The Whiteboard

ratchet freak

12:00 AM

pst the sequence 10-190-2890-38890-48890-... has a sequence to it

I mean that you can get there iteratively and use which order of magnitude you are in

user114359

There are quite a few patterns in the numbers in that code

user114359

After I finished the program I googled to see if there was a more optimized solution but I couldn't find one

ratchet freak

you have 10^n - 10^(n-1) numbers of exactly n digits

user114359

Good edit... 1^n - 1^(n-1) = 0 for all n

ratchet freak

for example take the difference between the subsequent numbers and you get 10, 180, 2700, 36000, 450000 etc

that if-else chain can also be simplified

user114359

12:09 AM

I think the core problem is those inner if blocks are going to be a bit tough to generalize

ratchet freak

using a loop you can do it

user114359

but if you have feedback then by all means write an answer

user114359

12:28 AM

@ratchetfreak in your first code block there is an i++ but no i declared.

ratchet freak

whoopsie should be a nDigits

that's what I get for refactoring without an IDE

Jimmy Hoffa

1:19 AM

@durron597 I asked my boss twice already but haven't followed up to force him to actually produce the damn thing. We're understaffed and every time I leave his office someone is walking in to ask for something else so.. I'll bug him again tomorrow for it but yeah; doubt we'd be able to compete with Amazon. Other than on location; Denver > Seattle

amon

8:18 AM

@Snowman Apparently it was migrated from SO to Programmers in '11, and closing it retroactively rejected that migration. Unfortunately, this seems to have auto-deleted the two slightly valuable answers (seemingly pre-dating the migration), leaving two really crappy ones behind. Ugh, is that behaviour buggy.

gnat

8:50 AM

featured tag has expired on Open letter to students with homework problems, do we want to refresh it?

Arcane Engineer

9:55 AM

Which is more important, don't repeat yourself or do the simplest thing that works? Because in my casem the simplest thing that works is necessarily repetitive!

MetaFight

11:08 AM

Use your better judgement. Following (often conflicting) rules religiously just leads to cargo cult coding.

When you're stuck picking between two conflicting approaches there's nothing wrong with just trying one willy nilly. If, after a while, you find the approach was lacking then change it. If not, then it was an easy win.

make mistakes!

Duga

11:45 AM

I would say this question should be asked on programmers.stackexchange.com — luboskrnac 31 secs ago

Duga

2:24 PM

Its a fancy name for something simple and obvious people use to paint themselves smart ;) Also, shouldn't this be posted in programmers.stackexchange.com? — ddriver 6 secs ago

Duga

4:46 PM

@ViV SO is not a good place to ask about coding practice, perhaps Programmers would be a good place, but don't quote me on that as I don't visit it often. — DavidG 37 secs ago

Robert Harvey

For what it's worth, there are reasons people are not allowed to comment until they gain some reputation. Spam is one of them; answers are first-class citizens and are more easily moderated. But answers should be answers, and if you have something to say that is more of a comment than an answer, it's bad form (and a bad introduction on your part) to break the rules just for your convenience. Welcome to Programmers. — Robert Harvey 43 secs ago

Duga

5:02 PM

@DavidG This question is on-topic for Programmers, yes, but it's not good enough to migrate. In its current state, there simply isn't enough information; any answer we tried to give would simply be a blind guess as to what the OP is after or should be using instead, as the two answers already posted here clearly show. — Ixrec 54 secs ago

Duga

5:45 PM

@gnat - I've heard this song before. And yet, according to programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic, "software architecture and design" is a good fit. — ddriver 18 secs ago

MetaFight

@ddriver: Asking for a complete tutorial on a particular subject isn't particularly a good fit on any site, regardless of topicality. Have you done your homework first, and researched CQRS before asking your question? CQRS is discussed extensively on the Internet already, so to add any value here, we would need to know what you already read, and why that didn't work out for you. — Robert Harvey ♦ 2 mins ago

@RobertHarvey ddriver didn't ask that question.

Robert Harvey

Yeah, got that.

@Lukáš Bednařík: What can we tell you that this, this and this doesn't already adequately cover? — Robert Harvey ♦ 11 secs ago

Christian Fischer

6:56 PM

Good evening! I would like to have some advice.
I am 20 and will start a new job next month where I will be working with c#/wpf. My new employer produces software for windows user rights management. AD user creation / modification, access rights management of file servers and reporting / monitoring of such activities. Now we want to support not only on-premise but also cloud servers, how would one accomplish this?
Also my personal interest and thought process is to go into the web with this product. so i would try to get into the web team. what are your thoughts and recommendations on this …

user114359

Seems like your employer should know how to do this. Asking a new 20 year old developer or intern how to do this is an unrealistic expectation.

Christian Fischer

@Snowman i know but i want to understand things and be able to do good work. also for my personal growth web applications seems far better than wpf.

user114359

@ChristianFischer having a variety of skills is always a plus. The best technology is the one where you can use it and earn money: being flexible enough to work with multiple technologies is called "job security."

Christian Fischer

7:12 PM

@Snowman thanks for your thoughts. so what is your technical point of view on this topic? using azure ad? switching from wpf to web?

user114359

@ChristianFischer I am unclear as to why you are even asking: I would expect these questions would already be answered by your employer. Honestly, being a junior member starting your career I would do more observing and less telling people what to do. Try to absorb knowledge and gain understanding of why the team does what it does.

