The Whiteboard

1:06 AM

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's an abstract/theoretical question about programming, which is more the domain of Programmers.SE than Stack Overflow, but even over there it's considered too broad: the equivalent question on their site has been closed, though readers may still find the answers useful. — Jeremy Banks ♦ 32 secs ago

1:23 AM

@MichaelT heh heh heh heh heh.

user55340

@RobertHarvey heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh eh

A: Do Kerbals die of natural causes?

heh heh heh

user55340

Still, lithobraking. One of the ways to kill a kerbel.

user55340

15

Kerbals can't die for any other reason than lithobraking (just like aerobraking, only difference is that you replace the atmosphere with the ground) and a collision with an object. When you're in control of the command module, try switching to Neil by using the [ and ] keys. Unless there's a lo...

Some of these guys look like they're running KSP on a 386.

Or an iPhone. Oh, wait. Did I say that out loud? Sorry Siri.

1:38 AM

Good evening gentlemen

ladies? maybe?

user55340

@JoeP g'eve

i feel like the one thing i will never be able to figure out.. no matter how long i mess with computers.. is how the hell to make my wireless router not suck majorly

i just hate all things networking.. and i have no desire to learn how to make it work correctly

im sure I can mess with channels and stuff.. but instead I just deal with dropped connections constantly

user55340

running copper up to the second floor... because wireless gets congested.

user55340

What computer do you have?

i have an asus and a thinkpad

both act the same way

i wanna blame time warner

but i know its my router

i live in a building with 16 apts.. so im sure its related to signals

user55340

1:43 AM

That was a prelude to a "if it was a mac I could walk you through the wireless scanner application"

:) i sensed it

at least it wasnt 'macs just work great'

user55340

Nah... its a "holy crap! there are how many 2.4GHz networks out there that people don't know to turn down the power on? That one is from half a block away!"

:) yeah thats the thing.. my knowledge of this stuff is bare minimum

i wanna plug it in and have it work

thats what I get for not paying TW to supply a router and set it up for me.

user55340

(mumble mumble mumble... get a new wifi hub that speaks 5ghz)

yeah i was actually looking at some

the thing with routers is i find them in so many price ranges... and have no idea why i would want one over another

so i just sort by amazon reviews

user55340

1:47 AM

Extra things... want a SAN? or printer on the wifi?

user15026

I know why my wireless sucks. I need to move :P

user55340

(I run a mac ecosystem... so it was an easy choice... Apple Airport express...)

user55340

Note that if you do go that route, there is an Airport utility for windows.

user15026

My main problem is no router access, and I have to depend on the upstairs router not hitting load, and it's not a very secure connection.....

the thing about mine is.. (and maybe this will help explain wtf is going on) is that if i power it down.. when it comes back up its blazing fast... for 10 minutes

then sucks again

user55340

1:56 AM

Check your machine too. My mother's laptop had dropbox on it... when her machine was on sometimes the network would just suck. Eventually my father tracked it down to her machine and dropbox doing syncing after startup (poorly)

user55340

Consider sniffing your own computer's network to see if its misbehaving. (wireshark or the like)

will do thanks.. this one has a pretty fresh debian install.. so id be surprised

but who knows

user55340

I'd still run wireshark to see what the network going to / from your machine looks like when its slow.

yea.. will do

2:24 AM

this hackerrank shit is addictive

Q: Having trouble working with a programming buddy, do I just let poor design choices go, or keep endlessly fighting over it?

4:53 AM

@darkyen00 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 37 secs ago

Ixrec

6:22 AM

0

I've found myself in a tough spot as of late. Been working on a game with a programming buddy for nearly 8 months now. We both started off as newcomers to programming around August of last year, he is a 2nd year CS student, I'm an IT support tech by trade and am a self-taught programmer with mult...

code-quality refactoring teamwork hacks

what do we do with this question? flag for migration to the Workplace? I think it's off-topic as career advice here but it seems sufficiently specific and well-written that it deserves an answer

Yannis

10:09 AM

> Communism, sexism, and the Moderator. A romantic novel. – Yannis 24 mins ago helpful

10:38 AM

I think this is more of a design question. It may attract a lot of opinions, so it might not be a good fit for Stack Overflow. Maybe Programmers Stack Exchange would be a better place to ask. Programmers.SE welcomes design questions. — jww just now

11:37 AM

Engineering Managers Should Code 30% of Their Time

rolfl

Meh.... any programmer who codes 30% of their time 5 years in to their career is lucky ;-)

I'm not convinced that it should be 30%. That works out to 12 hours (1.5 days) in a 40 hour work week. I'd be happy with 20%, or 8 hours / 1 day in a standard 40 hour work week.

