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user114359
1:43 AM
@durron597 I remember that too, I eventually saw the domain in the search results or result title and just gave up.
 
user114359
I just checked out the site again and it took one click until they wanted me to pay money for premium answers to more than 4,000,000 questions. That is what, the volume Stack Overflow goes through in an hour?
 
Hmm...chasing links from my proposed duplicates leads to Questions about licensing? which says that questions about licensing are explicitly on-topic for Progammers — see their on-topic help page. — Jonathan Leffler 31 secs ago
 
user114359
@MichaelT @gnat @durron597 @GlenH7 @ThomasOwens anyone know if the topic of having @Duga monitor meta sites in addition to main sites has been brought up yet?
 
user114359
@Snowman: OK; please also chase these suggestions to places like the MSO question/answer. I observe that the help centre says "software licensing" is on topic. People who aren't denizens are not going to read further. You need to get some sort of caveat put onto the help center page so that people know that not all questions about software licensing are on topic. I also observe that this question is asking whether their own software has to be GPL'd just because it is compiled with GCC, which seems to be within remit. — Jonathan Leffler 3 mins ago
 
user55340
2:03 AM
@Snowman Given that someone actually reads the help/on-topic (!!!) I'd be tempted to have a link from software licensing there to the latest software licensing guidance on M.P.SE.
 
user114359
Ah, it does not. The "Guide for SO" meta answer you wrote has a link to the legal/licensing question, but the help center does not.
 
user114359
2:16 AM
16
A: Questions about licensing

Martijn PietersSoftware licensing is not on topic, as it is not a practical programming problem. We don't list it explicitly, because such a list of everything not on topic would be prohibitively long. It is on topic for Programmers, see their help center: If you have a question about... [...] ...

 
user114359
Looks like the Meta.SO answer about licensing is now linked to ours.
 
user114359
2:29 AM
0
Q: Line wrap conditional operator (?:) at end of line or beginning?

cottsakI realise this is subjective however I'm sure there's experience here which can make a reasonable case for one alternative or the other: var username = (context.Controller as BaseController).LoggedInUser != null ? (context.Controller as BaseController).LoggedInUser.Name.ToString(...

 
3:47 AM
@MichaelT I was just trying to understand the use of interface as am new to java. I feel this is the answer.
 
4:38 AM
@psr WWJSD(ihgas)
 
5:18 AM
I never liked "On Hold" anyway. "Your call is important to us... Please wait for the next available moderator. [click]"Robert Harvey ♦ 57 secs ago
 
 
3 hours later…
8:38 AM
This question may be better on programmers.stackexchange.com, as that stackexchange deals with professional and conceptual questions. StackOverflow is designed to answer specific programming problems. — Relequestual 51 secs ago
 
9:03 AM
I think this may be better suited to programmers.stackexchange.com as it's about best practice, rather than solving an issue — beresfordt 41 secs ago
 
 
3 hours later…
12:45 PM
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about written code. Try looking at Computer Science SE, or Programmers SE and seeing if your question is on-topic there. — Matt ♦ 1 min ago
 
12:59 PM
@Ampt how goes life in the peanut gallery as the shining image of consultancy? Get that review yet? Is the new client manager guy a bumbling jerk, or a people person?
 
It may be useful to compare the differences between using a Message Queue or using the database. Not to say this is your solution, but you may be able to see if this is a better fit. programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231410/…Matthew 35 secs ago
 
1:30 PM
0
A: Questions about licensing

durron597I want to add some clarity about Software licensing questions being on-topic on Programmers Stack Exchange because there seems to be some confusion. In general: Licensing questions are off topic on Stack Overflow, period. See @MartijnPieters accepted answer. Programmers are not lawyers. Ther...

@Snowman I rolled back that edit, it was totally inappropriate. It should have been a separate answer.
 
@durron597 so that contracting SDET role would be C# doing a fair bit of TDD type of dev...
 
@enderland Remind me what you're talking about?
 
@durron597 that company that emailed me back
:P
without a real formal interview process
 
IIRC, that company sounds super disorganized and is waving red flags "STAY AWAY"
 
Yeah...
 
1:41 PM
unlike every other company in existence.
 
<only sort of joking>You should email them back saying "you guys sound like a complete mess, would you like to hire me to get your processes in shape?"</only sort of joking>
 
But I think it's interesting at the very least, it's more of a startup culture than anything else too (so it's kind of to be expected? idk)
 
@Telastyn This company sounds particularly bad.
 
I think it's because they don't have a centralized HR/recruiting office?
and are very geographically diverse
 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotfix (the only reason I can think of that your google failed to find it is broken network connection) — gnat 2 hours ago
I can't actually think of a close reason for this question:
-3
Q: Can Google crawl through my Django static files?

