The Whiteboard

Robert Harvey

12:08 AM

OK, I seriously don'

rolfl

t know where that damn enter key is

Robert Harvey

Control Panel/Set Associations. Choose one file extension, choose the program, click OK, and the entire list of extensions reloads? Takes about 30 seconds on this computer. Microsoft has been doing this sort of thing for... how long?

rolfl

Doing it, or doing it right?

Robert Harvey

Apparently just doing it.

And you have to change them one at a time. AARGH!

rolfl

In fairness, I am a Linux guy, but damn the KDE File explorer sucks at reading samba shares..... I think I will expose it as NFS instead.

Robert Harvey

12:12 AM

MediaMonkey hijacked about 50 of them.

rolfl

Ouch, I like media-monkey, but was lucky enough to intervene before it stole those.

Robert Harvey

If I uninstall, will it revert to the original file associations?

rolfl

It does ask to take the associations. As for the uninstall, no idea....

Jimmy Hoffa

1:28 AM

@RobertHarvey can you no longer right click->open with->choose program and there used to was a checkbox on there "always use this for these file types" and choose the program?

I know that inside the old windows media player settings there was a place you could set associations and tell it "associate everything with WMP" and winamp had similar somewhere inside it's settings

user41796

1:54 AM

Freeeeeee spam flags while the link lasts

enderland

2:09 AM

up to 19 helpful flags here! weee!

user41796

And every now and then the community wins one (Sorry, 10k only link now)

enderland

I didn't even read that post, so hopefully you were not lying about it being spam...

user41796

Oh, I nearly went on a tirade. But realized the idiot would never come back to read it, so I didn't waste the time

user41796

And since it's at -3 I can drop a delete vote on it

enderland

I think the solution is:

TAKE DRUGS

user41796

2:18 AM

Denis Leary would agree that the solution is not less drugs but rather more drugs. (ref: No cure for cancer tour)

user41796

It was pretty easy to talk myself into a glass of wine before I stop procrastinating.

user41796

@RobertHarvey while the folk in the Lounge have a point about the toolset, they're being a bit dogmatic about it. Pretend to be shocked, I know. :-)

user41796

Start with the core of C, and make sure you understand the basic types of pointers used there and what structs can and can't do.

user41796

clang seems to be the most popular c compiler at the moment. gcc has fallen out of favor since they can't adapt as readily

user41796

bonus points for messing around with gdb before moving on to the next stages

user41796

2:26 AM

From there, layer on C++ basics which will consist of using classes and understanding the different idiomatic approaches for doing things.

user41796

That will naturally lead to using the STL because nobody in C++ land uses char* for strings anymore. :-)

user41796

Take a detour to understand templates, then look at either boost or Qt or both.

user41796

By then you'll know what you need / want to tackle next

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa Ah, right. Right-click, Open With..., Choose Program.

@GlenH7 Thanks. Will start on Learn C the Hard Way tomorrow.

user41796

Some of the ways C handles things are pretty dang primitive and you'll miss the abstractions you're used to. But when you consider when it cropped up in the evolution of languages it completely makes sense.

user41796

2:29 AM

It make things a lot easier than assembler, and it was never intended to be an end-all be-all.

enderland

use some sort of smart pointer if you can

user41796

@enderland That would be C++, IIRC

enderland

it is, but I'm guessing it will be a C --> C++ transition pretty quick

user41796

True. I'd argue there is value in understanding raw pointers (aka normal C pointers) first before you start taking advantage of the advanced pointers that C++11 provided. They can do some really neat stuff for you, but I think you're remiss if you don't understand why you want them.

enderland

I suppose that's an element of C you do learn, you have to understand memory management types of issues in a way a lot of other languages don't necessarily care about

user41796

2:32 AM

Yes, and after you try using triple pointers a few times you quickly realize the value of those abstractions.

user41796

Yes, there are legitimate cases for triple pointers. Think an array of C style strings passed to another function....

ratchet freak

10:43 AM

@GlenH7 but you rarely keep them as triple pointers

Ampt

2:01 PM

@GlenH7 Every case is legitimate for a triple pointer!

