The Whiteboard

I just cleaned up the low quality answers.

user55340

No wonder that wasn't one boxing.

Q: Is systems engineer an IT profession or an interdisciplinary field of engineering?

There are a few distinct definitions. But it shouldn't be primarily opinion.

user41796

@ThomasOwens - I've got one for ya.

user41796

0

The term Systems Engineer has always interested me as it generally involves many different fields of engineering. Systems Engineer - Interdisciplinary The definition I'm familiar with is usually defined as an interdisciplinary profession of engineering, where the engineer has experience in a nu...

mechanical-engineering structural-engineering control-engineering design

oracle regular-expressions

12:12 AM

The number of answers doesn't really matter, and just because a question is attracting crap answers doesn't mean the question should be closed. Several people (including myself) provided specific references to definitions of the difference. And OHHH ANSWER.

user55340

@ThomasOwens If the question is attracting crap answers, and you can't fix the question, it suggests a constant and ongoing moderation of the question... some of which regular users can't do. The tools that we have is protecting (that doesn't help - would only have prevented one answer) and closing.

user41796

It might be worth nuking the net zero voted answers. Cutting out existing and not helpful answers sends a hint to future answerers to leave things be. They won't necessarily see the deleted answers, but they'll see just a small set of up voted answers and should be discouraged from adding anything further.

user55340

12:33 AM

Could we put this out of its misery... its effectively a repost/rewording of a question that was on DBA.SE and is soliciting code results (which it got a rather poor example of):

user55340

-1

Q: REGEXP_REPLACE in ORACLE

I have an input string with numerous formats. It might be: NCA385Useless Text NCA 386:Useless Text NC345/545Some Useless Text NCA400/500 Some Useless Text NC 300/500Some Useless Text NC 450/550(Some Uselss Text) NCA 200 Useless Text NCA 220/520:Useless Text NC250 (Some Useless Text) NC 300 (So...

user55340

16

Q: Is software development an engineering discipline?

Can software development be considered engineering? If no, what are the things that it lacks in order to be qualified as an engineering discipline? Related to this is this question on Stack Overflow about the difference between a programmer and a software engineer. There is the Software Engineer...

education job-title

12:46 AM

@MichaelT I may lock it then. Because it's not off-topic and it does have canonical answers. This is good for Meta, though.

@GlenH7 Answered.

user55340

@ThomasOwens The thing is, thats why it got closed... because thats the tool that we have that is most appropriate out of our toolbox for moderating questions that gather too many diverging answers and would result in a bad experience with a new user posting another similar answer to it.

user55340

I've occasionally espoused on such on other metas... that the tools that we (regular users) have can be incredibly blunt for dealing with finer problems (and being able to do things like delete up voted answers, lock, quickly protect)... I'm not sure what tools we do need, but close and delete are rather... blunt.

Yeah. Posting on Meta SE now.

user55340

Maybe a super-protect?

user55340

"you need at last a quality score of 95 out of 100 on the proposed answer, a length greater than 256 bytes and 1k rep to post an answer in this question"

12:53 AM

Does this accurately describe the situations?

> Let's say that a question is asked on a site. Several users have posted factual answers, citing specific sources. The nature of the question is well-defined, but the fact is that within the domain, there is a divergence of thoughts on the subject. There are a small number of widely accepted definitions that tend to be available in what can be considered canonical references.

user55340

Not an unreasonable description of the question. I would want to somehow work in the "this also has the situation where various organizations will often redefine these terms and users, trying to be helpful, feel compelled to post their local definition"

> Even with a small number of canonical definitions, individual communities within the domain may also define the terms uniquely.

user55340

Google's Guide to Technical Development

I added that to the very end.

@MichaelT I don't see a mention of requirements, architecture, or design.

user55340

@ThomasOwens Hmm... could you edit my title to "Google's Guide for Technical Development" - its more geared to the "up to graduation-esque" for students and non-traditional students.

user55340

1:01 AM

Its very much the academic path that gets you to an entry level job... where you then learn about requirements, architecture and design (because I've yet to see any college class that can substitute for experience there)

user55340

>
Having a solid foundation in Computer Science is important to become a successful Software Engineer. This guide is a suggested path for university students to develop their technical skills academically and non-academically through self paced hands-on learning. You may use this guide to determine courses to take, but please make sure you are taking courses required for your major in order to graduate. The online resources provided in this guide are not meant to replace courses available at your university. However, they may help supplement your learnings or provide an introduction to a to…

user55340

> Checking off all items in this guide does not guarantee a job at Google

@MichaelT Substitute? No, they can't. But they can introduce.

user55340

@ThomasOwens Consider this... who is teaching the class? College professors who've never seen a requirements document from a confused business user.