Matt AndrzejczukI was wondering if my Django Web Framework that's hosting some videos in the project's static files could be detected by a Google search? My website has a public DNS name pointing to the Django app. The stack is Linux, Nginx, and Django

as much as I might like to VTC it.
 
user55340
1:51 PM
@durron597 unclear. More information is necessary about the site architecture before it can be answered.
 
@MichaelT True.
 
2:02 PM
Ahh, questions from 2010.
13
Q: What are you telling yourself if you can't understand new concept, paradigm, feature ...?

FreshbloodProgramming always required to learn new concepts, paradigms, features and technologies and I always have been failed at first attempt to understand new concept what i encounter. I start to blame and humiliate myself without remember before how i understood new concept which i hadn't understand i...

 
2:16 PM
I got a new job, with that big employer. Cheers
 
@André Grats
Now you can answer questions in your time off between jobs to get 3k rep
 
I wont have time off haha :(
But I'm going to be more active on P.SE
 
お元気ですか?
 
I should know those kanji, the second particularly...
 
2:35 PM
I have hard time reading/writing, even if I can hold a simple conversation for a minute or two.
those darn squiggly lines
they always elude me.
 
I am not great at any of it.
especially bad at verbal communication, since I'm not solid enough to translate in real time.
 
translate: お元気ですか?
(from Japanese) How are you?
 
I never thought I could speak it until I bumped into a random Japanese asking for directions in my town.
 
user55340
translate: dude...
(from SoCal) Hello. Goodbye. How are you? Wazzup?! Want to get some food? Etc...
 
is that a chat script?
 
user55340
2:45 PM
It's a mod tool. I'm making fun of it.
 
haha :)
 
for all our efforts to clean up tags, a lot of off topic questions just aren't tagged that way:
7
Q: How do I learn Concurrency in Ruby?

ArieYesterday I read this great article about Concurrency in JRuby from EngineYard and I realise I need to leverage my skills about concurrency in Ruby, by mentioning Ruby here I mean it could be all implementations of Ruby : JRuby, Ruby MRI, Rubinius, Ruby on Parrot / Cardinal except IronRuby, I don...

 
@MichaelT does that only work for moderators?
I think it works for everyone
 
user55340
Yep.
 
user55340
Mod only.
 
user15026
2:46 PM
@enderland As far as I am aware, it's a mod-only tool
 
@MichaelT Do you know this hero? youtube.com/watch?v=GftsZ8luCJA
 
.... I just learned that then
 
user55340
12
Q: Indicate the language translated from translate tool

rolflThe "translate:" tool available to moderators in chat rooms is able to translate to/from many languages, and is also able to auto-detect foreign-language text and translate to English. This is great, but a small additional feature would be to indicate what language was used for the translation. ...

 
user55340
Now, define is available to all.
 
@durron597 Can someone put this in the CV queue please? I'm out
 
user55340
2:48 PM
Noun: queue (plural queues)
  1. (heraldry) An animal's tail. [from 16th c.]
  2. (now historical) A men's hairstyle whose primary attribute is a braid or ponytail at the back of the head, such as that worn by men in Imperial China. [from 18th c.]
  3. 1912, Herbert Allen Giles, China and the Manchus, Chapter III — Shun Chih:
  4. 1967, William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Vintage 2004, p. 176:
  5. A line of people, vehicles or other objects, in which one at the front end is dealt with first, the one behind is dealt with next, and so on, and which newcomers join at the opposite end (the back). [from 19th c.]
(2 more not shown…)
Verb: queue (third-person singular simple present queues, present participle queueing or queuing, simple past and past participle queued)
  1. To put oneself or itself at the end of a waiting line.
  2. 1820, Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
 
user55340
define: queue
 
3:05 PM
@DavidG: I take it very seriously. There are some things that programmers may be tempted to do because they don't know better, but which end up creating much larger problems. I do not want this site to be a place where bad and dangerous advice is promulgated to beginner programmers. — siride 34 secs ago
 
3:46 PM
@JimmyHoffa He's actually in the hospital for the next 2 weeks unexpectedly. Ask me how much I'm going to accomplish during the next 2 weeks.
(He's going to have a full recovery, I'm not that heartless)
 
@Ampt no manager in your way? Everything, right? Lots and lots... yep.
 
If I say yes, would you believe me?
 
@Ampt Given that you won't spend 6 hours out of every 8 in a meeting? I do believe you.
 
@durron597 hah you misunderstand his job; meetings are what he does. Consultancy FTW.
 
