The Whiteboard

Thomas Owens

6:01 PM

o_o

enderland

that's very close to the types of things I like doing nearly entirely across the posting

and I actually have relevant background/etc

user55340

37

Q: Better "Flag for migration" interface

Currently, the only way to ask for something to be migrated to a site that isn't part of the standard migration path is through a custom mod note. I currently have two active custom mod notes on Stack Overflow that ask for migration that are not standard targets for SO. I believe the questions ...

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT That's not the one I was thinking of.

It explicitly talked about a check box and a message pointing people to the other site's Help Center.

Robert Harvey

@enderland That is an interesting job post, but won't it end someone's developer career if they're currently a developer?

enderland

@RobertHarvey perhaps

Thomas Owens

6:07 PM

@RobertHarvey Maybe?

enderland

I mean, yes it probably would if you want to be in an IDE all day every day

Robert Harvey

I'm at the point now where I don't think I'll even take another obsolete technology programming job again. It's just too hard to prove that you're current.

Thomas Owens

That is a big fear of mine. As much as I love doing things like managing projects or doing process improvement, if I leave the standard SDLC-type requirements, architecture, design, code, test type work, I'll lose effectiveness at managing projects or doing process improvement.

Robert Harvey

No. You won't ever become ineffective at those things. You'll just become obsolete in the eyes of the employer community.

durron597

@RobertHarvey replied

Thomas Owens

6:10 PM

@RobertHarvey I think I would eventually become ineffective. I'd lose touch with how work happens. It doesn't matter if I write an amazing process, if it doesn't actually work to deliver value...well, it's pointless.

enderland

@ThomasOwens so my background is in HCI which has a lot of techniques to help you understand what the needs are - this sort of approach to processes is very helpful, too (not just UI design)

Robert Harvey

Ah, c'mon.

-5

Q: Any c# king here? Help!

Following is part of my c code(where wrong? Can u help me? :) ): using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Text.RegularExpressions; public class PinYin { private static string[] getValue = new string[] { ...

c# visual-studio visual-studio-2010

Thomas Owens

@enderland Apply for that job.

You'd be better than me at it.

enderland

@ThomasOwens I'm pretty seriously thinking about it - I'm not sure how long it's been up, but it's absolutely perked my interest and my experience here on SE is actually quite relevant to that job, too

Thomas Owens

Go for it.

Robert Harvey

6:17 PM

Yeah, you should apply.

I'm a good coder, and not a half-bad designer, but I'm completely bereft of product ideas.

enderland

@RobertHarvey the trick with all UX types of things (or even ideas, in this context) is realizing you don't have to be, as long as you have the ability to understand the needs and pain points of your users - then you just solve them and have now an endless litany of "product ideas"

Telastyn

Woo, laptop but no login.

@Telastyn Try 12345

or "password"

6:20 PM

if it's windows try the admin account

user41796

@RobertHarvey - did you get an answer to your question in here about globalant and the terms of their offer?

Robert Harvey

I didn't.

user41796

Sounded to me like they'll put you in their system but you don't get paid until a client accepts you to work on their projects

user41796

So you're "employed" but you aren't necessarily paid.

Telastyn

Well, I don't know my username. Password is likely set on first login deal.

user41796

6:22 PM

Even with the big consulting firms, some of their clients want to interview the contractor that will end up doing the work

Robert Harvey

Their offer was for an exempt employee. I don't see how they could get away with that. It's not like you can just turn it on and off like a hose.

user41796

Benefit of the big firms is they'll pay you even if you aren't actively billing to a client

user41796

@RobertHarvey That's not how I read it then. Weird

Robert Harvey

So they make it contingent on interview with the first contractor, then it's salaried after that?

user41796

It sounded like they were pushing the risk of you not having a contract to work on (and therefore get paid) fully on to you

user41796

6:24 PM

@RobertHarvey Yeah, sounds like it

user41796

Being cynical, that likely means you're laid off if the contract you're working on collapses

Robert Harvey

That would seem to be the case.

