The Whiteboard

12:40 AM

I think I stretched that analogy way past it's limits.

0

A: How do you explain Higher-Order Functions to a layman?

I think the first bit of difficulty is that a layman wouldn't know what a function is to begin with, so let's start there. The most commonly used analogy I've found that's relatively easy and accurate for the layman to programming is that of cooking so I'll go with that; a function can be though...

ah and I didn't read anybody elses answers first to see that somebody else already went with that analogy.

It's a shite question...but it begs me to write an answer. An actually good one. I'll think on it some more... hell I can hardly talk to a layman about layman things, what the hell chance do I have of explaining something like that to a layman

Jimmy Hoffa

12:56 AM

Yeah it doesn't make sense. That's like "How do you explain the technique for measuring a satelite's forward wing flap adjuster's heat tolerance in layman terms"

some things just don't translate to someone with no domain knowledge.

psr

@JimmyHoffa That's really what I think too. The thing a layman cares about is "they are a tool programmers can use to make programming easier."

But it's really an interview question so it's "spin the wheel of insane bias and see if it lands on a new job for you".

Yannis Rizos

8:11 AM

There were a couple of custom comment flags lately. While the flags were helpful, there wasn't any reason to delete the comments and (unfortunately) we can't dismiss comment flags as helpful without killing the comment. If you got a couple of dismissed comment flags because of this (comment flags are anonymous, don't know who flagged), sorry. Use the custom post mod flag next time (unless you're certain the comment needs to be deleted).

gnat

@YannisRizos these were mine, and I have no hard feelings. I know why you have to decline, I expected it and I find decline reasonable in this case, don't worry. Infrequent declines like this (usually I flag the post) are the "price" I sometimes prefer to pay for easier composing of a flag message, when I am a bit in a hurry

Yannis Rizos

8:45 AM

@gnat Heh, I suspected it was you, the wording was similar to your normal flags. The reason I wanted to keep the crossposting comments (although I closed/deleted the question) was for quick reference in case someone raged on Meta about the quick deletions.

@gnat Conversely, I'm not sure I want to protect this one. It has 3 close (dupe) votes, and protecting it won't allow any more close votes. Also, the rush from the hot list seems to have died down.

Nicolas Raoul

Hi all! Apparently the Windows application I am working on is detected as containing a virus by TrendMicro. I checked on VirusTotal.com, only TrendMicro detects it. This virus is supposed to put a key in the registry which is not actually put by my program, so I think it is a false positive. I will take action by signing my app (not that it should change much but always better). Any suggestion what else I should do?

ratchet freak

fiddle with the optimization settings?

Nicolas Raoul

@ratchetfreak: Ah, because that will modify binary signatures, right? Good idea.

gnat

9:07 AM

@YannisRizos agree, keeping comments in this case makes perfect sense to me; decline is necessary for that, I just have chosen to pay that price in these cases. As for deciding on protection, my own "measure" for cases like that is, would recent Shog's suggestion auto-protect these (5 lemming answers in 24h by default, 3(?) for sites with 15-answers threshold - ie us and Workplace)...

20

Q: Auto-protect questions that get more than N answers from new users in a 24-hour period

Expanding the criteria for auto-protection has been discussed in the past: Should we automatically protect all questions with more than N answers? But I think that discussion addresses the wrong problem: Protecting a question with a large number of answers doesn't do anything to fix the probl...

including deleted answers (there's one already deleted in select * question)

user55340

2:11 PM

Whee for hitting rep cap before waking up in the morning.

user55340

(and I wonder if I'll get a populist badge for that at some point... still need some more votes on mine that aren't on gb's: 36 vs 63 currently... I'd need +9 more without any vote's on gb's)

user41796

2:23 PM

@YannisRizos Protect doesn't block additional close votes. A lock would though. Looks like Thomas went ahead and protected that one. Probably an appropriate way to cool the question down a bit.

user55340

Locking would also make me sad because I'd not be getting closer to a populist badge. ;-(

user55340

Btw, I got another notable question on Meta! meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/47/…

user41796

0

A: How do you explain Higher-Order Functions to a layman?

