The Whiteboard

12:14 AM

@Deco Ryan Swindle is obviously a made up name. His real name is Jimmy Hoffa

@JimmyHoffa - If Microsoft posted linq on reddit and github under the name "Fred Jones" they still wouldn't know they needed linq.

Jimmy Hoffa

12:38 AM

@psr true, someone wrote a library years ago that implemented the async functionality damn near identical to the new async/await mechanism and nobody ever noticed it, but now it's a central part of the .net 4.5 push

psr

@JimmyHoffa - A programmers blog entry with an example of how semi-realistic javascript programs would work without monads, and how they would be better with them? (Wouldn't help much with your anonymity if you linked to your library though).

user20683

@JimmyHoffa blog? yes, yes :D

Jimmy Hoffa

1:19 AM

@Deco that's right, Ryan Swindle by night, he's my superhero form

psr

Oh, um, then can he write the blog. Right the blog, possibly.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr it's beyond recompense

even he can't help, cape or not

@WorldEngineer perked your ears up, perhaps so. I tend to spend all my extra time either hacking on something, or playing video games / watching TV trying to relax with the wife. Thus why I haven't happened to particularly write in my own blog. I have been meaning to write about this library all the same. I'm kind of proud of it

user20683

@JimmyHoffa just trying to keep the blog going

Deco

@JimmyHoffa you should be proud of it, I'm proud of it and I didn't write it

@JimmyHoffa @WorldEngineer I don't have time to write my own blog atm (not that I even have one) let alone the PSE one.. Plus I don't know what to write about :3

psr

@JimmyHoffa - By the way, I'm not sure if the "Don't be a dick to Ryan Swindle" public license would allow me to use it a work. A lot of enterprise shops have a corporate policy of being a dick to Ryan Swindle.

user20683

1:31 AM

@Deco an intro to the horror of ABAP? Maybe a funny limerick ;)

psr

Actually, sometimes only a list of well known licenses is allowed and getting another approved takes some work.

Jimmy Hoffa

1:47 AM

@psr I know, I've worked at them for years and they're all a dick to me. Also I figure I'll put one out under MIT license for that reason. Dbad is only one that came to mind to use without having to read it.

I didn't feel like parsing the MIT or bsd ones earlier

Deco

2:44 AM

@WorldEngineer that might be a really good idea actually!

@WorldEngineer I found a blog by some guy which is "Why I like ABAP", maybe I'll do one "Why I hate ABAP" :)

Deco

2:58 AM

especially this error: "The name '<name here>' is longer than the allowed 30 characters"

user55340

I keep resting voting this comment up...

user55340

user20683

5 would be reverse Fibonacci kinda

user20683

5:26 AM

@YannisRizos Any ideas on how to write a blog post about learning English as a good programming career move without coming off as a cultural imperialist?

TRiG

1:19 PM

@WorldEngineer Get a non-native English speaker to write it?

Yannis Rizos

@TRiG I think that's what he's trying to do by pinging me... ;P

(but I won't bite)

TRiG

Yannis Rizos ♦, Thessaloniki, Greece

20.6k 30 104 158

Thessaloniki. The one and only place in the world where I've been cruised in a public toilet. (I ran.)

Yannis Rizos

@TRiG I know I'll regret this, but... what!?

TRiG

@YannisRizos I was there for a short while to change trains. And there was a guy in the public toilet in the train station who was masturbating at a urinal. And obviously wanted to be seen. I was washing my hands at the time. I left. Weird experience.

(I was on my way from Athens to Istanbul.)

@YannisRizos Regretting it yet?

Yannis Rizos

@TRiG Sadly, it isn't the worst thing I've heard (or personally experienced) happening in a Greek train station.

TRiG

1:35 PM

@YannisRizos It was sort of fun, in its way. I mean, he was young and good looking, so I wasn't complaining about seeing him. I just freaked out a little.

I enjoyed being in Greece on my own. InterRail. I'd been before, once. Granddad brought us. He was from Cyprus, but never went back there.