@Snowman I think having @Duga monitor meta sites has been mentioned a few times, but I have not really received an official feature request. I'd expect to be informed about it :)
 
3:55 PM
@JimmyHoffa This is correct.
 
4:15 PM
@SimonAndréForsberg Would it look for the same thing? People referring to Programmers?
 
4:35 PM
@RobertHarvey I think what @Snowman is talking about would be to look for the same thing, but of course it could be modified specifically for meta
 
@GlenH7 Did you see I got your 11111 reviews screenshot?
 
I don't understand why Apache has tools that do the same thing. Is there a difference between Ant + Ivy and Maven?
 
@ThomasOwens Funny you should ask! ant.apache.org/ivy/m2comparison.html
 
@durron597 I'm reading that, but...
> So maybe a more interesting comparison would compare Apache Ant+Ivy vs Apache Maven. But this goes beyond the scope of this page which concentrates on dependency management only.
 
0
Q: how to compile a C program

Flewitt ConnorI'm attempting to compile my first c program, self taught using the book : C Programming by Mike Mgrath "in easy steps" I am unable to compile because when I follow the step instructing me to use command prompt i receive an error saying "The system cannot find the path specified" Step one i...

i want to help but it's too much work
 
4:51 PM
@ThomasOwens It looks like Ant grew out of a need in Tomcat and Maven grew out of a need in Jakarta / Turbine
Ant was supposed to be a platform independent alternative to make, and Maven was supposed to be a dependency manager
 
It still seems weird to me that they'd have multiple options for the same thing and not converge.
 
I bet they haven't converged for historical reasons. Think of the outcry if they tried to do it now
There's already a holy war between the two and I haven't even mentioned gradle yet.
@ThomasOwens are questions about the history of programming on topic for the main site?
 
(Maybe this is a bit off-topic here, I'm sorry.) Can someone help me? I'm looking for a particular blogpost on TDD. I recall it described how TDD specification should grow along decreasing levels of abstraction (it kind of sorted the possible operations by their abstractness). It was by some "big name" in the industry, I was thinking Martin Fowler, but I can't seem to find the post now.
 
@durron597 I think we decided yes.
 
I wonder if I'm going for the world record of number-of-times-to-rewrite-oauth-signing...
nah, that record is really high... every damn person who touches it has to do it because all the public implementations are awful in lots of ways
 
5:04 PM
0
Q: Why does Apache have two separate tools for build and dependency management?

durron597Apache has two separate tools: Apache Maven Apache Ant + Apache Ivy They seem to both fill the same niche. I have two questions: What are the highlights of the main differences between the two tools? I'm sure a really long article could be written on the differences between the two, I am ...

 
5:26 PM
(In case anyone cares, I found the blog I was looking for a few posts above: The Transformation Priority Premise by Uncle Bob)
 
@ThomasOwens ant and maven don't blend together well, that's why these don't converge. Totally different approaches, totally different ways of doing things. Haskell and Java can also be considered "multiple options for the same thing" but they don't (and won't) converge
 
@gnat That doesn't explain anything. If Ant+Ivy is functionally equivalent to Maven and both are produced by the same organization, why?
Java and Haskell are fundamentally different models of representing software, so that analogy doesn't make sense. If Microsoft or Oracle made two purely functional languages, then you would have a reasonable argument.
 
@ThomasOwens Ant and Maven are fundamentally different models of representing software build. On a practical side, it means (proper) migration of Ant project to Maven is a very effort consuming thing. Migration in other direction, from Maven to Ant is probably technically easier but involved unlearning of maven way of thinking may make it still expensive
I won't dive into deep explanations of the difference, I recall seeing articles about that but I honestly am not really much interested in these. It is just my personal experience that every time I switch between ant and maven it feels like world is turning upside down
I think it is perfectly reasonable to keep maven and ant separate. Thing is though, ant would simply die without dependency management. Sooner or later, people using it would say, screw it, let's invest half year into learning this damn maven and another half year into converting our project, but let's get out of ant because maven offers dependency management. For these people, Ivy makes a sensible way to save that "migration year" and keep using what they know and what works well for them
 
5:48 PM
None of that explains why Maven was built. OR why Ivy was built and people weren't forced to migrate. I believe Ant is much older than Maven.
 
@gnat Remember, we're not talking about Maven vs. Ant. We're talking about Maven vs. Ant AND Ivy
 
Ant was first released in July 2000. Maven was released in March 2002. Ivy was developed as a subproject for Ant in 2004. Why did the Ant project decide to go with making their own tool (Ivy) instead of migrating to a different Apache project (Maven) and perhaps just doing patch releases for Ant?
Now, not only do developers have a choice (Ant+Ivy / Maven) produced by the same umbrella organization under the same licenses, but you have resources spent making enhancements and fixing bugs on three projects instead of potentially one (Maven).
 