**(*myobj(**(String)**ptr->ptr_variable)&)

You know... you try and defend something you like, and then (redacted) like this shows up. sigh

2

Q: Agile Retrospective Ideas

I am a Junior at workplace and i have been to a number of our retrospectives over the last year. I have been asked to facilitate a retrospective of my own. So far, we have done "hats (red, green, white etc)", "mad, sad, glad", "imagining going forward to end of next sprint, and discussing how it...

enderland

fffff I need to stop checking my work email when I'm not at work, someone scheduled a 6am meeting for monday

user15026

@enderland 6 am? That's ungodly.

Ampt

Accept - [Decline] - Tentative

enderland

@AshleyNunn it's with India, so at least theres that

Ampt

sorry, had to get the MS phrasing

user15026

2:07 PM

@enderland I guess that makes it more okay, but I find getting up at 7 to leave by 720 to be at work by 830 already painful

Ampt

Commuting sucks.

enderland

I have a 40 minute drive, so leaving at 515 for this ain't happening, too bad I even checked my work email

Ampt

I'm guessing since you weren't a part of the conversation leading up to the invite, you probably won't even need to be there either

wooooo useless meetings

user15026

@Ampt If I had a car, it would be a lot shorter but I can't afford one (and don't super miss it)

Ampt

thanks @ThomasOwens. That question was going to give me a headache.

enderland

2:11 PM

No, I do need to be there, but if I hadn't checked my email I never would have seen it

Sometimes working with India is infuriating

user15026

I can imagine

Ampt

@AshleyNunn I, on the otherhand, am ~~an android~~ a sock, and therefore incapable of imagining anything.

user15026

Sometimes I think that might be nice though. But I think that's just my brain full of dental insurance info talking

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn your fillings are talking to you?

Lucille Ball had that problem...

vimeo.com/72473069

user15026

2:26 PM

@JimmyHoffa No, I am not that crazy ;)

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn there's nothing wrong with being as crazy as Lucille Ball...

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Truth, I am just lacking things talking to me in my mouth

user15026

(For reference, my newest gig is CSR in a call center getting trained on dental insurance related calls)

Jimmy Hoffa

2:38 PM

@AshleyNunn sweet, so you can help me out when I need to get my next filling

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Yay! I get to be useful!

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn people who will approve 100% insurance coverage for anything I want will always be useful! :D

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Hahaha I can't do that, I am not in claims, but I can answer your questions about your plan, and how it works!

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn Ok, my question is, how do I make it cover everything for free?

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Find a really good employer :)

Jimmy Hoffa

2:42 PM

@AshleyNunn are you a really good employer?

user15026

(I have seen plans that cover basic/major (everything except orthodontics) at 100%

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Personally? No. No idea what my employer gives, I am not full time there yet (on contract for 6 months with the possibility of permanent after that)

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn I had awesome coverage when I worked on healthcare software... that's one thing I've found I think most important to how employees are treated: The industry you're in. Different industries are run by people with different mentalities. Banking's the worst...

Anywhere in medical industry will take good care of you, straight up tech (MS, google, etc) tends to be pretty good because they're companies run by people who can relate to their employees

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Here is pretty good from what I can tell, once I am eligible.

user15026

(I haven't had benefits in SO long that really, though, anything seems good to me right now)

Jimmy Hoffa

2:48 PM

@AshleyNunn sure, it would be hard to convince people who deal with insurance issues to take any insurance policy that was terrible

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Pretty much :)

user55340

3:15 PM

Btw, out of close votes already.

user15026

@MichaelT It's like 11:15 am O.o

user55340

@AshleyNunn yep. And two already deleted posts with my close votes on them.

user15026

Oh goodness, that's a lot of crap posts

user41796

We've seen a number of crappy questions lately.

user55340

Apparently some class also got an assignment relating to fizz buzz between two numbers.

user15026

3:24 PM

@MichaelT And they've decided that P.SE is the BEST PLACE EVAR for help?

user55340

-3

Q: how to improve this flowchart

I have been given this flowchart and got told it needs to be made bigger and better. But the thing is I have no clue in how to and I've been sitting here researching on how to but still no idea.

flowchart

user55340

And yes, thats all the text in the question... there are two images, one of which appears to be a scan or screen capture of a homework problem.

user15026

Did they just copy/paste their homework? And ask you to effectively do it for them? o.O

user55340

Then there's programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/261418/…

user55340

> How would you create a java program which would read a and b (a<=b) and lists, how many numbers between a and b are divisible by 2,3 or 5.