I'd just generalize it and say that everyone in software should spend the equivalent of 1 day per week doing technical work. It doesn't matter if it's requirements development, design, coding, unit testing. But it should be with the tools and processes used by everyone else.

Lambda the Ultimate - Programming Languages Weblog: Eve: the development diary of a programming environment aimed at non-programmers

12:22 PM

I've been thinking about productivity recently.

Especially about how to measure it. I've come up with an idea, but I haven't actually found anyone who as written or reasoned about it publicly before.

Stack Exchange

posted on May 14, 2015

In spring 2012 Chris Granger successfully completed a Kickstarter fundraising and got $300K (instead of the requested $200K) to work on a live-feedback IDE inspired by Bret Victor "Inventing on principle" talk. The IDE project was called Light Table. It initially supported Clojure (the team's favourite language) only, but eventually added support for Javascript and Python. In January 2014, Ligh…

Q: What to do when you find a bug in development?

1:03 PM

0

It is common during development to find bugs in the project, but when it was not you responsible for that module, it's correct to add a FIXME in the code? I see that not put the annotation that can be taken to production and bring future problems.

team

you guys want that?

@ThomasOwens I think this is one reason why so many devs code outside work, when you are doing your own projectwork you can have a much, much higher ratio of programming to time spent...

@enderland I think it's a dupe. Even if not, it's too broad. I VTC on Workplace.

It's a poll at some level (what do you do is either you as an individual or you as a team/organization).

The answer is "follow your team's process".

@enderland Those people who are doing development work should be hitting much more than 1 day/week of development at work.

I'm mainly referring to leads, managers, and process engineers who, in many organizations, don't touch the product.

@enderland I left a comment. A mod closure would be nice.

@ThomasOwens k, I won't

@ThomasOwens there's a lot of organizational overhead too

@enderland If there's that much overhead, maybe the role needs to be split.

user41796

1:40 PM

@RobertHarvey That's very surprising to hear about them throwing the letters away unread. But my experience doesn't match what "The Ladders" claims. I'd argue it's 5% that actually send a thank you note, not the other way around. Usually, the decision has been made by the time the snail mail letter has arrived, but I think it's good form regardless. Email, if sent the day of the interview, can obviously beat out the decision window.

MetaFight

1:51 PM

Hi Spiderman

I just saw your avatar swoop in from the top of the screen. Very appropriate.

hello

MetaFight

Come to think of it, my parachuting avatar must be pretty appropriate when I leave the room.

@GlenH7 I suspect that it's selection bias, or people who say that they send thank you notes who really don't, or our industry is somehow different (kinda doubt that).

user41796

Selection bias would have been my guess too, yes

user41796

And while it wouldn't necessarily change my decision on who to hire, I think it would affect future applications for other roles.

2:02 PM

Thank you notes are bad now?

suck-upy thank you notes are bad

user55340

"Thank you for the opportunity to interview with your organization. The question XYZ gave me things to think about. I look forward to hearing back from you"

user41796

^^^ This is all you really need.

user55340

+ appropriate fluff

I usually do something like "Thanks for your time, here are the ways you can contact my references."

Plus that way, if I don't like them from the interview, no one has to be bothered by them.

user41796

2:15 PM

If I knew I wasn't going to accept an offer from a company no matter what they put out there, then I probably wouldn't send a thank you letter.

that is vapid drivel.

if you send me that you're wasting my time.

Someone's mad in AskUbuntu...

@AdrianoRepetti this question is a very poor fit for Programmers - it would be quickly voted down and closed over there. Recommended reading: What goes on Programmers.SE? A guide for Stack Overflow — Simon André Forsberg 36 secs ago

@Telastyn Social lubricant.

Not to be confused with the other kind.

@Telastyn Maybe. I've always considered it to be polite though. And everyone I've sent thank-you follow ups to have been receptive of them.

Of course I typically like to have several interactions before the interview. So me following up to say thanks for your time isn't abnormal at that point.

2:24 PM

I have an abundant sensitivity for people wasting my time. That's mine to waste thank-you-very-much.

you should've said that at the end of the interview. Repeating it in an email is dumb.

okay, donut time. That should make me less surly.