@ThomasOwens ant is much older, right. And it is much different. I don't know why people who built Maven decided to build it. And I honestly don't care because I exactly know why I prefer it over Ant (by a large margin). 1) Somehow (I guess it's by design), Maven integrates so much better into IDEs than Ant. 2) And somehow (probably by design too), it has got dependency management long before anything else got it. These two points are why I prefer it
 
@gnat Still doesn't answer the question as to why the Ant team decided to build Ivy instead of just moving to Maven.
 
nowadays one can get dependency management besides maven but 4-5 years ago there was no choice
 
5:53 PM
Maven only integrates into Eclipse because people worked on making m2eclipse. that was quite a bit of work
 
In 2004, the Ant team had two choices: build Ivy, migrate to Maven.
Why did they choose to build a new product instead of using an existing one?
 
@ThomasOwens And get everyone else who was using Ant to migrate to Maven.
Maybe maven wasn't very good in 2004?
 
@durron597 Exactly.
Force a migration to Maven.
 
@ThomasOwens "(proper) migration of Ant project to Maven is a very effort consuming thing" -- I can't read their minds but in my experience this was main reason for ant projects I've seen last 4-5 years to stay on it. Every one wanted dependency management like in maven but too many weren't ready to pay the price of migration
 
I guess a big difference is that if you want something where you control every bit of the process, you use Ant, but with maven you use all these plugins that just do magic.
 
5:55 PM
@gnat It still seems like the Ant team building tools to support a migration to Maven would have been better than building a competing product.
 
@gnat They would have no choice if Apache chose to stop supporting Ant
 
@durron597 yeah m2eclipse. And it integrates so well into IDEA because people worked on that too. Now, the question is, why this didn't happen to Ant
 
@gnat It did? Eclipse can both generate Ant build.xml files for projects as well as set up a project by reading one.
 
You absolutely can do Ant builds in eclipse.
@ThomasOwens ^^^ This
 
@durron597 sure and I can do Ant builds in IDEA. It just takes time to tune and maintain. As opposed to maven, which just integrates once and forever and works. As long as maven builds in command line, it builds just fine in IDE, no need to tweak / tune
@ThomasOwens from various "mavenization" efforts I've seen, creating and maintaining tools to migrate from Ant would be tough challenge. And that covers only technical part of it, people would need to relearn a lot of things - no tools can help with that. I heard that idea about simplifying migration for, like, 2-3 years after maven became popular. But after that it somehow... dissipated, as if people who tried it discovered that it's way too hard
 
6:05 PM
I spent two weeks migrating legacy code here from ant to maven
I had to think outside the box and install a local nexus
 
@André been changing directories structure? for one-true-maven-style? That's usually the easiest part of it (not that it's easy, just the rest is harder:)
 
@gnat Yeah I had to refactor code to fit maven project structure, also wrote lots of thing on pom.xml to fit our project structure too.
 
@André I am lucky in that I never participated (directly) in "mavenization" efforts. Just been watching my colleagues doing it
 
I did on my own, got too much crap because the brittle ant build we had. Mostly forgetting to manually switching the target profile (dev/prod). And dependency hell. Too many libwithoutversion.jar
 
just found a comment 5 lines of other code below the code it meant to comment...just...you know, hanging out...
 
6:11 PM
It was.. okayish
 
and with that I must grab a bite to eat. @Ampt you still need to go hit up Snarfs, the fact that you haven't yet is nuts.....I want snarfs...nomnoms
 
@gnat Is there a sandbox? A place where I can post a question to see what happens but I don't necessarily have to meet any site's guidelines?
 
@André my favorite trick to deal with "libwithoutversion.jar" (or with snapshots, if folks you integrate with are too lazy to do releases) is to establish a separate maven project to maintain these. Libs (binaries) there serve as just resources. Maven build simply adds to libs names release ids and deploys to nexus. After that, I use them as normal maven dependencies. Every time I get a library update, I copy it into that maven project and do release. Great to track things...
....ndirection solves all programming problems
 
@gnat You should register for the sandbox stack exchange
 
@gnat That sounds like it works
 
6:23 PM
@André yeah it works, I tested this approach twice :)
 
why does sony have to make everything complicated
 
@durron597 that probably won't help, because quality filter is established per site. That warning pops up at SO and Programmers, but it won't necessarily work on Area51
 
@gnat Wow, just tested that on a beta. Now that's stupid
 
@JimmyHoffa I'm not downtown nearly as much as I used to be haha
 
6:44 PM
The belief that "code should be self-documenting" notwithstanding, requiring developers to explain how their system works in comments might motivate them to simplify said system.
 