Christian Fischer

@Snowman good advice. the problem is these questions aren't answered yet and i don't want to stick around with wpf to long. it's a fast paced environment and i want to make sure i stick with the right technologies (web, azure asp?). so it's important to me what product development you foresee.

user114359

7:27 PM

@ChristianFischer More important than learning any specific product or technology is learning the methods of development. I assume based on your age that most of your experience is from college: the real world is a bit different. You will be working on real projects now that have to be profitable. I don't know about you, but the software engineering portion of my education was a bit light and completely different from my real world experiences.

user114359

Focus on learning one product or technology and learn how project teams operate, learn how to write good code of the size and scope of a real-world project.

user114359

Arguing about whether to learn one technology or another is losing focus of the big picture.

Christian Fischer

@Snowman i had an 3 years apprenticeship working in the industry i consider myself a decent coder but i think i lack in terms of the big picture (server structure, how eco subsystems work thogether)

user114359

@ChristianFischer That is why I recommend focusing on the big picture stuff as opposed to the nuts and bolts of coding. Learn how teams work when you are a full-time member of the team, not an apprentice or intern. Be that guy willing to learn whatever your employer needs even if you don't want to do it. You will learn a lot of useful skills and help your own career because those workhorses are the ones that receive bonuses and promotions in my experience.

Christian Fischer

@Snowman sadly i have to go now. it was nice talking to you and thank you for your advice. have a nice weekend :)

@Snowman i really do appreciate it!

user114359

7:37 PM

@ChristianFischer It is Saturday and there is NCAA football on, you were fortunate that I was at the computer and sober :-)

Ixrec

do you think in other fields knowing whether to pick up X vs Y is actually extremely vital information to long-term job security? I am continually baffled by how many people feel the need to ask "what do I need to learn to stay employable?" instead of trying to become good at coding in general so they can learn anything on demand

Brandin

@Ixrec Next time I'm in a job interview I will tell them "I am goot at coding in general so I can learn anything on demand!" and I'll tell you how it goes.

Ixrec

lol

well in all seriousness, all the skills a good employer actually cares about are vague and broad ones like that which are almost impossible to test for directly in a matter of hours (e.g., "works well in teams", "takes initiative"); that's why they test a single language and then ask for anecdotes to prove you at least "get" what those skills are

the fact that most candidates fail even those horribly inaccurate tests means they're not totally useless

user114359

@Brandin I have actually said that in an interview and impressed the interviewer. That means "I am confident in my ability to learn new things and willing to learn whatever I need to help the company make more money."

Ixrec

I've never used that exact phrase but when asked about soft strengths "learns new things quickly" is one I usually bring up, partially because I think it's true but also because everyone else keeps telling me that (including my current manager!) so clearly it must be true

Duga

8:15 PM

try this forum for your question programmers.stackexchange.com — Rahul Tiwari 1 min ago

user55340

8:53 PM

@amon Rejected migrations are a mess. They're locked. They can't be unlocked except by mod. They can't be deleted except by mod. Pre-migration answers are deleted. Post migration answers are still votable. Its all by design, but ugly.

user114359

I am trying to implement a Java iterator that iterates over permutations of an array. Each call to next() will return an array with a different permutation until all are generated. I don't want to precalculate them because that would be an insane amount of memory. Anyone have any ideas?

user114359

I am thinking the solution will involve a stack which stores the current state of the algorithm, basically taking the call stack and putting that data in a stack object

user114359

Recursion is mind-breaking enough, and I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around this.

user114359

projecteuler.net/problem=43

Duga

This question is too opinion-based for SO, you may find better luck on the Programmers SE. Remember to read their question requirements as they are more strict than this site. — Kyll 36 secs ago

Ixrec

9:43 PM

are we more strict? I thought SO was pretty similar but on a far larger scale

user20683

10:09 PM

@Ixrec SO's scale is so large that strictness has weird propagation values

user55340

10:35 PM

50 lane traffic jam in China: usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/09/…

user55340

twitter.com/people_cn/status/651434718634885121/photo/1

user55340

user55340

@Snowman I've got a Java iterator that iterates primes if that would help.

ratchet freak

10:48 PM

caused by those 50 lanes merging into 20

getting more traffic into a single spot that 20 lanes of traffic can't handle is mind boggling

if you take that 1 lane can handle 1800 vehicles an hour then that would mean more than 36000 vehicles/h were trying to go through there

assuming there's no further bottleneck down the line

M.Krov

11:07 PM

My questions are for people who are familiar with the job market in both Canada and the US. However, other people are welcome to answer as well .

I am a graduate student at one of the Canadian Universities, and I will graduate with a Masters Degree in Applied Math this coming December (my GPA is ~3.9/4.0). Before enrolling in my Master’s program, my goal was to go into academia through doing PhD, Postdoc, etc. For many reasons, I soon changed my whole plan and I am aiming towards getting a job in industry instead.

rwong

@ratchetfreak could take a clue from highway ramp metering (basically a traffic light to regulate merging traffic)

Telastyn

> What major do you recommend I should switch to in order to learn extra useful and applied skills that will increase my chances to land a good job in industry (and also where I will be using and benefiting from my math background)?

None.

Have you actually tried to get a job?

Everyone wants someone with 8 years of experience, a good attitude and can poop gold on command.

given the lack of competent programmers, companies take what they can get.

ratchet freak

@Telastyn and the lack of good test to show in a few hours that you are a good programmer

rwong

11:31 PM

Job questions are highly geographically dependent, which is why job questions are best asked by networking with similar people in your same geographical region. For example, answers appropriate to a Californian job-seeker may be completely useless for a Chicago job-seeker, and so on.

That said, I thought applied-maths with practical data-analytical skills are in demand, but that impression may be wrong, too localized to Silicon Valley, or maybe too much hyped by people who spend too much time on Hacker News.

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