@Telastyn some people definitely care about that sort of stuff though

See reference: HR.

More like, any position which isn't 100% technical in nature (which turns out to be most jobs)

Personally, after working with people who've handled clients poorly. I think follow up emails are important in showing you're capable of human interaction.

But yeah, a poorly made thank-you can definitely be a disqualifier from a position.

I would love a job where I didn't have to deal with people. But that's probably never going to happen.

2:41 PM

@enderland - if that is the tipping point between me getting the job and me not, they shouldn't hire me.

.people. Those pesky, irrational things.

being a crappy people person leads to stuff like this problem - programmers.stackexchange.com/q/283833/52929

@enderland you mean the other guy, right? The one who thinks his code is already perfect. How do you change the mind of someone like rhat?

@RobertHarvey ... you don't

@RobertHarvey We should automate them right after cars.

2:46 PM

@RobertHarvey some people are simply not effective team members. the lucky ones are brilliant on their own, the less lucky ones plague the rest of us

sending a thank you email does not correlate to being an effective team member.

user55340

a thank you is likely lost on a pure technical interview. Managers and HR may appreciate it.

you could send this to the tech folks, "Thank you for taking the time to partake in the BS that is hiring developers. I appreciate your willingness to be part of the convoluted and b0rken thing that is HR processes."

2

Canada vs Belarus | Game 58 | #IIHFWorlds 2015

heh.

MetaFight

@Telastyn Telastyn, I think I'm falling in love with your surliness.

►

Canada is kicking ass :)

Introducing the Lily Camera

3:27 PM

►

Not available yet, of course. Apparently they're accepting pre-orders.

for technologically minded voyeurs everywhere.

Simon André Forsberg

@AdrianoRepetti this question is a very poor fit for Programmers - it would be quickly voted down and closed over there. Recommended reading: What goes on Programmers.SE? A guide for Stack Overflow — Simon André Forsberg 1 hour ago

@SimonAndréForsberg nice link!!! I'd keep it as definitive reference! ;) — Adriano Repetti 35 mins ago

@gnat would be proud of me!

user114359

4:07 PM

@SimonAndréForsberg I am pretty sure gnat cannot feel pride, or happiness, or sadness. Robots don't feel.

user55340

@SimonAndréForsberg I'm glad people are finding that meta post useful.

4:22 PM

@RobertHarvey I'd hate to be on their support team when those things start following the wrong people.

On the other hand. Somewhere there could be a child asking their parents to keep the robot that followed it home.

user55340

@Spiderman blogs.discovermagazine.com/drone360/2015/04/23/…

@MichaelT "helicopter parenting" haha

user41796

4:35 PM

@Snowman We're obviously not allowed to discuss the matter, but I think it's safe to say that gnat is more than "just a 'bot."

user55340

Jon Skeet wrote gnat to handle chatting for him so Jon would have more time to write the bots that post questions so he can answer more questions

@Telastyn This one seems more attuned to sports enthusiasts. You carry around a little remote, so it's following you, not someone else. It's all about you.

user41796

@MichaelT With Java ME being a secret passion of Jon's obviously

user114359

@GlenH7 Everyone has a guilty pleasure.

user55340

912

A: Jon Skeet Facts

Jon Skeet can divide by zero. Jon Skeet's SO reputation is only as modest as it is because of integer overflow (SQL Server does not have a datatype large enough) Jon Skeet is the only top 100 SO user who is human. The others are bots that he coded to pass the time between questions. Jon Skeet c...

user55340

4:40 PM

@GlenH7 would you want to admit to using JavaME?

user41796

True. That would give it instant validity that it doesn't deserve

user114359

If you ran a JavaME program on WindowsME, would the universe end? Can it really handle that much failure at once?

user41796

> Abort, retry, fail?

user114359

@MichaelT If Jon Skeet teamed up with Bruce Schneier to write security software, would it have unbreakable security?

user55340

@Snowman people would still use php.

user114359

4:45 PM

PHP really isn't all that bad. If you turn off a bunch of default configs. And don't use more than half of the built-in libraries. And have a security committee review every line of code at each commit for asshattery.

Oh. Forgot we have an offensive flag.

Uh...that one question...

Me reflexively commenting. Me should know better.

Someone needs to write an RFC for a 6xx line of errors, with 651 being...that.