I checked them out on Glassdoor. The consensus seem to be "Good work, but terrible management." They're probably a pain in the ass to work for, but it's not like I've never done that before.

user41796

Almost sounds like a variation on you being a subcontractor to the primary contractor

user41796

If it's positive cash flow, that's a good thing. And I would certainly keep looking for something while doing the contract work

Robert Harvey

Well, I guess their safety valve is me interviewing with the client first. The offer is contingent on the interview, so.

user41796

6:26 PM

Even when I was in a contract-for-hire position, I kept interviewing in order to make sure I had a backup plan

Robert Harvey

Oh, of course.

user41796

Yeah, sounds like they don't start paying you until you're billable (aka client interview is successful). So they've minimized their upfront liability.

Robert Harvey

I need to do something to get some of these folks off the stick. They all like me and my credentials, but the process always seems to stall for whatever reason. Everyone wants to hire someone, but nobody wants to take the risk.

durron597

@GlenH7 thanks for that deletion

user41796

Probably wouldn't hurt to ask them what their notification period is if the contract ends

user41796

6:28 PM

@RobertHarvey For that alone, it's likely worthwhile

user41796

@durron597 np. Wasn't that good of a question or answer.

durron597

@RobertHarvey You could always try offering a short period where you work at reduced salary

user41796

roomba should clean it out tonight

durron597

@GlenH7 It's roomba eligible now... yeah, I didn't want to downvote your good answer to a bad question

user41796

@durron597 Many HR departments aren't well setup for the concept of a contract-to-hire

Robert Harvey

6:29 PM

@durron597 I might do that if I really like a particular opportunity, and I can't get them off the fence.

Telastyn

"Sorry, we can't create your account, the automated process needs to handle it tonight."

enderland

"why didn't you create it a week ago?"

Telastyn

Well then, I'm going home to "work".

durron597

@RobertHarvey "Job is paying $75/hr? Okay, pay me $20/hr for one week. If you still like me, we'll keep going at $75/hr for next 6 months"

or something.

Thomas Owens

@RobertHarvey Apply to work for Stack Exchange, as a dev.

Telastyn

6:30 PM

They needed my i9 info before they could give me an employee number, and the automated process needs the employee number...

durron597

@ThomasOwens He's tried that, as far as I know he hasn't gotten a response

Thomas Owens

Ah.

Robert Harvey

Stack Exchange tl;dr: "Come back in a year and reapply after you've done some more frontend web development work."

They were very nice about it, though.

durron597

@RobertHarvey You could probably come back faster than a year if you make a portfolio

Thomas Owens

Ah. Yeah. I haven't even seen a line of HTML/CSS/JS in like...6 or 7 years.

Probably longer.

Robert Harvey

6:32 PM

It's been five years for me. Ergo, the comments about allowing yourself to become obsolete.

ASP.NET MVC work has changed completely. When people say "Full Stack," what they really mean is browser applications with web services.

So ASP.NET MVC has been relegated to the role of creating web services for the browser applications.

user41796

@RobertHarvey That's pretty fair. Most CRUD type apps have minimal SQL backing them.

enderland

my (now somewhat dated) "about" on my careers profile:

> The longer version is, my career interest is more or less a position bridging the gap between software developers and non-developers, given I have a background in development/HCI and nearly always there is significant need for someone interested to facilitate both work together with that background. Most companies however do not seem to find developers interested in such work.

> This results in all sorts of problems, especially given how much easier creating requirements is when you can quickly prototype systems to help users determine their needs. This of course results in a much shorter overall development time and cost when done appropriately.

Robert Harvey

Sounds like you'd be perfect for the product manager SE position.

Thomas Owens

Yeah. Update your Careers profile and apply.

DO IT, @enderland!

durron597

@enderland Why? Are you not liking your new job?

enderland

6:37 PM

I'll be sad though if it gets closed before then

@durron597 I'm always open to new opportunities

durron597

@enderland Still, you just started a new role.

enderland

@durron597 I expect by the time this process gets anywhere it'll be several months at lesat

Duga

This question would be quickly closed and likely down voted on Programmers. At it's core, the question is a poll which doesn't work well within the StackExchange Q&A format. — GlenH7 36 secs ago

durron597

@enderland true

user41796

@RobertHarvey - This offends my SO sensibilities. Would you put it out of its misery, please?

enderland

6:38 PM

I'm tentatively optimistic, still, the tech stack is boring I think

durron597

@ThomasOwens This offends my P.SE sensibilities. Would you put it out of its misery, please?