@MichaelT At most schools? Probably. I was lucky that most of my department went on sabbatical. I was taught requirements engineering by a software lead who was an adjunct.

user55340

1:06 AM

They don't have the experience on working on software that a good 1M SLOC nor something that they won't throw away and have the next grad student research group redo.

I was also taught usability by a blind professor.

user55340

That professor likely had unique insights into usability and is more familiar with it than most people.

@MichaelT Exactly.

user55340

Looking back on the custom written software for the college classes I took... the largest program that any of the professors wrote compiles into something that is at best a few megabytes in size (SPIM - a MIPS simulator) with QT libraries.

user55340

Great program... just a "here is a superbly documented description of the MIPS architecture... have some grad students over seen by a professor work on it for a few years" - not "here is something that fell out of a business user's brain... can you have it done by next week?"

user41796

1:11 AM

@ThomasOwens I thought that one might appeal to you. Thanks for putting the answer in. I also addressed Mahendra's comment for you.

user55340

The professors that went off into the industry for a sabbatical often find themselves in R&D at a big company and are working on Big Ideas rather than the "get this product out before the salespeople start screaming up their management chain that we can't do anything on time"

user55340

I am doubtful that more than a handful of professors have the experience to teach a class on requirements gathering or how to architect software that is going to be used for half a decade (or more) without ~~slave labor~~ graduate students.

I guess I'm lucky. You're probably right on that one.

Although I my architecture professor was an academic with little industry experience. I'm not sure why he taught architecture. He did leave a year or so later, though, to go to a more research oriented school.

Please tell me that the hidden comments thing isn't live everywhere.

That's stupid.

user41796

@ThomasOwens hidden comments thing? All comments are hidden?

@GlenH7 Check out my answer on Engineering.

If you refresh the page, it just says "view 2 comments" and doesn't show any comments.

I know The Workplace is like that - they only show comments that have been up voted.

But it's stupid.

user41796

1:17 AM

@ThomasOwens Weird. They show for me. But I have a target on my back there.

user55340

I had Professor Larus teach Operating systems (he's the one who wrote spim)... Dewitt for DBAs, Landweber teach networking... looking at it, he's probably the one that could teach those classes (the others were excellent... but I doubt they had the experience when they were teaching)

user41796

@MichaelT - do you see the comments on Thomas' answer? engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2807/…

Weird. They are there now.

I jsut refreshed and it started behaving like every site except The Workplace.

user55340

@GlenH7 I see two comments.

user41796

@ThomasOwens I blame the diamond looking at the page now. They know they better behave. :-)

user55340

1:22 AM

(trying to think of how to do that Google guide as a community advert without getting into trademark issues)

Q: What should I do with a question that is attracting opinions, but isn't asking for opinions / is asking for factual information?

0

Let's say that a question is asked on a site. Several users have posted factual answers, citing specific sources. The nature of the question is well-defined, but the fact is that within the domain, there is a divergence of thoughts on the subject. There are a small number of widely accepted defin...

discussion questions

Google Guide?

@RobertHarvey First pnned message.

I just finished a programming test on HackerRank (it was a practice test for an Amazon Coding Challenge). It was a 45 minute timed test, which had the following questions...

1. Determine the missing term in an arithmetic question. Sample data: 51, 11, 31, 41, 51. Answer: 21

2. Find the diameter of a binary tree.

3. Count all the prime numbers less than n.

And an easy question about which sorting algorithm has the best complexity.

@RobertHarvey What is a diameter of a tree?

1:37 AM

@ThomasOwens geeksforgeeks.org/diameter-of-a-binary-tree

user41796

@RobertHarvey Did they give immediate feedback? Thumbs up? Down?

My answer to #1 passed some of the sample data tests, but failed two of them.