Functions are just abstractions for a number of activities you're going to do. You could also call them habits or routines. Our daily lives are built around habits and routines that we follow so we don't have to think too hard about what we're doing. When you wake up, you likely get up; take...

user41796

I couldn't resist trying to weigh-in on that one. I had originally VTC'd as Too Broad but after reading the chat history I decided it needed an answer.

user41796

2:39 PM

@MichaelT You're trying to pull a populist on the Schema question?

user41796

I'd DV the accepted answer to help get you there, but that really seems wrong.

user41796

I mean, I'm all about the badges too but that's going a bit far

user55340

@GlenH7 I'm hoping...

user55340

36 vs 66 (need +6 more)

user41796

If it were closer I could entertain the questionable ethics of a temporary DV in order to allow the badge to be awarded and then a stealth edit to reverse the vote. But I would have to proclaim it to be in the name of Science! to really justify it.

gnat

2:55 PM

-11

Q: How on earth does this question have 2.7k views on day 1?

How come the views for this question is at 2,732 if it was only posted today? It has a lot of answers, too! Is this a bug or is this really happening? How has this happened?

discussion specific-question views hot-questions answer-count

user41796

> "-1 for subtly inferring that Programmers doesn't draw enough traffic to justify that many views in a day."

gnat

I can't imagine there's even that many people on the whole internet. — jonsca 11 hours ago

^^^ 23 upvotes

user41796

@gnat Saw that and laughed.

gnat

made my day

user41796

I need to answer more bikeshed-like questions so I can ride the repz waves. The 3 answers I put in today aren't likely to garner me anywhere near as much of precious, precious repz.

Yannis Rizos

3:07 PM

@GlenH7 When did that change?

user41796

@YannisRizos Wasn't sure it was ever that way. My understanding was: Protect just keeps the lemmings away. Lock kicks everyone except mods out.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Oops, my mistake, it's a bounty that prevents close votes, not protection.

user41796

And I really shouldn't use my franglaise

user41796

Yes, a bounty will frustrate all the potential close voters

user41796

I won't swear that a high level user on Progs has bountied an answer just to keep it open, but I have seen interesting timing before.

Yannis Rizos

3:10 PM

It's hard to remember what stops close votes, when nothing can stop your own close votes /gloat

user55340

That said, its cooled down a bit - not in the top 3 for the day.

user41796

That's an interesting question - if I bounty a Q and let the bounty sit for 7 days, will that expire off the existing VTC's on the Q?

user41796

@YannisRizos MOD ABUSE!

user41796

I have a new, default response. (until I get bored with it)

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 I remember someone saying (in a comment) that their only reason for the bounty was to prevent closing, but that was some time ago.

ratchet freak

3:11 PM

@GlenH7 it's lost rep at least

user41796

@ratchetfreak once you're past 20, 25k, who cares?

user41796

35k if you care about delete votes

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Turns out my justification for not protecting that hot question was bs. Bounties prevent further close votes, not protection.

user41796

But look at Robert Harvey for example. He could bounty away for quite some time before it would have a material impact on his rep standings

gnat

@YannisRizos ah, then it's my fault too. I didn't figure you were referring to possible closure prevention, sorry

user41796

3:14 PM

@gnat well, it's always our fault since we don't have diamonds.

