The Whiteboard - 2013-11-21 (page 2 of 3)

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6:04 PM

WAT?

0

Q: We're using C#/ASP.NET MVC at the moment, but the company wants to use PHP for the front end. Is this a bad idea?

We'll be working with (mostly) various APIs written in WCF at the backend. For the front end we have a legacy MVC website but it needs re-doing as it was written in a hurry by someone who wasn't really a developer. Rather than re-do it properly in MVC they are suggesting redoing it in PHP as PH...

c# php asp.net-mvc

@RobertHarvey I disagree with the comment though

That's because you're a php developer.

@RobertHarvey No, you're making a broad and terrible analogy. I don't develop in PHP either.

user55340

@RobertHarvey so is Yannis... and he wasn't responsible for the Greek economic class with php... or so he claims.

The car is not exactly a bad analogy. PHP is a clean, simple language with a bunch of sh.... stuff bolted on to it.

6:09 PM

But let's rather skip the debate, because language wars have been fought before, to no end.

Cheaper labor... yeah, that's always at the root of all good decisions: Let's hang our entire business on something that can be done by lower experience lower priced employees than the alternative which would require industry experienced employees... — Jimmy Hoffa 1 min ago

Meh, it's just a joke anyway.

I agree with the cheap labour parts though

@Joe can the language wars, just the basis of their decision is stupid, let's get the product our business hinges on built by the cheapest employees we can find

user55340

The cheaper labor thing is indeed the key mistake and misunderstanding about long term cost of the site.

6:10 PM

That is always a terrible decision, and reliable PHP developers should cost as much as C# ones.

@Joe (probably because they used to be C# ones! OOOO!!) ;D

user55340

@Joe They don't, but thats because the php labor market is a bit depressed.

@MichaelT and oversupplied, the depression is mostly related to all the black make up and meh looks abounding their hipster natures

Do you guys share a similar sentiment towards Ruby as you do towards PHP?

user55340

@Joe Nah, I'm the one who gripes about ruby.

user55340

6:11 PM

I can't say too much bad about php because I'm a perlist.

@Joe I'm kidding. We all enjoy deriding languages in here, because we're all good enough to know it's the part of a programmer that matters the least. (Unless the language is perl, then you can just toss the programmer out with the bath water)

user55340

Though the misdesign in the language for ruby and php come from different directions.

@JimmyHoffa Key: @MichaelT :P

user55340

Or if you're a haskell person... they are all "monad and egienfunctor and polycatamorphism"

user55340

(I swear, they make up a new word each time they talk about something)

6:14 PM

@MichaelT bla bla bla polycatamorphism is redundant :P

In a way, I'm glad I'm not the only 1 who sees beyond the language and looks for the ability to deliver the product above the fanboyism

Seriously, the quality of the tools does matter some.

@Joe fabioism is the best way to choose a language

user55340

What would Fabio code in?

@RobertHarvey It matters to the product, not really the programmer which is the confusion people constantly make

6:15 PM

Otherwise, we'd still be writing everything in Fortran or assembly.

Or, God forbid, Cobol.

@MichaelT I was thinking more like ranking languages based on the hunkiness of their O'Reilly animal

I actually dropped PHP because I was looking for a more reliable tool that I could understand, so I chose Python

user55340

@RobertHarvey You know you want to be a cool kid and get an APL keyboard.

user55340

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@RobertHarvey The big problem with language wars is people take it personally like saying a language is good or bad or whatever means something about the skill of the person writing in that language. The best programmers in the world have likely all written in some horrible language at one point in their career or another, language relays nothing about a programmer.

6:17 PM

I must admit though, I find frontend frameworks fascinating for certain types of webapps. I'm just not sure that DB validation belongs in the client only.

Truth is languages are good and bad at various things and some are all around better than others as you mention above, these relay attributes to the product you're building (like shittiness if it's PHP ;D) which is totally worth bickering about. Though not in a question, CV'd.

@JimmyHoffa The fact that 30 million plus websites around the world are running on PHP (WP, Joomla, Drupal) is probably another reason why people just stick to it. The money is there.

@Joe It doesn't. Never did.

@Joe That's a pretty strong statement, as we mentioned earlier: It's a depressed market, the employee wage is way lower than alternatives

user41796

@RobertHarvey Sorry for the delay - had to grab lunch. Problem is resolved now.

6:19 PM

(which is why there's so much of it in large part out there)

@MichaelT What is that, a Stupid Toad? That's the Morphological offspring of a Turtle and a power drill isn't it?

@JimmyHoffa WP claims they have 20 million sites. Joomla claims that 2-3% of the web runs on it. You're looking in excess of 25 million (if that was the bold statement)

user55340

user41796

true story - at previous gig, I knew a guy who wrote his ESB adapters in Cobol.

