The Whiteboard

12:08 AM

Was anybody here on their High School Debate team? I need tips :P

11:06 AM

My ONE upvote was worth all of the ridicule I get from the the SE Nazis. Clearly this question is not serious so I simply added my two cents where I could with the "Rep" points I have. — STEJ 7 mins ago

Reductio ad Hitlerum

Reductio ad Hitlerum, also argumentum ad Hitlerum, (Latin for "reduction to" and "argument to" and dog Latin for "Hitler" respectively) is a term coined by conservative philosopher Leo Strauss in 1951. According to Strauss, the Reductio ad Hitlerum is an informal fallacy that consists of trying to refute an opponent's view by comparing it to a view that would be held by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party. According to Strauss, Reductio ad Hitlerum is a form of ad hominem or ad misericordiam, a fallacy of irrelevance, in which a conclusion is suggested based solely on something's or someone's ...

gnat

12:23 PM

@MichaelT found an explanation why cleanup doesn't make much sense for historical locks, it was discussed between Yannis and Mark Trapp ("user8") in an old question at our meta...

This is all well and good, but the purpose of the historical lock is to be a holding area for questions that suck, but can't be deleted for whatever reason (i.e., to frame garbage), not showcase how well we can curate content. If these questions were well-curated, they'd be open. In fact, the only reason those questions aren't locked now is because we had past (now obviated) guidance saying closure should always be favored over locking. — user8 Mar 13 '12 at 19:20

If you're going to delete them instead of lock them, go for it, but forcing people to dress up off-topic questions before you take action (delete or lock) is a waste of everyone's time. Heroic editing should be saved for when there's a good chance a question's actually going to get reopened. — user8 Mar 13 '12 at 19:24

@YannisRizos If a question is going to be edited to be the best it can be, reopen it! The point of locking or deleting is that a question has absolutely no chance of being saved, the difference being that a lock is slightly less disruptive and preserves the history of the question. Revising history on incredibly popular questions by deleting and consolidating answers is exactly the type of thing having the historical lock was supposed to prevent against. — user8 Mar 13 '12 at 20:05

Yannis Rizos

1:24 PM

@Dynamic Don't drink and drive.

(hey, it might not apply to your high school's debate team, but it applied to mine's)

enderland

1:48 PM

@gnat you ebil people here

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Mind looking at my answer on recursive types? Not sure if I explained iso vs equi recursive types clearly

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Just sat down, gotta grab my coffee first..

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Fair enough, Programmers after all are all functions of type Coffee -> Either CatVideos Programs

2

Jimmy Hoffa

2:10 PM

@jozefg I intuitively understand what you're talking about there but the formalism is unfamiliar to me so I can't really speak to that. The only thing I would say is it's informative and on-topic, but not super direct towards the question he's asking which boils down to two things "Why does OCaml require the rec hint when it can obviously deduce a recursive type, so it shouldn't need rec/where to try and deduce an recursive type?" and "OCaml allows recursive types, why doesn't Haskell?"

user55340

@gnat While I understand the reasoning, its not one I completely agree with. There are things where it was "just lock it" without significant cleaning done... or the cleaning was done, but as standards have chanced, more should be cleaned.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg to those two questions you're getting close, but you quickly gloss over the important part: Equi recursive types can be undecidable by the type checker

That answers the first part largely, the OCaml type checker does something completely different in the event of the rec keyword because it knows what it's about to try would put it's normal type-checker pass into an infinite loop, so it's normal type checker just throws immediately on non-recced self-referential types

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa I think it's clearer in the case of Haskell now

Jimmy Hoffa

and then to the second question he's asking, I don't honestly know the answer there but I strongly suspect it has to do with the lazy runtime

@jozefg So explain it to me; I understand the unification error and such but given that OCaml can complete a recursive type with the rec keyword, why can't Haskell also? They're both conceptually the same type system just with different amounts of bells and whistles.

I expect it's either, the lazy runtime would make such types not only stupidly dangerous but totally unnecessary because it can have infinite lists as it is, and the GHC folks just didn't have any interest of implementing a secondary type-checker that can handle rec types

@jozefg good edit, though as I said, the same is true of OCaml's type checker (it's just a fact of the HM type system which they both follow), the difference being OCaml has a secondary type checker you can enter by hinting with rec that follows different rules

gnat

@MichaelT well that's an interesting issue to ponder on. I don't feel that the quoted reasoning is 100% waterproof, but I somehow learned to live with it. It helps that h/l goes via moderator review, which makes me believe they would do some cleanup if deemed really necessary. Per my recollection, in some questions I flagged for h/l, moderators who locked sometimes did some sort of lightweight tidying

user55340

2:19 PM

@gnat It depends on when it was locked. Might be interesting to look at the distribution of "when locked" to "distribution of scores"

user55340

A mod locking today may go through and nuke all of the "meh" answers (today's standards) before a hl. A mod locking back at the great switch would just lock it (and not cleanup (to try to avoid additional angst?)).

gnat

@MichaelT Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised to find out some locked posts in a really strong need to clean up something (hard to cover everything in older monster questions with 30... 40... 50 and more answers). However I know that if I find something, there is an "officially approved" way to take care of it - post on meta,

6

A: Can't flag historically locked questions

I have removed the education from the two questions in question. As Sha Wiz Dow Ward pointed out, posting here is the correct thing to do.

user55340

@gnat I'm just going to wait for @GlenH7 to get his diamond so I can bug him about it in chat.

