The Whiteboard

« first day (2234 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2750 days later) »

user41796

12:39 AM

@ThomasOwens, I regret to inform you that mechanical engineering is already well covered on the (real) Engineering.SE. ;-) And yes, that's bait. — GlenH7 22 secs ago

user41796

@ThomasOwens - I'm not sorry as I absolutely couldn't resist.

user41796

Random question - What does MSE now mean in context of the name change?

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 ?

user41796

Meta Stack Exchange or Meta Software Engineering

user41796

Don't tell me that I can show up late to the party and be the only one to call that out.

Thomas Owens

12:41 AM

Uh...no one thought about Meta. No one ever thinks about Meta.

user41796

Clearly.

user41796

ROFL

Thomas Owens

Meta.SE.SE = Meta Software Engineering. Meta.SE = Meta Stack Exchange.

user41796

So it has been decreed

user41796

Pardon the naive question - did we significantly change the site scope as a result?

Thomas Owens

12:42 AM

Although we may want to avoid SE. What if one of those Systems Engineering proposals that gets floated from time to time launches? Do we need a fight to see who gets the abbreviation SE?

@GlenH7 Nope. Check out the Help Center.

user41796

i.e. is there a TL;DR on expected voting behaviour with the new site? (read: I may actually be able to start participating again in the near future)

user41796

Oh hell. There's no SysEng questions on Engineering to speak of and we're gonna give them their own whole site?

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 What do you mean? Voting behavior should generally be the same. Shog even suggested doing what they do on Meta.SE, and I know I have and Oded has, too - delete any code writing debugging, career/education, legal, or recommendation questions on sight, unless they are good enough to migrate to the approrpiate site.

user41796

OK, that's cool

user41796

is this a migration? or a rename?

user41796

12:45 AM

or am I rehashing stuff I could figure out on meta?

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 It's a rename.

I mean, we aren't starting over at question 1.

And with 0 rep.

user41796

NPR -> Progs -> SE. I like it

user41796

I mean, NPR -> Progs -> SE.SE. :-)

Thomas Owens

I do too. I do wish they had more time to revamp the theme more.

But I'll take it.

user41796

Given how long it took to get the rename considered?!

Thomas Owens

12:46 AM

@GlenH7 Are there seriously no Systems Engineering questions on Engineering

user41796

I was gonna say "sh!t, I was still in my old job then"

user41796

@ThomasOwens Pretty much none

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 There are 12, but most are in the controls side and not what I would consider real systems engineering - systems requirements, architecture, engineering management.

Maybe a couple are real systems engineering questions.

The reason why:

Q: Is systems engineer an IT profession or an interdisciplinary field of engineering?

The term Systems Engineer has always interested me as it generally involves many different fields of engineering. Systems Engineer - Interdisciplinary The definition I'm familiar with is usually defined as an interdisciplinary profession of engineering, where the engineer has experience in a nu...

user41796

Arguably, Systems and Controls created the basis of systems engineering, but the field has morphed considerably beyond that

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 At my previous job, Controls was technically part of the Systems Engineering group, but there were two Systems Engineering groups that were hidden. One was what I consider true systems engineering - requirements, architecture, and integration. The other was controls and they might as well have been in electrical or mechanical.

user41796

12:50 AM

The other you're referring to has traditional been electrical or mechanical depending upon what sort of physical system you were working with

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 Yeah. For some reason, there was an Electromechanical group that contained the electrical engineers and mechanical engineers. But the controls systems engineers weren't in that group. Lots of people didn't understand.

Especially since those three groups ended up as the "build the physical stuff" group..

user41796

That's definitely weird

user41796

You switched jobs, btw?

Thomas Owens

I still think there were some weird power things happening at higher levels.

Yeah, I'm in pharma software now.

user41796

Oh, very cool

user41796

12:52 AM

The things I miss when I drop off of the face of the planet for the better part of a year...

Thomas Owens

Come back to the planet.

user41796

Trying to do so

user41796

Went from a 7 minute commute to a 25 minute commute. And went from a gig where the builds took a while to where the shop is run really well. But we've got tons to get done.

user41796

Granted, I'm much happier where I'm working now. But my SE time has really dropped off.

