The Whiteboard

ok, I'm sure the others here who've been through job changes a few times know this better, but I believe that's usually either a polite way of saying "a better job" or (ideally) it's a reference to some specific career goal (such as gaining experience in a certain subfield or leading a team or whatever) which you believe cannot be met in your current position or direct promotions from it

SpringLearner

12:51 AM

thanks for explaining

does better career opporunity also includes the impression of better salary hike?

Ixrec

that is one of the things it might mean

SpringLearner

can I say the reason for job change as " better career opprunity,proffessional and personal growth"?

Ixrec

typos aside, those are standard phrases people would use for this sort of thing

SpringLearner

thanks

Telastyn

1:13 AM

yes, in general, "it is a better opportunity" implies that you're changing jobs because it's a better position to grow your career - either because you're getting more responsibility, or because you'll learn new/more things there. It... has a different implication than "I'm going to get more money". It's "I'm going to get more money because I'm doing more difficult work" or "I'll eventually get more money once I get the promotion there I can't get here"

SpringLearner

@Telastyn thanks for the response

can I say these words?

better career opprunity,proffessional and personal growth

I want to change job for better career opprunity,proffessional and personal growth

user55340

Thats not an unreasonable way to state it. The key question though is "do you mean it?" Receiving words on an application would have trouble when the HR person calls up and asks "what is the professional and personal growth you are looking for? Why do you believe that the company you are applying for is a better career opportunity?"

SpringLearner

for this part Why do you believe that the company you are applying for is a better career opportunity?

I am thinking to say that I have searched about your company in internet and I have found that every body speaks well about your company

people say the enviroment is good,

you will learn a lot

etc

Robert Harvey

2:03 AM

I've stopped putting objectives on my resume. The objective is the job I'm applying for. If they need to know more than that, they can ask me.

If they ask you in an interview, just say why you're applying for the job. Most people who are applying for a job know why they are applying for a job, and the company wouldn't have pulled you into an interview unless you were a good candidate for the position, so just be straight with them.

@MichaelT Can I talk to you for a moment about build systems?

So I've worked here for a couple of months now and it's becoming painfully clear that the process by which we deploy things is not going to scale. We're just two developers right now, and we're already spending a significant percentage of our time on build and deployment issues.

There are about a dozen C# projects in maybe a half-dozen solutions. The dependencies between the solutions are managed using Nuget packages, so when we build, we have to deploy Nugets to a Nuget gallery so that the other projects can see them and upgrade to the new Nugets.

Which would be fine if I never had to troubleshoot build problems. The last time I troubleshot a build problem it took me two hours to find it. Right now I'm troubleshooting a version dependency problem on our test server where one of the assemblies is looking for an old version of a dependent assembly.

It makes me wonder: if we're spending this kind of time on build and deploy problems with just the two of us, what's going to happen when we get to six developers? And this isn't even a very large application. I'm guessing the whole thing is, maybe, 250K SLOC.

So I'm thinking maybe a CI system. But sheesh. For two developers?

user55340

2:24 AM

@RobertHarvey If it was a employment thing, I'd do it for one developer too.

user55340

The value add comes when you can say "this is how we build code" - it isn't something that is local to one machine, it is a build process on a build machine that isn't messed up when a dev installs a different library locally.

user55340

It allows you to say "this is the build today, freeze it" and then continue on. When you have the build a week from now break when its deployed, you can go back to the build machine and grab the previous build.

user55340

It allows you to collect metrics from static analysis to make sure that you are improving code, or be aware that you are not improving code and adding to the technical debt.

user55340

It is much easier to put in the build and the process when you have only two developers. That way when you hire a new one, its already part of how its done. The challenge comes when you try doing "six devs building locally to six devs doing CI"

Telastyn

We have a similarly sized codebase and are considering tossing nuget in favor of One Big Solution

Robert Harvey

2:49 AM

@Telastyn I'd like to hear more about that. I finally managed to get this thing to run by rebuilding a solution with 9 C# projects, and copying every file that has a date time stamp of now to the three folders that might be involved in execution on the test server, and my version problem finally went away.

So I'm going home. I'll see you guys tomorrow morning, and will check into The Whiteboard about a half hour from now.

@MichaelT OK. The big boss already sees value in a build system (he's thinking something along the lines of Cruise Control), so I'll see if I can get this bumped up as a priority.

afk

Telastyn

Yeah, pester me tomorrow about it.

