Heya, whats going on?

I don't know whether you understand because text is so poor at conveying things

and I'm not a mod or anything, so I don't actually have the right to dictate that people behave certain ways

I'm pulling this out of 2nd because I wanna sort-of explain in detail without disrupting the rest

Personally, I don't like hanging around in negative areas - places where people are hating on each other.

Yeah, sure good idea. Regarding the recent discussion of meta more discussion should be encouraged tostay in 2nd and alt rooms.

But I can understand the countersignalling that occurs in a group of tight friends - insulting each other for fun, but not as hostile act

A problem then occurs when people assume they're friends enough to pull such a thing, and the other person didn't think so

e.g. you think it's okay to make such a remark, it's friendly ragging, the other feels offended.

Which is why in some cases I'll ask people to clarify what they're saying

You suggested the use of /s or smilies

and they're great for that sort of thing

to then say something like

Is diluting the value of that signal.

I am thus pulling you into a private conversation like this to confirm whether or not you understand why I ask you to use those... I dunno, indicators?

to use them to make a joke moments after I thought we just agreed that they can be used as a "not-actually-being-mean" flag of sorts

kinda pisses all over the idea of them being such an indicator

Regarding the last comment, it was a direct reference to our conversation just prior. I tend to do that a lot referencing to earlier conversations, and things in a joking matter. The problem is that I do not say anything with ill-intentions or ill-will ever. So I feel like I would have to use those indicators with every sentence I say, as most of the time I write them with a smile on my face (and mind).

Although as you know this is impossible to see just through the text.

The thing I'm personally noticing is that you're doing most of the ragging but you're not getting a lot back

so from an outsiders point of view, you're being offensive, and the other person is being tolerant?

Now I can't actually demand you to cut back on the offensive comments - I'm not a mod, and even if I was, that seems to be placing my needs over the others

Any idea why? I could think of a lot of reasons, but it is hard to see from an insiders point of view. Usually in my friends gang as you say it goes both ways. Sometimes I am am a bit better at pinpointing at the clever responses. Another reason might be the environment, and a third might be not giving enough to bite off. It is hard to know.

and I can't demand that you use some sort of indicator all of the time or some of the time or...

@N3buchadnezzar you're new-ish so obviously less of an attack surface (so to say)

and not everybody is the snarky type

So... yeah... if you could make an effort in that area, that'd be great.

I'd appreciate it

I feel the snarky comments can sometime bring an extra dimension to a conversation, and s you say "friends" tend to use them a lot. Do you want me to cut heavily back on them, or is it rather a clearer notification when they are used?

clearer notification; self-censorship is ultimately not going to work because if you feel restricted then you'll feel like contributing less

at least, self-censorship has that effect on me

sometimes, I post it anyway

but then I delete it afterwards

Great =)

oh and snark that scores stars is always great ofc =D

Good you did not feel my messages were too harsh, I try to balance on the line of funny comments. But I can see the intention being unclear

well you're implying offensiveness which is far less hostile than just calling someone stupid the straight way

@Pimgd, could I ask another completely unrelated thing?

sure

Been trying to draft up a meta post, or at least an idea of a meta post. But as you have pointed out I am not the best with words =p

As you have posted quite a few answers yourself; do you feel that you are repeating yourself in parts of your answers?

Yes, but ...

... either my review is more like a lint tool output

... or it's custom tailored to the asker

So not both?

In the first case it could really have been copy pasta'd

but in the second, it's important how you word the thing

explaining magic numbers is something I'll do for an absolute beginner

but otherwise "can be extracted to a constant" is all you'll get

Right, I agree.

Basically... this, right?

That's what you're asking about

Yeah. Basically it would cover what you said about lint tool ouput.

The thing is, people really ought to run a lint tool

Doesn't that fall into the same thing as "doing your research"?

but otoh I wouldn't copy-paste answer bits

The idea being to have a some short sentences which would be paired with examples from the posters code. So that I could focus on writing the custom tailored part of the question.

@Pimgd Still they do not, and there are common practices both language specific and generic which a lint tool does not cover.

I dunno, I feel that this devalues an answer somehow

special purpose entity, DRY, you do not need it. For Python Pep8 would be another one

@Pimgd That special fuzzy feeling of uniqueness?

Yeah but, taken to its maximum,

How many who ask questions will plow through similar questions before or after asking their own?

you'd have an answer that goes like 2: 5, 7; 6: 23; 12-16 & 45-49: 3;

If they actually had done that, more likely than not there would not be a need for question.

of a line: issue format

and even if you replaced it with english

I don't see the benefit

I think the human lint-tool output makes a decent answer

but it's not great

The benefit would be not needing to repeat yourself for every answer you write, pinpointing to the same generic principles being broken. This would make that part faster, more streamlined. So that one can focus on the deeper problems specific to the question.

... and you're missing support?

uhhh

the numbers thing, that's what you're proposing, right? Except with words.

