The Whiteboard

Jimmy Hoffa

12:48 AM

@whatsisname I dug up quite a few first hand experience stories with multiple years saying basically all the same stuff

a few saying it's fine, many more saying it's tough as hell and or literally hell

user55340

1:25 AM

enderland

1:41 AM

2

whatsisname

@Telastyn: I know it was discussed earlier, then I saw a bunch of more articles, then noticed they all had a common theme that the author had only been there a short time, so I brought it up again

user55340

NPR: Jeff Bezos Responds To 'New York Times' Report On Amazon's Workplace (text only, no audio) and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Dismisses Claims In 'New York Times' Article (audio only - no transcript at this time)

user55340

NPR: Bloomberg Columnist: Report On Amazon's Work Culture Not Surprising (audio only at this time - no transcript)

gnat

9:13 AM

don't you worry, question is in the hot network list. This means downvote will be reliably hidden by sympathy upvotes from Stack Overflow lemmings, who will likely also bring more similar answers — gnat 3 hours ago

^^^ sometimes the future is really easy to tell

Duga

9:34 AM

I think its more about Math and algorithms, so it should be ask at Programmers. — fuyushimoya 51 secs ago

Duga

11:44 AM

@VladimirF Advice about different styles of programming would be more appropriate for programmers.SE. Advice on his current code can be asked for on Code Review, but he would need to disclose the code. My gut tells me that may be a problem. — Mast 45 secs ago

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Go up vote this.

Jimmy Hoffa

12:30 PM

Happy Coffee Day

Duga

This question is too broad and even if it were not, programmers.stackexchange.com would be a better fit — Sebastian Negraszus 12 secs ago

I agree that policy and reviews would be the correct course of action here. I would suggest taking a look at programmers.SE for existing posts that are related to this topic, or even asking a new question if you don't find any other relevant posts. — Lix 30 secs ago

Jimmy Hoffa

1:07 PM

@whatsisname reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/3ce0s8/…

Thomas Owens

> the entire concept of a "BIG 4" that you absolutely need to kick your career off at allows these larger companies with lots of brand recognition to exploit you just like Amazon does.

That.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens yeah, this is similar to what I was saying the other day about Silicon Valley believing there actually is no tech outside of it anywhere... and this is merely accepted by many people... the idea that we work in some tiny industry of only a couple places and companies is just ludicrous - computers are utterly pervasive, it's like people don't look around and realize we're living in a society girded by a technological infrastructure at every turn...

It's just egotistical bullshit on the part of those people "making it" in those companies or silly valley, that they narrow their field of view to myopic proportions to tell themselves they're the kings of everything they can see- How great they are!

Duga

1:24 PM

You should take this question over to programmers.stackexchange.com — Jeffery Thomas 49 secs ago

Jimmy Hoffa

Transcript of an interview that just accepts silicon valley as where technology happens, because duh amiright: npr.org/2015/08/11/431673001/…

> Los Angeles is drawing tech entrepreneurs who are attracted to the beaches, the somewhat lower housing costs and the proximity to the movie industry.

^-- just shows how out of touch with any sense of a real economy silly valley is when LA is where you move to save money

user55340

There was an article about Kansas or Nebraska tech on npr a bit ago...

user55340

npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/03/12/392136573/…

Jimmy Hoffa

> ADAM LILLING: People thought it was career suicide. Nobody - not one person - would move down - no matter what the offer was.

Yeah, if you know how to program, living in LA is "career suicide" ? You can't get one person who can code decent in LA?

user55340

Part of the draw of SF or LA or Portland or Seattle or New York is that it has a culture that young people are after.

Jimmy Hoffa

1:30 PM

Myopia n. def: How asshats convince themselves everything they have and know is the absolute best in the world by covering one eye and gouging out the other.

@MichaelT I know - but still, the hyperbole is high in that statement, and yet he's plays it like he honestly believes it. Seriously? Do programmers all die after 25? Having a kid and perhaps 15 years of industry experience makes you incapable of programming?

Telastyn

not a bit of career building is (people) networking

if the people you need to network with are not in LA...

there's also the whole learning from better programmers thing

that's a problem around here

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn need to network with? I'm sure there were people in LA to network with. You mean if the people he knows to network with aren't, but then honestly; use a fucking job posting, do interviews, don't just look around and assume everyone you know are the only people you can work with. That's short-sighted, ignorant, and frankly offensive to everyone you've never met.

I just read that article as: "If I don't know you, you aren't worth a damn. That's just how it is. I'm not being an asshole, I just both know everything who's any good, therefore if you've never met me you suck." <-- the utter arrogance that bleeds

Telastyn

I'm not sure I follow.