Duga

6:26 AM

try programmers.stackexchange.com — neomega 10 secs ago

Duga

7:53 AM

Then ask in Programmers, or just grab Rcpp and use its various packages for outlier — Martheen 18 secs ago

Duga

9:49 AM

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it should be migrated to programmers.stackexchange.com — Alex 49 secs ago

Duga

12:24 PM

@Alex, what makes you think it's a better fit for that forum? Programmers isn't a dumping ground for questions that 'don't fit' on Stack Overflow. — Mark Seemann 19 secs ago

@Alex This question would likely be closed on programmers as "Opinion Based" or "Too Broad". — Ethan Bierlein 39 secs ago

Jimmy Hoffa

Happy Coffee Day

user55340

1:11 PM

Whee. Repcap.

Duga

I think your question relates more to programmers.stackexchange.com — Artiom 41 secs ago

enderland

@SpringLearner what country are you from, too? This might be specific depending on which country you live in

durron597

1:33 PM

So I show up this morning to see my model has already made 3x our largest day ever in one trade.

Thomas Owens

@durron597 Can I have some?

durron597

@ThomasOwens Sorry, I'm swimming in my vault right now

Thomas Owens

@durron597 Also, this nice fellow from Nigeria emailed me asking for some help. Can I point him to you?

durron597

@ThomasOwens Only if he has terrible spelling.

Thomas Owens

@durron597 Sure thing.

enderland

1:39 PM

I hope you guys have some sort of profit share :P

durron597

@enderland Trust me, I wouldn't work here if we didn't. That said, right now we're reinvesting our profits into being able to trade bigger size.

enderland

Haha :)

Thomas Owens

@enderland I've begun to think that profit sharing may not be the best benefit. Especially as an engineer.

When companies pay out their profits to employees or shareholders, how do they get money to invest in improvements? How do they buy better technology and tools, invest in R&D, or offer other benefits?

enderland

I think it depends, we have a bonus program which is "profit sharing" but we're big enough that it pretty much doesn't feel meaningful - I could save us $1,000,000 a year and that affects me nearly not at all

@ThomasOwens You can do both, depending on size, a company like the one @durron597 works for is small enough that you can't do both as easily but by reinvesting in yourself you end up with (in theory) higher wages eventually

user55340

Profit sharing / stock (options) is a way to get the employee invested in the financial wellbeing of the company.

Thomas Owens

1:45 PM

@enderland Instead of paying out to everyone, I'd rather the company contribute more to things that employees need to take advantage of by asking for and getting approved (a larger training budget for conferences or seminars) or R&D projects.

Telastyn

"Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results" - I've seen too many companies just take profits and gamble them again and again until they lose big. I'll take my profit sharing now, thank you.

Ixrec

obligatory mention of gambler's ruin

durron597

@ThomasOwens Can't you do both?

enderland

@ThomasOwens but see, I don't really care as much about the long term R/D - my company R/D has like a 5-10 year payoff period (if that) and I'd rather take a 10% or 20% (or heck, give me more! :P) bonus if they gave me the option

Thomas Owens

@durron597 Maybe.

durron597

1:47 PM

let's say you make $1,000,000 net. Invest $500,000 in growth, $500,000 in profit sharing.

Thomas Owens

@enderland What kind of profit sharing do you have? Ours is, if fully funded, maybe 75% of a paycheck.

durron597

(for example).

Thomas Owens

At least based on the past 2 or 3 years. It's work the same as roughly 40 hours of work.

user55340

Profit sharing encouraged the employee to do things like "if we do XYZ, the company will save 2h/week on managers printing out a form to fill in which will reduce costs and more profit = more money for me.

Ixrec

where I work is so huge there's basically no correlation between the overall financial well-being and my personal performance, though our bonuses are based partially on "company performance" so they're trying at least

I try hard because I find the product interesting and improving it satisfying

user55340

1:48 PM

There are some who have purely financial motivations.

Thomas Owens

@Ixrec Yeah. Our bonuses are tied to company performance and local business unit performance. They each contribute about half.

Ixrec

that sounds about the same as mine

note that the lack of correlation is partially because this product remains unreleased after years of development

Thomas Owens

But still, if you pay, let's say $2000 to one site - 300 people, let's say, that's $600,000. Most training programs have a longer term payoff and cost the company less than $2000, plus they aren't taken advantage of by everyone.

user55340

Because training isn't as inspiring to people as money is.

Thomas Owens

If you took that across all sites, you have a few million dollars more for R&D. That's one or two projects for a year, depending on how far you went. Easily two prototyping projects. Building a new prototype is pretty inspiring, I think, especially since it involves engineering and supply chain to make and then BD to go and sell.

Ixrec

1:51 PM

it's also really hard to justify the assertion that this particular piece of training will have any long term benefit

there's certainly loads of training courses I could take that would be totally useless

Thomas Owens

@Ixrec How so? Here training that isn't a degree program (those are managed separately by corporate) requires management approval and must be career-objective related.

@enderland I'd have to do the math to find out what percentage of my annual salary half of one paycheck is. 6%, maybe?

