The Whiteboard

2:04 AM

@dcaswell: What role do you play in this conversation? — Robert Harvey 10 mins ago

@RobertHarvey well done, spoken like someone who's tired of those damned punks on your lawn

(I don't like those little pricks either, all that dynamic typing, they're going to cause an accident one of these days)

user41796

@JimmyHoffa More accurately, the OP had a different user handle.

Jimmy Hoffa

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about economics. — Justin Cave 39 mins ago

There's an off-topic reason we don't see a lot of O_o

@GlenH7 O? Someone I'd recognize? Doesn't look like any content from a user I should really recognize...

user41796

@MichaelT for some reason my name in chat has not converted to blue yet. I think I need to ping SE about that.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 You just missed mod nominations at DIY, they closed earlier today. Should have gon for it, technically it is more close and delete votes

user41796

@JimmyHoffa No, it appears that both the OP and the commenter to Harvey are both fairly low rep. Arguably, OP and commenter are one and the same, but … who knows. If you've accumulated ~400 rep, you ought to know better than to create an additional account like that.

user41796

2:12 AM

@JimmyHoffa I'm silly in the ways I try to stay focused

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 the minimum wage question smelled terribly strongly of the same poster as well

(user number only 2 greater than the testing one)

err nevermind, I misread

the gift card generator is 2 greater

user41796

I don't know if the user # generator is sequential or not. But that would be kind of depressing if someone didn't understand the site usage and created two accounts for two questions asked at about the same time.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I can't imagine it's not sequential

the numbers get smaller with age

user41796

<shrugs shoulders> I think for the most part that it is. But I haven't looked at it closely enough to identify how they are generated. I kind of got the impression it's more than just a simple sequential thing, but … dunno.

user55340

@WorldEngineer you need to down vote more (just poking at review histories).

user41796

2:25 AM

@MichaelT Given that @WorldEngineer is just a sock puppet for @YannisRizos, it makes sense that Yannis would balance out the down votes from his main account with no down votes on his puppet account.

user20683

@MichaelT I don't downvote. We've had this conversation.

user55340

Ahh, but you can skip.

user55340

And skip is a different thing than 'no action needed' or 'leave open' since it doesn't remove it from the queue (if that was the case that it should have been left for someone else to do so).

user55340

(I'm not sure if nods see a 'delete' option in the review queue that would be passing for a bad post)

user41796

@MichaelT nods?

user55340

2:30 AM

@GlenH7 programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/43377

user55340

@WorldEngineer if you are not going to... how shall I say it... appropriate corrective action, then skipping is by far (and especially so for a mod) best option. Your 'leave open' actions remove something from the review queue. And the 'no action' means that someone else won't down vote or flag a first post that should be from the queue.

user41796

@WorldEngineer - I have to concur with @MichaelT's thoughts there. I'll grant on the review that you don't see the other post from the duplicate account. But that "answer" was not an answer. user55667 had the same last name as the user in that review question. But deletions have obscured that fact.

user55340

We don't have quote the population of 10k+ers on P.SE that poke at the 10k mod tools to look at what is at 4 close votes and somehow got dequeued... or the rampant first post review badge chaser.

user55340

(I'm frankly not sure if we have more than three 10k+ non-mods that look at the 10k tools at all)

user41796

@MichaelT perhaps not. But I have stopped reviewing first post queue items so others can chase after their own badges.

user20683

2:35 AM

@MichaelT We've more than that

user55340

that look at the tools?

user55340

I don't see that many helping out on delete votes at all... and I rarely see many getting into the close votes in the last 30 days that sit high on the list.

user55340

We might get some that help out with flags, but those are notification things that don't require one to get into the tools page.

user55340

(poking at the low rep feedback... hmm...

user55340

1

Q: Flow Chart - While Loops process

I'm having difficulties understanding whether or not this is the right process to use for a flow chart which illustrates the processes involved in an algorithm. For this, assume the following: A 1D X = [0, 1, 2, 3,........] data block is split into 2D blocks: x = {[0 1]} {[2 3]} For eac...

user55340

2:43 AM

That question has +6/-15 for the feedback. "Not Helpful"

user55340

I wish I knew what they were looking for.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20070219/044101.html

user41796

@MichaelT I think that's a question that attracts a wide variety of people interested in a different answer. The title is fairly vague, and you have to dig into the question to understand what is being asked in that case. Odds are, what's being asked is not what those -15 visitors were looking for.

user55340

It would be a good opportunity to write a question and self answer it for what the 15 were looking for.

user55340

All I know is most recently, not helpful.

user55340

2:49 AM

And given its only +1, likely 'overrated' wasn't what they selected.