enderland

I like the team and work environment, mostly, and keep in mind just interviewing doesn't mean anything about actually taking the job

that description is totally vague

durron597

(hint: it's a cross post)

user41796

@durron597 hint it's already closed

durron597

@GlenH7 lol

enderland

6:40 PM

plus I like interviewing and applying for jobs, generally

Robert Harvey

I like being flogged.

user41796

Interviewing when you're coming from a position of leverage (aka already have a job and don't necessarily need a new one) is a much different experience than doing so without leverage.

durron597

@GlenH7 oh man, tell me about it.

user41796

Have they gotten back to you?

durron597

@GlenH7 I should know by the end of the week

user41796

6:43 PM

Very cool

durron597

But even then, it's not the next step, the next step is meeting teams and getting placed

Even if I get a thumbs up I expect I wouldn't start until like, the fall

user41796

Are the additional rounds more focused on team fit or technical ability? Or both?

durron597

@GlenH7 The former

Thomas Owens

@durron597 Did you say who this was with?

durron597

I think 6 technical interviews is enough, even for Google

enderland

6:45 PM

@GlenH7 I told my wife worst that happens is they say no, she responded with "no worst is if you get an offer you can't decide if it's worth leaving for" :P

durron597

@ThomasOwens ^^^

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 fit, pah.. you should disabuse others of this excuse for H1Bing us all :P

Thomas Owens

@durron597 Oh. It's for Google? Which office?

durron597

1 min ago, by durron597

But even then, it's not the next step, the next step is meeting teams and getting placed

user41796

@enderland Yeah, I've been in that position before

durron597

6:46 PM

In other words, I have no idea yet

user41796

They didn't make the offer sweet enough to offset the 100% travel. In retrospect, definitely the right decision

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 This was how I unexpectedly ended up leaving a company after 2 months...only did that once, but I left for Microsoft, so it was worth it.

enderland

course this is putting a lot of things ahead of the conversational horse, so to speak

durron597

@GlenH7 A guy I play tennis with recently got a new job at a company based in Chicago... he still lives here in Houston. So he works from home... when he's not travelling. He buys and manages property for a large company

so he's travelling almost every week

user41796

@JimmyHoffa one-offs don't hurt your resume because you can explain them. Lots of them demonstrate a pattern

durron597

6:47 PM

the first week, he was like "yes! I get to work from home! I get to take my laptop to the beach!"

user41796

@durron597 Lived that life for a while; it's rough

durron597

now he's like "I never work out anymore, I drink too much (with clients) and feel like shit all the time"

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I sincerely believe you suffer from confirmation bias and judge others poorly because of it.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa ?

Jimmy Hoffa

Not atypical, success breeds success and before you know it all the succesful people are managers and when they look out at folks who've been in bad situations - they can't relate, and decide it must be that person's fault they weren't succesful

durron597

6:49 PM

I had a 15% travel job when I finished school. Travelling is fun, at first... but going out with your alcoholic clients when you have to actually get stuff done the next day SUCKS.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Could very well be.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I've been in plenty of bad situations too

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 and it doesn't demonstrate a pattern?

user41796

But when I've been in 10 bad situations, there's a single common factor - me.

Jimmy Hoffa

this is why there's a belief that "You've worked in lots of places" equates to "You messed up", as opposed to the very logical reality that perhaps "You ended up in some terrible places" - which is logical as a majority of this industry is pretty terrible.

user41796

6:50 PM

@durron597 I was never obligated to after hours with the clients, fortunately

user41796

@JimmyHoffa You misread then

user41796

"You've worked in lots of places" equates to "you're likely to move on again in a short period of time."