Thomas Owens

Yeah. My commute went from 30 minutes to about 45-55 (but also went from driving to public transit) and a pretty fast paced web development thing. I've gotten settled in to mod between tasks. I'm finding pomodoro working well in the new environment.

Anyway, I think dog needs to go out.

user41796

12:56 AM

I may have to give that a try. I'm noticing it's too easy to get distracted by the "next thing" and not close out what I'm working on. I want to work on my focus.

user41796

Cool, have a great evening

Thomas Owens

And I'm going to get away from computer screens before going to bed.

1 hour later…

CandiedOrange

2:15 AM

new logo <- thoughts?

6 hours later…

gnat

8:25 AM

@GlenH7 you may probably notice difference in "voting behavior" of moderators. Somewhere in the process Shog made it clear that it is now recommended to quickly delete blatantly off-topic stuff instead of waiting for Roomba to take care of it. This is mostly noticeable on debugging questions but I saw blatant recommendations / polls and career advice quickly disappear as well

2 hours later…

amon

10:08 AM

@AaronHall This is your occasional reminder to please learn more than one language. Paul Graham introduced the Blub Paradox, arguing that some languages are more powerful than others and programmers in an inferior language don't recognize a more powerful one. He concludes that Lisp is the best language. I disagree there, and have found that there's no total order of language expressiveness – different languages have different strengths. There is no absolute best.

When you evangelize Python, I partially agree – it's definitively one of the better languages out there. But your “good message” has two problems:

(1) If Python has a feature, it isn't necessarily good. E.g. its particular flavour of multiple inheritance has quite problematic aspects.

(2) If a language isn't Python, it isn't automatically bad. Its unique features may actually be quite valuable. Summarily dismissing them appears a bit uninformed.

Your Python marketing will be more successful if you can see it from an outside view, like the people you are “selling” to. What problems do these people have? How can Python help there? Under what circumstances might Python not be the best choice. Learning other languages will help achieve that perspective.

Bad sales pitch: “SnakeOil 3.6 will solve all your problems! Bugs, developer frustration, and customer dissatisfaction will be gone in a week. And if you're healthy right now, a daily dose will keep you that way!” Yeah, sure.

Better pitch: “It seems you are struggling with C's low-level details. Python allows you to focus on clean, high-level code and has a rich standard library. You can still interface with existing C code fairly easily. Counter-indications include an allergy to dynamic typing.”

3 hours later…

user41796

1:10 PM

@gnat, that's good to know. So VTD with wild abandon... :-)

user41796

@amon - "There is no absolute best." This! Very, very much true. Languages are just tools. Tools that have specific strengths and weaknesses when it comes to addressing problems.

Aaron Hall

1:24 PM

@amon I allow myself some artistic license for selling Python on its merits. I do have a short list of secondary languages I'm trying to learn as I have time: generic SQL, Haskell, C, (e)Lisp, and Javascript.

gnat

@GlenH7 laugh if you wish but they now close and delete even faster than I can get to the question. We're not getting much less garbage questions than before (though network wide asking limits somewhat helped) but I routinely have spare close votes at the end of the day. I think it haven't been like that since May 2014

(not that I complain)

Aaron Hall

1:46 PM

I have a very high standard for claiming to "know" a language, and I don't claim to "know" any of them. I would say that I can read them and understand what they're doing, for the most part. (Haskell can be a little tough to figure out what's going on though...)

CandiedOrange

I have a very low standard. But then I think of the language as the syntax. What you spend the rest of your life learning is the library, idioms, and development stack in which it's used.

I'm in favor of whichever view it takes to make you willing to work in more than one language. I prefer polyglots over wizards.

Aaron Hall

2:04 PM

To be clear - I do claim to know Python though. :)

CandiedOrange

This your way of letting us know you're against the name change?

Aaron Hall

2:16 PM

I'm not!

CandiedOrange

Sure? looks like the old name to me.

Aaron Hall

Q: Site Design, round 2

Possible Duplicate: New Design Launched First, I want to thank you for your valuable feedback for the first design concept. Programmers.SE is a site about people and conceptual design more than coding. The old design simply did not reflect that; so it failed. I talked to Jeff about th...