There are a set of people with the influence to help push your career along. Like any people, some you will get along with, some you won't. Being in an area with few of these people lessens your options, leading you to (in general) make worse choices due to worse options.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn Not disputing any of that, I'm just disputing his tone of "beyond my network, is only shit"

Telastyn

ah

Jimmy Hoffa

1:37 PM

yes sillicon valley can be of great career benefit, but it's not the end of the world. Hell, my last boss spent 10 years working startups out there - and he was awful.

Telastyn

given the reams of terrible programmers, I'm not sure that's such a terrible assertion :D

that is one of the things to remember about the valley - there are so many jobs, an acronym spewing barista can get a programming gig there.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn is that really true? I hear about statements like that all the time, but it all seems a bit of a stretch.

user55340

Btw, did you know we are the largest site to not have a gold badge dup hammer?

Telastyn

it might be an exaggeration perhaps, but there is certainly more labor market competition. These days it's more at the right of the bell curve, but I have to imagine that the less sexy companies are impacted as well.

Jimmy Hoffa

I've heard the same said about our industry generally, how programmers can just get a job anywhere doing anything, always getting hired! But @MichaelT is a fantastic engineer and it took him 6 months to find an employer; typically it takes me 3-5 months of looking to find work (and that's including when I was looking for work in multiple metros). I've heard about this "programmers can get work anytime!" thing endlessly over the years, yet I've never known a programmer who could.

In silly valley can you truly just pop into a job like falling in a hole if you know how to code for a damn?

user55340

1:42 PM

I'll admit to not working hard at it, and trying to stay in the area for much of that time.

Telastyn

I know a lot up here that can get hired at the drop of the hat, but they're contractors with broad networks.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa in silly valley, you get job offers standing in line waiting for the next iPhone.

Telastyn

I know a few people out there that simply have standing offers. "If you ever get tired over there, let me know. We'll make it worth your while."

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT hell, I should have gone there years ago mayhaps... my career wouldn't have been such a damned fight early on for opportunities perhaps.

user55340

Realize a good fraction of those are startups trying to ~~make it big~~ get bought by Google. They have ideas and maybe a round of funding.

Jimmy Hoffa

1:45 PM

@MichaelT "gold badge dup hammer" ? s/dup/HUP/f, ftfy?

user55340

Nope. Dup hammer. On other sites if you have a gold tag badge, you close as a duplicate with one vote.

user55340

I am half tempted to try spitting out 98 Java answers with an average of 3.3 score to get it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT how many answers do you need?

user55340

200 total. 1000 score total.

user55340

I have 102 answers with a score of 671

Jimmy Hoffa

1:50 PM

eesh

The most I have on one tag is 20 answers on design

no wait I have 21 on functional-programming

enderland

@MichaelT but you also live in silly valley. that's... a special place of hell for those of us midwest folks ;)

user55340

@enderland you mean the hell of a not blistering hot summer? Or the hell of no snow to shovel in the winter?

enderland

@MichaelT :) I would never want to live in an area so congested/busy

user55340

I took the light rail to work for a year. Walked to the station (2 blocks on each end)

user55340

It's a great place to be single and irresponsible. It's less than ideal if you want to find a girlfriend (gender balance way off), buy a house, or raise a family.

user55340

2:02 PM

On gender balance: when I moved out there in 96, for every 100 single men between 20-29, there were 77 single women. Multiply that by population.

Thomas Owens

Martin Fowler just tweeted that another woman technologist left Twitter after a rash of tweets over the weekend. I hate people.

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer @Ampt go to silicon valley, apparently if you wait in line at Starbucks and just say SCRUM, MUMPS, SRP, YAGNI over and over you'll be hired for a coding position

user55340

... At a startup. Repeat every 6 months.

Jimmy Hoffa

Alternatively...if anyone wants to move to Denver, I need a colleague, and so far we've interviewed like 6 or 8 to fail fizzbuzz... (I partially blame reliance on recruiters controlling our source quality)

enderland

@JimmyHoffa do you have lakes? :P

the part about SV I don't understand is how it functions considering how often everyone seems to change jobs

Jimmy Hoffa

2:06 PM

@MichaelT so long as the next gig is as easy to find as a barista, does it really make a difference to someone without a family?

@enderland bank money; they take 100 million dollars, put 5m into 20 companies, one company makes 200m, the other 19 go bust, they take 100m of the resultant 200m and start again.

user55340

@enderland big ones behind concert walls. And beautiful orange rivers.

user55340

(Actually Colorado is very nice - just giving jimmy a hard time)

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT heh yeah we really don't like that early mining days left us with a glut of wrecked up environmental messes up inna mountains, but they're all on the western slope so it doesn't effect us because that side flows to California, not Denver

It really is kind of shitty though; the way the companies left those messes and just up and abandoned the place... there's lots of them, the EPA was checking on that one because they have to check countless ones as they've found numerous cases of ground water pollution thanks to those shite companies that up and runoft

enderland

I think I'd love living there, but my wife not as much probably

Jimmy Hoffa

"we got ours, laterz! Enjoy the cadmium, suckers!"

user55340

2:12 PM

@enderland search for "maroon bells" and consider that is 3h drive away.

