The Whiteboard

7:00 PM

@GlenH7 because at the moment it's terrible? the focus of the site (in my experience) has been very hard CS, making it useless for most visitors and too close to TCS

user41796

@Telastyn Yeah, I started looking at various stats as Michael suggested. Just not a lot of activity there

user41796

Looking at edit and voting tallies was a bit discouraging

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn yeah I've yet to realize a distinction between TCS and CS - CS is after all completely theory if you're avoiding application, which is precisely what they're doing to avoid just being P.SE or SO

P.SE does everything CS does if CS allows application, so they have to keep it to formalisms that don't exist in reality - but only in theory.

user55340

@GlenH7 yep. No one closes, votes, or answers there. Thus, not graduating anytime soon.

user41796

It's kinda sad

Telastyn

7:07 PM

I've got 2 questions there that just were kinda poo-poo'd as "you don't know what you're talking about"

which, I mean sure, might be the case

user55340

7:25 PM

Btw, bridge question is in the hot list.

user41796

Congrats!

user55340

@GlenH7 they need something other than homework, and people answering them. And voting, but that is something many can do there.

user55340

And closing questions they don't want.

user41796

Closing is kinder than letting them die unanswered

user55340

Which get deleted after a month or year if no votes.

user55340

7:30 PM

But, since so few q/d, they are likely hesitant to clean, which is needed to determine what they do want.

durron597

1

Q: Constructor-only subclasses: Is this an anti-pattern?

I was having a discussion with a co-worker, and we ended up having conflicting intuitions about the purpose of subclassing. My intuition is that if a primary function of a subclass is to express a limited range of possible values of its parent, then it probably shouldn't be a subclass. He argued ...

I think the answer to this question is "No, it's not an anti-pattern". I was about to write an answer to that effect (with more explanation, obviously) but I want to make sure I'm not wrong first :)

user55340

I'll admit to writing a structure of classes that employed exactly that pattern.

durron597

My second instinct was that the question is opinion based... but if THAT question is opinion based, then all of P.SE is opinion based ;)

user55340

Granted, that was lpc, so differnt patterns employed.

user55340

(They were also singletons... But again, that's just how it worked)

user55340

7:42 PM

As to cs, they really haven't tried doing the "we come up with algorithms" that we get here, other than duping them to a post about np complete. Same with big o

durron597

I ended up answering the question anyway, but most of the time seeing an answer like @Telastyn's would make me bail on writing my own answer. It's certainly a complete waste of time to keep answering on SO when an answer as good and complete as that one appears before you finish writing.

Hm. Maybe my FGITW time wasting defense mechanisms I learned on SO don't apply on progs

Telastyn

yeah, I am not nearly fast (or niche) enough to effectively make SO answers

user41796

@durron597 No, not as much

user41796

Especially not over the long run

user41796

The answers on progs that tend to be up voted more are the ones that are more easily understood

user41796

7:53 PM

And even though two answers may say the same thing, the writing style can affect which one gets more votes

enderland

explains why mine are not normally upvoted... haa

user55340

... Given they are not trivial one liners.

Telastyn

8:20 PM

fucking math

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