Yannis Rizos

This.

gnat

32

Q: Close votes shouldn't expire on bountied questions

It is impossible to vote to close a question once a bounty has been added to it. If the question has existing close votes when the bounty is added, they are usually doomed to expire while the bounty is active. The close voters cannot re-vote when the bounty expires. This can easily kill th...

feature-request bounty vote-to-close

user41796

16 hours ago, by ratchet freak

who keeps sticky starring chat posts when they shouldn't be?

gnat

^^^ will expire

user41796

Notice something on the right hand side? :-D

user41796

3:15 PM

@gnat oh props for finding that! I was pondering heading over to MSO this afternoon to look for that. What a sneaky trick then

gnat

Oct 1 '13 at 18:36, by gnat

I am sure right because I did just that. Probably, the only thing I don't know about bounties is Why bounty dropdown sometimes defaults at value larger than minimum allowed? :) — gnat Aug 25 at 21:54

Nov 15 '13 at 22:06, by gnat

@MichaelT I am the tutorial! "134 Offered bounties for 11,850 reputation" :)

^^^ outdated, should read "180 Offered bounties for 16,000 reputation"

ratchet freak

@GlenH7 funny...

user41796

@ratchetfreak couldn't. resist. tweaking. CDO.

ratchet freak

it's OCD

I'm OCD about that

user41796

@ratchetfreak Not if you put it in proper alphabetical order

ratchet freak

3:19 PM

ahtt denos't aekm eenss, ouy acn't aedr aghinty eikl ahtt

enderland

@GlenH7 yeah I think so., I've done that before actually

user41796

@ratchetfreak sorry. It's a common joke amongst my fellow OCD sufferers.

ratchet freak

abbreviations should have the letters in the same order as the non abbreviated term

user55340

Incidentally, I was the one that did it last night, but I think World cleared that pin...

user55340

Today's hot question:

user55340

3:20 PM

10

Q: Does Functional programming add complexity in code?

For the entire past year I've been written Scala code (coming from a Java background). I really liked how you could create simpler and cleaner code, with vals, case classes, map/filter/lambda functions, implicits and the type inference. I've used it mostly for an Akka-based application. This yea...

functional-programming scala

user55340

user41796

@MichaelT Doc's answer kept me from VTC. But I really dislike the question.

Robert Harvey

3:39 PM

This is wrong in so many ways.

25

Q: How do I get my cat to wear a tuxedo for several hours?

My cat is quite dapper and handsome, so when we sit down for a candlelight dinner, he should have the proper attire. Therefore, I would like for my cat to wear a tuxedo. What is the best way to get my cat to wear a cat-sized tuxedo? I plan for him to be dressed this way for several hours. I...

cats attire

Next April 1, I think I'm just going to leave the country for a day.

ratchet freak

there's a how can I dress up my cat question in there that was well answered

Robert Harvey

Cats are funny creatures. You can teach them how to walk with a leash, but it requires a shaman and some funny substances.

Jimmy Hoffa

Why would he eat ravenously? Also, I don't have access to a freezer big enough for this. — JoshDM 2 days ago

i see from your replies to suggestions that you are missing the essential cat-do attitude. Without this, your task is impossible. — kodintent 2 days ago

that is hilarious.

@RobertHarvey I used to have two cats that would gladly wear leashes, then you could let them out and watch them roll around on the cement sidewalk, the leash was only effective if you felt like dragging them around; no easy feat as one of them was over 25lbs

Robert Harvey

You have to let them drag the leash around the house for several days. Then you have to walk them with the leash inside the house. Then, short walks just outside the house. In short, you have to trick them into thinking it was their idea (much like pointy-haired bosses). The process takes awhile.

2

ratchet freak

or just let them run free

cats will self-exercise

unfortunately they won't self-exorcise

Jimmy Hoffa

3:48 PM

nyuck nyuck nyuck. according to my wife, letting cats out unattended is the 3rd evil of the world, for every cat run over angels may not grow their wings, but my wife shed's a tear, at least the ones she hears about...

ratchet freak

I let my cats run free

then again my current cat is a stray

and I have some woods behind the house

user55340

4:07 PM

My parents live in the country and whatever cats want to go out can whenever they want. My cat is a stray that showed up at my parents.

user55340

However, I live in a city now, with some people that have fairly large dogs around... and I'm not thrilled about the idea of letting my cat (who wandered to me) wander from me in town. So he's a 100% house cat now.