user55340

@WorldEngineer another thought, if you can't reasonably complete it (can't flag, delete vote, or close vote it (because its not a question) - skip it... I've had to do it from time to time too.

user55340

11

Q: Can't reasonably complete a low quality question review

I looked in the low quality review queue (there was a 1 on it). Turned out to be a question. That is certainly not a looks good. I've already added a comment before it hit the queue (and have the only comment there at all). Its not an edit I can save. And I've used all my close votes for t...

bug review low-quality-posts

user41796

My definition of irony for the evening. I'm at a developer conference, and I picked up a "shark with frickin' laser" as part of the conference swag. I grabbed it for my kids thinking it wasn't really a laser. Nope, I'm wrong. It really is a laser pointer and comes with a class 1 laser, so I can't give it to the kids since they're too young.

user41796

No oneboxing: thinkgeek.com/product/f2eb/…

gnat

8:20 AM

@MichaelT FWIW I find his "Leave Open" typically fair, even though these are binding... and even though I typically vote opposite. :)

gnat

12:51 PM

amount of low effort answers today seems to be above average. Some even openly admit that they didn't intend to answer the question asked

Those are ideas, not advice. If implemented, they could lead to disaster. I haven't ever used any of them, as I haven't been a boss. If someone explains why they are great or awful - all the better. Other than that, they are meant to be food for thought. — Vorac 25 mins ago

"food for thought" yeah. How about water for drink... a lot of it...

user55340

2:25 PM

@WorldEngineer I've flagged a number of answers for undeletion (no, not undulation - thank you spelling correct) in that C pow question. There might be some more that are appropriate to undelete.

user55340

16

Q: why there is no power operator in java / c ++?

While there is such operator - ** in Python , i was wondering why java and c++ havent got one too. It is easy to make one for classes you define in C++ with operator overloading ( and i believe such thing is possible also in java) , but when talking about primitive types such as int, double a...

java c++ python

user55340

Thank you.

user55340

(while you are there, you might want to unlock it - its not a bad / historical lock / should be locked question...)

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Heh yeah read that long time ago..

conversation behind me:
colleague1: Object orientation came after I joined the industry so it was hard for me to pick up...
colleague2: Yeah I was completely a functional programmer too throughout all of college.
...
He means procedural...yeah, functional and procedural are the same thing...

Jimmy Hoffa

2:53 PM

Does anyone know why CSS decided to be lisp-case?

user55340

3:06 PM

well, CSS isn't case sensitive, which throws out practical CamelCase (which would be the same as camelcase which is hard to read). Font families are hyphen separated already, so consistency?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT font-families! that's where it came from!

Surely, that's gotta be it

user55340

3:59 PM

Palendromic rep!

user55340

361

Q: What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered?

What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered?

comments

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT You know declaring that in here just begs for that to change, right?

user55340

viewed 1,584,505 times

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Yep.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Oh geezus... 1.5m views of that, and we wonder why so many people think P.SE is a toiletbin.

user55340

4:06 PM

Thats SO.

Jimmy Hoffa

O n/m

user55340

If we had that many views...

user55340

Well, our highest rep one only has 230,578 views.

user55340

4:30 PM

> put on hold as off-topic by FrustratedWithFormsDesigner, MichaelT, Karl Bielefeldt, Shog9♦ 14 mins ago

user55340

The super duper mod close.

user55340

4:45 PM

I bet @Shog9 did it just for the badge‌... ;-)

gnat

@MichaelT no, he's got Custodian for politically correct Leave Open submitted a minute prior to that one, programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/43436

user55340

@gnat Yep... though I'm still gonna say he did it for the badge.

user55340

(and only 77 more rep until @jozefg gets at /review for close votes)

gnat

@MichaelT well I for one would do that only for badge, how can I think otherwise :)

gnat

5:51 PM

gnat, shog9, Robert: If you wish to continue discussing the suitability of the question, please move the conversation to either Meta or chat. — Yannis Rizos 49 mins ago

    public static int getProcType()
    {
        while (true) {
            procType = getInput();
            if (valid(procType)) {
                break;
            }
            System.out.println("Error! Enter a valid option!");
        }
        hrlyRate = hrlyRate(procType);
        procedure = procedure(procType);

        return procType;
    }

    private static int getInput() {
        final int invalid = -1;
        assert !valid(invalid) : "wrong expectation about invalid value used in catch statement";

I have no desire to pollute Programmers with code dumps completely based on concepts elaborated in a duplicate question

5

Q: Should I extract specific functionality into a function and why?

I have a large method which does 3 tasks, each of them can be extracted into a separate function. If I'll make an additional functions for each of that tasks, will it make my code better or worse and why? Edit: Obviously, it'll make less lines of code in the main function, but there'll be addit...

to study: slippery dupe votes

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