Are any of you guys self-taught with no CS degree?

user55340

This article is about the Common Surinam Toad, Pipa pipa. For other species of Surinam toad in the same genus, see Pipa (genus). The Surinam toad or star-fingered toad (Spanish: aparo, rana comun de celdillas, rana tablacha, sapo chinelo, sapo chola, or sapo de celdas) (Pipa pipa) is a species of frog in the Pipidae family. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical swamps, swamps, freshwater marshes, and inte...

6:21 PM

@Joe Of shitty paying jobs often done on contract with no continuous wage for the developer, or just hacked together by the techiest guy in the office

@Joe I am.

@Joe No degree here

@MichaelT Ah, made up just as I figured. It's well known Surinam is not a real place.

user41796

@Joe both of my degrees are in engineering, not CS

How did you guys get your first programmer gig? Did you stumble into it?

user55340

@Joe Contractor at a 'body' shop type place - they had a contract to fill.

user41796

6:23 PM

direct hire in as I had enough background from school projects to demonstrate it. I had done enough engineering projects wrapped around programming so it made sense to them.

user55340

The more specific route was "sysadmin (perl knowledge key) - web master - web developer (CGIs in perl)"

@Joe I have taken 1 comp sci class in my entire life, if that counts

@Joe Look I may not have a college degree, but I know geography!

user image

user55340

(screen captured) i.stack.imgur.com/FRAys.png

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That's an odd one. I thought jpgs came through

6:26 PM

I'm working at a dev shop that does CMS-based development, but I really want to work with frameworks itself and build webapps. It's like a crap catch-22 situation

@GlenH7 access forbidden issue.

@GlenH7 ...it oneboxed on my side... O_o

user41796

@Joe Help them get big enough to where they have to build their own framework

I didn't even know what you screen capped until the pic

user41796

Gigs in the toolset biz can be tough to come by

user41796

@JimmyHoffa didn't onebox on my side when I tried it.

6:28 PM

That'll mean I'll need to use PHP, which I don't mind doing though.

user55340

I blame caching.

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@Joe are you getting opportunites in your current job to learn?

user41796

I hear that php developers are cheaper. ;-)

User asks question on meta about repcap, gets suspended for sock puppeteering. Priceless.

2

6:29 PM

@enderland yeah, I had to literally review all the lessons they provide for clients and draw up tests based on those lessons.

Off-topic: Austria make damn good chocolate

user41796

@Joe chocolate is always on-topic here

user55340

Chocolate beer!

user55340

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@MichaelT Oneboxing must be broke, this didn't come through either

Being in these chat places I've noticed a stark difference between career-coders and startup coders.

user41796

6:32 PM

@JimmyHoffa I blame caching. Came through on my side.

You guys must notice it too, especially when startups try to recruit you for no wage and the promise of a big equity payout

user55340

@Joe Startups are funny places... and a gamble.

user41796

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user55340

(I worked at a startup once... the paycheck bounced)

Startups are definitely good at write-ups though. "Well-funded, world-class office, open-spaces, open amount of workday leave, etc. etc."

6:34 PM

@Joe I started apprenticeship at a tiny web dev shop when I was 13 doing basic HTML/JavaScript, stayed there grew into doing VB6/Classic ASP/T-SQL, then when I was 19 moved on to a real software company doing builds/deployments/installer development/environment and DB maintenance, took every opportunity I got to show I could do coding by debugging issues/automating processes and got moved back into it eventually in ASP.NET, been full-time C# dev ever since. My path was weird and very uncommon.

@Joe "Open amount of workday leave" -> "You can choose if you want to take 2 or 3 hours away from the office every day, because the rest of your time will be at your desk! :D"

user55340

(... when I was 13... hmm... lets see.. the Macintosh plus had just come out... nope, no web yet... unless you counted the bang path for email addresses)

13?

@MichaelT yeah yeah; I'm a yungin tell me something we don't know :P

@JimmyHoffa They expect you to put in 16+ hours a day though.

@Joe That's what I mean, you get to choose if it's 16 or 18, that's flexible!

6:37 PM

"We're building an app that will "revolutionize" the taxi industry by making it easier to hail a cab with 1 touch!"

oh shit you just reminded me of an idiot I worked with years ago... his previous job was as a pizza delivery guy, I have no idea how he got hired as a contract software dev

user55340

The "revolutionize" is for the kids. Now I am content with "not making something that sucks"

he had this horrible website claiming to revolutionize pizza delivery with his software algorithmic approach

Even though some of these crazy apps do well commercially, there are actually some legitimate startups doing great work. Tools like nitrous.io and divshot.com are really cool developer tools

He spent at least a year as a software dev there and all he ever did was jawbone at people, I'm pretty certain he never wrote a single line

user41796

6:40 PM

@JimmyHoffa Isn't that the equivalent of the traveling salesman with constant changes injected into the system?