Ixrec

maybe I'm saying that because in my position I have zero control over what technologies we're using, and most of what we use is stuff developed internally by the teams who do have that control

so the only stuff that is definitely worth learning is the internally developed stuff

Duga

This question would probably be better suited for programmers.SE — Laurent S. 14 secs ago

enderland

@MichaelT yeah. see we're big enough that I can't really impact anything that affects my compensation, so it makes it way less beneficial to do those sorts of things. I'll do things that impact me - and if I can't increase compensation that way, it'll be through doing projects which are more beneficial to me professionally

Ixrec

I still read and watch random stuff online out of curiosity but most of it won't be directly applicable probably ever (except of course C++11 and ES6, we'll get those eventually)

Thomas Owens

1:54 PM

@Ixrec Who says it has to be technology? Why not go off to a conference on your domain to see what other companies are doing?

Or what academia is developing that you can bring back. Plus, networking for yourself personally.

user55340

@enderland but you are a team... You all work together to improve yadda yadda yadda...

enderland

I think the biggest thing is thinking long-term vs short-term on company "benefits" - I'd rather them prioritize short term for me, since I know that my company would lay me off in a heartbeat rather than run at a loss long term. So it'd advantageous to get my "benefits" every year than over say 5 years

user55340

Academic and public sectors tend not to have stock or profits.

Ixrec

@ThomasOwens that just strikes me as a huge amount of time and money on something I may or may not learn anything at all from (useful or otherwise), and I'd get the same out of it by watching the videos online afterward

somehow I never got bit by the "tech conferences are amazing" bug

Telastyn

research says people aren't particularly inspired by money after a point.

Thomas Owens

1:56 PM

To me, I think the problem is the amount of profit sharing. Having me work my ass off all year, meeting and beating crazy deadlines that I have to fight over because everyone wants everything yesterday, for half a paycheck? Not worth it.

enderland

@ThomasOwens right, because it's not compelling to you (or me, for that matter, in my situation)

Thomas Owens

If you gave me an extra paycheck or two, maybe. I honestly get more in OT per year than hitting maximum payout on bonus.

enderland

but if I could see tangible benefit, like, "if I decrease expenses by $1000 I will receive a $500 bonus" I'd be a lot more inclined towards doing that sort of work

Ixrec

@Telastyn yep, and my impression is that people in our job are usually at or above that point from the get-go

Thomas Owens

Plus, I'm generally not inspired by money anyway. I could be making more not in the defense/aerospace industry. But I like the challenges. And there's not too many places that want people who do process improvement yet aren't managers.

enderland

2:00 PM

regarding why we don't really like working for more money - mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/22/…

Telastyn

at my last job, my bonus range was 25% of salary

enderland

@ThomasOwens I think I agree with you, that stuff like training (or work/life balance, our company recently started calling it "work/life management" instead lol) is better than an extra thousand bucks, but where I disagree is that I'd rather a company "invest in itself" than paying me more

Thomas Owens

@enderland I'd always like a bigger paycheck. Now that I think about it, I think the problem is the relationship between the objectives that trigger the money (all high level business objectives, not my day-to-day job) and the amount of money (less than a paycheck for a year's worth of effort).

enderland

Yeah. I feel the same way about trying to work hard and get promotions/raises/etc

If it's an extra 5 hours a week for a 4% raise than 2%, is it really worth it? I mean, if you make $100k/year that's still only $2k/year... and you're working an extra 250 hours for it... so what, $8/hr?

Ixrec

it is very hard to come up with financial incentives that map to genuine performance

and as Telastyn said money stops mattering after a certain point anyway

enderland

2:06 PM

I frequent an early retirement forum, and someone in Denmark was sort of complaining about their high taxes, but then offhandedly said that they get 5 weeks vacation + 5 days "personal time" and a maximum workweek of 37 hours... and I think most of us would be more than happy with that, even if it was less salary ;)

durron597

If profit sharing amounted to a $2000 bonus per year, sure, maybe reinvest it.

What if profit sharing was more like double your base salary.

Most companies don't run at high enough margin for that to be realistic.

enderland

@durron597 Well, many probably do, depending on the ratio of labor to expenses

Ixrec

and that would start to cause all the usual problems with absurd banker-tier bonuses, of encouraging short-term-only profitability and gaming metrics and all that junk

durron597

I bet king software (the makers of Candy Crush) make enough money to give really sizable profit sharing to their employees.

enderland

@Ixrec well, the flip side of this is companies laying off employees to keep short-term only profitability high

Ixrec

2:15 PM

it can happen to anyone

user55340

@durron597 employer^^ had significant profit sharing as a golden handcuff and allowing pay under the exempt employee limit so they could require overtime.

