V'dibarta Bam

Daniel

12:53 AM

@MonicaCellio There are so many questions that get asked there, most people never see most questions

People pretty much only click on the ones their sure they can answer

(aka the easy beginner-programmer questions)

Shokhet

@Daniel That's the feeling I got about SO also, even though I don't have an account there.

Monica Cellio

@Daniel true, but even a small fraction of users seeing any given question would be like all the users on a smaller site seeing it.

(I once answered a question there that was kind of niche and it got almost no views, hence no votes for me, until I mentioned it somewhere. I just figured that XSLT was a bigger topic, but maybe not...)

Anyway, it's not like I'm looking to build my SO portfolio or anything. It was just a little surprising.

Daniel

@Shokhet I brief look at the front page of SO right now reveals probably about 20% beginner-level questions

Shokhet

@Daniel Ah. I likely wouldn't be able to tell -- I can do a little basic HTML, and some small tricks in C++

(I may learn eventually....but probably not right now.)

Daniel

@Shokhet A lot of the basic questions are C/C++ oriented

because those are often the languages that are taught to beginners

(for some horrible reason that I cannot understand)

Shokhet

12:59 AM

@Daniel What do you think they should be taught instead?

Daniel

@Shokhet python, java, scheme/lisp, whatever

anything that doesn't have pointers and manual memory management

Isaac Moses

/me opens a bag of popcorn and gets ready to watch a holy war

4

Daniel

@IsaacMoses No I'm not one of those people :) I actually do the vast majority of my professional work in C++

and I like it a lot

I just think it's a horrible language for beginners

Isaac Moses

Oh well

Anyone want this popcorn?

3

Shokhet

@Daniel Once I started looking at the Khan Academy python videos.....looked simple enough.

@IsaacMoses Sure!

Daniel

1:01 AM

@Shokhet python is good for beginners because it looks like english

And enforces the good programming practice of indenting your code

My first real programming language (that wasn't TI-Basic) was Java which was a decent one to learn with, but it doesn't get much more unintuitive than System.out.Println

Shokhet

@Daniel Like this?

I wrote 20 short programs in Python yesterday. It was wonderful. Perl, I'm leaving you.

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet gah! beat me by about 5 seconds!

Daniel

@Shokhet yep :) haha

Shokhet

@Daniel I kinda understood that cout << string meant print this buncha words, but I never really got more complex than that.

Daniel

@Shokhet yeah I mean C has printf

which obviously means pring something

but imagine teaching a beginner how to properly use printf

Also I might have just found my new favorite SO question

-1

Q: Is there a C C++ C# compiler that compiles to machine code

I am looking for a way to compile a small computation-intensive program to a machine code executable. The program is currently written in the Microsoft Visual Studio C# environment, but I am just as happy to do it in C, C++ or any similar variant if it results in my getting a machine code execut...

Monica Cellio

1:06 AM

@Daniel when you teach a language you don't need to teach everything in it. Leave most of the printf() options for later. :-)

Shokhet

@Daniel I don't understand why that's funny.

Daniel

@Shokhet I mean sure there are compilers for some languages that compile to byte-code or something like that

but come on

Shokhet

(don't bother explaining if it's too much trouble -- it'll just be one more programming thing that goes on around here that I don't get)

Daniel

all c/C++/C# compilers compile to machine code

that's what a compiler does

Shokhet

@Daniel AIUI all compilers should compile to machine code

@Daniel Oh, so I did get it, then ;-)

Daniel

1:08 AM

@Shokhet Java compilers don't compile to machine code

but it's just the way the question was asked

Shokhet

@Daniel What do they compile to?

Daniel

@Shokhet Java byte-code

which is executed by a byte-code interpreter in the JVM

I guess you could call that JVM machine code :)

Isaac Moses

@Daniel Vmachine code. The V is important

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Until recently printf("hello, world"); was illegal usage of printf

you had to do printf("%s", "hello, world");

Shokhet

@Daniel Grammar police come after you? :P

Daniel

1:10 AM

@IsaacMoses yep

Isaac Moses

@Daniel recently in geologic time?