My answer to #2 modeled the Geeks for Geeks one, but gave the wrong answer, according to the site (it was off by 1).

I didn't get to #3. I've solved that problem before, but need to dig through my console projects to find it.

@GlenH7 No feedback is given on the practice test, other than you know which test cases passed or failed.

The actual test is going to be harder.

So my question is... Does this seem like a realistic coding screen for a 45 minute test?

More to the point... Should I find a new profession?

user41796

@RobertHarvey That seems like a lot to tackle in just 45 minutes

user41796

Average of 15 minutes per question doesn't leave a lot of time for thinking through the right answer

BTW, the prime numbers one was max N of 1 million. So I don't think the naive implementation would have worked, since they only give your code about 5 seconds to find the answer. And I don't think they give you enough memory for that large of a Sieve of Eratosthenes. Not sure if there's an algorithmic solution.

user41796

1:44 AM

Nor does it leave much time for coding an elegant solution

user55340

I could pull #3 out of existing code that I've got sitting around...

user41796

So if those questions are "absolute" filters, then I think they're bad questions.

user55340

If you don't have much time, its x/ln(x) and hope.

user41796

Because they're trivial to cheat if you have solved the problem before, but not solvable in the time allotted otherwise.

user41796

And they don't tell you anything about how the candidate actually thinks through the problem.

1:45 AM

The recruiter said I'd have to get a 70 out of 90 on the real test to pass through to the next phase.

[sigh]

user41796

Apparently they like to hire people who have solved lots of puzzles then

user41796

Text isn't very good at conveying disdain....

@RobertHarvey Can you say what company this test is for?

user41796

I need to drop for a bit

user55340

@GlenH7 👿

1:48 AM

Oh, sorry, thought I already mentioned. Amazon. For their Consumer Website division.

Ah. A few friends of mine work at Amazon Seattle. And I know two people at Kiva.

From what I've heard, the interview process is very team-dependent.

Yes, Seattle.

user55340

@ThomasOwens My Shopbop interview was such... though different process there (no coding test)... still an amazon experience.

Amazon didn't even get that far

I don't think I even applied to Amazon when I was in school. Not sure if they are really my thing.

1:52 AM

recruiter contacted me, I asked why they were interested in me over others and never heard from them again. Asking questions likely meant I was a bad fit.

user55340

I'll mention it again... if you're not opposed to it, check out state government. They're coming to terms with the amount of data flowing through the system, have historically had difficulty hiring techies and tend to have good benefits.

I think I've only talked to one or two companies not in aerospace/defense in the past 2-3 years. If I leave this industry, it does have to be for a really good opportunity since it may be hard to get back in.

I am more opposed than most to process and bureaucracy.

user55340

Coding... honestly, this has been the most cowboy-esque place I've been outside of early Netapp.

2:07 AM

Heh

user55340

The two bits of process that I've got to deal with are another department (as in entirely different division of the state government) deals with all the servers (deployments), its a pain to get new software (libraries and local apps). Outside that... I haven't actually seen a requirements document or someone bringing up Microsoft Project yet.

user55340

I'm sure I will at some point... but nothing like Employer^^ with 7 page MS Word templates that you need to fill out (thats when the templates are empty)

user41796

@ThomasOwens It's a notoriously difficult field to crack into, yes. Especially at the more senior levels. The counterpoint is when a firm is on a tear and simply can't hire fast enough. But there was a very significant difference in my offer from the defense firm and the very-large-international-everything firm that I had when I graduated.

user114359

2:26 AM

Anyone know if there is a way to filter questions with delete votes by removing questions I have already voted to delete?

4:15 AM

@MichaelT Do you work for state government? Where do I find those jobs?

@ThomasOwens I applied at Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, for several local jobs. But I think they were unimpressed because I didn't use C++ at NASA.

@Ixrec This essay should be required reading for all aspiring teachers of any subject.

4:43 AM

@MichaelT Ah, never mind. jobs.ca.gov

@MichaelT It looks promising, there are several openings for software developers. I'll explore in more detail tomorrow.