Sounds like a free-rider.

Excuse me..

But nothing beats the guy who tried to recruit via SO, and he actually had a legitimate startup that was doing something interesting.

I guess I'll just stick with PHP for now. Jobs are definitely hard to come by in any case. Laravel isn't a bad framework either.

user55340

@GlenH7 Pizza tends to be a courier setup - one delivery per route. You don't need to do TSP for it.

@Joe You mean not hard to come by?

6:43 PM

@MichaelT Have you guys heard of pizza being delivered via drones? they're doing that in Australia.

@JimmyHoffa Where I'm from, degrees matter. So local tech jobs are hard to come by.

user55340

@Joe Drones are even easier since you don't have to do street level routing, though it adds some other difficulties with needing accurate location information to deliver too ("My pizza is in a tree" and "when the drone hit the power line, the pizza got extra crispy").

@Joe They matter everywhere...

user41796

@Joe You can somewhat counter that by building up an online presence.

@MichaelT I'm sure they'll work out those kinks. It definitely isn't as bad an idea as 1 might think.

user55340

Until you can have HR look at the 'experience' tab before the 'education' tab, they matter.

6:45 PM

@GlenH7 Building a GitHub profile was my next strategy.

user55340

@Joe They also mean a large up front capital investment (compared to delivery people with their own cars) - that can be a difficult bit for some pizza places.

My magic trick for working around the degree is just having a long tail of experience as well as having had luck to get gigs at some big names and opportunities to work on some really cool projects

How do you give a drone a tip?

@JimmyHoffa That's true. But their requirements are out of this world. But then again, so too are many job positions on SO itself. Definitely HR people writing those.

user41796

@Joe keep working on your SE profiles as well. I like to see candidates with an SE account because their questions & answers really help me understand where they are at skill wise.

6:47 PM

@RobertHarvey throw change at it's propeller blade; the resultant carnage below entertains the drone as we have all learned damaging things is their favorite task

user55340

Secondly, autonomous drones have significant restrictions on them such that licensing may be difficult in some places. Non-autonomous drones means it needs a human controller who likely needs a license that is less available than a driver's license and could charge a premium.

@GlenH7 I won't get too far on stackoverflow. It's a race there, and I need time to think of a good solution. Which is why I'm using this Q&A now.

@MichaelT Yeah but lack of regulation probably means one of these guys gets to fly 3 or 4 of them at a time

@MichaelT Those drones aren't too expensive. Like even $250 each, over the long run saves a huge amount on fuel and delivery guys.

user41796

@Joe Then answer more on Prog.SE. :-) P.SE encourages thought before answering.

6:48 PM

@GlenH7 What kind of dev shop do you run?

user55340

@Joe I think you're a bit underestimating the equipment price... and as I mentioned, the licenses to use the airspace.

@MichaelT You just might be onto something. Becoming a commercial drone pilot might be a career of the future.

@MichaelT OOO!! Crowd sourcing! Online in-browser video game: Fly this pizza to this house! Each succesful delivery gets you one drone-coin redeemable for pizzas and other merch

:O

user41796

I don't run it, I'm just one of the top technical guys. But we're primarily C#. Some C++. More Silverlight than I care for. Moving into HTML5. And then there's the long tail, including an app in Fortran.

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user55340

6:49 PM

Civilian drones in the $4k-$7k range.

...allowing anonymous internet users to fly your drone fleet carrying pizzas...this is a spectacular idea and totally unlikely to encounter trouble...

I can see all sorts of problems with this.

user55340

> Draper backed DroneDeploy through his Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Airware, a start-up in Newport Beach, Calif., raised $13.3 million earlier this year from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures and First Round Capital to develop customizable autopilots for UAVs that cost about $4,500 to $7,500, according to the company’s Web site.

@GlenH7 That's where my focus currently is. HTML5

@RobertHarvey I know! what if the pizza is 30 seconds late?

user55340

6:50 PM

@RobertHarvey 'range'?

@RobertHarvey Not the least of which unkempt children slinging shoes tied together in the air at your $4000 drone trying to catch a pizza

user55340

@RobertHarvey insurance to make sure it doesn't cut someone's head off?

user55340

(just look at the title of the link - nypost.com/2013/09/05/… )

Drones will also only be available to deliver to 1 customer at a time, unless you believe people are honest or you secure the other pizzas

joemiller.us/2013/09/…

user55340

6:52 PM

@RobertHarvey Net gun for free pizza!

I guess payment isn't such a big deal. You leave a credit card number over the phone. But how do you instruct people to remove the pizza from the bag who can't even tie their own shoelaces?