Like it would read 11 and 30 and it would give us the number 14 (since there are 14 numbers in between : 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30).

Jimmy Hoffa

3:27 PM

Best practice is that children should not know about their parents. — Telastyn 7 mins ago

Great out of context comment. We programmers are horrible parents, semantically speaking.

user15026

@JimmyHoffa I approve!

user55340

Can't find the other one from that series of questions...

user55340

This one I've still got no clue what they're talking about...

user55340

-1

Q: Number series pattern

I recently encountered problems like printing the trapezoidal pattern,if n=4,then: 1*2*3*4*17*18*19*20 5*6*7*14*15*16 8*9*12*13 10*11 Are there any sort of general algorithms for pattern problems like these?I tried google se...

patterns-and-practices

Jimmy Hoffa

my son(4) last night asked me if I know what a Trapezoid is, and told me they had 4 sides. I was so proud :D

user15026

3:29 PM

Why did they include the picture of the search?

user15026

@JimmyHoffa :D

user55340

@AshleyNunn to show that they did a google search?

user15026

@MichaelT I guess that makes some sort of sense

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT nope, they're one of these desktop-theme-voyeurs. "mah ubuntu so pritty! look!"

little do they know we're all mostly blind from years of staring at screens, all those glisten-spot effects just look like shmears on the buttons...

user55340

Now you've got me thinking about back the late 90's with an xwindow manager that did translucent. Remember, late 90s... it looked soo cool but was also sooo slow

Jimmy Hoffa

3:32 PM

@MichaelT I knew you had the background to know what I was talking about :)

user55340

I'm debating glancing about google to see if I can find it again.

user41796

Walk away from the rabbit hole!

user55340

(I was more a vfwm guy...)

user55340

Comparison of X window managers

This article compares variety of different X window managers. For an introduction to the topic, see X Window System. == See also == Comparison of X Window System desktop environments Window manager == References == == External links == Comparison of extensible window managers compares window managers "extensible" by user scripts, like Sawfish, xmonad, etc. The Comprehensive List of Window Managers for Unix...

Jimmy Hoffa

I always used blackbox (I was weened on slackware so the simple/small of it made sense to me)

user55340

3:34 PM

I think it was Enlightenment?

Jimmy Hoffa

aye, I recall using blackbox with eterm and fiddling with all the eterm options to get it translucent..

it didn't matter what wm you used, as soon as you had translucent terminals or widgets your system started chugging...

user55340

(try it on a pentium from back int he day... without a high end graphics card....)

Jimmy Hoffa

it was all CPU rendered back then anyway unless you had like an AIX machine I'm guessing (presumably the bundled hardware/OS *nixes back then had hw accell, like anything from SGI)

user55340

Some nice HP systems did... and yea, beautiful SGI systems.

Jimmy Hoffa

SGI had *nix boxes, no? I never actually got to touch one, those things were so coveted and expensive...

user55340

3:40 PM

user55340

Irix.

Jimmy Hoffa

Any business sort of had to have a specific reason to justify spending the scratch to get an SGI

user55340

I worked as tech support at SGI for awhile (2 stints).

user55340

SGI had just swallowed Cray... and were also the other BIG iron company if you wanted the power.

user55340

Jimmy Hoffa

3:41 PM

I assume you mean swallow as in talent transition? I didn't think SGI bought cray, did they?

user55340

Cray

Cray Inc. is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. (CRI), was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation (CCC), in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995, while Cray Research was bought by SGI the next year. Cray Inc. formed in 2000 when Tera Computer Company purchased the Cray Research Inc. business from SGI and adopted the name of its acquisition. == Company history == === Background: 1950 to 1972 === Seymour Cray began working in...