Daniel

@IsaacMoses I guess I don't really know when the switch was made

it could have been C99

Monica Cellio

@Daniel oh. (My C/C++ days are rather distant by now, so I'd forgotten.)

Daniel

wow

data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/250153/…

150k for a user with a default user name

I was wondering where our very own user6591 stacks up with the SO people

I wish there was a way to do that search across all the sites

or possibly all of them besides SO

Shokhet

@Daniel I just checked that out on that query; he's significantly higher than any other

Daniel

1:17 AM

@Shokhet on Mi Yodeya

Shokhet

Has anyone installed @Hod's script on Android, and knows what the setup should look like

Daniel

but on SO, there's someone with 150k

Shokhet

@Daniel Yes

@Daniel I got that.

Isaac Moses

@Daniel You'd have to normalize. Their highest rep user has 729K. Ours has 77.4K

Daniel

@IsaacMoses So divide by 10

Isaac Moses

1:19 AM

(I'm actually surprised that there's only one order of magnitude difference)

Daniel

yeah

Isaac Moses

@Daniel Note that the #2 on that list for MY is not a default username

Daniel

EL&L has a user with a higher rep than 6591 does here

@IsaacMoses Is that right? Was there a user who had the default name user613?

I mean I knew that it wasn't exactly correct

AFAIK there's no way to determine if a username is a default one

Isaac Moses

@Daniel All I know is that user613 ain't UID 613

Daniel

@IsaacMoses ah fair enough

@IsaacMoses oh UID 613 is my namesake

Isaac Moses

1:22 AM

@Daniel B"H he'll come do more stuff and live up to the heiligeh UID and name!

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses or figure out how to write the SQL for "on each site, return top 5" (or whatever threshold you set).

(I don't know how to do iteration in SQL.)

Daniel

@MonicaCellio I don't think the data explorer allows such a query

You have to query each site individually

@MonicaCellio You wouldn't have to do iteration. You'd just do a group by

Monica Cellio

@Daniel the data explorer doesn't support cross-site queries. But if you did have, say, all the users from all the sites in one table, with an additional "site" column, could you write that SQL?

@Daniel ah, ok. So you can do a group-by and select the top N in each group?

Daniel

@MonicaCellio yep

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio paradigm shift

Monica Cellio

1:30 AM

@IsaacMoses indeed. SQL is very different from my past programming experience. (And so is scripting, by the way. My main experience is in C, C++, Java, and LISP, not necessarily in that order.)

Daniel

@MonicaCellio lisp is also a paradigm shift from those other languages

Monica Cellio

@Daniel yes. My first encounter with LISP was in college (after Pascal - remember Pascal?) and a small assortment of languages introduced in a comparative-languages class. (I mean, yes I have written APL, but it's not like I'd know what I'm doing if presented with a problem now. LISP, on the other hand, I went on to use.)

My only full-time professional programming jobs were with LISP, in fact.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Was it AI related?

AFAIK lisp was never used for much that wasn't AI related

Monica Cellio

@Daniel yup. :-)

Daniel

@MonicaCellio woo now I look like a genious

:)

Monica Cellio

1:39 AM

:-)

Daniel

Lisp has changed a lot, though

I think it's pretty much only used for educational purposes now

and usually it's scheme or some other later descendent of lisp

I liked it when I learned it

although I think it would be hard to do full-time lisp programming

I like functional programming, though. I try to keep my c++ code functional as much as possible

Monica Cellio

I haven't stayed current, so I don't really know what LISP is up to these days. But back when I was using it I loved it; it was powerful and expressive and easy to work with.

And that's what I learned functional programming on, so later when I got to C++ and Java I brought in some of those same habits.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio For one, it's not called LISP anymore :) it's called lisp

Monica Cellio

And when I started to learn JavaScript (never got very good at it, but dabbled some) my eyes got big and wide and I thought "LISP, you've come home!". :-) I mean not really, but certain things felt very comfortable. :-)

@Daniel really? When did that happen?