Yannis Rizos

@TRiG Did you get a chance to go anywhere outside Athens?

TRiG

@YannisRizos I visited the Metiora.

Amazing.

user20683

2:08 PM

@YannisRizos I'd be the one to write it, just looking for ideas on how to properly address issues that probably should be written on without coming off as needlessly antagonistic.

user41796

2:23 PM

@YannisRizos - re: blog on learning English as a non-English speaker. Think of all the fun you could have with the phrase "It's all Greek to me." I don't know how widespread that asinine idiom is outside of the US, but I cringe a little inside every time I hear it. So it's perfect for a bit of word play. I'll even volunteer to edit if you'd like.

TRiG

@GlenH7 That idiom is fairly well-known in Ireland and the UK, anyway.

in Islam, Feb 8 at 22:00, by TRiG

The Cyrillic alphabet, used for Russian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian, is related to the Greek. I was in a train station in Sophia, and managed to roughly sound out a word on a sign on a door. It sounded a little similar to that same word in the Romance languages. So I worked out the meaning of a Bulgarian word. That door said "Transport Police". I was quite pleased with myself for that.

user41796

2:36 PM

@TRiG - cool, thanks for that nugget! Part of my dislike for the phrase is that I see too many people in the US use it as an excuse to not even try and learn something new. "What?! I have to think?! I can't do that. It's all Greek to me...." I try to avoid intellectual snobbery (which I think just implicated me as one) but I die a little when I hear people use that as their excuse to avoid thinking.

Yannis Rizos

2:48 PM

@GlenH7 Well, on the plus side when people say "It's all Greek to me" they are quoting Shakespeare (The Tragedy of Julius Caesar more specifically).

2

user55340

6

Q: Is this a test smell or is it even worse?

I have recently been looking at some testscripts which looks a bit like ... try { receiveSomething(); // something was received even though it shouldn't failTest(); } catch (TimeoutException e) { // nothing should be received succedTest(); } The problem I have with these types of tes...

code-smell functional-testing testability

user55340

I read that at first as "is this a TASTE smell or is it even worse?" and thought briefly about migrating it to cooking.SE.

user55340

So, you ask a basic programmer to count to 10 - they say "1, 2, 3, ..., 8, 9, 10". Ask a C programmer and you get "0, 1, 2, ... 7, 8, 9". Ask a DBA and you get "0, 1, many"

user41796

3:22 PM

@YannisRizos - Shakes-spear?! Whozzat?

Jimmy Hoffa

3:39 PM

Native American Wiseman, Chief Shakes His Spear

Jimmy Hoffa

4:37 PM

Is this guy talking about the actor model? I'm really not understanding this question. Maybe it's actually too vague and Not-A-Question...

0

Q: Use Case with system actors

I have asked a similar question earlier but the context is a bit different here - I have an application that receives data from an upstream application. My application consumes webservices exposed by multiple other applications in order to fulfill a task. The data flows through multiple applicat...

requirements uml analysis business-analysis

Jimmy Hoffa

4:51 PM

I've been avoiding writing parser combinators with my javascript library because people think they're cool but don't recognize the overarching use of the approach, though perhaps I should write an example using the library for parser combinators just because they're trendy

user55340

5:07 PM

If a Q links to a site other than amazon for the book, is it a good thing to edit the link to amazon (the theory being, SE gets affiliate benefits).

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT If that's the only edit, that seems too trivial.

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT If that's the only reason to edit, then don't. It'd be a minor edit that wouldn't actually improve the post itself.

gnat

5:19 PM

12

A: Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever

One problem with hot questions seems to be that there is no way for "hotness algorithm" to differentiate genuine popularity from fake one, that is from popularity introduced by the algorithm itself. The issue probably wasn't even noticeable when current algorithm was introduced in 2008, since S...

thanks @YannisRizos - guess how I am going to re-invest that bounty? :)

Rachel

@gnat I'm going to start downvoting your posts about the "hotness" formula if you don't stop bumping it every few days :p

Jim G.