> The tiny Colorado plains town of Deer Trail has yet to vote on a proposal that would create drone-hunting licenses and bounties, but that hasn’t stopped the man behind the initiative from selling 100 of his own licenses online.

@Joe or just arm the drones? :P

@RobertHarvey or stop them from stealing other peoples pizzas

user55340

@RobertHarvey You don't - you do a "release" as in a bomb drop. "Drone pilot not responsible for damage while delivery"

6:53 PM

@MichaelT hahaha

Ironically, the cartoon "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" may then become a reality

How to post a pop tart

@MichaelT It's only reasonable that in the event of assault on the drone it is equipped to defend itself. Every drone will carry one pack of 200 black-cats to be lit and dropped in the vicinity of any marauders. Totally legal as self-defense, after all, drones are people to.

Eventually drones will just be used for the same thing all other good tech is used for: to spy on people

Or as porn. I can't imagine how, but that's how all new technology seems to be used first.

@RobertHarvey Illegal recordings of people in their homes. I guess amateur porn will tie to spying on people

6:57 PM

@Joe You underestimate the internet... propellerfelia O_O

@JimmyHoffa shivers

My wife got confused making soda bread yesterday. She said that the oven wasn't working properly, that it kept turning itself on and off (you can see the flame in this oven). I told her that's how it regulates the temperature.

She wound up baking it in the toaster oven. Didn't work, of course. I don't even know how she got it to fit in the toaster oven.

@RobertHarvey PID!

What seemed to be lost on her was that the house furnace also turns itself on and off.

To regulate the temperature.

@RobertHarvey When I turn 50 will I no longer try putting thoughts of saying stuff like that out of my mind? As it stands even hinting that she did something stupid warrants a smack

6:59 PM

People know so little science nowadays. Not just my wife. How do people survive without some basic science knowledge?

2

@RobertHarvey ...I do ok... :o

@RobertHarvey as someone with an engineering background, this question haunts me

user41796

@RobertHarvey but I have a phone that tells me everything!

2

My knowledge of science begins and ends with "There are tiny doodads that you can't see, we're made of them but they're slowly killing us all"

Ah, but you can program your thermostat with a monad.

user55340

7:02 PM

@RobertHarvey Ever read "Light of Other Days"?

user55340

amazon.com/Light-Other-Days-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0765322870

Ah, gotta read that.

user55340

Consider - what if I could open up a tiny wormhole to any place or time and 'look' through it?

user55340

You want porn? Just find some house with the lights on in the past...

user55340

(culture rapidly changed to the point that everyone started showering in the dark)

7:05 PM

if this worries you guys, dont think about what the general public's knowledge of how computers work is - most people have no clue about anything (especially kids now, who have OS's that "work" all the time)

@MichaelT yeah what a real buzz killington

user55340

Who has read accelerando yet?

@MichaelT ...I will, I promise...

user41796

@enderland friend of mine had an argument with his daughter. He wanted to get her a new chrome book. She said it wouldn't work for her schoolwork. He pointed out that she does everything for school through google docs.

@GlenH7 moral of the story, she got a new macbook air

7:08 PM

it's the same reason people can drive cars but don't know how they work.

user55340

Its got lots of ideas of things that could be their own story too...

user55340

>
A marginally intelligent voicemail virus masquerading as an IRS auditor has caused havoc throughout America, garnishing an estimated eighty billion dollars in confiscatory tax withholdings into a numbered Swiss bank account. A different virus is busy hijacking people's bank accounts, sending ten percent of their assets to the previous victim, then mailing itself to everyone in the current mark's address book: a self- propelled pyramid scheme in action. Oddly, nobody is complaining much. While the mess is being sorted out, business IT departments have gone to standby, refusing to process a…

user41796

@JimmyHoffa nope; chromebook.

user55340

> About the only people who're doing well right now are the uploaded lobsters – and the crusties aren't even remotely human.

user41796

@Joe so much easier since they made them push to start....

7:09 PM

@GlenH7 I had an '88 mazda that was push to start...luckily the light weight of it made it less prohibitive than you'd otherwise think...

@GlenH7 People question Tesla tech, but the idea that once you lift your foot of the accelerate, that the car should slow down is somewhat intelligent.

this is funny because I actually have no interest whatsoever in learning how my car works

@enderland I have an interest so far as I can fix things for $20 dollars that a mechanic would charge $300 for.

I once replaced my car's starter when I was a teenager, this taught me the most valuable lesson about auto mechanicary I ever needed to know: It's painful, unpleasant, and I'll probably just do it wrong and end up paying someone else to fix my mistakes anyways.

(I put the positive/negative wires onto it wrong as a side effect of having absolutely no idea what I was doing)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa That applies to programming too...

7:13 PM

@JimmyHoffa Also applies to taking medical advice from everybody with an opinion

@Joe I have an opinion! Gluten will kill you, so you should eat lots of condroitin and snake oil!