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 negative

durron597

@GlenH7 Not only was I obligated, but I was the one who had to do the taking out, so I had to do complicated expense reports when I got back if I wanted to get reimbursed

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 it equates to "You may have worked some places that were truly terrible"

not always, but often

enderland

6:51 PM

@durron597 I think part of the thing is that I am not super excited to come to work every day at this point. It's a job to me, it's probably a good job, but it's not something I am super passionate about at all

Jimmy Hoffa

and that's the confirmation bias I refer to

user41796

And when I weigh the potential return on invested training, I have to guess at how long they'll stick around

durron597

@enderland I hear you brotha

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 see that's dehumanizing; you should think of how you can motivate them to stick around if you want them. Not what is their carcass going to be worth to you.

enderland

so it's not that I hate my job or even dislike it, but it's not really a passion for me at all

part of that is inexperience

user41796

6:53 PM

@JimmyHoffa I'm an engineer. Making cold, misinterpreted as cruel, calculated decisions is what I do. :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 about people? That's a terrible way to deal with people- quite ineffective. People treated like people tend to be far easier to interact with, and sincerely more effective.

user41796

It was a joke....

durron597

@GlenH7 We should rename this room to where-jokes-get-taken-literally

enderland

@durron597 of course, we're a bunch of humorless engineers

Jimmy Hoffa

;P anyway, just saying. Nothing against you, I just think that's a confirmation bias from people who haven't been in lots of terrible positions. There's a number of them which all equate to "this person has had failures, it must be there fault, because I haven't had failures". Folks who've never worked in shops that were severely disorganized, or entirely legacy (this person doesn't know the newest thing, he's not keeping current like I always have!)

user41796

6:57 PM

@JimmyHoffa I hear what you're saying. And I'd point out that you've got a lot of projected feeling wrapped up within some of those statements. Granted, I'm biased, but I think my perspective is a lot more neutral than what you perceive.

user41796

I do know of folk who misinterpret past events and use that to pre-judge the candidate. But I also know of many folk who just look at things as data points and don't judge.

user55340

Inspired by a poor p.se question:

durron597

Speedy Deletion Please

user41796

That latter group is more interested in predicting likely behavior and potential fit with the company culture.

user55340

0

Q: Expand an encoded string

There's the classic run length encoding and decoding. input output a3b2c5 aaabbccccc And that's fairly straight forward and done before. The challenge is to also account for a non-standard behavior when multiple characters precede the run length (a single digit from 0-9). Each character be...

code-golf string

durron597

7:01 PM

Oh, that's interesting

user55340

Heh. I know my regexen.

durron597

Hey, why is a123 aaa111222 not a12a12a12

can you clarify that bit?

user55340

3 is the final digit in the rle block.

Robert Harvey

Levels of regex competency: 1. Regex ninja, 2. Knowz teh regexen, 3. What's regex?

user55340

And gets applied to all characters in that block.

durron597

7:03 PM

@MichaelT right, but if you're repeating the string a12 three times, it would be a12a12a12

Your way is entirely valid, it's just unclear in the problem description outside of your example cases

user55340

No, this is the non standard part.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 understandable, but we all know past performance is no indicator of future results. So I find it a bit ignorant to try using that rule regardless of it's known failure, when you have other tools for assessing a person (talking to them for instance, like they're a person).

enderland

@JimmyHoffa it's not a causation of future results, but it definitely has correlation

durron597

@MichaelT Okay adding that word helps.

user55340

Yep @durron597 good edit.

Duga

7:06 PM

@gyoder 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 59 secs ago

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland yeah? So if I flip a coin fifty times and it lands on heads every time, I can correlate future results from those past performances?

user55340

And yea, it is interesting.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa coin flips are unrelated (other than if a coin is weighted) but people cannot equally separate themselves from their past life

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland perhaps they are quite learned from seeing so many ways to fail. Trying to simplify a person to a linear regression is not an effective technique for assessing them.

user55340

@durron597 I blame you. Used 30 delete votes and can't delete (vote 3) on the C# king question.

enderland

7:10 PM

@JimmyHoffa no but the problem isthere is no other way to evaluate someone

if someone has failed at projects for 20 years, I'm not going to expect them to start succeeding in the future

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland ...you could talk to them. Have them write code in front of you. Ask them about their experiences et al.

@enderland Employer^ everyone who worked there did that. And it was none of their fault. The company organized them for failure, and their clients were basically on a constant never-ending support call with them. The only successes they had was of their contract negotiators that ensured they were well funded regardless of their inability to accomplish anything at all.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa ... but then why did they not leave? it seems a company which sets me up to fail would be on the "leaving job ASAP" list for me

@JimmyHoffa I'm not saying you can categorically group people simply based on that sort of thing

but it can provide insight

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland many did, but for doing so many of them were looked upon poorly in their interviews and surely passed over for the failures there

@enderland yes, of course it can provide insight, just like horoscopes.