7:47 AM

SO is (unfortunately) not a place to ask for libraries. You can try at programmers.stackexchange.com — cosmo0 6 secs ago

9:05 AM

@cosmo0 this question is a very poor fit for Programmers - it would be quickly voted down and closed over there, see meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/6483/… Recommended reading: What goes on Programmers.SE? A guide for Stack Overflow — gnat 31 secs ago

overexchange

9:39 AM

I would like to to debug server.py's do_Get(self) method in this code when user clicks playbutton from browser to send http get request to http://localhost:8000 after starting python server.py

How do I debug do_Get(self)? to know why make_song() does not get invoked.

am stuck here, ideally I need to hear Twinke Twinkle note.

port number can be changed(if required)

11:44 AM

programmers.stackexchange.com. I would suggest to experiment a little and come back with some solution to start with. — Ruslanas Balčiūnas 34 secs ago

12:35 PM

Unfortunately, that's not enough to get the question re-opened. It's not only "too broad" due to many questions embeded, it's also too open-ended as a question. This means it fails on both "too broad" and "opinion based". "Which is better" is a dead giveaway for a question that does not belong here. You might have better luck at programmers.stackexchange.com. — GreenAsJade 39 secs ago

1:05 PM

I thought I remember reading something where Visual Studio was going to be free - but looking at all their pricing it doesn't seem to be free?

did I miss something?

ratchet freak

there is a free version

but with a premium if you want all features

Oh. my google-fu is failing me then

Ahhh, ok

this is jogging my memory, iirc the free version had most features still though

ratchet freak

I think there is a table somewhere on microsoft's site with the features you miss out on

I want it to do a relatively simple Outlook add-in, so I don't think I will need the fancy features :)

visualstudio.com/en-us/products/…

I'm glad they have stupid formats for showing the different features for each

Hmm, their license basically says "if you work for a big corporation you can't use this"

> In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or > $1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.

ratchet freak

1:24 PM

well yeah otherwise they can't make any money off the paid versions

yeah... well it's still a bummer :)

user41796

@enderland Look for Visual Studio Express. That said, the Express editions may not support Office / Outlook development.

@GlenH7 yeah, I need one of Professional/Ultimate/Premium

I should never have let my license for VS get reclaimed last year! haha

user41796

< cue sad trombone />

user41796

@enderland Yeah, those are gold in the enterprise world

1:30 PM

I don't know if I can convince my boss to support this as a software request - the main benefit would be outside my team (since I want to automate a tedious thing for me, and figure if I make it into an add-in I can save a ton of time)

as well as give me exposure to C#

Q: When developing an MVC framework, how should I be using Knockout.js?

1:50 PM

0

I'm currently using the Laravel PHP MVC Framework to develop a web application; and it's going along quite nicely. I'm very comfortable with the expectations of the framework and how my application should be structured. This is not a problem. My problem is with the front end, UI/interaction side...

architecture mvc web mvvm front-end

Isn't Knockout intended for single page applications? What is this "one view model per page" thing he speaks of?

well there's no refreshes, but there's likely a view model per view.

Spiderman

@RobertHarvey It's possible to have different knockout models, and switch them out as needed.

user41796

@RobertHarvey Primary purpose of it is for SPAs, yes

Hi there, I have asked a question on Stackoverflow, and someone suggested that it should be crossposted to programmers.stackexchange, tho I'm not sure it would be a good fit. Is this a good place to ask for an opinion about it?

user41796

@jimijazz First off, please don't cross-post. :-)

user41796

1:54 PM

Second, please provide a link in here to the SO question so we can look it over.

user41796

And thank you for asking in here before posting on the main site.

I see, then flag for migration would be the proper way? Here is the question: stackoverflow.com/questions/30124412/…

user41796

If asked on Progs, you would likely get more detailed answers about when to declare / use an interface and when not to. Ignoring the job code sample aspect, is your primary question more about when to use an interface as opposed to "how"? ie. are you more focused on the broader question or about the implementation aspect of getting to that map functionality?

We will need a lot more info to help you, and I think this question would be better on programmers.stackexchange.com — Tom Jonckheere 34 secs ago

@GlenH7 I'm more focused on the broader question. At the same time I'm not sure how to rephrase it for it not to be so much "opinion based" and more based on "proper coding reference," if such a thing exists...

user41796

1:59 PM

The Progs is the better site for your question. It should be migrated instead of cross-posted though. Flag for moderator attention and request the migration.