Ixrec

especially "fictional people" like corporations

user55340

If you were there long enough, bonuses + profit sharing > 50% yearly paycheck.

durron597

@MichaelT Doesn't help much if your yearly paycheck is low.

Ixrec

my base salary is definitely past the point where bonuses are my primary motivation

I'm just glad the program I work on is one I find interesting

enderland

2:18 PM

Nearly any additional money I earn will just go straight to savings/investments...

durron597

@enderland I want to buy a small sailboat.

Like a sunfish or a razor.

enderland

We're saving right now for a house downpayment, which is where any additional money is going basically

Ampt

2:36 PM

happy coffee day!

user55340

@durron597 as to low paycheck- one should take into account cost of living. I was able to buy a nice two bedroom house on a double lot with a large fenced lawn and mature trees for 60k. Try to find anywhere where you can buy a house on one year's income.

durron597

@MichaelT Not here, that's for sure.

enderland

@MichaelT every time we're up in WI we look at property prices and wish we could have that here :)

user55340

Making six digits in the Bay Area and you would still be looking at 10+ years for a house.

enderland

whereas six figures in much of the midwest could easily pay a place off in 10 years entirely...

user55340

2:50 PM

Six figures and ten years should get you a mansion in some parts of the Midwest.

enderland

I just visited some friends with a 2BR only like 5 acres, a huge shed and a 2car garage I think they got for less than $200k

Duga

@MatíasFidemraizer Are you saying this question is more relevant on programmers.SE? — overexchange 19 secs ago

user55340

@Duga sigh

user41796

@ThomasOwens It ends up being a balancing act. Company I'm with currently is employee owned and has two separate programs for profit sharing (annual bonus, tiered bonuses based upon food chain, as well as a retirement program contribution). They're also trying to significantly grow the company along with adopting new technologies... So the profits get doled out proportionately based upon the budget / plan that was setup.

Robert Harvey

Is it just me, or is this the very embodiment of pattern abuse over-engineering?

user41796

3:03 PM

One thing I like is that it helps frame cultural values - people watch expenses because they feel like it's their money

user114359

We don't troubleshoot code here, sorry. No, we don't know where else you can ask. — Robert Harvey 7 mins ago

durron597

Just had CEO's Dad's (company founder) birthday. He's 94.

His mind is still 100% there, comes into work every day.

Ixrec

@RobertHarvey you mean that flowchart isn't a joke?

user41796

@RobertHarvey Single elevator? Perhaps. Several banks of elevators for a skyscraper? Perhaps not.

Thomas Owens

@RobertHarvey I don't understand the "Tag" stuff.

But the rest, not really. Especially like what @GlenH7 says for a bank of elevators or several banks of elevators that need to stay in sync.

user41796

3:06 PM

I used to work in the tallest building in my city. No, nothing like Dubai's tower or what Chicago or NYC have. But it had 3 separate banks of elevators spread out across the various floors. I started thinking about it, and the controller software must have been non-trivial in order to minimize wait times and anticipate building traffic flow.

durron597

Does anyone here have their companies do cake and birthday stuff at 10 AM

Actually, looking at the clock, we must have done it at 9:30.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 I've met people who make elevator software. It's non trivial.

user41796

@ThomasOwens The tags are event information coming in from the SCADA system

durron597

Who eats cake at 9:30 AM??

user114359

@GlenH7 My building has three banks of eight elevators each.

Ixrec

3:07 PM

@GlenH7 what kinds of events do elevators have?

durron597

Elevator - Obligatory

user41796

door open, door closed. in motion

Ixrec

I assume you don't need an event handling framework to deal with "button pressed" and "arrived at floor"

Thomas Owens

@Ixrec Floor N Pressed, Door Open, Door Closed, Arrived at Floor N, Departed Floor N, Call Pressed, Call Responded, Call Done...

Robert Harvey

You do need to handle an event, though. It's a UI.

user41796

3:08 PM

I wonder if the advanced controllers can guess at the weight of the passengers being carried

Thomas Owens

Not to mention the emergency triggers. The fire override and EMT override.

Robert Harvey

Well, the question being asked is actually an interesting one: "The problem seems to come from the fact that each observer class must have a different interface signature"

Thomas Owens

@RobertHarvey I don't understand the need for that...

user41796

@RobertHarvey Yeah, I don't know I'd go that route. I like the way C# / WPF / Silverlight / winforms even(?) handle events. Here's an object, here's some args. Go do something with it.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 In Java, it's one of the few instances where I don't have a problem accepting Object and type checking.

That way, I can hand everything off to everyone and let them decide. I don't need to know specifics of the accepting observer or the thing I'm giving it. The observer needs to know what thing(s) it needs to do its job, though.

And that's OK to me.

user41796

3:15 PM

It makes declaring them much easier and there's a bit of semantic information conveyed by having a conventional form for the method signature.