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa I think it's cause type synonyms in Haskell are dumb.. the only useful equirecursive types are type synonyms, eg type t2 = t2 -> t1 -> t0

I'm trying to find a technical difference that makes it impossible but it looks like in Haskell it's just not worth the effort

Jimmy Hoffa

2:46 PM

@jozefg Yeah, that's what I figure. I wouldn't be surprised if the runtime makes it particularly hard but I know the runtime makes it particularly pointless heh

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Updated everything.. yeah I'm fairly sure the killer is that implementing this in Haskell changes the semantics of a type synonym from barely above raw text substitution

Jimmy Hoffa

2:59 PM

@jozefg Yeah that's better, more direct to what the questioner was asking. All good info though, more formalism on recursive types than I knew previously so that's always fun to learn..

I should really read the techniques book

(along with the SICP, the algorithm design manual, the rest of TAOCP...)

jozefg

Haha taocp.. I've read volumes 1 and 2 and then I realized I wanted to know what a friend was :$

I was an interesting 7th grader

@MichaelT At this rate we'll need about 7 more type systems questions for close votes

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Haha yeah, that sounds familiar.. though I've failed miserably to put much of a dent in volume 1. Good lord is it dry.

user55340

@jozefg I've noticed that... and I keep looking forward to seeing them.

jozefg

@MichaelT Type systems are fun! They combine the clarity of math with the excitement of compiler errors

user55340

3:26 PM

@Sparticus you still got +50 rep so far on the answer from 'collateral votes'.

Sparticus

3:41 PM

Yeah, but the mention on Ars Technica > 50 rep imho

I was kind of hoping to be able to say that one of my answers about Agile development was featured on an Ars Technica article in my interviews

Thomas Owens

One of my answers was Ars'd...is that noteworthy enough for my SO Careers profile?

gnat

@JimmyHoffa dry (way too dry) is just what I felt about vol 1 and 2. However, vol 3 is a different beast (at least to me), quite a smooth reading

Sparticus

@ThomasOwens I'm going for my first real job so anything is noteworthy for me haha

but I think Ars is a reputable site that carries merit in the tech world

Thomas Owens

Woah. I've been Ars'd twice.

More people need to ask process/methodology questions so I can get that number even higher.

Sparticus

see, now you've been featured on Ars Technica multiple times for your outstanding contributions to the software industry

No ones gonna call me out for the amount of BS I just threw on the screen?

user55340

3:47 PM

@ThomasOwens Quite possibly.

user55340

@Sparticus It takes practice to write the right thing.

user55340

Not so much 'just the right thing (content)' but also practice in writing for the right audience.

user55340

(I'd show you examples from Everything2 of my starting writing quality to what I was writing after a bit more work... but honestly, I'm a bit embarrassed over the early quality)

user55340

Ok... @Sparticus here's one for you from my early writing - everything2.com/title/… Compare to something 'twards the end of my activity there, everything2.com/title/Wow%2521+signal?author_id=744222#m_turner

user55340

I'm still tempted to get a t-shirt that says "6EQUJ5 - WOW!"

user55340

3:57 PM

Sparticus

4:22 PM

that was an interesting read

its like the bloop, but cooler

cuz space

user55340

The thing is, it took a while to learn how to write for that site... it wasn't something that came naturally.

Sparticus

4:35 PM

I don't feel that my answer is bad though

20 votes and chosen answer

if anything I feel that my answer is more complete than the 3 he chose, but he usually does 3 answers so he went with 3 partials to round out the question

in which case I feel that maybe I should start doing more incomplete answers on high volume questions to increase my chances of being on ars technica

maple_shaft

4

Q: Advice on designing web application with a 40+ year lifetime

Scenario Currently, I am apart of a health care project whose main requirement is to capture data with unknown attributes using user generated forms by health care providers. The second requirement is that data integrity is key and that the application will be used for 40+ years. We are currentl...

1

Q: How to resolve issues with offshore resources that control the product?