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland pshaw, everyone loves living here :) They just don't all know it yet. That said, we're full, stay home. It's terrible here; the winters are like 20' of snow dropping, everyone has to replace their roof every 6 months because the snow caves it in in the winter (so you have to sleep in the basement for safety) and in the summer the hail just deshingles it, the tornados flood the mudslides into the towns and we all have to hike 2 miles in the trees to get to and from home. It's horrible.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa apparently you have never seen lake effect snow.

user55340

Lake-effect snow

Lake-effect snow is produced during cooler atmospheric conditions when a cold air mass moves across long expanses of warmer lake water, warming the lower layer of air which picks up water vapor from the lake, rises up through the colder air above, freezes and is deposited on the leeward (downwind) shores. The same effect also occurs over bodies of salt water, when it is termed ocean-effect or bay-effect snow. The effect is enhanced when the moving air mass is uplifted by the orographic influence of higher elevations on the downwind shores. This uplifting can produce narrow but very intense bands...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT yeah, honestly the myths of our winters are hilarious and confounding because much of the country has it way worse. So many folk around the whole of the midwest and northeast have this image of us as this mountain top town getting insane snow, meanwhile our winters have always been so much milder than all those places (and get milder every year for numerous years now).

durron597

Buffalo has really, really terrible snow.

user55340

2:16 PM

> These areas average 250–300 inches (635–762 cm) of snow each season.[

user55340

Though I know mountains have fun too.

user55340

In Tahoe skiing one year, the overnight snow was taller than my geo metro.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT midgets are taller than your geo metro

@enderland where? Was that raised too or just born?

user55340

Chinook wind

Chinook winds /ʃɪˈnʊk/, or simply chinooks, are foehn winds in the interior West of North America, where the Canadian Prairies and Great Plains meet various mountain ranges, although the original usage is in reference to wet, warm coastal winds in the Pacific Northwest. Chinook is claimed by popular folk-etymology to mean "snow-eater", but it is really the name of the people in the region where the usage was first derived. The reference to a wind or weather system, simply "a Chinook", originally meant a warming wind from the ocean into the interior regions of the Northwest of the USA (the Chinook...

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland Westminster's where I grew up and have settled back. It's a nice suburb halfway between Denver and Boulder, easy commute for either.

enderland

2:24 PM

Was a long time ago ;)

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa What's in denver? Do I have to program in Haskell?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt C# and or Java

Ampt

does your fizzbuzz test require the use of monads? (maybe that's why everyone is failing)

Jimmy Hoffa

or rather, I think they're focussing on Java

Ampt

what a coincidence, I happen to know a guy who's main language is java

Jimmy Hoffa

2:26 PM

haha, yeah but I understand he's aversed to moving. If he weren't, he should probably go rent a closet in Silly Valley and rack up real career reputation since he's still young enough to put up with that shit

Ampt

I'm averse to moving where the rent is 8x what I'm paying now... haha

enderland

only 8x? :)

Ampt

Denver was nice though

Plus there's architectural engineering gigs there which is a + for the GF

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt Denver rents are on the rise fast, but we're still not Silly Valley (and we still have easily commutable areas that are not as expensive)

enderland

We pay $785 for a very nice 1BR with a garage and are on the higher end of where I'm at...

Ampt

2:29 PM

I'm at 1350 for a 2BR 2B apt right now

Jimmy Hoffa

When I moved back 3 years ago I got into a nice big 2 bedroom townhome rental with yard for $1100/month

Ampt

not bad, but the GF wants to buy (don't get me started on the whole rent vs. buy thing)

enderland

plus utilities though right?

@Ampt :)

Jimmy Hoffa

that was 30-minute commute into downtown, 45 to Boulder

Ampt

water and sewage are included

we pay electric/cable/internet

enderland

2:30 PM

Ah, so more like $1450 or so

Ampt

yeah

and there's 2 of us

enderland

Yup, same for us

But either way, both are pretty reasonable

Ampt

if we didn't have student loans, SV would probably be an option

enderland

SV?