@Ampt figure it out somehow, that place is worth the effort and then some
 
forcing documentation just leads to garbage documentation on top of potentially garbage code.
2
 
@Telastyn ding
 
like I got to spend 30 minutes today trying to track down where we insert user credentials into cache.
Where was it? cache.Get, clearly.
 
it was cache.get(key,valueToAddIfNotFound)?
 
6:53 PM
@Telastyn Surely it was actually in something like a CacheLoader.load(), no?
 
In ICacheReader<T>:
    /// <summary>
    /// Fetch entity from cache.  If id does not exist
    /// Fetch it using the fallback funct in the shape of our async
    /// only service layer calls.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="key">Key identifying the entity</param>
    /// <param name="fallbackValueFunc">function to call if the entity is not already cached</param>
    /// <param name="timeToLiveTimeSpan">Time value remains in cache</param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    Task<T> GetAsync(string key, Func<IResult<T>> fallbackValueFunc, TimeSpan timeToLiveTimeSpan);
Function name lies. Parameter name lies. Documentation lies.
 
and in the method body, GodObject.getSingletonInstance().getUserCredentials()?
 
no, in the implementation, store.Set(fallbackValueFunc, timeToLiveTimeSpan)
also, no shit it's a TimeSpan
grr.
 
@Telastyn haha...so...fetch...sets....and not even with the value it retrieved in the first place unless it fell back... oo that's just fun.
 
it's GetOrAdd but improperly named.
 
7:00 PM
ah
technology get's overripe
 
Also Smalltalk does not mean what you think it means — Daenerys Naharis 59 secs ago
^^^ that comment made my day. Look at the question folks, just look at it
burninate and blacklist , it leads to chatty discussions! :)
 
haha well at least he's aware that he doesn't know what he's doing. Unfortunately programming isn't a "Just work harder and more and you'll do good!" venture... Reality is seldom so linear.
also @Telastyn well done on the broken comment sentence
 
very few things are a "just work harder" venture. It's a pleasant lie that bosses tell you to get you to work harder.
 
What is this code doing?
        public List<TType> GetList<TType>(bool createEmptyIfNull = false)
        {
            return Value == null ? createEmptyIfNull ? new List<TType>() : null
                : Value is IEnumerable<TType> ? (Value as IEnumerable<TType>).ToList()
                : Value is TType ?
                    new List<TType> { (TType)Convert.ChangeType(Value, typeof(TType)) }
                    : ((IEnumerable)Value).OfType<object>().Select(i => (TType)Convert.ChangeType(i, typeof(TType))).ToList();
 
7:16 PM
(bool createEmptyIfNull = false) that parameter is creating bugs
I'm not familiar with this syntax, where Value is from?
 
member Property I would assume.
 
Egad. Value is a public string property.
 
Value is a string? how??
 
Resharper is complaining about it.
 
It's converting that String into a list?
Egad.
 
7:19 PM
"The given expression is never this type."
 
@RobertHarvey how to make ternaries (even nested ones) easy to follow; reformat as:
 
I was just starting to figure it out until you told me Value is a string and not a generic
@RobertHarvey Yeah, no shit.
 
condition
  ? then
  : else
 
@durron597 It will never follow that branch. But it still compiles, because generics.
 
so nested is...
condition
  ? condition
    ? then
    : else
  : else
 
7:20 PM
yeh, I dunno since I don't remember the binding properties of ternary. That's something where I would blame/annotate and make a mental note about the person in question.
 
@RobertHarvey I would definitely look at the revision history of that file and then go find a person armed with nerf weapons.
 
Nevermind. I think it's broken.
Next.
 
Oh, and the XML comments? All generated from "Document This."
Completely useless.
 
gasp
 
7:23 PM
generated docs != written docs.
 
@Telastyn The only thing more useless than garbage code comments written by a developer is garbage code comments written by a computer
 
naw. Computer generated garbage comments at least didn't waste your developers' time.
 
@Telastyn True, but they're still more useless though.
 
maybe. Humans can be more deceitful.
 
/// Tos the String
public String ToString()
{
}
I hate generated comments.
 