I took a position as a Junior programmer on a programming project 6 months ago. However, I do have 10+ years of experience, but I needed a job fast. The project I joined has been ongoing for the past 4 years. However, the client tells me that since I joined, things have actually gotten done. The...

software-industry

This guys employers sound like a bunch of "winners"

People with delusions of grandeur and self importance yet little or no ability to spot quality, intelligence, or technical skill in anybody they depend on

Sparticus

man, that senior engineer sounds awesome

> No use of frameworks

think he makes his own wheels and spins his own clothing?

maple_shaft

@Sparticus I think what amazes me is that the guy is a "junior"?

user2708395

@maple_shaft Hey thanks for chat, any advice on this Health Care design?

maple_shaft

@user2708395 Hey

user2708395

4:50 PM

Essentially its a Research system used to capture health data and report on it monthly.

maple_shaft

so, are you actually a junior developer?

or do you have 10 yrs experience?

user2708395

I have 10 years experience, but I needed a job fast. Wife is pregnant and is leaving work.

Sparticus

Junior, at least so far as I'm aware, is usually 1-3 years of experience

(maybe 1-5)

maple_shaft

@user2708395 Your employer sounds greedy and stupid

user2708395

So I took this job.. yeah, my friend just started a start up and she said she would've paid me 20k more than I get as a Junior

Sparticus

4:52 PM

@user2708395 mind if I ask where you're at in the world?

user2708395

@maple_shaft Problem is my client has a "little" tech knowledge, but not enough.

@maple_shaft Canada. :) Not working on Obama care. However, our offshore is in South America somewhere

user55340

(with health care, knowing the general country is quite helpful to be somewhat aware of the various implications in information storage and requirements...

user2708395

@maple_shaft What have you designed? Any advice on where to start?

Sparticus

Canadia eh? I was more curious from a social perspective

maple_shaft

@user2708395 They first try to offshore everything for money... then when that doesn't work they find a guy in an unfortunate situation and pay him a criminally small amount of money for a VERY LARGE effort

user55340

4:54 PM

I recall one person from India asking about setting up something so one could have a friend come with you, and pay for you at the clinic and such that would run afoul of hippa)

maple_shaft

Where I work we are working on a similar project...

but we have a team of about 60 some people working in various different technical areas

user2708395

I didn't mention that my client has dreams that this app will be world-wide... :P

Sparticus

@maple_shaft that's what I was thinking as well all they see are dollar signs. I figured this was india (no offence @user2708395)

maple_shaft

@user2708395 Then I don't know what to tell you...

Sparticus

Are you having trouble finding engineering work with 10 yrs/ experience?

maple_shaft

4:55 PM

Your client is an IDIOT

user2708395

damn... I guess you're right it is visions of grandeur.

I guess I'll wait out the year and look for something better.

Sparticus

whats the penalty on the contract?

user2708395

I guess one angry wife. :) hahaha

Sparticus

this sounds like something out of a horror film

user55340

@Sparticus You need to go work for my previous employer...

Sparticus

4:57 PM

I guess I'm just very lucky graduating when I am

I've got my choice of employers as opposed to the other way around. If it smells fishy I just move on

@user2708395 I hope you find something that works out for you man!

maple_shaft

@user2708395 I think the answers sum it up best, you should have a focus on the database and work your way from there

user2708395

I guess I don't have trouble finding work, but I only had a week to find a job that didn't have crunch time with the baby's arrival.

user55340

If you were ~3-5 years older... back when it was hard to get any job in the area.

maple_shaft

Write HL7 listeners that accept data feeds from the various EHR systems and have them publish to your transactional database

user55340

@user2708395 extrawork environment pressures are always awkward.

user2708395

4:59 PM

Yeah I have to write HL7 listeners in Feb. They want to wire that up.

maple_shaft

Have a seperate report mart database that is denormalized star schema

write an ETL process that will regularly publish data to your reporting database

Tools like Informatica can help with that

user55340

Previous employer, one guy was on his way out (he was the scapegoat for a big mess-up), he stuck around for another 3 months until after baby was born to avoid switching health insurance or being uncovered when the baby was born.

maple_shaft

@user2708395 On second thought... your employer is too cheap for Informatica, you might have to write a bunch of stored procs to do ETL

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart!

maple_shaft

Then reports are a breeze... any tool will work, Cognos, SSRS, etc...

user2708395

5:01 PM

@maple_shaft I've had bad luck with projects. Several years ago I worked for a financial institution and we built an app to manage transactions but the client demanded that the system be built with Star Schema because he had heard about Star Schema. It was a nightmare - 2-years of crunch time.

maple_shaft

@user2708395 The client dictated an architectural decision for you because he "heard about it"?