7

Q: Have there been disputes when software identifies genders with a boolean?

I remember that in our first programming class with Java, while explaining data types, the following occurred (kinda): Professor: So, what data type would you choose if your program needs to store the user's gender? Someone: How about a boolean? You know, true for male and false for ...

history

@YannisRizos: ^^^ 12 upvotes? Seriously?

gnat

@Rachel love you too. I for one am likely more tolerable to stuff like that; your terrific answer at MSO sits second from top in my bounty queue despite multiple bumps:

16

A: What are the most effective ways to guide new users?

Treat new users like actual people. Understand that they don't understand the site yet, and show a genuine interest in helping them out. I still remember my first experiences with both SO and Programmers. I thought I understood the sites, but realized later that I had barely scratched the surfac...

by the way if you ever cross "10 edits" CW boundary with it, just ping me I'll flag for mods to revert CW

I've got a canned flag message exactly for cases like that

Yannis Rizos

@JimG. I honestly have no idea what's going on in that question. All I know is it's not a programming question, therefore I don't care.

Jim G.

@YannisRizos Agreed.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:34 PM

@YannisRizos edits need to be non-trivial? I edit posts to fix commas and trivial shit all the time because it annoys the crap out of me, should I not?

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Editing bumps things up. If it's a recent post, it's probably OK. But as a general rule, unless you are making significant improvements to the question, it's best not to edit it.

Jimmy Hoffa

Balls. Grammar accidents annoy me

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Readability is different than changing the link from one functioning site to another - which is what my question was about.

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT If it's unreadable, make it readable. But if it's not unreadable and you aren't making significant changes, it's probably best to let it go.

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa If the post is hours old, go for it. Bumping a six month old question just to fix a comma is a whole different thing though.

Thomas Owens

5:36 PM

But there's probably some leeway with posts that are already at the top of the list.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens for instance, I shouldn't have made this revision:

programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/187097/revisions

I generally don't pay any attention to old questions

user55340

@ThomasOwens Readable is not a boolean value. Seeing a question where "i have written something ,but i fail to understand how to use the space bar or shiftkey" likely needs to be changed so that we (SE) don't look like a bunch of poor typists. We are professionals - our questions should at least look that way too.

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Rule of thumb: Look for the active thingy in the sidebar. If it says today, edit. If not, only edit if you are substantially improving the post.

user55340

My "should I do this" is based on...

user55340

3

Q: What's the effect of this assignment (whatever the language)?

I think my book (Programming Languages: Principles and Paradigms) is wrong. a is a vector, assume a C-like language: b = 0; a[f(3)] = a[f(3)] + 1; int f(int n) { if(b == 0) { b = 1; return 1; } else return 2; } It has the effect of assigning the value of a[1]...

programming-languages array evaluation

user55340

5:40 PM

Where the book is linked to www.springer.com - and exists on Amazon. I know that SE rewrites amazon links to use its affiliate program and thus feeds money back to them. I was wondering about changing that link to amazon.

Thomas Owens

I wouldn't. It links to the publisher's page. Does it really matter if one links to Amazon versus some other source? The only time I would consider editing is if the user is using a personal referrer code.

user55340

Thus, my question and the answers, and why I didn't edit it... however, the question (in chat) appears to have lead to other questions here, and thus the clarification for my previous question and the answers to it...

Jimmy Hoffa

..too many semantic articles...head..hurting... you're a jerk @MichaelT

ok, I feel better now

gnat

@YannisRizos "to fix a coma..." well I think this is serious enough to justify any edit :)

Coma

In medicine, a coma (from the Greek koma, meaning deep sleep) is a state of unconsciousness lasting more than six hours, A person in a state of coma is described as being comatose. Although a coma patient may appear to be awake, they are unable to consciously feel, speak, hear, or move. For a patient to maintain consciousness, two important neurological components must function impeccably. The first is the cerebral cortex which is the gray matter covering the outer layer of the brain. The other is a structure located in the brainstem, called reticular activating system (RAS or ARAS)....