And not even Lisp but lisp?

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Oh maybe Lisp

@MonicaCellio I never got very good at javascript either

When I was in college, I took a seminar where we tried to write a complete semantics document for JavaScript, but after a semester, we just gave up

haha

@MonicaCellio But even C++ is taking some lispy things now

C++11 has lambdas

Monica Cellio

1:47 AM

@Daniel I've heard that! (My new employer does a lot of stuff in C++ so I'm slowly getting reacquainted with it.)

Daniel

@MonicaCellio They're still much harder to use in C++ than they are in lisp

but it's a step forward

a function that takes a lambda as a parameter in c++ looks like

void f(std::function< int(int) >& lambda);

that's pretty horrible

I guess no worse than function pointers, though

Monica Cellio

Bleh! It's a first step, but I sure hope they hasten to the second step.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Usually people just use auto for lambdas, I think

Monica Cellio

Well, I must attend to some other things. Talk to y'all later.

Shokhet

2:13 AM

Vote on the suggested tag synonym here .....it needs a score of 5 to become a real synonym.

Shokhet

4:19 AM

judaism.stackexchange.com/help/badges/89/halacha?userid=5323 !

Finally :)

Double AA

5:17 AM

@Shokhet I've noticed you have been quoting from ShShKH a bunch recently.

I encourage you to note which edition you are using when citing it. There are now 3 editions TTBOMK and the numbering schemes are not always identical.

msh210

6:52 AM

Nov 9 at 21:31, by Monica Cellio

@Scimonster as a spare-time activity I'm actually playing with loading all the data dumps into a single DB so that I can do cross-site analytics. But my SQL is weak, so if this goes anywhere I hope to ask folks for help with the queries they'd like to be able to write but can't. :-)

@MonicaCellio @Daniel

select id,reputation from users t where reputation in (select reputation from users u where u.site=t.site group by reputation desc limit 5)

seems about right (in mysql). You'd better have keys.

msh210

8:01 AM

4

Q: Standard comment for users who likely need to be merged

When a new user account shows up, and it looks very similar to an existing user account, it would be nice to leave a comment saying something like "Are you this other user? If so, here's what you should do." What should such a comment say?

discussion comments user-accounts

^ faq?

Scimonster

8:52 AM

@msh210 IDK, but maybe

5

Q: A standard comment for new users asking psak questions

I wanted to suggest that we put forth a standard comment to put on psak questions asked by new users. The goal of the psak-close reason is, as I understand from various chat conversations, to instill in new users that they should not take what they receive from this site as psak, and to drive th...

discussion close-reasons new-users

(I just went to use that one!)

Double AA

3:00 PM

Nov 20 at 16:51, by Double AA

In fact you may consider making something parallel to http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/4925/22307 or the lists linked to there.

msh210

@Scimonster See @DoubleAA's last chat message, just above.

@DoubleAA Yeah, good point.

Scimonster

@DoubleAA I was thinking that too.

Monica Cellio

7:12 PM

@msh210 thanks. Noted.

Shokhet

7:23 PM

@DoubleAA Ah. I didn't realized that the numbering scheme changed, though I was aware of the multiple editions. Thanks for the heads-up!

@Scimonster If I had to pick a day to get the Mortarboard badge, it'd probably be today -- I'm at +175, and it's only 19:25 UTC

Scimonster

7:39 PM

@Shokhet Go for it!

Shokhet

Just spotted an old (last active a year ago) question that is clearly an RfP, but has answers. Should I edit the question, or vote to close?

Scimonster

@Shokhet Depends. Let's see it.

Shokhet

4

Q: At what age will my female cousin become forbidden for me to touch?

Wikipedia's article "Negiah" begins: The term negiah (Hebrew: נגיעה‎), literally "touch," is the concept in Halakha that forbids or restricts physical contact with a member of the opposite sex (except for one's spouse, children, siblings, grandchildren, parents, and grandparents). A person wh...

halacha family-members age negia

Scimonster

@Shokhet Edit, i think. It's a good question. (But i want that Archaeologist badge just as much as you!)