Jimmy Hoffa

ah no shit

user55340

They bought it lock, stock and barrel. There's still some SGI and Cray types around here... (Cray was in Chippewa Falls, WI)

Jimmy Hoffa

makes sense. a dying industry fared better together- but didn't matter, they were both dead already and just didn't know it...

user55340

3:43 PM

The name is still kicking around... there are still some people who work at it.

user55340

There's even a road named after Seyore Cray...

user55340

Jimmy Hoffa

That's the problem with really bleeding edge or R&D stuff in the industry, they're only adopted by movers and shakers who will quickly and competently move to the best platform available, and as soon as it's not you they'll be gone. The AS400 is a testament to what non-R&D focus can get you, embedded in place in industries that are too conservative to ever change, so you'll have clients long past the time when your tech makes sense

user55340

Though the locals note that it doesn't really seem to go anywhere.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT our local tech claim to fame still has some roads around, don't believe the offices are still living though...

Storage Technology Corporation

Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek or STK), aka STC until about 1983, is a data storage technology company. Current StorageTek products focus on tape backup equipment and software to manage storage systems. New products include data retention systems, which they call information lifecycle management, or ILM. Now a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation and referred to as Oracle StorageTek, StorageTek was headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, United States with manufacturing facilities in Ponce, Puerto Rico. == History == In 1969 four former IBM engineers: Jesse Aweida, Juan Rodriguez, Thomas...

user55340

3:47 PM

IRIX

IRIX is the operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) to run natively on their MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system. The last major version of IRIX was IRIX 6.5 which was released in May 1998. New minor versions of IRIX 6.5 were released every quarter until 2005; since then there have been four further minor releases. Through version 6.5.22, there were two branches of each release: a maintenance release (identified by an m suffix to the version number) that included only...

Jimmy Hoffa

They however did not up and die like Cray, they dissolved into the industry dissipated across tons of companies from IBM, Western Digital, so many companies had their hands in the Storage Tech pie at different times... they really put out a lot of tech that drove disk drives forward from what I'd heard

^-- note the street names

user55340

Back in the day (late '90s), thinking to the support calls I got... we had large graphic shops (Lucas Arts), government agencies (had a phone call from Jane Smith at a "Metrocom Incorporated" that worked in Virginia... who got very disturbed when I did callbacks)... military (once had a "lets fix this computer in an airplane in flight" call)

Jimmy Hoffa

(pretty sure the buildings in the center that surrounds are either long-since abandoned or gone by now)

oh yeah, it's just parking lots now...

user55340

Porn web servers were up there on the list too. Club Love was running on SGI metal. At the time there was a billboard on 101 that read "SGI: At the Core of Business"... with some early image editing software we had version on the bullitenboard that read "SGI: At the Hard Core of Business"

user55340

(I had root on Club Love for a few minutes... they wouldn't hire a good sysadmin... so whenever they had a problem that stumped them, they'd call tech support, tell the person the root password and the IP and have them fix it... there was a neat bit they did with typescript to echo all the activity to another device (tty or printer))

Jimmy Hoffa

3:53 PM

haha

Robert Harvey

Cracked open Bjarne's tome yesterday.

Made it to page 38.

Only about 1430 pages left to go.

user55340

Btw, the big SGI system was the Origin 2000

user55340

SGI Origin 2000

The SGI Origin 2000 was a family of mid-range and high-end server computers developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics (SGI). They were introduced in 1996 to succeed the SGI Challenge and POWER Challenge. At the time of introduction, these ran the IRIX operating system, originally version 6.4 and later, 6.5. A variant of the Origin 2000 with graphics capability is known as the Onyx2. An entry-level variant based on the same architecture but with a different hardware implementation is known as the Origin 200. The Origin 2000 was succeeded by the Origin 3000 in July 2000, and was discontinued...

user55340

Yea, lats look at that a bit closer...

user55340

4:02 PM

SGI did have some big metal back in the day.

user55340

Blue Mountain (supercomputer)

Blue Mountain was a supercomputer designed to run simulations for the United States National Nuclear Security Administration's Advanced Simulation and Computing program. It is capable of 3.1 trillion operations per second. In June 1999 it was the world's second fastest computer, and remained among the world's ten fastest computers until November 2001. According to the Los Alamos National Laboratory website, the supercomputer set a world record in May 2000, with the equivalent of 17.8 years of normal computer processing within 72 hours, including 15,000 engineering simulations requiring 10 hours...