Ixrec

that Matias guy from the last Duga comment is getting really weird over on SO

Thomas Owens

@Ixrec Link?

To the weirdness, I mean.

Ixrec

stackoverflow.com/questions/32314017/…, the whole comment chain basically

user41796

Even overexchange knew / said it shouldn't go to CR

Ixrec

yeah, I found that kind of funny

user41796

3:20 PM

And I think overexchange has been getting better at picking where his questions ought to go.

Ixrec

yeah, I think it's on-topic there, it just wasn't terribly clear what he was asking

Jimmy Hoffa

I rather enjoy coffeescript... creating my own whole client web framework be fun

user55340

@GlenH7 rate limiting may be getting into action (or the "recently closed" warning)

user41796

That could very well be too

user55340

The most recent attempt at a question here programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/294501/… - look at revision 1

Ixrec

3:27 PM

wow, closed as unclear without even a single comment

that takes some serious skill

user41796

@MichaelT Oh, I missed that...

user55340

Or people aren't commenting so they can't get pinged and dragged into what we all know will be endless comments.

user114359

^^^ this. And what do you say and still "be nice"? Sorry, your question is incoherent rubbish?

user55340

Every person on that close list has had that happen.

Ixrec

I would assume every person who has ever voted with a custom close reason has had that happen

Jimmy Hoffa

3:30 PM

@Snowman as I said the other day, people on P.SE aren't "rude" as is so often said, rather they just avoid being nice often because it simply takes too much time. If they had to be nice on every moderation activity they did, they'd moderate less

Ixrec

everyone has a different definition of "rude" anyway

imo close voting with no comments whatsoever is not rude at all, as long as the close reason at least partially describes what it wrong with the question

enderland

There needs to be a threshold of people to respond well to that sort of teaching or people give up

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm sure folk get a touch impolite at times as well, but it's neither from malice or intent usually. The aggressive moderation which keeps this site so high quality bleeds over for everyone a bit I'm sure to having a somewhat aggressive demeanor towards low quality content. People self-police to keep it from bubbling into the community at large, but mistakes happen, people get frustrated on their 12th nonsense-CV of the day, and forget to catch themselves before expressing their frustration.

Most everyone here I've seen double check themselves fairly often asking around "Hey, was this too much?" or letting eachother know when someone went a touch far etc. You all know you've been there.

user114359

I would also hope that if a mod sees a "rude/abusive" flag for a veteran user they would handle it a little differently than a newer user, especially if such flag is rare or it is the first.

Jimmy Hoffa

It stinks that sometimes people get the impression those are actually effects of malevolent intent distilled from echo-chamber effect

user55340

3:37 PM

There is also the pressure release of chat.

user114359

Not because regular/high rep users should be held to different standards, but because we are more active in curating the crap from the site

user114359

The dead teamster is right, it gets really tiring some days dealing with the crap content.

enderland

I don't think I'd mind if more than like 5% of terribad question posters were serious and willing to try to fix them, either, but it sure feels like... none of them do

user55340

Speedy delete votes are so therapeutic.

Ixrec

yeah, whether I leave a comment or not is largely based on whether the question "feels" lazy or not

Jimmy Hoffa

3:39 PM

urgh... one cuppa no is do... must find way to more...

user41796

@Snowman There's more precedent for the moderators to weigh those comments against. That gives them more context to make their decisions from.

Ixrec

if there's a chance the guy is legitimately trying to ask a real question, I attempt to explain what's wrong, and from his first response it's usually pretty clear whether he can be reasoned with or not

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 s/decisions/derisions/f because their job is after all to wear us down

shakes fist at enderland

user114359

@Ixrec If the asker clearly used his brain when writing the question, I am much more likely to use mine when responding in a comment. Otherwise, vote and move on.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa At least you were smart enough to not shake your fist at me. :-)

user55340

3:54 PM

@JimmyHoffa us italic non-blue need to stick together.

Ixrec

but you're both italic

user55340

But we're not blue.

Ixrec

nvm, thought you said non-italic

durron597

@MichaelT reporting for duty sir

user114359

what does italic mean?

Ixrec

3:56 PM

room owner was it?

durron597

@Ixrec Yes

Ixrec

uh-op, a wild opinionated list question has appeared

user55340

And getting my delete vote therapy in.

durron597

CLIMAX is good, but SEXCLIMAX is even better.

I want to buy an Acura PizzaJazz

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 let's be clear. Fhqwhgads would be a great mitsubishi, what's up fwqwhgads?

durron597

4:05 PM

@JimmyHoffa I think Homestar Runner drives a Mitsubishi Fhqwhgads

Strong Bad Email - 009 - fhqwhgads

►

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 you didn't notice the reference in my comment I see :P

Thomas Owens

Hey guys. Read this:

89

Q: Warlords of Documentation: A Proposed Expansion of Stack Overflow

It’s been 7 years and 10,000,000+ Questions since Stack Overflow was launched. The amount of good that has been done for the field - all the developers helped, all the man-hours saved, all the beginners who grew into professionals - is hard to overstate. I cannot express how proud I am of what ...

