The Classroom

@HenryWHHackv2.0 hello

Hi

I am here

hey

So is everything ok?

Yes?

2:07 AM

0

Q: Cannot install Taskel

I created a fresh VM using a recently downloaded iso from Ubuntu. Version 16.04.1 and I am trying to install taskel so I can put LAMP on here. When I run this command: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade sudo apt-get -y install tasksel && sudo tasksel I get the following error... ...

16.04

So

nevermind

2:20 AM

Yeah just figured that out. Thank you. /facepalm — sqlsqlsql 18 mins ago

I don't know if he is trying to say: (Yeah dude this solved the problem or Yeah Thanks for telling me but I'm sure I spelled it right)

10:26 AM

Time to check the reviews

and I found nothing that I can review.

Choirbean

10:47 AM

There's always more voting to be done. Or ask a question! We need more questions :)

10 hours ago, by Henry WH Hack v2.0

I don't know much about Computer Science or teaching. I only vote on the questions that is interesting and useful but also understandable to me.

So I shall not ask a question.

But something may come to me I mean it happened with IOT.SE.

I wasn't really thinking of asking a question in general and BOOM I asked a question.

Now I don't have a question I have around 5 now.

11:28 AM

The question from Peter is really cool. I don't do C, but the way it's implemented is really cool.

11:38 AM

Maybe we can rename language-choice to choice or something, I just used it on a question about choosing a ruby framework to teach.

choice seems a bit too vague to me, but I see your point

tool-choice? Languages are tools.

11:58 AM

@Aurora0001 Just curious, do you ruby? It seems like you do from your answer to my rails v. sinatra question.

A little, but I use Python a lot more (and occasionally JS)

Although my experience with JS is mainly wasting time configuring stuff and not getting anywhere

I certainly wouldn't ever recommend trying to teach in the Node/JavaScript ecosystem; there are too many different frameworks which all do the same thing, but most don't work well together without a lot of effort.

E.g. "Hmm, let's add React". Then "How about Babel too to get ES6 support". Then "Webpack is better, let's switch to that". And "Server-side rendering is cooler, you need to be doing that"

Etc etc etc, ad infinitum

Yeah, JS is generally a mess. The language is getting better, but now frameworks are appearing like pokèmon in tall grass.

And the current "best practice" changes far too often

About 5 years ago, CoffeeScript was incredibly popular, but now it's virtually dead

And now it's TypeScript that's the popular one

So you end up having hundreds of layers of compilation, packing, minifying, compressing, and everything

If you do ruby, there is a transpiler called Opal that will transpile ruby to JS, but I've heard the output is really hard to debug.

@Aurora0001 And you can do all if it with 1 command in rails! It's magic!

@thesecretmaster Yeah, I've heard of Opal (although I first heard of it through the arguments over one of the maintainers)

12:05 PM

I'd like to try it, but I try and avoid JS in my projects for anything more than a super basic ajax form submission.

@thesecretmaster Django (basically Python's equivalent to Rails) is pretty nice too. I used that for a while, and never found any big problems with it

I should try python. I just don't like how it forces the indentation on you.

@thesecretmaster That's why I do like it

Stops you from being sloppy, and it's much more appealing than curly braces everywhere

I like ruby because it lets you do what you want, even if sometimes you scew yourself over.

And, of course:

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

12:09 PM

What about rubygems???

I also like ruby because of the ease with which I can make a DSL.

Ruby's metaprogramming is incredible from the little I know of it

Yeah, that's why I love it. Literally anything is possible except 2 things: Finding out where a file was required to and unbinding a method/block/proc from a scope/context.

Yeah, JavaScript is quite 'flexible' in that way too

Well, JS is... special. Ruby lets you do most things the "right" way

Not to say that everything is pretty. There are lots of ugly thing buried in there, but most of it is really nice.

@thesecretmaster Whereas in JavaScript, you'll definitely do it the wrong way

Hopefully Emscripten and Web Assembly will get to the point that you don't need to use JS at all

12:21 PM

Fun thing about ruby for DSLs, if you try and call an undefined method, you can actually intercept the error by having another method defined (method_missing).

@Aurora0001 What are these things you speak of?

Emscripten is a transpiler that converts LLVM bytecode into JavaScript/Web Assembly

Web Assembly is this

And LLVM bytecode is an intermediate language that a lot of other compile to (e.g. the clang compiler uses it)

Hold on. lets talk about boo. now that's one strange language

Can't say I've ever used it

But if it's a .NET language, it's probably relatively easy to pick up if you know C#

Neither have I but friends of mine say that it is actually a joke

All I know is a a little Python,HTML and CSS.

12:25 PM

similar to this thing

@HenryWHHackv2.0 are you interested in learning more languages?

Well

Let's see I am going to learn ten

because I want to

ten?

not all at a time

one at a time

@ItamarGreen Well

oh, ten languages. For a moment I thought there was a language called ten

LOL

Who knows maybe I may learn more or less.

12:30 PM

I recommend Node.js (haven't tried, will start learning is by myself ) or java. But it actually depends on whatever you want to program (what type of application)

Somehow I got auto logged out

@Aurora0001 Do you have anything to do with this?

Nope

Ok

Happens sometimes.

I can't log people out on random sites

Oh yes

maybe someone logged me out and have me re login to get some session cookies and hack me.

or maybe it's nothing

Choirbean shall moderate this site.