I think people confuse gut feeling with sense of reason a bit much in all of that; so it bugs me.

enderland

I don't think Glen (or myself) are saying, "your past dictates your future" at all

if you had a situation like that, remotely competent interviewers will want to know, what did you do to help your project succeed and what did you learn

durron597

@MichaelT Just give me a 6800 rep bounty

André

7:22 PM

Debugging bugs without debugger is hard

durron597

@MichaelT meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/5327/17249

user55340

@durron597 4k is trusted user on code golf.

durron597

@MichaelT Hm?

enderland

beta site ftw!

user55340

Oh, here... Yea... No.

user55340

7:28 PM

You would also need another 10k to do speedy deletion.

Jimmy Hoffa

@André windbg and code reasoning FTW!

André

@JimmyHoffa window.alert()!

durron597

0

Q: Fix the Braces, etc

Fix the braces Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to add the minimum number of parentheses, braces, and brackets to make a given string (containing only parentheses, braces, and brackets) have correct brace matching. Ties of symbols added must be broken by having the maximum distan...

code-golf string

Jimmy Hoffa

@André ugh... yes, that is miserable. Why no debugger? Not used to using a remote debugger?

André

@JimmyHoffa GWT code transliterated to Javascript, legacy code doesn't support superdev that generates sourcemaps, nor old dev mode works.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:30 PM

@durron597 what about [({}{)]

durron597

@JimmyHoffa [({}{})]

André

There isn't anything to debug, except robot-readable javascript

user55340

And @amon does deeper regexen wizardry than I dare.

user55340

1

A: Expand an encoded string

Perl/Bash 54 chars perl -pe's:([a-z]*\d*)(\d):"\$1=~s/./\$&x$2/egr":egie' It's basically a regex within a regex. And a bit of magic.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 it wasn't mentioned as valid is all; should be an example to clarify. I would have just split at the first closing brace and mirrored from there if it weren't for that scenario

durron597

7:38 PM

@JimmyHoffa That's not minimal

Telastyn

If those people didn't leave the poopy job, and also didn't manage to improve it (or learn to function in it) over the years are to be frowned upon.

Sorry, was afk, late to convo.

Because lots of jobs are bad, and you're setup for failure. Making small successes is enough to sell in an interview.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 ? is it a valid scenario that must be accounted for? Or?

@durron597 don't understand your comment about "minimal"

user55340

@durron597 I like how this challenge gets the cjam guys to complain about long solutions at 33 bytes.

Jimmy Hoffa

also quite like the problem. Good one.

@durron597 is my test example of [({}{)] valid input?

durron597

@JimmyHoffa Yes

Jimmy Hoffa

7:45 PM

ok

durron597

That is valid input, the only acceptable output is [({}{})].

@JimmyHoffa It's good, but it's basically a duplicate unfortunately :-/

user41796

8:07 PM

bye bye delete votes

Duga

@RoyalAirForce It is not bad or completely off-topic question, just that its abstract design level will probably be a better fit for programmers.stackexchange.com scope. — Eugene Podskal 55 secs ago

user15026

I start work tomorrow! I am so excited! (And also freaking out a little, but you know.)

Robert Harvey

@AshleyNunn Say hi to the cows for us.

2

Boy that overexchange is a persistent bugger.

user15026

I will pass along your greeting :P

user41796

@AshleyNunn At the ISP? Very cool!

enderland

8:11 PM

@AshleyNunn wow fast? that's awesome

user41796

@RobertHarvey There's a lot to be said for tenacity. Listening to the shared wisdom of others is good too

André

@AshleyNunn congratz!

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 It's just funny how so many software developers will hang their hat on the correct definition of a word.

As if that really matters.

user41796

And given the widespread mild misuse of pretty much every term, it is a bit of a fool's errand to find the "one true definition."

enderland

3

user41796

8:20 PM

precious. my precious.

Robert Harvey

9:04 PM

What does it mean when a company asks for 5 years of code merging experience? Is this a company that has had trouble with their code merges?