Ampt

Silly Valley

enderland

2:31 PM

Oh, right

Ampt

she'd love to live in Cali

enderland

Well to be fair if you get a job there you could make a ton more in SV than where you are at

Ampt

but it just seems so ridiculous, I don't know how people can afford it

enderland

Probably makeup the difference, remembering what you got offered for your current gig

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt Picked up my house for $180k (built in '74) 2 years ago a block from the highway that puts me 20 minutes from Denver and 30 from Boulder. The burbs are still affordable (though the houses are selling like hot cakes, everyone's putting in offers on 20-30 places and being told "Oh, someone else got the contract first" for each one before getting the contract first themselves)

enderland

2:32 PM

I'm hoping that the housing market crashes soon

:)

Ampt

it's my understanding that I would be in the 1.5-2x range for salary, which probably wouldn't cover the increased cost of living

plus my GF would probably have to be remote at her current gig, so not making any more for her

net we're making 1.25-1.5x our current rate, which def won't get us anywhere in SV

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt no family, no responsibility, live like a bachelor (in a closet- only expense is beer and takeout)

Ampt

Yeah, I guess. I don't think I could handle it lol

Jimmy Hoffa

that's a guess. @Telastyn seems to think it's easily worth it and he's actually lived there. I don't see how it works but I've also never been so I have no idea

enderland

@Ampt yeah that's true I guess. Another $2k/month in rent requires about $30k more salary at least....

Ampt

2:38 PM

I think the problem is that I've got (what I think) is a pretty good salary for where I'm at now - getting 2x that in SV might not be reasonable

enderland

@Ampt me too where I'm at...

I'm even saving a bunch of money right now, too, so moving to SV would require a huge salary increase for me to consider it

though I am quite frugal...

hey I just got a message on careers about the MS Stack

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt yeah, but you're confused, you see, you are of utterly no consequence

> DAVID STURTZ: Almost any new company of consequence has to be in San Francisco or in Silicon Valley.
>
> BERGMAN: Sturtz says he knows that sounds arrogant, but it's the truth. Sturtz visits Santa Monica every few weeks where we met recently.

^-- Google Fiber maybe coming here? Hey...

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa I can't see that...>_<

Why are people not putting images on stack imgur?

enderland

@ThomasOwens because imgur is copy/paste and trivial

Thomas Owens

@enderland It's also blocked by a lot of corporate filters.

enderland

2:46 PM

> They use VB.NET, C#, ASP.NETMS SQL 2008 R2, Nth Tier development, MS Analysis Server, Crystal Reports, SSRS and Sharepoint.

how crappy would picking this be if I have a lot of experience with VBA and decent experience with C++

I guess I've worked with SQL Server and Sharepoint too

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa Lol, how could I forget

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland sounds like a recruiters tag line- I'd give them a talk with your background. The SQL stuff may well be a strong point, you can't trust that stack listing as I'm sure the actual position they're trying to fill doesn't do all of that.

the only job that relies on all of those tag lines would be a slow-paced internal LOB dev, at which point your experiences would actually be a great fit, alternatively it's an actual product and not a slew of little hacked up apps, at which point it doesn't use SSRS and Crystal and expect Sharepoint dev work...

enderland

@JimmyHoffa it's custom inhouse software according to the message

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland there ya go. Lots of little hacked up apps, internal LOB work. Those jobs can be nice slow-paced places or shithole jobs. I think you already know this though, it sounds as though that's more or less what you've been doing?

enderland

So definitely internal, though I will cry if they say Sharepoint is actually part of it

@JimmyHoffa yeah it is very related to my first project I did in this gig, my current work is not quite as relevant (and less coding..)

Jimmy Hoffa

2:52 PM

@enderland internal LOB work on the MS stack actually does often include some custom sharepoint dev...

enderland

As long as it's coding to deploy to sharepoint rather than doing basic sharepoint manipulation :P

Jimmy Hoffa

it's not so terrible though. It's no different than the VBA stuff you did; it's a big structured framework that you're just working within templates of

and it's all done in .NET

enderland

Yeah, it could be neat, that's for sure

Though when I look on their site they are looking for a senior software dev, rather than a more junior person....

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland Senior means different things to different people. Can you whiteboard Fizzbuzz? I've watched people with years actually working with that title in real companies fail it numerous times. No reason not to give it a try. Worst that can happen is you find out it would be awful, or they think you couldn't cut it.

enderland

good call, lol:

> Education and/or Experience: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, or specialized education/training, or five years programming experience; or equivalent combination of education, training and experience.

also, this is amusing as the next qualifications:

> Language Skills - Ability to read, analyze, and interpret business reports, documents, data, and technical procedures. Ability to write summaries, reports, business correspondence, and procedure instructions. Ability to clearly and effectively present information and business needs, and respond to questions from groups of managers, the IT team, coworkers, system users, and other applicable groups.

Mathematical Skills - Ability to calculate figures and amounts such as discounts, interest, commissions, ratio, proportions, percentages, and volume. Ability to apply concepts of basic algebra …

and:

> • Proficient with VB.NET or C# language and SQL Syntax Some knowledge of ASP.NET or Java also helpful.