user55340

(I also saw a cat, on a leash, with boots on in Yosemite may years ago in the winter... apparently the person who owns the cat is a Yosemite resident (worker). You can't let pets run - either they'll get killed by a wild animal or they'll kill some animal they shouldn't. Anyways, the first year the cat was there the rangers were occasionally called with 'animal abuse' calls - the cat put up a racket when putting the boots and jacket on it)

Robert Harvey

4:24 PM

I know NoSql are non-normalized and it is normal to replicate data avoiding joins (that are not supported) -- Disregarding normalization because joins are not supported does not sound like a very good idea to me. You can simulate joins in a NoSql database; you just have to write code, that's all. Us old-timers have had joins as a native capability in our databases for ages; we wonder why anyone would ever want to do without them. — Robert Harvey 32 secs ago

user55340

I'm still irked/amused by the Cult of NoSQL trying to model relational data in their databases without using relations and wondering why it doesn't work well.

user55340

Use a relational model for when there's a relation. Use a non-relational model when there isn't. And if you need both, look at both and decide which is easier to fit into the other.

Robert Harvey

I've seen many of these folks justify their decision with "it scales better." But unless you're dealing with many billions of records (which they aren't), scalability isn't really a compelling argument.

Dr. Ibb

@RobertHarvey I also think a lot of people just say "it scales better" because it sounds good.

Robert Harvey

It's good because the almighty Google uses it.

Dr. Ibb

4:30 PM

I'd be interested to see how most people respond when you ask "Okay, why does it scale better?"

Or, even more specifically, "Why does it scale better under the circumstances in which you are trying to use it?"

Jimmy Hoffa

@Dr.Ibb it's easier than that, whenever somebody says "It scales better" there's a simple retort that can be bandied about just as ignorantly which they will have no response to "But what about ACID?"

The NoSQL cargo cult doesn't know what ACID is, if you catch one who says they do, just tell them to explain ACID to you

user55340

►

Jimmy Hoffa

"uhh.. ACID... uhh Alex Carmack of ID ?"

Dr. Ibb

"ACID... Like the recording software?"

Robert Harvey

"Does /dev/null support sharding?" - ROFL

3

user55340

4:38 PM

I'll also point out that if you don't have relational data, tossing stuff into a document in a NoSQL database is very easy and fits the model quite nicely.

Dr. Ibb

@MichaelT True. But I think in a lot of cases people try to do what you said before and shoehorn in relational methods and ideas into a non-relational database, resulting in the difficulties described above.

I am certaintly guilty of that.

I started working on a project using MongoDB where I was creating some user accounts, and very quickly realized I should just use MySQL because I needed some relational stuff.

Robert Harvey

I'm sure there are other valid use cases, but I know of only two: document databases, and applications that require an incredibly big, incredibly fast key/value store.

For everything else, there's PostGres. :)

Jimmy Hoffa

@Dr.Ibb at least you realized it

Dr. Ibb

4:53 PM

@JimmyHoffa Yeah. I tend to get way too caught up in the "This is some super cool sounding new piece of technology that I want to use" mindset.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey I was trying to look at a graph database the other day for something I'm working on. Seems like an interesting concept

Robert Harvey

Yeah, I saw that conversation. I grabbed the link to the free O'Reilly book.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey you've poked around in LDAP, no?

@RobertHarvey other than the graph thing, I'm pretty much with you. Documents are neat, key/values are very logical, but all the different details people try to use as discriminators to say they're not just this or that, sound like fairly niche minutia that doesn't provide value across any large general cases like the document and key-value scenarios do.

Robert Harvey

5:10 PM

0

Q: Is this better called model, controller or something else?

I need a good name for one interface in a GUI application. The application has normal logic in standard object-oriented language, user-interface in a special language (something like XUL/XAML/...) with limited power to express logic and "engine" which handles the presentation. And I am looking f...

design-patterns mvc naming

This is why I dislike "Name that Thing" questions.