Or 5 years of TFS. Is it really that difficult to learn another source control system?

enderland

may depend on what the role is, my last team lead did a lot of merging and knowing how to use mercurial or not would be a huge deal there

Robert Harvey

It doesn't sound like a very fun environment to work in. Who is checking out all of these classes and hacking on them simultaneously?

enderland

@RobertHarvey my team lead kept our branch up to date with all the other team's once they got integrated into the default and release branches

so whenever another team branch was merged, he'd merge those changes into our team branch

Telastyn

I worked at a place that had hella merge issues, mostly due to bad developers/code

Robert Harvey

Why are there multiple branches? Why isn't there just one production branch?

Telastyn

9:09 PM

Also, I hate how over exchange is trying to code via uml and keywords.

enderland

@RobertHarvey there was a single production branch, but when you have 200+ people you cna't have everyone pushing to production without some integration testing

the production branch had every other team's changesets merged in and tested/etc

Robert Harvey

@Telastyn He should write some actual code. Then he will be enlightened.

@enderland Ah, now I'm starting to see why companies have CI.

Telastyn

Well, he seems to write code, but then worries that it's not "right"

Robert Harvey

A lot of coders seem to worry about that. Being "correct."

Telastyn

But only a little code - then argues about it for a month.

enderland

9:11 PM

@RobertHarvey we had CI too, but when your software goes onto a fairly complex hardware system you need to validate it on the hardware system too - but no team ever did this on their branches actively (due to the amount of time it takes)

Ixrec

perhaps we should nudge him towards CodeReview.SE?

Telastyn

/me spits.

Correctness is defined in requirements and peer wtfs

enderland

anyways I'm out of here for the evening

Telastyn

G'eve. I will soon as well likely.

durron597

Is there a way to make this question not awful?

-2

Q: How to do ab testing

Many books on startups/kanban strongly advocate the use of AB testing to validate product features. I haven't had any experience with this but it sounds like a great idea for some projects. My question is, how does one go about AB feature testing in practice? Say you want to test how registe...

kanban

Some good answers

user55340

9:18 PM

The rle challenge is causing challenges for all languages without magic.

durron597

@MichaelT Haha guess who upvoted this answer

whooops

Robert Harvey

By magic, do you mean teh regexaz?

user55340

4

A: Expand an encoded string

Perl/Bash 54 chars perl -pe's:([a-z]*\d*)(\d):"\$1=~s/./\$&x$2/egr":egie' It's basically a regex within a regex. And a bit of magic.

user55340

3

A: Expand an encoded string

CJam, 33 31 bytes Ughh, lack of regular expressions makes this pretty long... q{LA,s&\:LA,s&>{])~e*[}&L}%)~e* How it works We loop through all characters of the input string and in each iteration, keep track of the last encountered character (starting with an empty character for the first ti...

durron597

@MichaelT No one has answered mine yet.

@GlenH7 Self-delete answer request #2

Robert Harvey

9:23 PM

@durron597 Fundamentally, it's a product recommendation. Even the self-answer emphasizes that aspect.

user55340

Heh. Stupid numbers.

durron597

@RobertHarvey Downvoting all the answers will make it fit the roomba criteria

user55340

4

A: Expand an encoded string

rs, 43 71 chars Dang, this turned long quickly. Stupid numbers... (\d)(\D)/\1 \2 +(\w)(\w+?)(\d)(?= |$)/\1\3 \2\3 (\w)(\d)/(\1)^^(\2) / Original version (did not work with input like 123): +(\D)(\D+)(\d)/\1\3\2\3 (\D)(\d)/(\1)^^(\2) Explanation The first line places spaces between runs, ...

Robert Harvey

9:38 PM

Error 403 - This web app is stopped.

The web app you have attempted to reach is currently stopped and does not accept any requests. Please try to reload the page or visit it again soon.

If you are the Administrator of this web app, please visit the Azure Portal to check why the app is stopped.

Hanselminutes.com

Hmm, looks like it has some sort of watchdog timer/ restart mechanism on it.

durron597

9:49 PM

14

Q: What should you leave behind for your successors?