• 3+ years experience in VB.Net client/server application development with a Microsoft SQL Server as a back-end or with like database system, i.e. Oracle.

• Database development including table design, code SQL queries and stored procedures.

• Experience in designing and developing SQL reports (Crystal Reports) or Microsoft Reporting Services.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:00 PM

@enderland remember, it's a recruiters posting you're looking at, they just put smatterings of crap together in their postings with no idea what any of it actually means or how the information relates.

enderland

yeah they took "VBA" and made it VB.Net I think :P

hrmm. this seems intriguing to me

Though I do like my current job a fair bit

lol. recruiter spelled the city wrong. Good alert that they are not from here...

@JimmyHoffa This job is definitely not a "senior software dev" position, I wonder if they make it that so they can pay higher than a "normal position" or something. No senior level position will require such minimal things

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland recruiters often times mix this stuff up and it's all sales for them - they like to sell senior to both sides of their process because this is more for them. Whether it's senior or not isn't relevant. Generally internal LOB is just about never particularly senior anyway.

enderland

but their website shows a senior software dev. #recruiters

whatsisname

70k weak

enderland

@whatsisname it's in a college town, though

whatsisname

3:12 PM

still

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland and it's not like Ames, IA is an expensive place to live deptofnumbers.com/rent/iowa/ames

enderland

@JimmyHoffa lol yeah. Midwest FTW :D

Jimmy Hoffa

But yeah, that's pretty weak depending on where you are in your career. Also, internal LOB has no growth opportunity internally, and Ames, IA won't be handing out external opportunity

enderland

I'm pretty early career, this would be a "take a job doing coding to do primarily coding" job if I do go after it

Jimmy Hoffa

That's the type of job you go after to settle down and work some steady gig in an affordable place for 10-20 years where you won't really learn or grow or become better over time, but you'll have a nice life. Downside: If you ever end up out of the company, or want to move on, 10-20 years later you better have been honing your skills outside of work hard. You will be a dinosaur otherwise.

enderland

3:16 PM

or if the company goes under

Jimmy Hoffa

Yeah. You won't be gaining value really, but then it sounds like you may not be particularly getting much of that from your current situation..

enderland

well I'm not doing active software dev, I'm getting a lot of other experience that if I had a crystal ball for what I want to do 20 years from now I could answer whether it's better or not :P

Ampt

@enderland you're not doing dev work either?? High Five (for sadness)

enderland

@Ampt I'm not sure if that's a bad thing for me or not

Ampt

I'm positive it's bad for meeeeee

breaks out into song and dance about why not-coding sucks

user55340

3:30 PM

@enderland likely inbound "should I quit" to workplace.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT inbound "yes", followed by inbound "closure", inbound "deletion" and finally inbound "sadness" to @enderland

enderland

:)

Thomas got that one within a minute, I snuck my CV in before him

user55340

@enderland there was a suggestion to repost on workplace just before the self delete.

user55340

Btw, @GlenH7 there are quite a few speedy delete votes on impossible to salvage low score closed questions on the front page and newest 50 if you want more delete vote therapy.

user41796

4:02 PM

@MichaelT I'll try to hit those today. Past few days have been a metaphorical struggle of trying to keep my head above water with everything that's going on.

user55340

No rush. If you don't gnat and snowman hit them in two days.

user41796

I take a little bit of pleasure in nuking chat flags where the recipient of "straight talk" doesn't like the message and chooses to flag it as offensive.

user55340

(Flagging previous comment as offensive)

enderland

@GlenH7 :)

user41796

And I want to write up an answer to the question regarding OpenSource & Law migrations / question topicality scope

user55340

4:06 PM

Hmm. Can't flag in mobile.

user41796

@MichaelT Need me to flag myself for you?

user41796

< wonders what would happen />

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 Is it actually significantly different than an existing answer?

user41796

@ThomasOwens Yeah, I think so

Thomas Owens

Because if not, just leave a comment. If people are voting all over the place, it's hard to tell what people want to do.

user41796

4:08 PM

We have a past precedent in place with Workplace, but I understand that SE's policy has changed. Likewise, no one has addressed the fact that we've recently developed some good rules of thumb for topicality. And we haven't considered the perspective of perhaps overlap is good because of the different perspectives of the communities.

user55340

@ThomasOwens it's clear: something

user41796

I was tempted to hijack your second CW answer, but I'd be making some pretty substantial edits and that didn't seem kosher with a meta answer

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 I wrote my second answer (which I now prefer). My only issue is defining what is in-scope and out-of-scope with respect to open source.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Vote splits might be more telling in this case. Dunno though

Thomas Owens

That's going to be non-trivial without being confusing.

user41796

4:10 PM

@ThomasOwens Agreed.