2

Based on your edit: IGenericActions. Failing that, IOneRingToRuleThemAll. — Robert Harvey 1 min ago

Dr. Ibb

IApplicationControlButNotAWidget

Robert Harvey

If you can't name it, then you don't really understand it. Anyway, you're asking the wrong people. Sit down with your development team for an hour, and work out a name together than everyone can live with. — Robert Harvey 5 mins ago

user41796

@RobertHarvey link?

Robert Harvey

graphdatabases.com

user41796

@RobertHarvey danke

gnat

5:23 PM

@MattFenwick what about practicing what you preach? Go over all the terminology and naming answers, vote down and comment "wrong words" then tell us how it worked. A word of advice (from a 5K flagger) - don't flag answers as "silly" - moderatotrs will decline — gnat 7 hours ago

^^^ wonder why all who teach me to downvote and comment crappy answers in crappy questions they defend, just wonder why don't they do that themselves. It's third or fourth time I see that on meta and it becomes frankly tiring, especially since I loose 5-15 rep/day exactly on voting down crappy answers (as a rule with explanatory comments)

Robert Harvey

This one really is a "Name that Thing" question. It's not asking for the name of a well-known concept, or a principle of naming. It's simply "What should I call this?"

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Something you don't see everyday: OP came back and expanded their link only answer.

gnat

@YannisRizos well not everyday that's for sure. But IIRC about 1/4 - 1/5 of my comments (peppered with downvotes) have that effect :)

@RobertHarvey agree, exactly this kind of thing, where 42 would be a perfectly legitimate answer

24 hours ago, by gnat

^^^ appropriate, solid, supported by Wikipedia answer to naming question about Everything

24 hours ago, by gnat

"I call it 42 - sounds right to me, and it's widely supported"

Dr. Ibb

@gnat if (42) always evaluates to true.

gnat

5:41 PM

@Dr.Ibb in an answer in naming game question? you bet!

Robert Harvey

5:57 PM

0

A: On the troubles of naming and terminology

As has been previously pointed out, this issue has already been discussed at length, with a consensus that there are two categories of "naming things" questions that might actually be on-topic: What is the name of this well-known concept? Questions about "principles of naming things." There i...

@MichaelT: ^^

gnat

6:17 PM

@RobertHarvey I think there is a typo in question title (n instead of h), it should be: "Oh the troubles of naming and terminology"

user55340

@YannisRizos my "you don't see that every day" - look at the comments leading up to this one:

user55340

Yeah, that is about as true as it gets! I try to plan them out beforehand and work out the debugs before I even type in the code, but like you said sometimes you don't always pick the right solution and that's where you found me stressing out like it was the apocalypse! But that link you sent about splitting the problem space really helped me in my analytic process for debugging my programs so thanks again! — NeverWalkAlone Mar 31 at 20:00

user55340

6:35 PM

@RobertHarvey Do you think there are any additional criteria for the ones that are on topic? Can we ask that there is a certain amount of additional information that is provided for it to be an acceptable question?

Robert Harvey

You were pretty thorough in your answer. I don't think "what should I name this thing" is ever on-topic.

user41796

@MichaelT After the ones that rolled through today, I'm starting to be of the opinion to just nuke 'em all

user41796

@RobertHarvey You should have put the one ring to rule them all in as answer just to see how much rep you would have picked up from it

user41796

maybe a little fluff about "well, you have a god object, so just call it ...."

user55340

I think one more upvote on select * without an upvote on Ga's will get me a populist.

user55340

6:39 PM

(maybe 2 upvotes... I"m getting really close)

user55340

7:21 PM

@RobertHarvey (not to diss DBC) but... that article is from 2001 and those are doclets which are... old.

Robert Harvey

Yeah, just noticed that.

user55340

I do like the concepts behind DBC. I really like it.

Robert Harvey

.NET 4.5 has Code Contract classes in it, but I don't know how mature they are.

user55340

The contract craze seems to have died down a bit from earlier though.

