters, formerly Vice President in charge of Microsoft Office. Interviewed in 1993 and 1994 for the book Microsoft Secrets. See chapter 4 of that book, under the heading “Tracking and Announcing the Ship Date”."

But we're probably going to switch to something else in the near future.

user55340

@RobertHarvey What are you looking at?

I've never used Trello, when I looked up what it was I got the impression it was kinda like Jira but far more lightweight

It's some proprietary bug tracking and reporting system. It's rather expensive.

user55340

I'd bias to either YouTrack or Redmine.

user55340

12:33 AM

(Redmine is free)

Trello is nice. It would be a toy if it weren't for all of the nice workflow features.

user55340

@Ixrec its kind of the other way around... Trello came first.

You can really make it sing if you put a little effort into it.

user55340

Side bit: joelonsoftware.com/items/2014/07/24.html

user55340

It was one of Joel's other projects.

12:34 AM

@MichaelT not making a historical claim

@MichaelT It would need corporate reporting and dashboards to be viable.

what do those terms mean for your workplace?

user55340

@RobertHarvey It kind of has them... what "dashboards" are you after?

I'm having trouble thinking of what a dashboard would be for a bug/issue tracker

"Sprint Progress: 10/20 tickets done"

@Ixrec Exactly. That and KPI's.

user55340

12:36 AM

@Ixrec redmine.org/projects/redmine/roadmap

ah, the per milestone stuff

Ruby on Rails. Blargh.

user55340

@RobertHarvey Its highly customizable.

we don't have hard milestones/client-facing versions so that's probably why it doesn't apply to us

user55340

@RobertHarvey Its open, yes, its ruby... flip side - you aren't going to get into the guts of the one you buy either.

12:37 AM

We're not a rails shop. All Microsoft, all the way.

what KPIs does your business believe in?

user55340

@RobertHarvey redmine.org/plugins/redmine_kpi

user55340

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@Ixrec Ehm, the top guy is trying to position them as "personal and professional growth tools," and not clubs to hit personnel over the head with.

right

user55340

12:39 AM

A fair bit of stuff I did at Employer^^ was tweaking Redmine.

@MichaelT Just looking at this image scares me. Is that normal?

user55340

@Ixrec no clue. Just more a "this is what we can do with this plugin"

user55340

And I don't think that Darth Vader is a real employee.

not that, lol

I mean that's the sort of thing that could make me immediately go from loving my job to hating it if they introduced something like that

user55340

Side bit - I was intrigued at the close voters on this one:

user55340

12:41 AM

-2

Q: Avoid copy and paste programming, what pattern to use?

I have a small software that generates some Word documents. It reads a template, runs a few SqL procedures to get the data, generates the documents and then sends them via e-mail. It's quite simple. Right now I want to apply that logic to generate another type of report, the base word template w...

design design-patterns

user55340

> put on hold as too broad by coredump, Scant Roger, MichaelT 2 hours ago

Everyone says that. "Performant and maintainable." How will you choose? Until you know how you're going to make the choice, you won't be able to make the choice, and polling random strangers on the internet is not going to help. — Robert Harvey 30 secs ago

user55340

While I'm on there... and Scant has been showing up here quite a bit recently, coredump isn't one I've seen often. Just a "there are more and more varied close voters now"

3:41 PM

I'm alive

glad to hear it

How is it going?

the close vote experiment is winding down, queues are not as perpetually near-empty as they were last week but we're still seeing more edits/reopens than before, and much faster closing of blatantly off-topic questions

so pretty good

that's nice to hear, been a long time since I last browsed any SE site

been working a lot lately

user55340

Nov 24 at 17:28, by GlenH7

Stupid jobs killing off our chat room fun

3:56 PM

nods

at least I have a shiny new huge project to display at my CV

2 hours later…

5:38 PM

Given this is a "whiteboard" question and not a "coding" question, while interesting, I'm flagging to move to programmers.SE. — CodeCaster 9 secs ago

1 hour later…

6:53 PM

Not sure about it, but could this question be something for programmers.stackexchange instead of stackoverflow? — albert 39 secs ago

1 hour later…

8:03 PM

You need to spend more time with Fowler first, before you ask questions like this here. — Robert Harvey 1 min ago

user55340

@maple_shaft when Java 9 comes out, would you consider deleting programmers.stackexchange.com/q/101649/40980 ? As is, all the answers are half a decade old. The performance answers are wrong. The 'compiled or interested' is fundamentally mistaken. The shortcomings that have been addressed and yet to be addressed are horribly out of date. The answers are not aging well at all and to be "current" they need to be updated to... well, at least Java 7 or Java 8 stand points, but none have.

Should this be on Programmers?

0

Q: What type of architecture would I need to deal with partially-completed operations in the event of a server crash?

I have been working on a social network powered by ASP.NET 5 for just over six months. As I think about my architecture, I realize that there are a variety of issues with it. One of the biggest issues is that, in the event that the server would go down (for whatever reason), any operation that ...

asp.net entity-framework architecture

user55340

@RobertHarvey Looks not awful. Has a specific problem that is possibly resolvable.

it's definitely on-topic, I'd have to stare at it for a minute to decide if it's answerable

user55340

8:19 PM

@Ixrec Its "use transactions" or "have a reaper script"

what's a reaper script?

user55340

Grim reaper. Runs periodically and removes unreferenced things.

user55340

An example: github.com/2072/File-Grim-Reaper

9:48 PM

Why is it that I cannot find a Wireless Access Point that will stay up? Do they all use the same damned defective chip?

1 hour later…

Lightness Races in Orbit

10:49 PM

Don't know, and no

Lightness Races in Orbit

11:14 PM

@Leeor: Hi! Welcome to the comment section. It is for comments. You write comments when you want to request more information from the question author to help you answer the question. When you are ready to provide a solution to the problem, you write an answer. The answer section is down there: ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓ Thanks and have a great day! — Lightness Races in Orbit 10 secs ago

tybvm

Lightness Races in Orbit

11:44 PM

148k 30 806 1062

star-trek story-identification star-wars harry-potter star-trek-tng movie plot-explanation

how can one be "on strike" from SFF.SE lol

I'm told he explained this in The Screening Room chat a while back

though I failed to find that particular bit, and we're not allowed to talk about this stuff anyway

Lightness Races in Orbit

lol

"not allowed"

feel free to ask a CM why it's not allowed

I'm sure it won't end badly

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Nov '1528

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