Then this:

4

A: Warlords of Documentation: A Proposed Expansion of Stack Overflow

I generally agree with Stign. There is already documentation out there for many things - some of it good, some of it bad. I think that his points need to be addressed for this to make sense. What worries me the most is that this is a very SO-centric feature. I don't generally have a problem with...

durron597

These all seem like really good problems to have. In that any problem that arises due to having too much good documentation is, in some sense, worth having. — Shog9 ♦ 21 mins ago

@ThomasOwens I just registered for the beta.

Thomas Owens

Also, @RobertHarvey, how do you feel about being support for {insert your favorite company here} now?

enderland

171

Q: Why we're not customer support for [your favorite company]

Why can't I ask customer service-related questions here, like: How do I get my Facebook developer account confirmation code? Will Apple approve my app, and under what conditions? Where can I download the developer kit? Can I ask questions about using their API? How is that different? Return...

discussion faq outsourcing

Thomas Owens

4:20 PM

@enderland status-declined because.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens tag wiki's don't sell product; a software documentation engine would be a novel product they could sell along side their sales of custom company SO sites

I'm not certain I even understand the product, I get the sense that there's an endless stream of attempts at recapitalizing on SE's success when it's just not something that can/will happen. It was part fluke part enormous need part timing, it just happened and that's great but... Nothing else that's offshot from it has meant much of anything. That Discourse thing (where did that ever go?), this documentation thing (what are they even intending? They just want a wiki with a forum I think...)

It's like if Wikipedia tried to recapitalize on their enormous success with ... an e-mail service? Wikipedia and SE filled a huge need at the right time, but lightning only strikes lightning rods, so they need to stop holding up sticks of spaghetti and shouting "I AM ZEUS!!"

ratchet freak

but wikipedia is struggling for cash though

(if the frequent banners are an indication)

user114359

@ThomasOwens I agree with you partially. I think axing tag wikis entirely but keeping the excerpt would be a good first step. Tags exist to categorize question. Shoehorning other functions into them doesn't work, as we have seen. Who actually reads them?

enderland

I nearly never read them, at all

Jimmy Hoffa

@ratchetfreak well they never monetized, doesn't change the fact that it was an enormously successful idea

ratchet freak

4:28 PM

is there something that logs visits to tag wikis?

user114359

Maybe Stack Exchange should take SRP to heart: be a Q&A site, don't burden itself with extra functions

user114359

@JimmyHoffa: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/295028/…

Thomas Owens

@Snowman Want to know how to get people to read tag wikis? Get people to create and maintain them. Want to know how to get people to create and maintain them? Have a list of tags without tag wikis and provide better attribution to people who contribute to them so they can show off to others. Then, once they have content, make them searchable in the search feature of the site.

user55340

This doc idea will really boil down to how muck Skeet, Lippert and the like want to write free docs rather than book$.

user55340

Given the writing quality of 90% of SO, I have doubts as to if it will be intelligible.

user114359

4:30 PM

I am on the fence about signing up for the private beta. I think it is a bad idea given the current state of SO, but it could be good.

user55340

"U use the pointer to get teh thing. Do u still have doubt? i can help."

user114359

@MichaelT while I am patient with non-native English speakers, the misuse of "doubt" always annoys me. I feel like I should go door-to-door to all the schools that teach English to foreigners and yell at the teachers.

Jimmy Hoffa

why don't you store them as a Float if you need Float ? Float is an instance of Num, you can definitely make any functions you use that do + have a Num type restriction, and they'll take in a Float and return a Float... — Jimmy Hoffa 39 secs ago

@MichaelT Wikipedia shows crowd-sourced literature is more than possible, I just don't really think they'll get what they want. Wiki's exist already...

user55340

I'm not trying to make fun of them, but technical writing is a completely different skill set than programming.

enderland

@MichaelT I'm intrigued though, because I think that the skills that are good for technical writing are different than those for SO (which is all about FGITW)

user55340

4:35 PM

@JimmyHoffa and it's done by a wider gamut of writers than stack overflow has.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT you need to fix this into 5-7-5 and I'll vote it Haiku of the day.

Ampt

@Snowman or needful - "Please do the needful by EOD."

user55340

@JimmyHoffa didn't you see my yoda speak comment on academia?