MetaFight

not very

I believe they're still in beta by the MS Research team.

Robert Harvey

7:26 PM

@MichaelT Probably because validation is more mature, more comprehensive and (except for that little niggling problem with interface validation) works quite well for most applications.

@JimmyHoffa will probably assert (Get it? Assert?) that this is all built into Haskell's type system already anyway.

user55340

Btw, you saw the announcements about MS and open source recently?

Robert Harvey

I haven't.

user55340

roslyn.codeplex.com

user55340

And then visualfsharp.codeplex.com

Robert Harvey

Hasn't the Roslyn Preview been out for awhile?

Microsoft open sources more of its .Net technologies

user55340

7:29 PM

(associated HN post on the roslyn: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524082 and F# news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7530137 -- the C# one has 10x more comments than F#)

mister_rampage

I have a question, could someone help me out? I posted a question, but I found the solution, should I delete the post or should I link the solution to the post? Here is the question: stackoverflow.com/questions/22871236/… and here is the solution: stackoverflow.com/questions/5996702/ajax-problem-in-ie9

I figure my question is unique enough that someone else might run into the same problem.

user55340

@mister_rampage Cast a dup vote on your own question.

MetaFight

@MichaelT that gave me a code boner last night when the uservoice site sent me a notification that it had be open sourced.

What's a better term for code boner? nerdgasm?

Robert Harvey

Those happen at two different times.

mister_rampage

@Mic

@MichaelT Thanks!

MetaFight

7:32 PM

@RobertHarvey if you have enough experience.

user55340

@mister_rampage its one of those little known/used privileges - at 250 you can cast a close vote on your own question: stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/view-close-votes

user55340

@MetaFight there's also progasm

user55340

(note: that University of Wisconsin was "University of Wisconsin - Madison" and it was a typo from one of my friends back in college... don't ask what he was trying to write)

user41796

@MichaelT but inquiring minds want to know!

user55340

@GlenH7 I could try hunting up the feed achieve of uwisc.upl...

Robert Harvey

7:37 PM

@MichaelT I don't see much news here. Most of the projects in that list have been open-sourced for quite some time. Open-sourcing the compiler is nice, but Mono has been around for years.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey no, for type systems to verify values, you need dependant typing. Haskell has great interfaces for writing validation code though in the applicative interface or in a monad easily. Like @MichaelT said, validation has become a standard enough thing throughout software that most everyone in any language has a library for implementing validation with a very nice API that makes it very easy to write good validation code

Robert Harvey

14 mins ago, by Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Probably because validation is more mature, more comprehensive and (except for that little niggling problem with interface validation) works quite well for most applications.

Jimmy Hoffa

sorry, as you said I meant

Robert Harvey

:)

user55340

I don't mind taking the credit... though I got rather confused.

user41796

7:41 PM

@MichaelT I read the F# announcement as them implicitly giving up on active development for the language. And by releasing it they can make themselves look good while not completely hosing the existing community

Robert Harvey

Supporting contracts in an interface would be nice. An interface is a limited contract anyway.

Maybe @JimmyHoffa can fix all of the problems with F#, and make it into a real language.

user55340

I'm still wondering if @NonNegative made it into Java 8... that said it doesn't affect me too much because of EE being about to get Java 7 as cutting edge someday soon.