The purpose of star schema is to minimize table joins so large amounts of data can be quickly queried on for reports

user2708395

@maple_shaft I've had a string of bad PM's in my last 3 projects. This project had an amazing PM but he left after 4 months and accepted directorship at some Engineering firm. The PM's I've worked don't really manage the client's well.

maple_shaft

it is madness to use this for a transactional system

user2708395

@maple_shaft I know... it was a nightmare of a project.. 1.5 million dollars plus down the drain.

maple_shaft

@user2708395 Being a PM is tough when your client sucks

you know that if you dont deliver on their demands they will replace you

user55340

5:05 PM

@maple_shaft (I recall your laments earlier... you're doing a good job of proving them unfounded - this is a good thing)

user2708395

@maple_shaft two years later when it was a failure, I told the client that Star Schema wasn't the way to go.. He had this look on his face that was priceless.

Then I handed my resignation to the PM.

maple_shaft

wow

@user2708395 Your from Canada right?

user2708395

yeah

I couldn't stop smiling that day. It was awesome.

maple_shaft

A guy I worked with was from Ontario, he came to work in the states because he said that being a developer in Canada is a terrible existence

he couldn't even afford a 2 bedroom home because of how outrageous real estate is out there

user2708395

@maple_shaft I use to work at EA.. That was a sweatshop. Oh yeah... real estate is insane. I envy the states whenever I watch home buyers shows.

maple_shaft

5:08 PM

@user2708395 I envy you guys when you can just go to the hospital and not have to worry about going into bankruptcy

user2708395

@maple_shaft oh yeah, I think I'm happier with health care than real estate.. Medical care is key.

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft I'm trying to hold off on filing as long as possible, because the first filing is just the one where I get rid of the previous debt, but it only continues accruing until somebody comes out with a cure and there will just be another filing 10 years down from the first one... Hooray for Healthcare!

user2708395

ouch!

maple_shaft

@user2708395 I just built a 4 bedroom 2300 sq ft house on a .5 acre lot

that would be about $900k in Canada

I paid less than 1/3 of that overall

Its weird that as much room as you guys have in that country that you pay so much for so little space

user2708395

My house is 1500 sq ft and cost $400k... last year.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:12 PM

@maple_shaft Congrats man. Getting out into the burbs or something? Seems to be A) the only place you can build your own and B) where everyone who can, prefers to go out there

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa I am about a 50 minute drive from downtown

im practically farm country

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft eesh... North?

maple_shaft

north east towards New Ken

user2708395

Your Internet service down there is amazing as well. We pay $65/month with an 80GB cap.

Jimmy Hoffa

Cool, lots of nice area out there.

maple_shaft

5:14 PM

@user2708395 O_o 80GB cap?

cheese and crackers...

Might as well just communicate through carrier pigeons

user2708395

@maple_shaft yeah... It's pretty crap. Down/Up is 12MB/1MB

maple_shaft

@user2708395 Well... I g2 get some work done

good luck to you

you have a pretty tall order to fill

user2708395

Thanks for advice.. Will definitely help

maple_shaft

And no matter what happens...

don't feel bad if things just dont work out... what they are asking you to do is what other health care orgs have teams of personnel working for years to accomplish

it is NOT an easy or trivial set of tasks and there are a lot of moving parts

user2708395

@maple_shaft Thanks! Only 7 months left. :)

maple_shaft

5:18 PM

Stick with what you know, document along the way, follow good practices and hope that you can find something else in 7 months... good luck

oh and ping me in chat if you have a specific question

later

user2708395

later

Thanks again

Sparticus

5:31 PM

Alright, I think that wraps up this monday for official programming chat. Next we move on to beers. Up first is Snake Venom a beer in name only. Coming in at a mind boggling 67.5% alcohol, you'd be best to take shots instead of chugging this bad boy.

user55340

o_O

Sparticus

That was my thought too. I'm quite sure they had to distill it at some point. Theres no yeast that I know of that would tolerate >30% Alcohol

Most yeast can't survive past 10%

user55340

Its kind of badly written...

user55340

by concocting one that’s 67.5 per cent proof.

user55340

67.5% is not 67.5 proof.

Sparticus

5:36 PM

I think the proof is a typo

other sources also claim 67% alcohol

ibtimes.com/…

huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/…

user55340

brewmeister.co.uk/snake-venom/4580369643

user55340

Go to the source if you're going to get the data...

Sparticus

I've never heard of brewmeister so I'm not sure about their reputability

huffington post and International Business times I know though

user55340

It appears to be a one product only company... thats their beer.

user55340

Thats the company that makes it.

Sparticus

5:39 PM

yes

and I've never heard of them

I guess I just don't trust everything that a company says about it's product anymore

user55340

Certainly not, but mislabeling alcohol is a slightly big deal.