@JimmyHoffa In fact, if you can generalize that statement, we may be sitting on a social theory here. We can call it the "Hoffa et. al theory of 2013".

@JimmyHoffa yeah that's what I figure too

user55340

You see a news feed item thats an obvious "should be closed" and look, its on hold... Oded on the prowl.

@MichaelT ...this is annoying the crap out of me now, "on the prowl" I can hear in my head as part of a lyric to a song I can only vaguely construct...

OO I know what it is

haha

user41796

7:26 PM

@MichaelT --- Of interest merely because it's a POS system.

user41796

-2

Q: Patterns for maintenance login

Are there any reliable strategies to implement a login mechanism that will allow access to an application for maintenance purposes? Kind of like how some routers have a list of default logins that technicians can use. But the way routers do it is insecure, and I was wondering if there are better ...

user55340

@GlenH7 I deduced that before the comment... oh, you mean Point of Sales?

pajamapirates.com/books <-- somewhere in this book is this phrase as a repeated bit

@JimmyHoffa word.

user41796

Yeah, point of sale.

7:29 PM

Pajama pirates, on the prowl... No wonder I couldn't construct the song, it's not a song, just a rhyming story book

This question: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219142/… is actually an interesting one.

Although it's been asked before and there are many books/sources now.

user55340

Interesting? Its a book recommendation. Thats... not something that requires too much thought.

user55340

"Get Safari online, and go find All The Books you like"

@MichaelT ask him the second part of his question and he'll tell you the most important part: free book

@MichaelT I should've also defined interesting. Interesting in the sense that those resources aren't as easy to come by.

user55340

(I'm not even getting a chance to cast my remaining close votes... Go Oded!)

7:35 PM

@MichaelT where's that ascii-drawing website?

Want to link this guy to ask him to diagram his table design more clearly

0

Q: Audit trails and entity relationships

I'm working on an order system and implementing an audit log. Two main concerns are: 1) While auditing a line item , you should only see audits for the line item 2) While auditing an order, you should see audits pertaining to the header information AND line item. For example, a line item would...

@MichaelT what's a more standard name for a "bridge table" ? I sware someone told me at one point but I've been calling the many-to-many tables bridge tables for so many years...

stupid non-standard term cemented into my vocabulary

user41796

@MichaelT I think he's working on the "fastest close in the west" badge

oded is ruthless. I love it

user55340

When you get into point of sales devices, you find you will want to thoroughly review the PCI requirements. pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/pci_dss_v2.pdf In particular, 6.3.1, 8.1, and 8.5.8 — MichaelT 26 secs ago

user41796

@enderland honey badger don't care

@GlenH7 oded killed and ate honey badger

user41796

7:39 PM

@MichaelT That's a good point. Should I delete my answer? Or just steal that link and add it into mine?

user55340

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Q: How do you name your many-to-many relationship tables?

I've seen a few different naming schemes throughout multiple languages when it comes to many-to-many relationships, so I was wondering: what naming scheme do you use for naming these relationships? Please include the platform for which you are developing. Use Posts and Tags as examples for the t...

database naming-conventions many-to-many

user55340

@GlenH7 Nope - your answer is correct for the non-pos situation. POS isn't part of the question (its part of his clarifications).

user55340

In database management systems following the relational model, a junction table is a database table that contains common fields from two or more other database tables within the same database. It is on the many side of a one-to-many relationship with each of the other tables. Junction tables are known under many names, among them cross-reference table, bridge table, join table, map table, intersection table, linking table, many-to-many resolver, link table, pairing table, pivot table, transition table, or association table. Junction tables are employed when dealing with many-to-many rela...

user41796

@MichaelT thanks. I'm tempted to dig into that link and see how woefully inadequate my suggestion would be in light of PCI.

user55340

@GlenH7 There are some of the requirements in there you'll just want to gloss over... things that are "all sysadmin policies" - all connections from remote to card holder data are encrypted...

user55340

7:42 PM

you've got the firewall setup, you've installed the security patches, etc...

user55340

Section 6 is where it gets fun - thats about the development environment. Section 8 is about accounts.

@GlenH7 I finally had to look this up, have you seen the youtube video for the honeybadger meme? That's actually pretty awesome.

user41796

At first glance, it's not too bad of a solution since I'm saying you shut it down from operation with a reset. But that doesn't necessarily protect against accessing any stored information on the machine.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa it's the only reason I reference it all the time now

@GlenH7 Yeah, I ignore most memes but that is indeed a respectably badass creature.