Jimmy Hoffa

> u use the pointer
> to get teh things done. have doubt?
> i can help at you.

user55340

@Moriarty In grad school I was, roommates had we. Hmm. Problems some had. Hard was sharing. Nightmare roommates some had. Again and again. Nightmare roommates they were! Strong is the projection of blame in them. Yes. Hmm. — MichaelT Jun 8 at 21:01

Jimmy Hoffa

4:40 PM

> I got it working
> in IE 11 yay
> plz no IE 8

user55340

@ThomasOwens re: jon on tags and lack of anchors... And docs without anchors are going to be useful?

durron597

U use the pointer
To get the thing. U have doubt?
i can help you out

@JimmyHoffa ^^^

user55340

No anchors in that gets painful.

durron597

@MichaelT Anchors are key.

user55340

4:47 PM

... To tag wikis too.

Jimmy Hoffa

I do know of a reasonable way to do what you're asking, I just doubt you really need to do it. It's not really a good idea to be doing because it's not going to be compile time guaranteed, conversions generally aren't which is why they're notoriously absent from Haskell as a whole. It's generally better to figure out how to make the type information available to the compiler so conversion isn't necessary vs. just forcing the conversion at runtime when you don't have a guarantee that the instance will be convertible. — Jimmy Hoffa 30 secs ago

Duga

Might be more on-topic for programmers.SE? — Andras Deak 27 secs ago

Ixrec

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/140776/… should this get a historical lock due to the high view count and decent answers or be deleted because it's such an abysmally lazy and overbroad question? (I can't decide, but two people have delete voted already)

Thomas Owens

5:02 PM

I wish I could see where views are coming from.

user55340

@ThomasOwens disappointed Google.

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Probably. But it would be good to know if it was a link on some other site or random Google searches.

I'm going to historical lock to be safe, though.

Ixrec

thanks

Jimmy Hoffa

> 29% from US
> 14% from Canada
> 57% from Hell

Ixrec

@JimmyHoffa do 57% of comp sci majors really study abroad in Hell?

that seems expensive

durron597

5:07 PM

@Ixrec It's cheap to get into hell.

Are you asking about the return trip?

Ixrec

I was referring to total costs, yes

one more delete vote

Jimmy Hoffa

...I think I officially want to be a Node.JS dev D: the horror. I really do enjoy JS/CoffeeScript a great deal. It makes so many good designs clear and concise to implement with clean and organized code and syntax...

I use a lot of the same techniques and designs I do in C#, they just typically take like half as much code in JavaScript/CoffeeScript

Ixrec

gasp someone other than me admitted Javascript might not be pure evil!

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec I've been on the controversial side of that argument for ages now...

but this is the first time I've decided; as I'm opening up Visual Studio to start on the serverside of my web app since I do the client side entirely client-side rendering like a desktop application, I'm wishing I could just stay in Atom and start coding the server side in Node...

durron597

@JimmyHoffa as I've started to get more used to Java lambdas, I agree they don't really give much on code brevity in many cases.

user114359

5:21 PM

@durron597 Nothing about Java is concise.

durron597

@Snowman I just got my first Scala accepted answer on SO

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 blech.. it's funny how people are finally realizing something smells funny in Java, and so they're going to the next smelliest language around... You want away from Java, go to Clojure. Really I'd suggest Frege but the industry isn't there like it is for Clojure. Plus Clojure is a lot more natural for most people (all they need to do is realize they're writing JavaScript with (foo) instead of function(){return foo;}

durron597

@JimmyHoffa I don't want away from Java, I like Java.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 that's ok, you'll get over that in time

durron597

Clojure is also a good language though

Ixrec

5:27 PM

I'd still like to work on a codebase in a truly functional language like Clojure or Haskell someday

I'm not sure if there's a situation where I'd go out of my way to advocate for it though

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec as would I, which is why I like JavaScript so much

Ixrec

exactly

Telastyn

I might advocate for Haskell if I was a contractor.

What? Can't find anyone to maintain this thing? Well, I guess I can do it for my usual rate.

Ixrec

the only serious problem with our current Javascript codebase is that too little of it is testable, since fundamentally it's all about complex UI manipulations

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec state machines/data processing. Working on something that needs to parse a bunch of data? Those projects should be steered in that direction.

Ixrec

5:29 PM

and atm I'm not sure if going functional would magically make anything more testable

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec that's why I like Knockout, it's fallen out of favor but I don't care. I write HTML templates and all the code just meddles with view models which have been bound to the display

Ixrec

@JimmyHoffa yep, I'd absolutely design it with lots of pure functional methods; what I meant was I'm not sure if I'd ever advocate a functional language where that was mandatory everywhere

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec I know; I'm saying for that I would. I've already tried in one job to advocate for F# on a large legacy-data-processing piece of code we had that needed to integrate with some old ass fixed-message systems

(and was shot down, c'est la vie)

Ixrec

if I ever get proper experience with such a language on a real codebase then maybe I would

I know somebody inside our company is using Haskell for something, maybe I should go track down where that is

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec head first is always the way to go with tech... it's really the only way IME.