Sparticus

not on a website its not

on the bottle, yes

I haven't seen any of the bottle labeling up close though

user55340

That it was percent not proof was the question... and that would be a bit of a slight misstatement.

user55340

Anyways... I keep waiting for Menards to start stocking Christmas stuff... they typically start with the candy on the 31st... and I put on a santa hat and give out candy canes to trick or treaters. Confuses them.

user55340

(by 'start' I mean "finish out the halloween stuff and go 100% christmas")

user55340

5:46 PM

The store here has had trees up since mid August.

Sparticus

I hope they aren't live trees...

user55340

Nope, the fake ones that are indoors.

user55340

beeradvocate.com/community/threads/…

user55340

> Locking this one down. It's not beer. It's distilled.

user55340

(from the mod / founder at Beer Advocate) - its the 'freeze it to distill it' approach.

Sparticus

5:52 PM

Ah, thats what I thought

jozefg

Wow, I've officially forgotten all my vim keys

Sparticus

that or they genetically modified yeast to survive in high alcohol situations...

user55340

@jozefg vim-adventures.com

Sparticus

@MichaelT oh boy. book marked for class later

user55340

@Sparticus This appears to be a... low tech company. Not quite up to GM yeast... and Europe doesn't like GM stuff in general.

Sparticus

5:55 PM

I've actually discussed this at length with a few of my BioMolecular engineering colleagues. They aren't sure it's completely possible

jozefg

@MichaelT Or just C^f, C^p C^n and C^j (I remapped this to be C-b).. Emacs is a drug

Sparticus

basically something about being able to not only survive, but thrive in your own excrement is something hard to overcome

Morons

@user2708395 you here?

user55340

@Sparticus There's a good board game about that...

Sparticus

@MichaelT Is it called life?

enderland

5:56 PM

meta.stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/19269

best suggested edit ever

Sparticus

looks like an audit lol

user55340

@Sparticus Primordial Soup is the english version of it - boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124/primordial-soup

user55340

Primordial Soup (board game)

Primordial Soup is a board game designed by Doris Matthäus & Frank Nestel and published by Z-Man Games. It was first published in 1997 in Germany by Doris & Frank under the name Ursuppe and this original version won 2nd prize in the 1998 Deutscher Spiele Preis. Theme Each player guides a species of primitive amoeba drifting through the primordial soup. The player controls whether and how his amoebas move, eat and procreate using the 10 biological points which he receives each turn. A player may evolve his species by buying gene cards, which give the amoebas abilities such as faster mov...

Jimmy Hoffa

Primordial soup

"Primordial soup" is a term introduced by the Soviet biologist Alexander Oparin. In 1924, he proposed the theory of the origin of life on Earth through the transformation, during the gradual chemical evolution of molecules that contain carbon in the primordial soup. Biochemist Robert Shapiro has summarized the "primordial soup" theory of Oparin and Haldane in its "mature form" as follows: # The early Earth had a chemically reducing atmosphere. # This atmosphere, exposed to energy in various forms, produced simple organic compounds ("monomers"). # These compounds accumulated in a "soup", ...

Sparticus

if I want to "compile" a set of python modules into a single, versioned, library, is there a way to do that?

Jimmy Hoffa

6:02 PM

@Sparticus xcopy class1.py+class2.py+class3.py compiled.py

(you think I'm kidding but I'm not. arcane dos command knowledge ftw)

Sparticus

dos? what am I, Bill Gates?

user55340

The basics of the game is that you get pushed around by the environment (unless you mutate not to), and have to eat one block of the other colors (so if you are green, you eat 1 red, 1 blue, 1 yellow) and then excrete two blocks of your color. If you take two damage (either attacks, or starvation) you die, in which case there's 2 blocks of each color from your remains.

user55340

You mutate to do things like be able to move against the environment, or attack, or defend, or be able to substitute other colors...

user55340

Its a really good game.

Sparticus

@MichaelT that sounds really cool actually!

user55340

6:04 PM

Trying to see if I can find the windows version of it I remember playing years ago.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I recall a game many (this was ~94?) years ago where you were this alien creature that mutated based on what other alien creatures it killed. Called like evolve or something...

user55340

doris-frank.de/UrsuppeWin.html

Jimmy Hoffa

it was a third-person game and surprisingly good

Jimmy Hoffa

6:18 PM

Evolva

Evolva is a third-person action game, released in 2000. The player leads a team of 4 "GenoHunters" exploring a planet; each of the GenoHunters can develop new abilities by incorporating and altering the DNA they've absorbed from the creatures they have killed. The GenoHunters will change their physical appearance (change colors, develop spikes or horns) based on the DNA they've used to mutate themselves. Your Genohunters can punch, jump, super jump, breathe fire, vomit flammable liquids, shoot explosives, scramble enemies brains and spawn small alien offspring that injure enemies. The...

Just saying. That game was awesome.