@MichaelT ahh yes, junction. I'll try and remember it this time, thanks

user55340

7:48 PM

PCI isn't so much a "you'll get in trouble if you don't do this" but rather "VISA and the likes will jack you around with the fees on the items to cover the likelihood that they'll have to reimburse someone because of a data breech if you don't follow every point."

user41796

w00t. 10 more imaginary points

user55340

@MichaelT: Thank you! Looks very relevant to my situation. — David McDavidson 59 secs ago

user41796

@MichaelT by hook or by crook, I'll take it. The twist to that is they become de facto reasonable standards. So people who fail to comply with that can then be sued for negligence for not meeting a reasonable standard of care or diligence.

user55340

(and there are places that I will not shop at with a credit card after seeing how bad the POS software we modified (we fixed our copy))

user55340

Things like log.debug(creditcardnumber) -- ok, yea, its a debug log and won't go to any log file in production... but wait, log4j was set up to also log to the server... so it sends the log message to the server which then decides that it doesn't need to log to a file...

user55340

7:51 PM

but wait... it sends the log message in the clear to the server. Oops.

user41796

@MichaelT nobody sniffs network traffic.... <snicker>

@Oded's renewed interest in P.SE of recent is interesting. His ruthlessness depicts the possibility of some general motivation or goal beyond "I like this place"; I wonder if he is overarchingly hoping to see if he savagely polishes P.SE in such technique if it will turn into the xanadu of SE after a while

user41796

@JimmyHoffa remember that he used to be very active on the site prior to joining SE proper. Shog9 consistently has kind words to say about the site. Anna was a regular as well. Tim Post was another regular. So Prog's interests are pretty well represented amongst SE folk.

user55340

@GlenH7 I've read about a PCI tiger team (the ones who go into a place and see what access they can get - here's the network, do we pass the audit) who do things like install a wifi point where the copier is plugged into and go poke around from the parking lot. Or slip under a fence to get into the unlocked break room and unlocked building after hours to see if people lock their machines.

user55340

(incidentally, we had "PCI rocks" which were ~200 lb rocks put in spots where there were gaps under the fence...)

7:54 PM

@GlenH7 I know that, but all of those mentions distantly engage in it including Oded until recent weeks

user41796

@MichaelT That could be fun. And there's all sorts of wicked stuff that can be done if you just walk around with a frequency scanner.

user55340

@GlenH7 That was for the office... where code is written and people have database access.

@JimmyHoffa lolwut?

user41796

In store pen-testing would be quite surprising to see as well, I would think. Whenever I see a USB port on a POS system I wonder if they have it locked down or not.

user55340

Before we locked down the system when we realized how big a hole there was, we figured out that we could change the price of any item in the system remotely, untraceable.

7:56 PM

@RobertHarvey You chose P.SE over SO too. This is the SE promised land, Oded knows it, he perhaps is just trying to clear the dust away

There's a long-standing principle on Stack Exchange that diamond moderators should not vote any differently just because their vote is binding. So while it may appear that they're being heavy-handed, they're merely voting like any other user would.

user55340

@RobertHarvey Yep... and he's saving me from casting some close votes... he's just fast about it. Its impressive.

It doesn't take long to figure out that it's a bad question. Most of my close votes take place within 30 seconds of seeing the post.

@RobertHarvey There's a gap the size of a mack truck right there where you say "not vote any differently" which moderators have interpretted as "not voting up or down or close or delete when they wouldn't have as non-moderators" but does not get interpretted as "voting up, down, close, or delete every time they would as non-moderators"

user55340

@RobertHarvey The last couple, I saw on the feed and said "close"

7:59 PM

people don't vote differently as moderators, though they admit to often voting less

@JimmyHoffa People sometimes have trouble differentiating moderator behavior from ordinary community involvement. Moderators are still members of the community.

And they're specifically instructed not to hold back their close votes just because they happen to be mods.

14

A: Add a way for moderators to cast a normal, non binding vote

The purpose of moderators is to moderate. If they are afraid to do so, they should not be moderators in the first place. As for educating the community, leaving instructive, explanatory comments is far more useful than casting a weak regular user vote in these circumstances. So in summary: lea...

@RobertHarvey That's interesting to me because I sware I've heard mods say they prefer to let the community take care of it and try to avoid one-vote closing. In fact I'm pretty sure there's been lots of metas about "Diamonds shouldn't be the only close voter on anything"

user55340

You mean Yannis was always that way?

Sure, but if there's trash laying around, there's no point in waiting for 5 community members to pick it up, when you can do it all by yourself, albeit with a big scoop.

@RobertHarvey I don't disagree, I just mean I'm not certain that in the large part moderators vote as often as they did before being mods

@MichaelT Wasn't Yannis always a mod here?

user41796

8:04 PM

@JimmyHoffa Those have been references to marginal questions. It's harder for a mod to say "yeah, ought to be closed but I'm only 1 vote out of 5. So if I'm wrong then the community won't back me."