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet It's got useful answers that address the general case rather than rendering pesak. The best thing would be to edit it so that it poses a general question with OP's particular motivation.

Shokhet

7:51 PM

@Scimonster I got it already -- if you want it, go for it!

@IsaacMoses Okay.

Isaac Moses

... But closing would be fine if people don't have time now to do such edits.

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses What would you say if the answers only dealt with the specific case?

@IsaacMoses I don't have the time, but @Scimonster volunteered to take care of it ;-)

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet Depends, but I might be more likely to recommend closure and possible deletion of answers if it's really blatant.

Scimonster

@Shokhet judaism.stackexchange.com/help/badges/82/…

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses Got it. Thanks!

Scimonster

7:53 PM

"Shokhet did not earn this badge" ;)

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet But that's just my opinion. CYFIJQAC

Shokhet

@Scimonster Right. I've done it more than once though, so I got Excavator (which is what I thought you were talking about)

@IsaacMoses "consult your......" ???

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet favorite Internet Jewish Q&A community. Duh.

4

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses I did that already! ;-)

Scimonster

Done.

Edit summary: "No more Rfפ" (cc @IsaacMoses)

:)

Shokhet

7:57 PM

@Scimonster Nice!

@Scimonster Happens to be, skimming the edit summaries for that question are very clear.

Scimonster

@Shokhet And that was while Bam-ing.

Shokhet

@Scimonster :)

Bam!

Isaac Moses

@Scimonster This may be the first usage of that term in verb form.

Scimonster

@IsaacMoses :D

I wasn't sure whether to coin it as "Bam-ing" or "Bamming". I think the hyphen preserves the pronunciation better.

Charles Koppelman

8:31 PM

@YeZ I have a funny story about that mashal

The shul I grew up in hired a second rabbi and rented another building for YK and RH services.

On RH, the congregation would go to both shuls - one "team" spent the first day in the main shul, and the other "team" would go to the rented building. The second day, they'd switch

We went to the shul for second day.

So one year, the temp rabbi gave a drash starting with that story. He used it for something about mussar or the like.

The next day, we go to the main shul where the main rabbi starts his drash with the same story

You can hear everyone in the shul talking while the rabbi goes on about the pebbles and sand and water (not beer)

Anyway, he completes his drash about whichever topic it was about.

.... we never hear from that temp rabbi again.

YeZ

@CharlesKoppelman Why not? Sounds like he created the setup for the Rabbi's most memorable drasha!

Charles Koppelman

@YeZ Not sure! Might have been embarrassing

Scimonster

@CharlesKoppelman Sounds like the two rabbis had some communication issues. :)

Charles Koppelman

@Scimonster Or something

@YeZ And to be honest, I don't remember exactly the point of the drash, just the realization that they were maybe on the same listserve

YeZ

@Shokhet I currently have 4 half-finished answers that I have lost interest in and plan on coming back to in open windows. Disaster waiting to happen.

@CharlesKoppelman Well, do you remember any of his other derashos?

Scimonster

8:41 PM

@YeZ Are they saved?

Charles Koppelman

@YeZ Absolutely. He is a really really good speaker, actually

YeZ

@CharlesKoppelman Oh well never mind then.

@Scimonster Absolutely not. It's my ongoing "living on the edge" approach, which @Shokhet is trying to get me to do teshuva from.

Scimonster

@YeZ touch answers.md

Shokhet

@YeZ Good luck! (5 keystrokes per answer will save you: ctrl+a, ctrl+c, win+r, notepad, ctrl+v)

(just saying)

Charles Koppelman

even easier - keep it in browser on Stackedit.com

that keeps things in localStorage

...which is easier to not delete from, and you can download it.

YeZ

8:45 PM

@Scimonster what does that mean?

Scimonster

@YeZ Create an answers file.