Morons

I recommend waronterrortheboardgame.com Like RISK, but with terrorists options

Jimmy Hoffa

amazon.com/Evolva-PC/dp/B00004KHB5

$3

And probably still fun

Morons

amazon.com/Terrorbull-Games-War-on-Terror/dp/B004GHYT0U/…

Stack Exchange

Blog - Stack Exchange: Podcast #53 – Let’s Go Rio

Alex Miller on October 28, 2013

Welcome to Stack Exchange Podcast #53 with special guest Gabe Koscky, our new Brazilian community manager, and usual suspects Jay Hanlon, Joel Spolsky, and David Fullerton. Today’s show is brought to you by the National Security Administration!

Site Milestones: We launched Astronomy, which is not the same thing as the Space Exploration site we’d previously launched. You can ask questions about gravity (the force) on Astronomy. You cannot ask questions about Gravity (the movie). Astronomy and Physics have a lot of overlap, and that’s okay! Also, you can’t say Count Dooku in Portuguese. This is an adult-only podcast. …

user55340

Ohh, workplace on the collider...

user55340

6:24 PM

7

Q: What do I have to consider when working with muslim colleagues?

We have a new colleague in our team and she's muslim. Technically she's my subordinate, so I want to avoid as many pitfalls as possible. What are things one needs to know in this context? Prayer-related details, food/drink choices we should/shouldn't offer, even behaviour related things? Please...

professionalism employees

Sparticus

Pretty sure that this approach applies to just about anyone and not just religions

worried about offending someone? Talk to them

there are vegans, Christians, and soccer moms and theres always going to be something that they find morally offensive

Jimmy Hoffa

@Sparticus I found one thing worth noting in there that wasn't relatively obvious: Don't even try shaking their hands. Good point you don't think about.

Sparticus

While I had no clue about that, I hope they wouldn't be too offended by me trying anyway

all they have to do at that point is say "No thank you" and we can move on

It's just called being a decent human being

enderland

@MichaelT that question suckzors

user55340

@enderland Welcome to the collider...

Sparticus

6:31 PM

that is a hands down terrible question

Jimmy Hoffa

@Sparticus What's a hands-up terrible question? "How do I get the money from you, this is a stick up?"

enderland

1

Q: I want to close my question, why can't I do that?

I've come to realize that StackExchange is not the right place for my question and I want to close it (I have voted close already). I don't want to delete it though, because I think the responses and reactions to my question are valuable nonetheless. Thing is, I can't find an option to actively ...

support

Sparticus

At least he realises the errors in the question

@JimmyHoffa if a question asks you to "Raise the roof" you qualify for the hands-up terrible question certificate

user55340

(Tangent - hindi rather than muslim...) I one time worked with two Indians, one from India on Visa, one born in Berkley (incidentally, the Berkley one was the traditionalist...). The contrast was enlightening for the various cultural and religious influences.

user55340

@enderland 250 is the rep for close vote on own questions - workplace.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/view-close-votes

Sparticus

6:34 PM

It's almost as if humans are individual people with their own thoughts and opinions on their multifaceted beliefs and morals. Ha JK, they're all suckers who will buy my app

enderland

@MichaelT yeah he voted to close it but didn't get it closedsince just 1 vote

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Previous job I was at had a ton of hindi, I was surprised to learn they maintained the sense of caste in the office. One of the better engineers was a lower caste back in india and was extremely meek and avoided speaking out when one of them who was terrible but was apparently of the higher caste back in india would boss him about.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa this is how their culture works even without the caste system. much more seniority based and respect for authority

user55340

The traditionalist wouldn't touch the french fries that sat under a piece of chicken. The guy from India (not traditionalist - liked steak, shot pool with an irish team to name two items)... his brother tried arranging a marriage for him. He told his brother to not try again "unless she had blond hair and blue eyes".

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland Was annoying because the guy who acted hot-to-trot because we found out he was of the high caste out there was a bloody terrible engineer and wouldn't listen to anyone. Pain in everyone's ass.

user55340

6:37 PM

(He was moderately afraid that if he told his brother that he was dating an african american woman at the time, he'd get disowned).

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT shit my wife's cousin was disowned for that and he's Mexican. In the world at large, it's a lot less foreign to not maintain marriage segregation than the other way around

Sparticus

@JimmyHoffa That's where you cross the line from respecting your religion into being a not so great human being.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Sparticus Iduno anything about that, whether that was social or religious that those "caste"s came from or whatever.

Sparticus

Tomato Tomato.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa The skin color is a unofficial, but rather important indication in many cultures - pale is "better". Thus a white american would be seen as a unorthodox, but step up. A black american however...