As a mod on Stack Overflow, I always prefer at least one flag, close vote or comment so that I have some community consensus. But generally I don't have time to wait for that.

fortunatley there's enough crap there the decisions get easy occasionally ;)

user55340

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If I'm not sure it's crap, I leave it for the community to decide.

@RobertHarvey But you wouldn't have done that before being a mod; thus is the mods don't vote as often as before

user41796

8:06 PM

@JimmyHoffa That's true, but you're starting to split hairs.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa If I'm not sure, I skip a close vote... its a matter of where in grey you draw the line.

I'll grant you that my threshold for a close vote is slightly lower on Programmers, where I don't have a binding vote.

plz writ me teh codz

user41796

@enderland VTC as VLQ

user55340

Sometimes there's a close vote "run it up the pole and see if anyone salutes" - which you don't have the freedom of as a mod (because you're a general).

8:07 PM

@RobertHarvey Ok; I had been given the inclination that threshold difference was more significant. Guess not.

But many moderator decisions are much more clear-cut than that. See the detailed answer I posted on that meta post.

Many moderation decisions are clear-cut whether you're a moderator or not..

22

A: Add a way for moderators to cast a normal, non binding vote

New Edit -- Since this issue keeps coming up, I'll make a few points, based on my experience as a moderator. As a moderator, the actions I take are almost always initiated by a moderator flag. That means that my moderator actions are never unilateral. There is always concurrence from at least ...

user55340

Ha! Got a close vote in on that one before Oded!

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8:09 PM

You could have just said "Bleh!" and saved yourself a lot of time (and poetic license).

@RobertHarvey I'm pretty sure my poetic license has no net value so it really didn't cost me much

@RobertHarvey Though now that you mention it, from now on I might just say Bleh! in all of my flags and point the finger at you if they get declined

user55340

BRB - flagging on SO...

user55340

"Bleh! Leave this for Robert to deal with."

@cja Unfortunately what is a valid question for you is the opposite of what is a valid question for this site. This site exists for a larger audience than just you, and it's purpose is to be authoritative. In the case of this question it serves neither of those purposes, so closure is the appropriate action. Feel free to ask questions in the future when you have general detailed questions that can be answered authoritatively and would be useful to the internet at large in the vain of being conceptual programming questions which this site exists for. — Jimmy Hoffa 6 secs ago

@MichaelT That might be edited to somehow make a post for your "close reasons" meta

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user55340

8:15 PM

@JimmyHoffa Actually... I was thinking of proposing it for a MSO close reason.

user41796

@RobertHarvey that's .... kind of crazy. Harkens back to some old-school terminal keyboards

@RobertHarvey I never under any circumstances use the numpad either.. never understood people who did when the number keys are a hairs reach from the homerow.. though I'm also too much of a cheapskate to blow more than $10-20 on a keyboard

user55340

@JimmyHoffa When doing number entry, I'm numpad only. I debate getting the numpad blutetooth for my laptop at times.

@MichaelT Yeah, people do that really quickly but... when do you do number entry?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I used to work for Babbages. We had to punch all the skus in by the number pad. WAY faster

8:18 PM

Is it worth moving my hand to one side of the keyboard just to type in 1 or 2 numbers?

I bought myself an apple, USB mini keyboard personally and use that at work

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I worked in Point of Sales... I did LOTS of number entry.

and have the old USB one I use if I need to enter lots of numbers

user55340

Btw - fun numpad keypad store.apple.com/us/product/H0321VC/A

@MichaelT Ok, that's fair. I recognize people who do nothing but number entry but I'm referring to when your hands would otherwise be on the homerow

8:19 PM

@JimmyHoffa I spent $50 on mine off craigslist, stupid apple stopped making it too (NO one makes a quality usb-mini keyboard)

@JimmyHoffa it's also a foot of additional movement most of the time to go to the mouse and back if you use the righ thand mouse

fine fine... I'm wrong, long live the numpad... O_O

aka that thing on the side of my keyboard which I get lost in (hey, these numbers count upwards not down, and why is the zero so big??)

user41796

@JimmyHoffa and notice that the 5 should have a little notch on it so you can find it by touch

A large number of programmers have participated in questions about keyboards already on this site. There is clearly interest in this among programmers. — cja 5 mins ago

^-- and with that, it's time to go "Bleh!" flagging keyboard related Q's around P.SE...

My beef with the numpad is it forces your mouse too far to the right.

5

Q: Why do physical keyboards still have built-in numpads?