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey nah, ~260, at page 300 most people just slit their wrists.

user55340

@RobertHarvey tag synonym: Bjarne -> pain

Robert Harvey

Bjarne has a decent writing style. How bad could this be? He's saying all the right things: you need all the language, but everything has a purpose. You don't pay for what you don't use, classes are cheap, etc.

And his latest edition is written in C++11 style code, unless otherwise specified.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey The way I see it is if it takes 1400 pages to explain a language, that language has so much complexity it can only be wielded safely by an astronaut.

Ampt

4:08 PM

That moment when you realize you spent 30 minutes creating an HTML parser to turn a webpage table into a csv file when excel could have done it for you instantly...

user55340

@Ampt But then you'd have to use Excel.

Robert Harvey

Well, I'm not far enough in to know for sure, but it seems like the complexity is, to a degree, an unavoidable consequence of the relentless focus on high-performance. Also, backwards compatibility is highly-valued.

Ampt

@RobertHarvey Also: Every other feature they could think up.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey the idea that such an amount of complexity is unavoidable is what I think ruins the mind of C++ folks to the point that they just stop trying to avoid complexity or caring if stuff is complex, because, y'know, it's unavoidable, right?

Robert Harvey

Well, C# in a Nutshell is a thousand pages, so.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:11 PM

@RobertHarvey that's depressing. What on earth could it say?? Does it have a 400 page listing of the .NET framework's classes and signatures?

Ampt

@MichaelT I acted before I thought

the end goal was to have the table in excel

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt yeah, the clipboard is your friend.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa No, but you need a fairly substantial portion of the book just to describe Linq and Async.

Jimmy Hoffa

The variety of ways excel can easily tabulate text data for you is one very worthwhile thing for software folk to know.

Ampt

I mean mine is formatted nicer... but I'm sure excel could fix that too

Jimmy Hoffa

4:13 PM

@RobertHarvey only if it's speaking in terms of how they're implemented rather than the abstraction they present-which is all that matters

Ampt

yeeep. Text only works

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt I've long used excel for tons of things like this. dir > somefile.txt, open in excel and it'll tabulate the files/sizes/etc then I can fiddle the columns and copy it into outlook to paste a table with files and their sizes to notify people wth is taking so much space in <some folder>, tons of things like that.

any table in a webpage can be copied and pasted into excel verbatim to sort/filter/highlight the data

(should I be talking about some open source excel competitor? I don't even know what somebody would use other than excel for these tasks?)

Ampt

Yeah, I know how great it is... it just never crossed my mind

user55340

-18

Q: Real life People-avatars distract me (rant)

I know I'm going to get downvoted but here goes. I would like to see all photographic headshot-avatars go the way of the of the dodo bird. Why? Because it distracts me. "Hmm, he/she is too XYZ-adjective. Oh yeah there's a question! What isthe question!" Somewhere in the mix of things, it's pr...

discussion

Robert Harvey

Too bad they got rid of the [always-friday-in-iceland] tag.

Ampt

4:18 PM

Put. The. Coffee. Down. — codeMagic 28 mins ago

user55340

@RobertHarvey That was old MSO, doesn't it still linger in MSE?

user55340

3

Q: Where to ask about frozen badgers?

I want to ask the following question, which may be suitable for pets or politics, but I'm not really sure either way - or if it's on topic anywhere? Why does Peterborough City Council freeze badgers? Peterborough City Council has released the amount of animals they freeze each year as pa...

support site-recommendation badgers

Ampt

What a bunch of buzz-kills

StackExchange: Where we hate fun.

user55340

2

Q: What is an electric unicorn?