Thomas Owens

The only good thing about scope change is that it makes the discussion of explaining to people what site they go to based on the question.

user41796

On Engineering, we adopted a policy that said the mods would nuke any comments to the effect of "This belongs on EE." We knew we'd have a degree of overlap between the sites, but as a beta we can afford that ambiguity. At the moment, we have a few users who are picking and choose EE vs. Engr based upon the types of answers they want to receive. But that's a very advanced user expectation.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 It can be hard, though. If it's too hard to figure out, people can get frustrated.

X goes here, Y goes there needs to be clear and explained concisely.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Absolutely agree, it's a thin line that can be hard to walk.

Thomas Owens

Changing scope does make that a moot point, though, since everything about open source licenses goes somewhere else.

But it does bring up the point of all the old questions.

@GlenH7 My challenge to you is to come up with two sentences: one that explains what open source questions go on Prog and one that explains what open source questions go on Open Source. If you can do that, then the scope should definitely not change.

user41796

4:17 PM

And lurking under the covers is a potential accusation that migrating off old licensing questions is little more than an attempt to circumvent what the community has agreed upon.

To be clear, I'm not accusing you or anyone else of that but I certainly see that as a potential issue that could come out of this. In other words, something seems a bit squicky

user41796

@ThomasOwens Do they have to be grammatically correct and not run-on sentences? :-(

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 That's true. Either way, there's a problem.

user41796

I think HopelessN00b's short term as a mod kind of serves as an extreme example of what I'm concerned about. He rolled through and nuked things based upon what appeared to be just his whims.

There's content of at least neutral or positive value benefiting Progs, and I'm very leery of a wholesale "Well, this has changed" type action. I think we'd want a very strong community consensus about that grand of a change.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 I agree with needing community consensus. That's why I'm leaning toward my second answer: no scope change, add pointers to Software Recommendations, Open Source, and Law, and make a Meta post (probably on Meta.Stack Exchange) to point people to the right site about open source.

Open Source and Open Data both exist. Open Science is closing on Friday, but there may be alternatives (there's also a new A51 proposal - don't know if the other science sites take open science questions). Programmers, Project Management, and to some extent Law can all house open source questions, too.

user41796

Open Science?

Thomas Owens

4:27 PM

Yeah. I don't know. It's a thing that's closing down on Friday.

user41796

They didn't even make it out of private beta then.... (Looking at A51 page now)

Thomas Owens

Yeah. They are closing more sites between private and public beta now with the new graduation policies.

I'm still waiting for a response to more RSS feeds.

11

Q: Additional RSS feeds

This is based on a few other posts here, such as 1, 2, 3, and 4. User Answers: A particular user's newly posted answers to questions. Every answer posted by the user gets published. Edits to answers would be published as well. Ideally, it would be nice to differentiate somehow between new answe...

user41796

Seems like a reasonable approach. They could afford an SE blog post showing some of the numbers behind communities as they go from private to public beta. Engineering, for example, took a huge dip in participation shortly after going public. There's a core crowd that will kickstart a site but doesn't stay as vested in long term contribution.

user41796

I know I'm guilty of that on woodworking.

enderland

> Up to 5% domestic and/or international travel by car or plane may be required.

Poorly worded ftw, unless it's canada by car

Thomas Owens

4:33 PM

@enderland What if you want to take a train?

Or a boat?

Or a choppa.

enderland

TOUGH

Thomas Owens

Those bastards. :( Reject that.

Duga

You may want to ask this on programmers.stackexchange.com with less code and more of a best-practices approach. Short answer: 15 methods is better than 1 method with a giant switch. — AndrewR 35 secs ago

user41796

Has anyone mentioned that naming is hard?

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 Only all the time.

enderland

4:39 PM

@GlenH7 snitchn.com/#

that's 100% a serious app

user41796

@enderland I blame John Walsh of America's Most Wanted

user41796

@ThomasOwens One of the devs on the team really ought to be a consultant based upon the way he names things

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 Can you share examples?

user41796

Really doesn't jibe with the rest of the program either. Just maps to a (his) very myopic perspective on a task.

user41796

And he declared a set of those things, but for the life of me, I can't find where they're defined within our code

user41796

4:46 PM

This is why we can't have nice things, kids.

enderland

so it's not that names are hard, it's that idiots naming things make things hard ;)

user41796

You could say that, yes.

durron597

Yes, there is a problem in the way that we communicate that we've seen important meta posts. But no, this solution is a non-starter. — Jon Ericson ♦ 6 mins ago

^^^ cc @gnat @MichaelT

enderland

:(

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I enjoy accepting every single flag that ever floats by as I just like wondering what people are thinking as they see conversation pieces just disappearing mid-argument