Normally I use a wireless keyboard without a number pad and a mouse right next to it. Having started a new job, I was finding my right arm somewhat more sore. This was confusing until I realized: Each time I swap mouse/keyboard with my right hand I have about 13" EXTRA movement (numpad is about...

usability physical keyboard ergonomics

@RobertHarvey that's why I don't have one. it was 14 inches of extra movement each time

when I calculated it I was moving my arm a quarter MILE per day as a result

user41796

8:25 PM

@JimmyHoffa I checked the keyboard and only spotted one that was a shopping request and not closed. So I put a VTC on that one too.

user55340

Ick. Baleeting. — Robert Harvey 9 mins ago

@GlenH7 I'm talking delete flaggings. Broken windows are best invisible, closed doesn't leave much of an indicator to people

> Bleh! (See Robert Harvey for reference) programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/219146/…

my flag reason

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I'll roll through those again and drop some delete votes in as appropriate. Just got my 12th delete vote today!

@GlenH7 Woohoo

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That should be the other part of my mod campaign - election would cut down on my whinging about being out of close and delete votes.

8:30 PM

@GlenH7 got my vote on that alone ;P

@GlenH7 easy way to filter that tag: Skim for the high-answer count, many of the 10+ answer count Q's in that tag are old trash (not to be held to current standards? Humbug, broken windows are broken whether 2 or 20 years old)

user55340

@GlenH7 ... "for other mods, because I will delete them all! MAWHAWHAWHAWH!"

user41796

@MichaelT I'm trying to tone down the evil laughter in my run-up to the campaign. Just saying. :-)

@GlenH7 All of this rhetoric makes me wish we actually did have an upcoming campaign

user41796

Maybe we could have one for the upcoming site birthday celebration

Technically we could make an argument that maple_shaft has shitcanned himself by way of child-rearing and job changes. Seriously though, somebody could have a word with him about if he would want to step down relating to time, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he said yes. Community engagement levels may mean we don't really need a whole moderator in his stead but that doesn't mean SE wouldn't want to maintain the so-far-succesful mod headcount.

Though for all I know he's very active in the background around here, mods can do a lot without my eyes ever seeing it..

8:37 PM

Our personal character has nothing to do with the veracity of your question. This isn't a forum environment; if you came here expecting to be able to do all of the same unproductive things that people do in forums, then expect to be disappointed. — Robert Harvey 1 min ago

@RobertHarvey Quote of the day worthy IMHO

user41796

Now I know why I'm gunning for 20k+ rep.

user41796

> Voting to delete questions with a score of -3 or lower immediately after they are closed

user55340

@GlenH7 Yep... and answers too.

user41796

I keep looking at questions like that last one and say "sigh, I have to wait 2 days before I can vote to delete"

user55340

8:43 PM

Three 20k+ can drastically clean up the "no, this should go away" on the front page that people keep complaining about... granted, they'll then complain about mod censorship...

user41796

@MichaelT actually, they won't. Because it'll be gone.

@GlenH7 Delete votes have a 2 day cooldown?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa For untrusted users like @MichaelT and I, yes.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa We have to wait 2 days after closure for a delete vote to be cast... until you're 20k rep.

user41796

granted, I wouldn't trust me either. But that doesn't matter.

user55340

8:46 PM

Oh, whee... I love that comment he left...

@MichaelT Oh closures have a 2 day grace

I thought you meant 2 days waiting for delete votes to reaccrue

user41796

> And I have noticed the self-important, obstructive, pedantic nazis here before. I am sure they are wonderfully helpful people with rich and rewarding lives, it just doesn't appear so judging by their behaviour here.

user41796

So the site cleanup efforts have been noticed. This is good.

Yeah, it didn't take long for him to invoke Godwin's law.

Usually the hallmark of a liberal. :)

@RobertHarvey Don't you live in the mountains of california? The other hallmark of a liberal? ;P

8:49 PM

"I can do what I want, when I want, but you can't because it's unfair, so fuck you."

@RobertHarvey US liberal or normal liberal?

The kind illustrated in my quote above. --^

US liberal then.

Right.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa There are strange people in the mountains in California... and it depends which range.

8:54 PM

@MichaelT Yeah I know, there's the red mountain areas then the green mountain areas

user55340

Sierras... yea, because they are the monied people from SF and LA... but once you get over the mountains, its back to deeply red. Additionally, you go up to the Shasta area, and its quite red there too.

@MichaelT speaking of, have you caught the movie "This is The End" ?

user55340

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Having lived in that area you, and @WorldEngineer may appreciate it for the mocking of the culture

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Nope...

8:56 PM

(as if mocking of LA/SF culture is in some kind of short supply)

user55340

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user55340

For non-americans looking at that map, realize that the population of some of those vast red areas is less than that of a little blue spot in California.

@MichaelT Interesting thing about NM is the blue spaces there are reservation areas of less densely populated portions than the red areas

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Same with the Dakotas... and that bit in upper minnesota.

Yeah, it's an interesting artifact of indian cultures

reverses the whole lower-population higher-republicanism bit found over the rest of the country

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