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1:45 AM
for fucks sake this is the least helpful site to programmers trying to ask questions it takes longer to figure out how to word a question without pissing people off for formating. Just let me ask a question — Programmerdave 36 secs ago
 
 
6 hours later…
7:28 AM
When I have complex JUnit constructions with large @Before and @Autowired things, I often write a small unit test that does really nothing. If even that test fails, I know there is a problem with my JUnit constructions. Are other people doing this? Is there a name for that "technique"? Is there a by-convention method name for it? (I used to call these methods "placebo()" but I discovered placebo is also the name of a unit tests library so it might be confusing.
 
8:11 AM
Good morning
I have a question regarding an answer I wrote here. This morning I have edited it to add some reference links to it for furhter informations and I have included a link to a Pluralsight course. What I'm asking is by adding such links I hope that I won't be considered as a spammer -since I have really no connection to that site which contains courses one have to pay for to access the content.
I have -compared to everyday users- fairly good "moderating" past on SO, but just trying to get used to SE site rules
 
 
3 hours later…
11:20 AM
We are a company developing among other things a somewhat complex Word add-in (500KLOC).

We started one year ago to create and collect crash dumps but we lack the knowledge to fully understand them (we can handle standard .net crashes but sometimes the call stacks get complicated).

Can you point us to companies or individuals focused on this kind of postmortem analysis (or a place where we can locate them)?
 
 
1 hour later…
12:30 PM
@kayess I don't see a problem with that answer at all. In fact, we encourage adding links to support an answer. The important things to keep in mind are that an answer should stand alone (people shouldn't have to visit links or pay for things behind a paywall in order to get an answer to their question) and that if you do have a relationship with the target of the link it should be disclosed.
 
12:42 PM
@ThomasOwens Alright thanks for your acknowledgement. Shall I edit it and make it clear that course link is behind a paywall? And of course I don't work at Pluralsight :) Just mentioned as a very good source for learning in subject matter
 
@kayess I don't think that's necessary, but it may be nice.
To add that it's behind a paywall, I mean.
 
@ThomasOwens Edited Please see if you think it's acceptable.
And thanks you for your assistance and time :)
 
I think that's fine. Thanks for taking the time to ask.
 
It's a recurring problem at SO, that's why I'm asked here to make it clear
Also wondering about how to identify the fine line about how far shall I go with question OP... how many edits are fine responding to questions asked in comment.
in SO Close Vote Reviewers on Stack Overflow Chat, 36 mins ago, by NathanOliver
Just to add my two cents I'll typically answer a follow up to the solution if it is not a completely different answer. After that though I tell them it is time to ask another question and link back to this one as reference to where they started.
Though we have been discussing it at socvr.SO chat and this looks fairly acceptable to me
 
 
2 hours later…
3:02 PM
Hanging out with the cool kids.
 
3:18 PM
all the kool cids
 
@jrh RE Verb(noun) vs. noun.Verb() – There is no real need for a syntactical distinction, e.g. Julia allows the former syntax, but it also uses multi-methods, which is a bit unusual. The whole verb vs noun distinction is only useful for OOP as a design approach, not for OOP as a concept or implementation technique.
The dot-notation becomes immediately obvious when you implement vtable-based OOP yourself in C. A vtable is a struct of function pointers. To call a method, you access the function pointer in the vtable struct, then also pass the object as invocant/this-parameter.
I've implemented an example here. Of course that uses a lot of dereferencing access "->" instead of normal struct access ".", but that's just C for you. In C++, object pointers are rarely used – objects usually are either references which allow method calls with ".", or are values that do not support polymorphic calls since their exact type is known at compile time.
 
@amon I about pinged you when jrh was asking that yesterday as it felt like the exact thing which would peak your interest ;-)
 
Some later languages use "->" for method calls (Perl, PHP); most prefer dot notation (Java, C#, nearly everything else). Exceptions (well, actually they predate C++) are Smalltalk which uses juxtaposition ("object method", "object method: arg", "object everything: is named: arg"). And Objective-C, which uses the circumfix operator [] as in [object method], but is otherwise Smalltalk-like
@jrh Unless you use polymorphism (and most code doesn't use polymorphism), OOP as used by most programmers is 100% a namespace management technique. Method calls are effectively a macro that substitutes a.b(...) with typeof(a)_b(a, ...)
@enderland Yes, please ping me for programming language stuff. I tend to read the transcript, and I tend to be asleep when such interesting discussions happen in another timezone, but such notifications are always appreciated.
 
3:53 PM
oh man. some documentation really makes me lol:
> Note: We initially used Java’s SCREAMING_CAPS style for constants. We changed because:
SCREAMING_CAPS looks bad for many cases, particularly enum values for things like CSS colors.
**Constants are often changed to final non-const variables, which would necessitate a name change.**
The values property automatically defined on an enum type is const and lowercase.
 