The About of the SE bot writes: I'm just a bot. Sometimes I post feed items, sometimes I post room status changes, sometimes I dream about electric unicorns. I'm not a native speaker so I don't get the metaphor of the electric unicorn. What does it mean? Why does the bot dream about it? A q...

discussion fun unicorns

Ampt

4:29 PM

Nope. SE Hates fun and that whole thread is a cover story.

I blame Joel.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT what you get when you attach a fork to a horses head and jam it into an electric socket

user55340

4:51 PM

6

Jimmy Hoffa

The best of nerd humor. And we wonder why people look at us funny...

user15026

5:03 PM

@MichaelT What.....

user55340

@AshleyNunn You should suggest Pets.SE.

user15026

@MichaelT Oh, that will go over SO well.

user15026

I left an actually hopefully useful comment, as much as it pained me to do so

user55340

@AshleyNunn well, its better there than getting someone to make a flash game about it and then asking about it on Arquade... because you know there's a good title there too.

user15026

@MichaelT Oh yes, that would get you some "omg out of context yay" upvotes for sure

user55340

5:09 PM

@AshleyNunn Best type.

user55340

The web page for the data is a wonderful 'wat?' too

user55340

data.peterborough.gov.uk/View/…

psr

@MichaelT The Whiteboard? Probably a lot of Bucky the Badger fans in here.

user55340

@psr But Bucky is never frozen! Unless its a December home game...

user55340

5:14 PM

Or maybe a hockey match.

user55340

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT That's just awesome in so many ways.

OK, so Clang looks cool. What IDE should I use with it, on Windows?

Thomas Owens

@RobertHarvey Eclipse?

user55340

74

Q: LLVM C++ IDE for windows

Is there some C/C++ IDE for windows, which is integrated with LLVM compiler (and clang C/C++ analyzer), just like modern Xcode do. I have Dev-Cpp (it uses outdated gcc) and Code::Blocks (with some gcc). But Gcc gives me very cryptic error messages. I want to get some more user-friendly error mes...

c++ windows ide llvm clang

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT doesn't XCode do clang? I know people rant and rave about XCode for C/C++ development, no?

(am I totally remembering wrong?)

user55340

5:19 PM

@JimmyHoffa Yep. But it doesn't run well on Windows.

Jimmy Hoffa

oh I didnt' see the windows qualifier @RobertHarvey mentioned

If I had to deal with something as nasty as C/C++, I'd gladly go to a mac just to get better tooling because C/C++ is hard enough as it is and really benefits from tooling I should think...

user55340

Clang does some really nice things with error messages and such.

Jimmy Hoffa

Though I guess there's probably more C/C++ dev in nix than anywhere else, so you probably should get the best tooling there, no?

user55340

Granted thats from Xcode and objective C... but the information is from clang.

user55340

5:23 PM

user55340

that one looks C++ish.

Robert Harvey

Sort of wondering what the aerospace community is using for their embedded development. They're probably on Eclipse and Unix.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey plausibly

Robert Harvey

F15's, specifically.

Jimmy Hoffa

I would think stuff like that is more likely running an RTOS...

I think C++ is largely a way to repurpose embedded devs for more general purpose applications work- real embedded shit probably isn't actually done in C++ for shit.

Robert Harvey

5:28 PM

I find it hard to believe that they would be advertising for C++ devs just because C is not in vogue.

Ampt

you can do RTOS C++

it's not out of the question

Jimmy Hoffa

8

A: WHat are the five most commonly used real-time operating systems?

Real-time operating systems that I have come in contact with, in order of (subjective) impact: VxWorks QNX eCos RTLinux Especially VxWorks has a long history in critical applications - for example, in cars and various NASA space platforms. It is however neither free nor open source software -...

Robert Harvey

VxWorks.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt certainly, but as soon as you get to the level of RTOS, I suspect C++ becomes less relevant because it's whole purpose of improving on C to be more general purpose and higher level becomes somewhat irrelevant- you're going to be doing low level stuff that C was explicitly built to do

user55340

Remember to play the trick or treating drinking game tonight. Every time Elsa shows up at your door, have a drink. If its Elsa and Anna drink the entire bottle.

user55340

5:30 PM

(assuming beer, not hard liquor)

Robert Harvey

Sounds like a variation on FizzBuzz.