7:29 PM
/**
* TODO: write javadoc
**/
 
/**
 * Always returns true.
 */
public boolean isAvailable() {
    return false;
}
 
my head kasplodes
return !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!false;
 
@RobertHarvey here:
public List<TType> GetList<TType>(bool createEmptyIfNull = false) where TType : class
{
    bool valueIsNull = Value == null;
    bool valueIsIEnumerableOfT = Value is IEnumerable<TType>;
    bool valueIsT = Value is TType;

    if (valueIsNull)
        return createEmptyIfNull
            ? new List<TType>()
            : null;

    if (valueIsIEnumerableOfT)
        return new List<TType>(Value as IEnumerable<TType>);

    if (valueIsT)
        return new[] { Value as TType }.ToList();

    return ((IEnumerable)Value).OfType<object>().Select(i => (TType)Convert.ChangeType(i, typeof(TType)
 
return /*over 9000*/!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!over(9000);
 
that's my takeaway for that method
 
7:35 PM
Where would you ever need such a horrible method??
 
@MetaFight right between yourself and a deranged maniac. They'd never reach you.
 
json-ish serialization
 
I have done similar in a trace logging aspect before. Except I didn't make it so grody.
 
I've made things like that, though not as terse.
I don't remember what the best comment I've read was. It was by one of my... flightier programmers 2 jobs ago. She was whimsical at the best of times, and under stress only got more-so.
it was some sing-songy reference to explain why the method was absurdly named.
 
@JimmyHoffa A lot of work for a method where Value is always a string
 
7:40 PM
@durron597 it's stupid, but I'm obsessive about readability... syntactically and or functionallty correct code that's completely unreadable makes me twitch until I fix it.
 
user20683
 
user20683
#gnatIRL
 
precisely.
 
user20683
That moment when you realize the best answer to the problem is MATLAB:
 
user20683
 
7:52 PM
@WorldEngineer where did you get my photo?
 
@gnat your flickr page, duh
 
@JimmyHoffa Nice, but...
public List<TType> GetList<TType>(bool createEmptyIfNull = false) where TType : class
{
    if (Value == null)
        return createEmptyIfNull
            ? new List<TType>()
            : null;

    if (Value is IEnumerable<TType>)
        return new List<TType>(Value as IEnumerable<TType>);

    if (Value is TType)
        return new[] { Value as TType }.ToList();

    return ((IEnumerable)Value).OfType<object>().Select(i => (TType)Convert.ChangeType(i, typeof(TType))).ToList();
}
Of course, this presumes that I understand what the purpose of this thing is, which I still don't.
 
@durron597 can't be so, I only use that photo in my profile at SO Careers
 
user20683
@RobertHarvey I think it takes whatever you pass it into a list
 
user20683
assuming I reading it right but I've done very little with C#
 
8:03 PM
it also handles coersion to the type (int -> double) in some cases.
 
@Telastyn In zero cases, actually, because Value is always a string.
 
Well, if you pass Value as a parameter of type T, you get a function that actually works.
 
user20683
Today is a better day for Python
 
@RobertHarvey Value isn't a parameter in that method declaration.
 
user20683
we are getting a native matrix multiply and async/await in 3.5
 
8:08 PM
public List<TType> GetList<TType>(TType value, bool createEmptyIfNull = false) where TType : class
{
    if (value == null)
        return createEmptyIfNull
            ? new List<TType>()
            : null;

    if (value is IEnumerable<TType>)
        return new List<TType>(value as IEnumerable<TType>);

    if (value is TType)
        return new[] { value as TType }.ToList();

    return ((IEnumerable)value).OfType<object>().Select(i => (TType)Convert.ChangeType(i, typeof(TType))).ToList();
@durron597 Now it is.
 
@RobertHarvey How much of the original code does that change break?
 
Well, I'm not going to put it back in. I'm just trying to understand why.
I think about half of the method is broken in its present form.
 
no unit tests?
 
I'm not going to fix it.
There are bigger fish to fry.
 
@durron597 just noticed - "Maybe maven wasn't very good in 2004?" -- I started (was forced to) using Maven about 2008 and back then, it was still not very good (softly speaking). Per my recollection, up to version 2.1 Maven was quite fragile and difficult to use (some say it still is but it was really much worse than now)
 
8:14 PM
@gnat I didn't learn of its existence until 2011
 
@WorldEngineer Are they backporting those things to .NET 3.5?
 
user20683
@RobertHarvey Python 3.5
 
@RobertHarvey ...that code doesn't make since now. You're trying to type coerce a TType param into various other forms of TType. The last of which would never be executed.
granted you were type coercing a string before...
gads just delete that damn method. It's so pointless.
 
user20683
@JimmyHoffa So a method walks into a foo bar and says "Let me convince you to be a Bool so that you can be true to yourself"
 
@durron597 in 2011 Maven was already in good enough shape to compete against Ant
 
8:28 PM
@gnat That's probably why someone showed it to me then ;)
 
@gnat O_O it took that long for Maven to compete with Ant?? That's like saying "After 10 years we've finally developed a format that competes with .txt!" gads, Ant is neat and useful but I wouldn't even remotely call it advanced...
 