Robert Harvey

Seems like the problem with things like "number must be positive" is that double is the wrong type. What you need is a NonNegativeDouble type in the interface.

user41796

10k+ link: programmers.stackexchange.com/q/234865/53019 OP's comments left me muttering unkind words

Robert Harvey

I wish I could say that I routinely walk away from those kinds of comments. Unfortunately...

user55340

7:48 PM

Btw, I hate the word 'mileage' - I can't spell it right and doing refactors all over the place to fix it makes me sad.

user41796

@RobertHarvey yeah, that one kind of irked me

user41796

Welcome @WordsLikeJared

user41796

10k link to @WordsLikeJared's recently deleted question: programmers.stackexchange.com/q/234870/53019

user41796

@RobertHarvey I think my best retort would have been "No, I expect programmers to be able to read the [spec](about)"

Robert Harvey

@WordsLikeJared: Sounds like you already are prepared, though kudos for thinking about it.

user41796

7:50 PM

It's a case where RT F M would have been appropriate instead of RTM.

user55340

@WordsLikeJared I'm gonna link my favorite How to Be a Programmer - the "Intermediate Team Skills" are the ones you are most interested in.

user55340

"Advanced Serving Your Team" would also be a good read.

user55340

(shoot, all the intermediate and advanced... or just read it all, its all good)

user55340

Another thing you will want to think about his what trajectory you want within the company - if it offers differing ones.

user55340

At my former employer being a 'team lead' amounted to 'secretary for the manager and not coding anymore'

user55340

7:57 PM

There's the managerial trajectory and the technical trajectory... and when you get to that level, they start to or can separate. Make sure you're heading on the right path that you want to take your career.

user41796

@MichaelT it's one of the few cases where I would consider fudging (downwards) my actual title on my resume

user41796

Or I might just leave titles out if that made more sense

user55340

@GlenH7 assigning work tickets, going to meetings that the manager can't make and trying to figure out who will work on the next project... thats the team lead there.

user41796

Wee!!!

user55340

And FWIW, team leads rarely last > 3 years there - they're either on the management track or fail so badly they get knocked back to developer.

user55340

7:58 PM

(or get scapegoated and leave the company)

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa: Have you considered submitting change requests to the F# team for the problems you've found?

user55340

@WordsLikeJared all that said, do think about your professional trajectory that I've mentioned.

user55340

At Netapp there was a distinct point where you could make the decision to go 'lead -> manager -> on up' path vs 'sr. -> architect -> on up'

Robert Harvey

Repeat the mantra after me:  Haskell is Lazy; Haskell is Pure; Haskell has Type Classes; Haskell is a Committee Language.

Of all of these, the most defining characteristic of Haskell is that it is a committee language.  It’s an amalgamation of many different goals with no clear vision.  This is at the same time Haskell’s greatest strength and greatest weakness.  While it is the most widely used pure functional programming language, the quirks of committee design are obvious.

atalasoft.com/cs/blogs/rickm/archive/2009/01/29/…

ratchet freak

don't let Jimmy find out about that...

user41796

8:28 PM

Why does this have migrate to SO votes?!

user41796

0

Q: Identity matrix using Fortran 95

The following code give the identity matrix of any size the user wish it to be: program identitymatrix real, dimension(:, :), allocatable :: I character:: fmt*8 integer :: ms, j print*,'the size of the matrix is?' read*,ms allocate(I(ms,ms)) I = 0 ! Init...

fortran identity

ratchet freak

because it is a "what does this code do?" question which is on topic for SO (or at least people think it is)

user55340

One of those is mine - analyzing the specifics of working code is much more similar to debugging than it is to algorithms.

user41796

I can see those points. I thought it was more about the concept behind the routine

user55340

> write (fmt, '(A,I2,A)') '(', ms, 'F6.2)'

write (*, fmt) I(:,:)
What does (A,I2,A) do exactly?

MetaFight

8:33 PM

this
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/234110/81495

user55340

Thats dealing with the specifics of some fortran.

MetaFight

just got accepted as an answer.

it has 0 votes. I'm not too happy with that being accepted.

user55340

@MetaFight Tenacious!

user55340

> Zero score accepted answers: more than 5 and 20% of total

MetaFight

oooh, there's a badge involved? I'm all about that then.

user55340

8:35 PM

You've got 4x 0 score accepts currently.

user55340

One more 0 score accept and you'd get the first P.SE tenacious badge.

user55340

Whoot! Populist! programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/49/…

user55340

(I'm all about not getting accepted answers)

user55340

Btw, recent code that I wrote... "SELECT * FROM mileage ..." I found that ironic.