(after all, how damn important are any of the messages that ever get flagged?)

user41796

4:58 PM

@JimmyHoffa Most of the flags are retaliatory because the recipient's fee-fees were hurt.

durron597

@enderland "Herculean task" get real.

user41796

My impression is that meta post devolved into arguing about solutions as opposed to simply acknowledging that there's a huge communication gap

enderland

Perhaps the fundamental problem with all this is that a Q/A format works really poorly for actual discussion (such as on that question)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 oh, I know, all the more reason why I really don't care about accepting the flag: It's just an argument on the internet; the importance is staggering.. Like I said, I just like imagining conversation pieces disappearing

(and occasionally it's incidantal NSFW which I'm all for keeping out of chat anyhow since people do work in open floor plans..blech..)

enderland

5:13 PM

@durron597 It's not SE's business model though, so from that perspective I totally get it

Skylion

5:50 PM

Hello

enderland

@Skylion welcome

Skylion

Mind if I bounce some ideas off you guys?

user41796

Go ahead

Skylion

So I have this piece of code I was working on at Hackathon. A little utility that's let you encode binary files into Youtube Video for Unlimited Storage on Youtube. Debating whether to continue development on it, thoughts?

user41796

Seems like an abuse of TOS for youtube

user41796

5:58 PM

And given the number of providers who will give away large amounts of storage for free, it begs the question "why bother?"

Skylion

It's technically not lol. Especially if I don't directly interact with Youtube in any way. Right now the utility just converts the files into videos and back again. You have to upload it to Youtube yourself as well as download it yourself.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Skylion what are the points of the debate? Go for it or don't, but I don't know why you would or wouldn't so.. ?

Skylion

Just curious of any you guys would ever consider tinkering around with it. Sorry, I should have gotten to the point

user41796

@Skylion Personally? No. Too many easier to use forms of freely available online storage.

user41796

To me it sounds ... clever. And while clever can be fun, I don't have the time to maintain clever.

Skylion

6:06 PM

@GlenH7 Thanks Glen, that's what I needed to hear

The repo if anyone is interested: github.com/Skylion007/LVDOWin . I'll be on my way now.

Jimmy Hoffa

Creative idea for sure, but folks here aren't really looking for new projects, we're mostly professional coders with plenty of work to do in the office and no trouble finding projects outside of work if we want them. I think the most avid project anyone here works on outside of work is either working on our booze, or @Telastyn working on his language.

Woot @GlenH7 I just canned this chat message: Now I'm wondering if I should kick him next time I see him n the room.

Telastyn

I hate to think my handful of days a month is the most avid project.

Jimmy Hoffa

someone somewhere is pondering who actually accepted some trolls flag

@Telastyn you're right, we definitely drink more booze than you code Tangent.

Telastyn

quite true!

perhaps if I drank more, I would write more code.

whatsisname

no doubt

Jimmy Hoffa

6:12 PM

@Telastyn I can guarantee you the inverse is true, and I'm quite certain it's correlative so you could give it a shot and let us know if the correlation is two way

user55340

@Skylion I am sure I saw a discussion about this on hacker news a bit ago about encoding data in a YouTube video.

whatsisname

reminds me of when someone wrote a FUSE module to use gmail to create a storage volume

user55340

Several implementations and such with a day or so. Barcodes, color, issued with MPEG compression corruption

user55340

There is also a redditfs

user55340

github.com/ianpreston/redditfs

Duga

6:50 PM

@Tomas: You may try asking at: programmers.stackexchange.com — kenorb 26 secs ago

@kenorb - Too broad is simply too broad. It's too broad for SO and it's too broad for Programmers. Even the "what design pattern" bit of the question wouldn't work on Programmers. — GlenH7 59 secs ago

user41796

Cripes. Is it already September?

user55340

Judging by the front page, yes

Jimmy Hoffa

@whatsisname SOAP over email transport anyone? No? No? Oh :(

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I've seen it once.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT and it burned didn't it? Oh how it burned

user55340

6:57 PM

Worked very nicely. Core part of a key offering at Employeer^^^ for awhile. Not sure if that's still the interchange format now. This was 10 years ago.

durron597

@GlenH7 Want to set a line about when I pass Dan Pichelman in CV reviews?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT and it used a voice mail box on a PBX for data persistence too amirite?

durron597

@MichaelT You have 9999 CV reviews. Make sure you pay attention tomorrow

user55340

@JimmyHoffa tied to the crm. Devices sent info when they crashed. Came in via email. App processed it and sent out email to human about fix and/or support case created.