Sparticus

6:40 PM

That doesn't work ell on the internet

user55340

@gnat btw, fun read on random numbers and bad shuffles - cigital.com/papers/download/developer_gambling.php

user55340

Free spam flags!

user55340

-3

A: find second smallest element in Fibonacci Heap

Just want to say your article is astounding. The clarity in your post is simply spectacular IT managed services Indianapolis

gnat

2 days ago, by Stack Exchange

Ars Technica » Stack Exchange: How can you make sprint planning fun?

posted on October 26, 2013 by Stack Exchange

When meetings drag on for hours, developers check out.

-1

A: How to make sprint planning fun

So far, this page seems to contain ways to make sprint planning less painful but not exactly fun. There’s no mention of alcohol, candy, cigars, dancing girls/guys, desserts, magic tricks, kitten videos, party hats, noisemakers, amusement rides, clowns, hallucinogens, etc. I have some suggestions...

my favorite pattern is from MetaFilter, which is: When we start seeing effects of scale, we shut off the new user page. "Someone mentions us in the press and how great we are? Bye!" That's a way of raising the bar, that's creating a threshold of participation. And anyone who bookmarks that page and says "You know, I really want to be in there; maybe I'll go back later," that's the kind of user MeFi wants to have... (Clay Shirky, A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy) — gnat Oct 24 at 15:11

enderland

@gnat it doesn't take me hours to check out

I'm jealous of those who can make it that long

user55340

6:52 PM

@enderland Its called "5 hour energy"

user55340

@gnat Deleted by owner 35 seconds ago.

gnat

@MichaelT yeah. This time, it was not typical for hit-and-run crap throwers brought from outside

user55340

The other trick is to learn how to play various simple pen and paper games.

user55340

@gnat That one had no other visible accounts on the site... I suspect it was someone who created a new account just for that post.

enderland

@MichaelT last week I had some 16 meetings in 4 days

or more, I forget

brain = fried

user55340

6:57 PM

The 'Grab a pencil section' from A Gamut of Games are very good.

user55340

A Gamut of Games

A Gamut of Games, written by Sid Sackson and first published in 1969, contains rules for a large number of paper and pencil, card, and board games. Many of the games in the book had never before been published. It is considered by many to be an essential text for anyone interested in abstract strategy games, and a number of the rules were later expanded into full-fledged published board games. Some of the games which were later sold separately include Focus, Property and Origins of World War I; Robert Abbott expanded his game Crossings, published here, into the more-refined title Epamin...

user55340

The idea is 'tic tac toe' is overdone, but you want a game in a similar vein - easy to do on paper.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT This is my chat-reply Y combinator. Way better than my bookmark Y combinator.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I lied, I'm not here.

user55340

You're gonna make someone's head explode.

Sparticus

7:07 PM

Schrödinger's chat anyone?

user55340

The spam is dead. Long live the ~~spam~~ flag!

enderland

8:16 PM

@MichaelT I should just schedule a meeting to talk about it!

user55340

8:48 PM

@enderland On a piece of paper, draw a square with two adjacent sides one color, and the other two sides the other. Each player will use a color. In your turn, a player draws a line that starts in one side of the square, do a right angle, and end in another side of the square.

user55340

The first player start by doing this without further inplications, then the second player must cross one line already in the square, then next play must cross two lines, three lines, four lines and finally five lines, after that the game end with the original square divided in various sections. Each sections is won by the player that was more sides in it. Winner is the player who takes most sections.

user55340

Or "hold that line"

user55340

books.google.com/…

user55340

Here are the rules, copied from A Gamut of Games (pg. 146): "To play, just draw 16 dots in 4 rows of 4. The first player connects as many dots as he wishes in a straight line [which an illustration indicates may run diagonally]. From either end of the first line the second player draws another straight line. From either free end the first player now makes a line. Continue until no further lines can be drawn. The player who was forced to make the last line is the loser! The completed line must be continuous, with no branches, no crossings, and no dot visited twice." — Barry Cipra Jan 9 '12 at 2:38

enderland

9:02 PM

hahahahhahahahhahaha. nice

user55340

The idea is to have a good game that can be pen and paper.

psr

@MichaelT Wow! My interpreter has 12 tokens and 18 production rules, and not using a parser generator was a real PITA. The goal was that someone like your dear friend who wrote that interpreter could maintain mine. But one of my tokens is "function" and the lexer captures the name. Another token is "SpecialFunction" for special hard-coded function names like "+" or "!" (can't be arbitrary without making me do backtracking). So that alone probably eliminates a good 500 tokens in your case.

user55340

@psr It was just done wrong.

psr

But following the Interpreter pattern does mean lots of code like: If token=A then do stuff, if it's B do the other thing.