Charles Koppelman

@YeZ it's a unix command that creates a new file called answers.md

YeZ

@Scimonster and ruin all the excitement?

Shokhet

@Scimonster Your solution is easier than mine, granted....but mine is more widely understood, apparently ;-)

Scimonster

@YeZ echo true

@Shokhet Actually, i think yours is easier. Mine just creates a blank file - you still have to open it, copy/paste, and save.

YeZ

8:47 PM

@Scimonster stop speaking in unix!

Shokhet

@Scimonster True.

YeZ

@Shokhet what about ctrl+s?

Charles Koppelman

@Scimonster Where do answers get saved, anyway? Is it local? Is it on SE servers tied to your session?

Scimonster

@YeZ Or should i go all JavaScript nerd on you and alert(!!(![1]-1))?

Shokhet

Does anyone know where I might find a linkable edition of the ריקאנטי online?

Scimonster

8:48 PM

@CharlesKoppelman SE servers, because i've had it show up between my computer and iPad.

Charles Koppelman

@Scimonster So not tied to sessionid, either?

Shokhet

@YeZ ah, who needs it? .......that would save you from computer crash, but your problem in the past had been with SE server problems.

Charles Koppelman

... you sure you don't sync your browsers?

Scimonster

@CharlesKoppelman I do, actually. So maybe it's local.

Charles Koppelman

is there an answer to this on MSO?

Scimonster

8:50 PM

@CharlesKoppelman MSE now. No idea.

Shokhet

@Shokhet (for my question here)

Charles Koppelman

@Shokhet Easiest to find: hebrewbooks.org/41284

Shokhet

@CharlesKoppelman Thanks!

Charles Koppelman

@Shokhet np

Shokhet

@CharlesKoppelman Incorporated into question -- thanks!

That question was answered amazingly fast. I am impressed!

Scimonster

8:56 PM

@CharlesKoppelman Just looked in my localStorage, and it's not in there. Must be the servers. :)

If i know that someone is breaking the rules of MY by being too young, should i report them?

Shokhet

@Scimonster ( brother? )

Scimonster

@Shokhet Might be.

YeZ

@Scimonster you could ask.

Shokhet

@Scimonster I would say it's fine, but that's just my opinion.

Scimonster

@YeZ Halacha, or MY rules?

Shokhet

9:02 PM

@YeZ That link only works if it's a halachic question -- point him to ask on Meta if it's a policy question.

YeZ

@Scimonster @Shokhet I assumed we were asking a halachic shailoh.

Scimonster

@YeZ Just general. Halacha or policy.

YeZ

@Scimonster So I stand by my previous comment then

Shokhet

@Scimonster I just got 210, but no badge yet because 15 was an accept.

YeZ

@Shokhet I think that still counts. I got the badge on my first time breaking 200 which included a bounty.

Scimonster

9:06 PM

@Shokhet You should get it, just let the script run.

@YeZ Will do in the morning, from a halachic POV. Currently limiting to 1q/day to get Socratic.

(and i need to go to bed)

Charles Koppelman

@Shokhet found at DuckDuckGo.com: duckduckgo.com/?q=%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%99

@Scimonster localStorage is not the only local storage mechanism. It might be in a cookie or in sessionStorage... or unlikely in a flash cookie.

Scimonster

@CharlesKoppelman Not sessionStorage, i checked that one too.

YeZ

@Scimonster How many questions a day do you think Socrates asked?

Scimonster

@YeZ [history.se/ask] :P

Shokhet

9:24 PM

@CharlesKoppelman I'll check that out, thanks!

@Scimonster I'm pretty sure that accepts don't count for the rep cap.....anyway, I'm at 215 now, including the accept, so I'm definitely getting the badge now :)

Scimonster

@Shokhet Accepts don't count for the cap, but they count for the badge. Source: experience

Shokhet

@Scimonster Ah. Alright.

I wouldn't be able to tell, from this case.

I gotta go, TZT all!

Scimonster

Bye!

And i see you got the badge. :)

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