gnat

7:16 PM

@gnat I've spent 15-20 minutes trying to find the right tags (job*, etc.), reading clean-up meta's, but all of them were like DO NOT USE THIS TAG, so I was confused and really desperate to find at least one which was suitable for it, so this was the only which I could find. Secondly I'm not looking to improve my resume, this is just general question in order to understand the difference between those titles. — kenorb 3 mins ago

^^^ our tags seem to be in a good shape! We probably only miss that "DO NOT USE..." warning in resume

enderland

I feel like we should direct that poor guy here, he did more work than 99% of people

just by reading the tags

user41796

@gnat How about "You probably should not use this tag" as the opener for resume

durron597

Both - there will be some measure of disagreement, and that's ok. Improve your odds by not raising too many flags in a very short period of time, if you can help it; if someone's flooding the site with crap, that's unavoidable, but if it looks like you're just clogging the queue with old answers that matched a search query some mods will decline all at the first sign of inaccuracy. — Shog9 ♦ 5 mins ago

This begs the question "if you don't want me looking for old, terrible answers to flag them, why the heck do I have 75 flags available"?

Can I trade 60 of my 75 flags for just 30 more CVs?

user55340

I've got 100x here, could I get 50 close votes for them?

user41796

@durron597 That's a "The SO mods are drowning in regular day-to-day crap, don't add to the overload" type answer

gnat

7:23 PM

@GlenH7 probably sounds bit too weak. But still, worth trying

user41796

The key phrase that I read in there was "too many flags in a very short period of time ..."

user41796

@gnat I went bold with it. Have a look.

durron597

@GlenH7 Custom flags are one thing. These were NAA / VLQ flag which can be handled by the community.

gnat

@GlenH7 "you've written readable and easily maintainable tag wiki" :)

enderland

@durron597 insert complaint about wanting to be able to kick those flags into a 1-day "wait for community to handle" mod complaint :P

user41796

7:25 PM

@gnat Thanks! :-)

enderland

That may be part of the problem, on a site like SO they can't just "hide for a day" and so either they validate a flag the community should handle or they decline it

gnat

-13

Q: Serial flag decliner

Looking back at one of my previous questions here at meta I feel like I was hit by serial flag decliner (someone who makes a large number of questionable declines of flags in a row): Was it a mistake to flag these answers? Wonder if this kind of issue can happen on Stack Overflow? update ...

discussion flags declined-flags

durron597

proposal: any question which gets 4 recommend delete AND 2 looks ok should go to mod queue; every other question should never even reach the mod queue.

user41796

The more and more I learn of SO, or perhaps the trinity, the less and less I think there's any real resemblance between how the big sites operate and everything else in SE operates.

durron597

@GlenH7 Well, maybe the trinity + AU.

enderland

7:33 PM

@GlenH7 that's probably my biggest "UX" complaint against SE, all the mechanics are designed to work on the bigger sites where things are objective, volumes are crazy, and the community is a huge collective and not individuals really mattering

gnat

@enderland that was based on ancient belief that every site eventually grows the size of SO. They officially dropped that idea only recently. I guess it happened when someone discovered that the rest of the network started getting more views then SO. For a views-oriented enterprise this sends quite a strong signal to open their eyes at last

user41796

We just picked up about 1.25" of rain but the ground was fairly dry. Trying to decide if I should have practice or not. Looks to be clear skies for the rest of the afternoon.

user41796

@gnat When did SO (finally) get surpassed by the rest of SE?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I was born 7 minutes from Stanford. I've lived Silicon Valley. I've seen what it does to people.

gnat

@GlenH7 I don't know, I only read comment about this at MSE few days ago

user41796

7:46 PM

It potentially represents a radical shift in perspective. What would be interesting to see is expected growth rates (read: increase in eyeballs) of various sites.

enderland

How many views does SO get a month?

user55340

Api calls!

user55340

api.stackexchange.com/docs/info

user55340

api.stackexchange.com/docs/sites

gnat

@enderland I wouldn't be surprised if they see trouble ahead. Garbage questions at "two ends of spectrum" - h/w dumps repelling answerers and "entertaining" code golf garbage polluting hot list. Obsolete and duplicate answers that are untouchable because, just as it always was before, "London is a valid answer to question What time is it now?" This makes SO less attractive for visitors

user20683

7:56 PM

Our education efforts are working. I've seen people comment on stuff correctly as "Should be on Programmers but it's too old to migrate here"

enderland

@WorldEngineer to be fair, the area needing education is "not SO content, try programmers" perspective :(

durron597

@gnat Are you following this?

Sure; just keep in mind that 70 flags in an hour is a lot different from 70 flags in a day. One is manageable if reasonably accurate; the other screams "2 pac in da house" — Shog9 ♦ 1 min ago

user20683

@durron597 In other news, Shog is old.

user20683

Someone born when Tupac died can legally vote.

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