I can predict the future.

12:36 PM

I feel like this question will become stuff of legend.

yes

lazy coding

is bad

I always wonder what triggers does dots when chatting. It seems to appear randomly.

and it's gone we shall never know what it means

what 0.0

See those dots above your post

1:45 PM

1 hour later...

Sasha

2:27 PM

@HenryWHHackv2.0 catchup markers

2:50 PM

It seems like the site has settled down after 3 days

Q: What is the typical growth pattern of a new beta site in the first few weeks?

@thesecretmaster Well, that's to be expected

See:

28

I've been involved with matheducators.stackexchange.com and a little bit with expatriates.stackexchange.com. I've noticed that both had very high activity during private beta and then about half as much activity during public beta (which makes sense, because people are trying to get the site goin...

discussion beta-phase beta-sites

Everyone rushes in when the inbox notification appears saying there's a new site, but people quickly get bored

Plus, weekends are usually lower in activity for Stack Exchange sites

Oh, huh. I would've guessed that public beta meant more people so more questions.

That's what I was expecting on IoT, but frankly, it doesn't happen. At least not at first

Slowly, good questions start to rank highly on Google, get shared on other sites, etc.

But that takes months, maybe years in some cases to reach the 'critical mass'

People just leave when it goes public?

Well, it's more a fact that they don't stick around after day 1 of private beta, so you're only left with a small fraction of the users who actually committed

3:02 PM

So some people are kinda lying about how committed they are?

On IoT, 238 users committed. 10 have fulfilled their commitment

And it's been nearly 6 months since launch for IoT

@thesecretmaster Well, I wouldn't say lying. It's just that most people either: don't turn up; don't contribute as much as the commitment requires or forget that they ever did commit, I guess

About 30% of users who committed on IoT didn't even join the site

And the figure is even more dire for Computer Science Educators: "43.8% signed up for beta"

Looking at the Area 51 stats, roughly 60-70% of committed users join by the end of private beta

And about 10% fulfilling commitment seems normal

So you can see how the numbers work out badly... 200 committed > 140 join the site > 10–20 fulfil commitment

What is fulfilling?

You have to either ask/answer a certain number of questions

Can't remember how many

Found the text:

> I commit to participate actively in [topic] for at least three months, especially during the private beta, and to ask or answer at least ten questions.

Anyway, on the positive side: as long as the site exits private beta, it's pretty much guaranteed to be open forever

So if the private beta remains active enough, it should be fine

We already have 16 users with > 100 rep earned, not counting association

Yeah, I think the site is doing pretty well. There are a lot of interesting questions so far

3:13 PM

Also, do you know when we get onto SEDE?

I think it's when the site reaches public beta

And when is that? (Assuming the numbers work out for us)

Private betas usually last 3 weeks (unless they're closed early or extended for some reason)

3:39 PM

There is so much less to do on a beta than there is on SO. I'm used to review queues always having at least 50 questions, a new question every couple minutes, etc.

Yeah, betas are more 'relaxed' than SO (for better or worse)

5:44 PM

I'm not crazy for casting a CV on this question right?

It is rather broad at the minute

OK, just wanted to check. OP said they're editing so hopefully I'll be able to retract that vote and +1

6:14 PM

@Aurora0001 I just actually looked at the area51 page, and the 41% is 41% of followers signed up for beta. It also says "222 users" and "242 committed," which sounds optimistic.

There's one figure for the followers, and one for the committers

44.2% of committers, and 41.7% of followers joined

Although some people may have committed and followed

Then I guess roughly 110 users got here from invites?

Probably. You can join without committing, though, through Area 51

Oh, I didn't know that.

6:43 PM

Is there a link I can send to people who already have SE accounts to get them to join?

Yep, just send them to here, and if they click "Visit", they can join

Aha! Thanks.

8:22 PM

If anyone is curious, I found this SEDE query for posts/day on a question linked by Aurora001 earlier: data.stackexchange.com/workplace/query/117133/posts-per-day

culture area51-meta languages feature-request

11:11 PM

@Sasha You seem familiar.

Of course:

Sasha

3.3k 1 18

Your the guy/girl who proposed the Ukrainian language proposal.

Q: Should the title still be Computer Science Educators?

11:25 PM

It got a reopen vote

-3

I believe that they're aren't that many people out there who are interested in a site that is only for Computer Science Educators. Personally, I'm a Java student, and my interest rate in this site is dropping exponentially. I think the site should be more open and broad so that more users will be...

discussion feature-request

I suspect the reopen vote is from the OP but really it can be anybody.

In fact it can even be ~~thesecretmaster~~

Hi, and nope.

Oh

cseducators.meta.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/4

I voted to keep it closed.

Yeah, I CVd it, but I didn't vote to reopen

ok

Most likely it can be a reopen vote from the OP.

I don't think that an OP can vote to reopen their own question

11:36 PM

cseducators.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/view-close-votes

Oh, huh.

Gilles

@thesecretmaster I voted to reopen. It's a perfectly valid question. The answer is no, but that doesn't make the question invalid.

Ah he did^

I mean, it's a valid question, but it's just strange that such a question even is asked. That's like asking why stack overflow is so anti-chef, whenever a cooking question is posted it's closed.

Does that mean?

Oh

@thesecretmaster What does this mean?

11:53 PM

@Gilles Why isn't your mod vote binding?