I didn't realize how broken yours was from your original description - it sounded like mine. But it really is so not like mine.

user55340

The proper thing to do would have been some reflection to poke at the transaction object from the interpreter -- thats all it really needed.

user55340

9:14 PM

What it likely was is they started out with about 100 messages and conditions... and then it grew by one... and another one... and another one... and eventually they had 900 tokens.

user55340

They didn't have the skill or time to say "screw this, its being done wrong, we need to start over"... and it kept growing.

psr

@MichaelT Wow again. It's strange that one (really large and silly) mistake like that implementation can cause so many problems for so long. Not uncommon, just strange.

user55340

When I got it, it was a total of about 40k lines in the file, I think when you look at SLOC its only about 10k lines.

user55340

But when you do the estimate based on "how long does it take to write the functionality in 10k lines" you've got things like "30 person months" or so.

psr

Unless you just lift it from hackage, where its 37 lines of code.

user55340

9:17 PM

Assuming thats divisibile, is it worth it to let someone spend a year or two hacking away at it? or split off 5 people for half a year? That type of thing... its a "is it worth it" business decision of a rather high order

psr

(The author spent 11 lines deriving rational numbers from set theory, so it's a little verbose).

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr Let's be honest, rational numbers are bullshit.

psr

@MichaelT Yes, and the estimate is very rough, and the benefits hard to quantify.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr Benefit number one: We end up done with it, as opposed to spending one full-time engineer on every release cycle just to fix newly found bugs in it.

user55340

Given that we didn't need the customizability the software had, its still a huge undertaking (to rewrite all the receipts for a register at a large retail company). Not something that can break and something that has high visibility.

user55340

9:21 PM

(gha, just remembering some of the feature requests on the receipts that I had to implement)

user55340

The thing is, if its not fixed or overhauled, it remains a pain in the side if they ever want to update it in a reasonable time. "Lets add this new promotion type that shows up on a receipt as XYZ" is a 1-2 month undertaking for the receipt part rather than a much smaller change.

user55340

You've gotta define the new tag (add it to that monstrosity - see how it grows?), add it to a couple config files, add it to the receipt script (and figure out where it goes there) and then test it every which way because its a mess to do.

Jimmy Hoffa

tap-dances to the tune of "I hate state machines, and imperative parsing, I hate OO patterns, and comment barfing"

user55340

No unit testing on the thing (how do you unit test something with a cyclomatic complexity of 1k?)... and so the test becomes "test every single receipt type and promo combination and add up all the numbers to find out if they're right... and compare that to the previous run to see if its an existing bug"

psr

@JimmyHoffa Documenting stuff like like that is the first step towards getting it approved. And, frankly, sometimes the answer is that suffering with it is the best choice. It sounds like this would probably be worth it, but a close call. Probably worth letting someone take a prototype pass at it to get a handle on the estimate.

user55340

9:25 PM

(there's a bug in the receipt that if multiple % off discounts are applied, the 2nd one doesn't show up (the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and so on do show up correctly... but not the 2nd one))

user55340

Not that thats a big bug because its hard to get multiple % off discounts on a single item the way the promo system is done unless you're invoking the employee discount.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr I know, I've been there and done that, with pages of charts and memory dump analysis to show why the overhaul I wanted to do is something the company wanted to do

Sometimes you gotta put a flag on the code's dunce cap before anybody will even notice it's wearing one

user55340

9:38 PM

@enderland TW is just in the collider today...

user55340

8

Q: Is there a business reason for programmers to do training?

Programmers at my company have moaned that they don't get any training. I suggested to management at my company that all programmers sit down with a senior programmer to discuss their training needs. If any training was identified then the programmer would be given a couple of hours of work time ...

training

enderland

we always get the programmer questinos into the collider

psr

@MichaelT Hmm, sounds like a feature.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Off by mod 2 error?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa It was likely deeper than just the receipt - I poked at it a few times but din't get too far. It had to do with the way the promotions were applied. The final total was right, just the numbers didn't add up (and it looks like you got it cheaper than you should have).

Jimmy Hoffa

10:27 PM

More interesting stuff to read that seems fairly well explained ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Trimble+on+ETCS+I

Jimmy Hoffa

10:49 PM

@jozefg Are category's in Haskell (I haven't yet touched them) basically derived from the axioms he mentions there? Would be interesting to define a typeclass with those axioms and start tossing together stuff that fulfilled it. I'm guessing haskells Category type is more generalized because that link speaks specifically of a single category, so I guess implementations in it would just be members of the category of sets

Does this deserve a CV? I tossed one on but I'm not certain.

-1

Q: Is paying programmers to "test" for bugs normal?

I recently hired a programming team to do a port of my iPad app to the iPhone and Android platforms. I also wanted them to implement a bunch of tips on how to play the app, similar like you would find in Candy Crush or Cut the Rope. They want to charge 12 hours @ $35/hr for the "Testing all o...

testing bug acceptance-testing

I really wanted "too localized" when I was looking for CV reason\

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