No, english is hard :p

Here at line 2 <snippet> you've got extends Object but that's not needed

Okay; I mean to say that you're proposing partial answers that could be compressed down to line numbers and issue keys

much like a compiler issues you warning 11043 for line 4 of a certain file

Think of it as a two step process. First step is what you are talking about ^ snippets with code from the user. This is what would be more streamlined. The second part is the handcrafting part, changing parts of the code and explaining why the changes are good.

Implementation aside, I think that it's lacking supporting arguments for why this is wrong

And the text is different for various levels of understanding

    Your main method is responsible for too many things. The main method is
    meant to be an entry point into your program, rather than the program
    itself. As a general principle try to let each function serve a single
    purpose ([Single responsibility principle](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_responsibility_principle)).
    It would be better to extract some of the code into
    [routines/methods/functions/classes and continue with OP code and examples]

Yeah, I totally see that point. I do think that this would work the best at those entry level spagetthi code questions where everything seems wrong. They do seem to turn into Zombies because nobody find the motivation to start answering them.

I think you should go for it but I personally prefer writing it in my own words

@N3buchadnezzar those are easy to shoot if needed

pick any spot

wound it

and done

mini-reviewwww

:p

But yeah, the reason for me not posting in meta is that the idea is so hard to convey..

Nah the zombie issue tends to be more questions that, well, are either in obscure languages

or are ... lacking in context

random java zombie

@Pimgd Been thinking about killing this codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/135439/… one for a few days.

Okay so when I look at this question (the java one) all I can think of is

that's a boring question

and I think there's not a whole lot of meat in there

It's pretty long but it doesn't really do anything

And what it does, it does wrong

def die(why):

    """Kill the program."""

    print "{} Exiting..".format(why)
    quit(1)

It's not really good; there's a few things I'd complain about if I wanted to (comments?)

For example in the python answering snippets one of the snippets would be about quit()

@N3buchadnezzar this one is offensive and pretentious to me

I have it downvoted and don't feel like gracing OP with an answer

Yeah.. I guess that is why it is still a zombie.

if I did write an answer it would boil down to "your docstrings are useless and do not help programmers."

@Pimgd "Your functions are useless."

"Your program is useless"

But that would be a bit too harsh

no, just the doc strings

Well the functions really are useless

But the idea isn't

The idea of printing things wasn't wrong, it's just too low level to be useful

@Pimgd And the idea of adding docstrings is good.

There I'd argue he just wanted to tick boxes

?

Gotta add docstrings to have docstrings else you will not have docstrings and thus no documentation

= just ticking boxes

Gotta have functions because a single function is bad check

Anyhow, wrote up a new attempt. Still not happy with the wording, If I was able to convey the proper meaning. Hopefully it is fine to post it, even if you will not use it.

I'd disagree there, those long strings can be disruptive to the even more massive code

also, reduce of duplication?

@N3buchadnezzar ooh nice.

yep, you could post that

I think

hmmmh

ah

I am more afraid of posting things on meta than on here though. I feel like if I post something wrong I will forever be cursed by the mug.

@N3buchadnezzar you're not allowing answers that disagree with your idea

they'd get in the way of the supportive answers

recommend you rewrite to indicate that this is an idea,

not that you're doing it now in this question

Right I can change that, gimme me a quick fix. I tried sorting that out in chat beforehand, but I see that it is better to have an open discussion about it first.

also, this sort of thing is GREAT when you have links in there

as 2-3 sentences of text can be typed, but searching for a link takes at least that much time

Yeah, the idea was to bombard the snippets with links.

@Pimgd Second attempt?

@N3buchadnezzar missing paragraph ending @ paragraph 2 under background

Yeah. I also changed the "improvements" to "documentation".

this post

nooo

discussion

Documenation was a really the word I was looking for. As they are neither code bits, or answers.

I was referring to not making it a question to be "this post is THE PLACE to put the answers with the general comments"

but this is my idea, what do you think about it, the idea is that we will have a question like general comments which... blah blah blah

I just removed that part. It is really not neccecary

"The idea is somewhat controversial, and hence would like to start an discussion on the matter before doing something more drastic."

@N3buchadnezzar yep that sounds good

Posted

Let the downvotes rain

meta downvoting gets you a question ban @ meta at worst, I think

maybe not even that

and you'd have to post some REALLY bad stuff for that

I dunno, maybe take your post,

and instead of suggesting generic answer snippets,

suggest we close down the whole site instead

I'm gonna go home

I just read your last three lines by mistake:p

Thought you were suggesting I do that instead, haha. Or that doing that would be better than my suggestion.

If you want downvotes

that'd be the way to do it

spam gets deleted too fast =D

@Pimgd Have a nice trip home, it is getting quite late.

@N3buchadnezzar What it is and what is is not.

also, it's still saying "this post" which means you're not providing a space for discussion

but oh well

I has fixt

please see the tiny diff

Did you change it? I really thought I had fixed it, must have missed a spot or two.

Really want a discussion though =)

I missed a comma, added that too

now I am leaving

Have a safe trip home, and thanks for the fish.