Ixrec

5:32 PM

@JimmyHoffa what do you mean by "head first"?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec instead of wading in after you've had "proper experience", sometimes you just have to go for it; sink or swim.

you'll never get experience "on a real codebase" unless you just..jump in.

Ixrec

oh right, yeah I don't mean it in that sense, if there was an opportunity in my company to work on something in that language I would seriously consider it

I no longer have any desire to do serious coding outside of work so not gonna happen any other way

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec if you particularly like JavaScript, you should definitely have a go at CoffeeScript. It's just like a cleaner simpler syntax for JavaScript that makes it more pleasing to look at and write. I know people gripe that it's got to compile down, but the JS it generates is extremely clear.. pragprog.com/magazines/2011-05/a-coffeescript-intervention

Ixrec

@JimmyHoffa there's actually some effort within our company to support TypeScript in our internal JS frameworks

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec yuck. TypeScript is just JavaScript standardized to C# semantics. CoffeeScript just puts a simpler clearer more concise syntax on JavaScript rather than trying to decry it's semantics as un-OO (It's not an OO language so of course it's un-OO! I hate hearing people gripe about this..)

Ixrec

5:38 PM

I have no idea what you're referring to now, maybe I need to read more about these *Scripts

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec just look at CoffeeScript's site to see a quick run-down of what the syntax changes are. Basically just removed cruft like function and var (it makes all assignments automatically var unless you use @ to assign to this). Simple stuff like that.

Ixrec

oddly enough after skimming more of your link I'm feeling like Coffeescript is the one with an identity crisis (no I'm not prepared to defend this in great detail)

Jimmy Hoffa

> I was writing code more quickly and with fewer bugs, because everything was so much clearer.

^-- Everytime I start working in CoffeeScript I feel that way after a few days

Ixrec

some of these changes I like and some I don't

Jimmy Hoffa

Largely it's lauded as an awful language across the majority of JavaScript folk

Ixrec

5:43 PM

I'll probably stick to the TypeScript movement since that's a strict superset and it adds what I actually want (type notations)

the conciseness features I want like arrow lambdas are all coming in ES6 anyway

@JimmyHoffa "lauded as awful"? and which one are you referring to?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec most things I've read/heard about coffeescript claim it as being a bad idea

Ixrec

any specific reasons they like to cite? I see stuff I'm knee-jerking against but obviously I have no experience with it

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec stuff like white space scoping - that's a huge one people have troubles with because it's so ingrained in folks that curly braces = coding. Largely semicolons are seen as a good thing you should have throughout your JavaScript even when I go the exact opposite - it's just visual noise. I use semicolons if I'm putting two lines of code on one line, which is very rare.

people gripe because it doesn't add features so it's not worth their time to learn etc

user114359

Forget CoffeeScript, I would like to see either of you use GolfScript in a production environment.

Jimmy Hoffa

which is ironic, because by not adding anything - it makes it ridiculously easy to learn

Ixrec

5:48 PM

@JimmyHoffa I'm neutral on the issue of whether a language should have meaningful whitespace like Python or stick to being C-like, but I do think it's not a great idea to completely reverse the convention of the underlying language

it merely becomes an obstacle to incrementally migrating, a strong reason to never have a codebase that is partially JS and partially CS, since that guarantees inconsistent style

which is why I like the fact that TS is a strict superset

whatsisname

sup

Ixrec

hey

I feel similarly about the part where you don't always need a return keyword to return values. Ruby's great, I like that there are languages which do that, but I don't want my JS to require returns in half the files and not in the other half; we get enough bugs caused by that when the language is being consistent

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec I never use return when writing CoffeeScript, I like that my function has a clear terminal and that's the value going out, if it doesn't then I restructure my function so it does have such an end point.

Hop overe here and paste some JavaScript file you know relatively well into here: js2.coffee and read the CoffeeScript just to see how it reads comparably. I find it just much less noisy largely.

Ixrec

I'd be happy to consider it for a brand new project, my objections are mostly that incremental migration would be a bad experience

the changes I'm seeing remind me a lot of Ruby, but I have no experience in that language either so no strong opinion on this versus JS on new projects

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec that's actually a common gripe too: It is closely related to Ruby I believe and so people assign guilt by association (I know too little of Ruby to care or claim anything of it. @MichaelT hates it, that I know)

Ixrec

5:56 PM

people hate Ruby?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec absolutely. It's a programming language, everyone hates all of them (except one, which one varies by person)

whatsisname

no matter what something is, it will always have haters

Ixrec

"There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people complain about and those nobody uses." -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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