Assume that you're a sole developer leaving a job. What kind of information/material, outside of the code itself, should you create and leave behind for your replacement? An obvious answer is "whatever you would want at a new job" for sure, but it's been a while since I started a new job, and I ...

documentation new-job knowledge-transfer

psr

@JimmyHoffa At the very least it indicates that you leave shitty places, which should be a red flag for shitty places that want you to stay for a long time.

Duga

10:19 PM

It's not a code or programmer's tools related question, and therefore it's off-topic here. This site is for problems commonly experienced by programmers related to their code. Do you have code written that attempts to implement your solution? — Ken White 42 secs ago

Ixrec

@Duga shockingly, that looks like a potentially good Q for PSE, even though the commenter is not recommending migration

psr

@durron597 - Um, we're using Angular. Little Googlers jump out of the keyboard and do everything while we just pretend to work.

durron597

@psr I'd love to see a video of that

Robert Harvey

11:22 PM

@psr Apparently, that's fairly descriptive of Angular's architectural organization.

Also, we get to relearn everything in Version 2. Yay.

overexchange

@amon this is what I was trying to share with you in our recent chat. link

Robert Harvey

@overexchange How long are you going to keep cogitating over that question?

If you're worried about writing the game correctly the first time, don't. You won't get it right the first time. It might take three tries or more. That's true whether or not you actually know the true meaning of "computational object."

Ixrec

11:37 PM

it's more important to keep the code well-written and organized in some way so that it's easy to refactor and rearrange later on when you realize you did something wrong (or something you did right became wrong as the requirements changed)

user55340

The general workflow of today is with the assumption that you will write something multiple times. Waterfall is dead, long live the waterfall. You don't sit down and write a huge (perfect) design document, and then go from the design document to perfect code. That doesn't happen.

user55340

Btw, I hate java.sql.Date.

user55340

wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonFAQDateHandling

user55340

> Notes on java.sql.Date

(aka "Please do NOT use java.sql.Date, ever!")

Although Jackson supports java.sql.Date, there are known issues with respect to timezone handling, partly due to design of this class. It is recommended that this type is avoided, if possible, and regular java.util.Date (or java.util.Calendar) used instead. If this is not possible, it may be necessary for applications to convert these dates using java.util.Calendar and explicit timezone definition.

user55340

ResultSet.getDate gives back a java.sql.Date object. Since java.sql.Date is a subclass of java.util.Date, it fits nicely into the java.util.Date field... and sits there lurking as a bug until you serialize it and you've got the wrong date.

Ixrec

11:42 PM

dates are so much harder than they need to be in all languages

user55340

@Ixrec Yep. But when its sitting there and previous coders made a special effort to not use it... but forgot to check the return types that they were getting.

user55340

So now we are converting it all to Calendar objects.

Ixrec

I still can't get over the crash we had in production that only occurred for Brazilian clients 6(?) days after a daylight savings time change equivalent, and the root cause is that there's no 100% timezone-aware way to add/subtract 1 day from a Javascript date

does java.sql.Date do stuff like that?

user55340

@Ixrec not really... its how it is seralized that I'm dealing with. The timezone is in there in both (its a subclass) - the difference is that java.util.Date serializes to a number of milliseconds since Jan 1, 1970. java.sql.Date seralizes to the string '2015-05-27'

user55340

Which, well, doesn't have any timezone information. So, when you convert it back into a java.util.Date on the other side of the request, it says "oh, this is midnight 2015-05-27 GMT which is 7pm 2015-05-26 CDT" and then you've got a date of 2015-05-26 floating around instead of 27.

user55340

11:48 PM

When dealing with things like "when is this person going to be released from prison", such values are very important.

Ixrec

I think I have a potentially unjustified bias against any date/time class whose default serialization is not either seconds from the epoch or ISO 8601 format

every other default format I've seen drops information just like what you're describing

user55340

So, that was today's bug.

user55340

Oh, don't forget that I need to serialize this back into a java.util.Date object to maintain the contract of data objects with client jars.

Ixrec

of course

clearly you need a javaDateMultiFactoryTypeAdapter

Jimmy Hoffa

what about a javaDateMultiFactoryManagementAbstractServiceLocationDecorator?

user55340

11:57 PM

Yep. Fortunately, the class that does the smashing of one bean to another (that then goes out across the request and gets searlized back to itself) is well unit tested.

user55340

... I wrote it.

Transcript for