8:48 PM
@JimmyHoffa Ant is easy to understand - just like .txt is. That's a solid advantage. As for Maven, back then it was competing not so much against Ant but against own bugs. Yeah it felt promising to me even in 2008 but when it broke and I couldn't fix it, it didn't help
 
@gnat I'm a big fan of simple for stuff like that, I'm pretty enamored of Grunt these days for that reason
 
9:03 PM
@EdDie try posting your question on programmers.stackexchange.comuser990423 24 secs ago
 
user20683
Seems appropriate that I'm listening to:
 
gads duga wrecks referers.... too funny.
 
programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic this topic isn't listed or related to any of the entries in the "on topic" list — Kevin B 24 secs ago
 
@gnat what a trainwreck. I doubt that guy read any of the links, how could it be more clear?
 
9:19 PM
@Telastyn Very few unit tests. Certainly none on this one.
 
@RobertHarvey @gnat @WorldEngineer Of course some jopker answered it with "practice, practice, practice" and now the question will live forever because roomba is stupid.
 
user20683
@durron597 you do realize that @RobertHarvey is an SO mod right?
 
user20683
and that he has some kind of appendages and can push mouse buttons?
 
@WorldEngineer I guess my insinuation wasn't quite as thinly veiled as I thought it was.
 
user20683
@durron597 :)
 
9:22 PM
Aha, I came up with a valid reason for flag for deletion:
> This question should be deleted because it is blatantly off topic (so should be removed anyway), and, more importantly, has inspired an involved comment discussion about scope. At the very least, the comments here need to be cleaned, but if it were up to me, the entire question should be deleted.
"This question is off topic and has -3 score" is not enough of a reason for deletion flag, IMO.
 
Quick poll. You're writing a scraper for multiple websites. You're using HtmlAgilityPack to do the scraping. Do you: 1. Create one IScraper interface and a custom implementation class for each site, or 2: Create one implementation class and several SQL tables, and encode each site's fields of interest/site structure in database tuples?
 
user20683
@RobertHarvey I'm gonna say the former since that's a classic factory pattern
 
I generally favor encoding such things in a database, which is what they've done here. But I gotta admit, the logic is really hard to follow.
Especially when all the PKs are GUIDs.
Oh, and since they've got one class per site also...
 
user20683
it's kind of the same structure just different implementation details
 
One of the "reasons" they cite here for having everything table-driven is making changes easy to deploy on the server. Which is... not a real reason, I think.
 
9:31 PM
0
A: What privilege should 30k users get?

durron597Give 30k users the ability to see Not An Answer flags, perhaps in a review queue. They already have the ability to delete answers at 20k, now let's give them the ability to quickly and easily see which answers they can spend these votes on. Ultimately, it could be possible for 30k users to comple...

 
user20683
@RobertHarvey it's a real reason for a start up
 
Do startups just rewrite everything at some point?
 
my impression is they often outgrow at least one of the shiny toys they started with and have to backpedal to something more traditional or scalable
 
user20683
@Ixrec Twitter's Ruby to Scala scramble comes to mind
 
I was thinking of Facebook's equivalent language switch
 
9:36 PM
@durron597 SEDE query to find triple occurrence of word "practice" in an answer would probably reveal a bunch of old delete-worthy garbage. When career questions were tolerated at Programmers, 3Xpractice was a really cheap way to gain rep. I can't recall using it myself, but I am certainly guilty of playing 1Xpractice card. Maybe even 2X. It felt a bit dirty but everyone around was using it, like it's okay
 
user20683
that too
 
user20683
 
user20683
it takes talent to make Arnold look tiny
 
@gnat I can't believe anyone ever tolerated two sentence answers
 
@durron597 3Xpractice is a magic combination, at a site with... somewhat shaky quality norms it alone can simulate an answer (not to visitors coming from web searches mind you - to site regulars who got used to believe that it's okay)
 
9:44 PM
@EdDie You are allowed to self delete your answer. Editing it in the way you have is the incorrect thing to do. — durron597 19 secs ago
 
@durron597 except that... he can't since question has got upvoted answer
65
Q: The "I Get It" Reputation Problem

user130116I wrote a question about blocking certain characters in passwords. It became tremendously unpopular, and it seemed like everyone wanted to rain on my parade every day. Eventually, I "got it," agreed completely with what people were saying to me, and just wanted to withdraw my question so that my...

 
@gnat Even if he unaccepts the answer?
 