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa Yeah but you only pay for what you use in C++, so you can take advantage of some of the features without incurring the wrath of the perfromance gods.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT boo at the zoo, there were so many elsa and anna's...

Robert Harvey

@Ampt That was my thought as well.

user55340

From the frozen badger question:

user55340

5:31 PM

Just let it go. — MichaelT 1 hour ago

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt I know it can be done, I just doubt it is done much, and the benefits of doing so are likely paltry.

user55340

@MichaelT Let it go? — Andy 6 mins ago

user55340

@Andy Let it go, let it go. Can't keep them in the fridge anymore. Let it go, let it go. When they thaw, you'll be out the door. / I don't care what they're going to say, let the reports pile on, the paperwork never bothered me anyway! — MichaelT 4 mins ago

Robert Harvey

Andy must not have seen the movie.

Jimmy Hoffa

...I don't know what movie is being referenced...

user55340

5:34 PM

Frozen + Let it go... it was a reference.

Jimmy Hoffa

yeah, my kid would have caught the reference, but he watched it with my wife not me

user55340

I couldn't figure out a way to make the badger badger badger / mushroom song fit into frozen though.

user55340

►

Robert Harvey

Eclipse, then.

Ampt

@RobertHarvey not many other options unfortunately

Robert Harvey

5:36 PM

Do I need Eclipse CDT? Or does that come with Luna?

Ampt

although the chip manufacturer you use may provide their own IDE (Atmel and Microchip do, for example)

not that those IDEs are anything to write home about

user41796

The CDT in eclipse has gotten a lot better. It's been a few years since I've used it.

user55340

@RobertHarvey jetbrains.com/clion/quickstart

user41796

@RobertHarvey Depends upon which variant of eclipse you download. Or just install the CDT plugin.

Jimmy Hoffa

Anyone here read the recent dadgum/Programming in the 21st century article?

Robert Harvey

5:39 PM

Extreme Formatting?

Jimmy Hoffa

Showed on our feed the other day, I just remembered to go look at it now- great article me thinks. I've really thrown out a lot of expected formatting rules in recent years as I've grown more accustomed to trying to organize by semantic value rather than syntactic demands

@RobertHarvey aye

Robert Harvey

Holy shit, he's right.

Jimmy Hoffa

also looking at lots of different languages I've gotten more comfortable with the idea that code doesn't have a uniform correct appearance- if it did, every language would look the same. Makes me feel more comfortable throwing out my current languages demanded-standard-conventional-formatting

user41796

link?

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 prog21.dadgum.com

user41796

5:41 PM

danke

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa I'll give it to him for CSS. Not at all convinced anywhere else.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey how about this: public string Name { get; set; } ?

Robert Harvey

That's standard.

Jimmy Hoffa

nonsense, it's heresy by many folks

Robert Harvey

Pfft.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:42 PM

it's about semantic value per line- how much should there be? Here's another one: public string Name { get { return _name; } set { _name = value; } }

that would be heresy, no? same semantic value as above though.

Robert Harvey

Still acceptable.

Jimmy Hoffa

nonsense. inlining that would have you guffawed at by most-moreover, you'll see code like that nearly nowhere in the C# community.

Robert Harvey

It's when you start adding logic that you need to use proper indentation.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey I'm not talking indentation, just same line. That's unacceptable by many.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Not true; It's actually in our code standard that the one-line example you gave is an acceptable form.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:45 PM

@GlenH7 good for you

that's great

user41796

In fact we state a preference for:
public string Name { get; set; }
versus
public string Name
{
get;
set;
}

user41796

or any other extended monstrosity

Robert Harvey

I don't know anyone who uses the latter form for automatic properties.

Jimmy Hoffa

...maybe I've just been stuck working with stiffs.

(still when I look at C# open source code I don't see much of that...)

user41796

And we'll go with:
public string Name
{
get { return _name; }
set { _name = value; }
}
or the one-line version depending upon personal preference. We generally don't declare the private variable anymore for the simple getter / setter case.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:48 PM

@GlenH7 yeah, there are odd occasions where you need the private variable, but they're not common

user41796

But by the time you break out your getter / setters you likely already have logic behind them so it makes sense to put them on additional lines.