Whoa, I just got a mega accept. :D
 
@AaronHall ?
 
The code review question. I was like the only answerer who actually answered the question.
But other "answers" were getting more upvotes than mine.
I did not expect the questioner to actually accept my answer, though.
 
I wrote an answer this morning I'm 99% sure the OP won't accept
This isn't really a good fit for a Q/A format, but perhaps Software Engineering Chat would be a better way to find answers. It's more of a discussion than strict question/answer type of post. — enderland 1 min ago
look at that software engineering chat. so shiny
> This question was voluntarily removed by its author.
hrm
 
4:12 PM
shiny chat...
yay, got a guru badge from it too! :D
 
4:26 PM
Hey, maybe I could turn that into a talk?
 
what question?
I'm giving a talk this weekend!
 
4:40 PM
@enderland what talk where?
 
4:55 PM
Hey, don't leave me hangin! :)
 
5:38 PM
@AaronHall I'm giving a talk about CI at a local dev conference
 
5:58 PM
Really? That's so cool, please get it recorded - I wanna see!
@enderland do they usually record talks? If not, please arrange yourself, if you can.
 
6:19 PM
I should check, I'm not sure
would be really useful for me too
 
6:37 PM
Usually they ask you give your assent to be recorded up front. That may mean they don't record it. What's the name of the conference?
 
6:51 PM
it sounds like they don't
 
What's the name of the conference? Getting it recorded can help you get speaking engagements at better conferences too.
 
7:08 PM
Ugh, I just wrote down the names of like 50 attack patterns from my security training course (which of course has some kind of bitmapped text...)
 
does this resolve for anyone else?
5
A: Are API-changes expected in beta releases?

Paul KTo cite from Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything may change at any time. The public API should not be considered stable. Hence, if you talking of a beta as the 0.x.x version then yes. Anyway, considering section 8 Major version X (X....

... wat. my DNS must be down
 
Don't trust me, I can't get to half the web at work.
Training or docs frequently cite blocked material.
Sometimes I can report it, most of the time I just get a 'The proxy server isn’t responding" message, and that's all.
 
7:56 PM
Dammit. Was gonna close/delete a question, but got sniped by @ThomasOwens
 
@Oded Welcome to my world. :P
 
:P
 
8:15 PM
@Oded Here at Software Engineering, we call that "getting Oded'd."
21
Q: When is a software licensing question on topic?

durron597I would like to ask a question about software licensing. The help center says: If you have a question about... ... software licensing and it is not about... ... legal advice or aid It seems like there is a lot of overlap between those two categories. In what situations is my software lic...

Does this guidance need updating?
 
It needs discussion first.
I should make a Meta post.
I'll do that in just a few minutes.
 
8:31 PM
@RobertHarvey rolls off the tongue
 
Sometimes I feel like I don't value my time enough.
 
I certainly don't. Currently listening to the next Stack Overflow podcast, as it is being recorded.
 
Say hi to Spolsky for me?
 
0
Q: Should we continue to accept software licensing questions?

Thomas OwensOur current guidance regarding software licensing can be found here. The current guidance says that a general rule of thumb is that questions answerable by experts in software development are on-topic, while questions that need the expertise of a lawyer are off-topic. As we practice the craft of...

 
9:00 PM
2
Q: Should we continue to accept software licensing questions?

Thomas OwensOur current guidance regarding software licensing can be found here. The current guidance says that a general rule of thumb is that questions answerable by experts in software development are on-topic, while questions that need the expertise of a lawyer are off-topic. As we practice the craft of...

 
I answered too - community wiki style. :P
To be fair, it should be edited to make the best case for the position.
So if I left anything compelling out, please contribute to it.
 
9:22 PM
@AaronHall The only thing missing is what part of the SDLC licensing falls under.
Can you elaborate on it? Please use the SDLC definition on Wikipedia we link to in the Help Center since that's what we normalized on and there are too many SDLC definition
Also my train is crowded. The one before had a broken car.
 
jrh
10:23 PM
@amon thanks for the replies, I wasn't expecting a follow up so this was a neat surprise. I've worked with VTables a bit and even tried doing COM in plain C, so the class organization strategy is pretty clear. I like your answer there, (+1) I don't know why that question didn't come up in the searches I did.
I thought the way you compared messages in smalltalk to messages to a web sever was particularly interesting. I think that makes a lot of sense and coincidentally I think in the back of my mind I sort of felt like that was what OOP was intended to do, though I didn't really come to a good answer. I kind of just agonized back and forth about whether "Fox Mulder" programming was a good thing to do, and whether I was silly for not even trusting "my own" code.
I never came to a consistent conclusion but I sort of formed something in the middle
Also Smalltalk is really interesting but utterly unlike anything I've used before, and there's a bit of a learning curve it seems.
 

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