^^^ a while ago it was closed as... too localized, unbelievable. As relevant and broadly applicable as it gets
@durron597 even then
single answer at +1 => asker can't delete
I bumped into it myself once at MSE. Felt really weird, especially since answer was totally senseless
 
@EdDie I forgot that you cannot delete this question because it has an upvoted answer. I recommend flagging the question for moderator attention and ask them to delete it. — durron597 48 secs ago
 
> Think of it, how would one phrase flag message? - Please convert to CW. - Why? - Please convert to CW because I don't want to continue losing reputation? - Everyone would want to, what makes you special? - Please convert to CW because I don't want to continue losing rep for the question where I changed my mind. - Why don't you just bring it on meta? You see, simple explanations carry risk of flag decline. And detailed enough explanation would make a reasonably good meta question anyway.
 
9:50 PM
@gnat Well, I've flagged it for deletion too, which should carry some weight.
 
@durron597 with delete vote on it, yes, the flag will have better chance to get through
 
@gnat I don't have 20k
 
user20683
I can't even remember the last time I saw a CW
 
564
A: My boss decided to add a "person to blame" field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?

gnatTell them this is only an amateurish name for the Root Cause field used by professionals (when issue tracker does not have dedicated field, one can use comments for that). Search the web for something like software bug root cause analysis, there are plenty of resources to justify this reasoning ...

^^^ here it is
 
user20683
@gnat before I was a mod, that make sense
 
user55340
9:56 PM
@durron597 if there is value for it on the site, could always flag for disassociation.
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa it wasn't until frameworks became non-trivial in dependencies that you had a value proposition for maven. That took some time.
 
user55340
At employer^^^, we had some commons stuff from the web, but were ejb based and were not using them. Sruts was painful enough.
 
@MichaelT these non-trivial dependencies, in turn, became popular because maven made it (seemingly) easy to establish and maintain. Sort of positive feedback loop here. Maven handles dependencies, frameworks using maven exploit that more and more, maven becomes more and more popular, more frameworks jump that train etc
 
user55340
Pre annotation Java frameworks were pain incarcerated.
 
user55340
@gnat yep. Very true.
 
10:03 PM
4
Q: Why does Apache have two separate tools for build and dependency management?

durron597Apache has two separate tools: Apache Maven Apache Ant + Apache Ivy They seem to both fill the same niche. I have two questions: What are the highlights of the main differences between the two tools? I'm sure a really long article could be written on the differences between the two, I am ...

Do you know the answer to that one?
 
user55340
Apache is an umbrella.
 
@MichaelT so, Maven and Ant are made by different teams for their own purposes and interests, just under Apache umbrella. Like California making software and Kentucky makes bourbon. Under umbrella of United States
 
user20683
@gnat more like General Mills makes umpteen kinds of cereal
 
user55340
The Apache Software Foundation /əˈpætʃiː/ (ASF) is an American non-profit corporation (classified as 501(c)(3) in the United States) to support Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. The ASF was formed from the Apache Group and incorporated in Delaware, U.S., in June 1999. The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized community of developers. The software they produce is distributed under the terms of the Apache License and is therefore free and open source software (FOSS). The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus-based development process and...
 
@WorldEngineer all right, that's closer. Software and bourbon are too different to serve analody
 
user55340
10:12 PM
Note the decentralized bit.
 
user20683
@gnat it'd actually be most like the work of a university
 
user20683
you've got all kinds of strange departments putting out all manner of research but it's all still research
 
user55340
Btw, ant, maven, and gradle are all ASF projects.
 
@WorldEngineer I see. That's probably even closer
 
user55340
There are other build tools too that I've never heard of.
 
10:14 PM
1 min ago, by World Engineer
you've got all kinds of strange departments putting out all manner of research but it's all still research
 
user20683
Some of it is highly theoretical like "A comparative study of the use of gendered pronouns in discussions relating to partial differential equations and their applications to muons and quantum field theory."
 
user15026
I'd read that paper. I'd never understand it but I would read it.
 
user55340
"What gender do you use for oscillating neutrinos?"
 
user55340
 
user20683
@MichaelT alternate or rotate based on current state
 
10:30 PM
@AshleyNunn part about gendered pronouns would be rather hard to grok
 
10:49 PM
@MichaelT O_o frameworks in Java have never been non-trivial, they're each prctically uninteroperable operating systems from what I've seen
 
user55340
11:31 PM
@JimmyHoffa in the pre annotation days, it was servlets + jsp + ejb (deb connection and soap)
 
user55340
You really tried to avoid more because of jar dependency hell.
 
user55340
With ant you got huge cut and paste targets and include everything classpath in house. This lack of dependency management made upgrading a framework a nightmare.
 

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