MetaFight

getting a 0 score accepted answer just feels wrong. Getting 5 would essentially confirm something. I'm not sure what... but it can't be good.

enderland

8:39 PM

Yeah I use SELECT * frequently though whenever I don't want all teh information then I don't...

@MetaFight try frequenting an obscure tag on SO

user41796

@MichaelT I recently found Select Count(1) From ... Where ... to test for the rows existing

enderland

you get lots of 0 score accepts there

MetaFight

@enderland I'll keep that in mind.

user55340

@enderland I wrote a big long bit about the evils of select *

enderland

@MichaelT Yah I read that just now (Well skimmed)

user55340

8:41 PM

@GlenH7 ... where exists(select 1 from ....)? Please don't make me cry telling me other wise...

user41796

@MichaelT I'm afraid I may end up making you cry. Sorry.

user41796

The above was pretty much the exact query I used against SQL Server. Obviously, left out the particulars, but ...

user41796

But it was more convenient that way to take advantage of the execute scalar off of the datareader.

user55340

I'm still happy with the select * answer in that I've got 2 more days that are closer to the epic badge.

user55340

> earned at least 200 reputation on 20 days

user55340

8:49 PM

programmers.stackexchange.com/reputation

user41796

I have a meager 11 days of rep capping. <sigh>

enderland

I've only gotten 9 days worth on workplace

I need to spam more low quality answers to every question like some of the other users

wait that lazy search I did doesn't include days I went OVER +200 rep. maybe a bit more...

ratchet freak

I got 4, and by some surprise I don't have any on SO

@enderland you can go to *.stackexchange.com/reputation

user41796

@enderland Just hit /reputation and scroll to the bottom of the page

ratchet freak

and scroll to the bottom to see how many days of over 200 you got

or look at the graph

enderland

8:54 PM

oh, didn't realize it had that down there, sweet

> earned at least 200 reputation on 20 days

user55340

@enderland workplace I assume?

enderland

@MichaelT yeah

user55340

9:10 PM

@Dr.Ibb have you seen onlywei.github.io/explain-git-with-d3 ?

Dr. Ibb

@MichaelT I have. It didn't even dawn on me to show that to him.

enderland

@MichaelT oh gosh I wish I'd seen that when I was learning git

Dr. Ibb

@enderland Yeah, it's awesome. We've had a couple of gitastrophes around here that would have been avoided had we seen something like that when we started.

user55340

I'm wondering if just checkout out the commit before the mess and then saying "this is now master" would be a proper way to fix that gitastrophy

enderland

I should not even look at this

to think about how much time I would have saved

Dr. Ibb

9:14 PM

@MichaelT I fixed ours by reverting, manually copying and pasting the contents of the files into new files, saving them, and then recommitting with a message like "Fixing this f'ed up mess."

user55340

git branch gitastrophy
git checkout master~20
git branch -b new_master
git branch -D master
git branch -mv new_master master

Dr. Ibb

@MichaelT Would that get rid of all the history from the original master, though?

user55340

Nope. That's still at gitastrophy branch.

Dr. Ibb

Interesting.

user55340

In the free playground:
git pull
git branch gitastrophy
git checkout 7eb7654
git branch -d master
git branch master
git checkout master
git commit
git push

user55340

9:21 PM

granted, that last push is rejected as a non-fast forward.

Dr. Ibb

"When is it suitable to use inheritance" - Whenever you don't want to the government to liquidate your estate and you have relatives who will probably outlive you.

ratchet freak

@Dr.Ibb I don't think that is what he meant

enderland

@ratchetfreak I think it would be a good answer though

ratchet freak

funny comment at most

Dr. Ibb

I thought about posting it as a funny comment then decided I'd just say it in chat.

enderland

9:26 PM

be even more funny to write it as a big answer

ratchet freak