Robert Harvey

Here's some more heresy for you:

user41796

I think .NET 3.5 required it? Or maybe it was an earlier version.

Robert Harvey

public Manager(int annualSalary) : base(annualSalary)
{
}

Jimmy Hoffa

stuff like public string FullName { get { return FirstName + " " + LastName; } }

user41796

5:48 PM

@RobertHarvey We'd tack the curly braces on the opening line.

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 It gets a bit hairy if you have a lot of constructor parameters.

But I don't like separating the opening brace from its declaration.

as in

public Manager(int annualSalary)
        : base(annualSalary)
{

user41796

We'll sometimes do that one too depending upon developer preference and length of class name

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey again, semantic value per line. Parameters are cost because when reading code you do need to look them over (am I passing the right ones? in the right order?) overloading the semantic value of a line makes it harder to find the detail you're looking for because it takes longer to read the line for your detail

but too many lines with low semantic value increases your vertical scanning time to find the detail you're looking for

Robert Harvey

Up next: The One True Brace Style™

user55340

@RobertHarvey 2 spaces? 3 spaces? 4 spaces? or tabs?

Jimmy Hoffa

5:51 PM

@RobertHarvey aka: Who gives a shit?

11 mins ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

also looking at lots of different languages I've gotten more comfortable with the idea that code doesn't have a uniform correct appearance- if it did, every language would look the same. Makes me feel more comfortable throwing out my current languages demanded-standard-conventional-formatting

really, no syntactic style is more correct than another...

user41796

The guy has a point with really small bits of code that you wrote. Code formatting provides semantic meaning to the person who has to deal with the code that someone else wrote.

user41796

Two completely separate domains

Jimmy Hoffa

wonder if you could write a semantic value analyzer... give weight to particular things to calculate how much semantic cost each line has...

user41796

You wrote it and you'll be the only person ever maintaining it? Do whatever you want.

user41796

You're writing it and someone else will likely maintain it? Follow the team's standards and generally accepted idiomatic convention.

Ampt

5:54 PM

@GlenH7 That you know of

user41796

@JimmyHoffa You could on a per language basis

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 readability is entirely subjective though. Formatting your code to a standard doesn't automatically make it readable- that format may be very unreadable to some and very readable to others

user41796

@Ampt In the article, the guy is talking about the CSS for his site. So I'll grant the case. Almost never happens in professional or enterprise work.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Not true. Human Factors / Usability studies have demonstrated that people have faster reading rates and higher comprehension rates when the formatting matches what they expected. ie. idiomatic conventions for the language.

Jimmy Hoffa

comments for instance usually irritate me because it's more clutter I have to sift through, that's just the way I read code- I look to the details first and then zoom out from there while comments are trying to give high-level artifice (and as a rule I simply refuse to trust them because they're never maintained, and if I'm in the code they're probably wrong because the author made a mistake otherwise I wouldn't be in the code...)

user55340

5:56 PM

I prefer seeing block comments than line comments.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT agreed, and at the top of the file and nowhere else so I can simply avoid them.

user55340

int foo = calculate(42); // get the bar from somewhere

user55340

Don't like seeing those. If I see them, its because something is not obvious, which is a problem.

Ampt

/**
 *
 *
 *
 *
 *
 * Get the bar from somewhere */

Robert Harvey

Eww.

@MichaelT Sometimes you don't have a choice, though the comment goes above the code, not next to it.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:58 PM

the code tells me what it does, the only time a comment has ever helped me was one time there was a comment somewhere generateQuantizer(bla.range, 56 /* must be multiple of 9 or quantizer will break */)

user55340

/* When entering this block, the following this can be assumed about the parameters:
 * the foo is true, bar contains a map of quxes.  If these are not true, they must be
 * identified before we get too far in because they are mutable structures and Bad
 * Things Happen.
 */

Jimmy Hoffa

stuff like that- arcane facts you simply couldn't know come in handy. Otherwise they do me no good

user55340

@RobertHarvey I want to see comments about block of code, not lines.

Transcript for