Jimmy Hoffa

unconciousness lasting more than six hours, I go into a coma every night?

Yannis Rizos

5:53 PM

@gnat No idea what you're talking about (not having to care about editing time limits is the best thing about having a diamond ;)

gnat

@YannisRizos wow that's a pretty strong magic!

now I recall I have been exploited these powers before, regular guys like me can possess a bit of it via flagging (I flagged for mod to do that when I needed some edits in comments without removing these)

@JimmyHoffa I experience something like that daily, when going through close votes queue at SO...

stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats

user55340

8:02 PM

23

Q: Free as in "free speech", not as in "free beer"

Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. — Richard Stallman Translating free to my language (Ukrainian), generates a huge variety of different terms, including (I apologize for my lame ...

meaning-in-context

user55340

A hot question over in ELL that is of interest to some over here...

user55340

9:47 PM

Hmm. This is interesting. "Cascalog" - a clojure library where you write in clojure for database connectivity rather than in sql.

user55340

nathanmarz.com/blog/…

user20683

@MichaelT I saw something like that a while back, might have been the same thing

user20683

some part of me is still interested in Lisps

Jimmy Hoffa

10:20 PM

last day next friday and my boss literally just told me "Surf or whatever you're going to do for the next week"

@WorldEngineer that's cuz lexical closures are cool

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Bloggage :D

user20683

:P

Jimmy Hoffa

also there's a Haskell cloud querying thing

happstack.com/docs/crashcourse/AcidState.html

queries all in haskell

I only heard bad things about acid-state (mostly around the fact that no one uses it because it's not one of the normal databases everyone expects) but it actually looks pretty cool

Jimmy Hoffa

10:41 PM

@WorldEngineer Blog about what now?

psr

@JimmyHoffa - Blog some examples of how your JavaScript library will cause all errors to actually happen inside monads so your real code is always error free.

user55340

@WorldEngineer As a perler, there are a number of functional parts to the language that I am comfortable with. It isn't too hard of a stretch to get to functional languages theselves (but keep me away form ML - meh... bad memories there).

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr eh it's javascript, I can't really guarantee error safety, if they doSomething.then(function(a) { undefined.n = "error!!"; }) the interpreter will choke no matter which way you go about it

it's still a dynamically types language, I can't force type safety heh

@MichaelT what ya got against ML? the HM type system is the cat's knees

@psr the real trick to the lib is two fold, it forces you to break everything you want to do up into small independent functions which is just good design, and the other side is it allows you to make those little functions pass values between eachother in various ways flexibly, so you can structure them a little differently for different scenarios, or dynamically build them up based on various criteria

psr

Or show an example of how your library buys you beer after you do make an error...

Jimmy Hoffa

10:58 PM

haha

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Just one of those "if you got sick drinking tequila, you never want to see it." I had an assignment in CS 538 (theory of programming languages) to write a program (generate a maze) in C (procedural), Java (OO), ML (functional), and Prolog (WTF)... the ML one was a painful experience.

user55340

I recall someone saying "its kind of like C, but it doesn't have any variables... or is it like lisp but without parentheses?"... it was just bad.

Jimmy Hoffa

the magical error-freedom haskell spouts isn't related to the monads, rather it's related to the stringent type guarantees it gives you

user55340

I also couldn't figure out how to do the algorithm I had for mazes for C and Java to do in ML... so I came up with another one that was challenging to rethink... and that took a good chunk of the construction time up.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT lol, if I were you I'd chalk that up to just inexperience at the time. You could probably go back and somewhat grok it now if you're ok with LISP

user55340

11:00 PM

@JimmyHoffa Indeed... but I tequila still makes me sick.

user55340

And ML still gives me headaches.

Jimmy Hoffa

heh

user55340

The original method was "Take an NxM array (each element was a room with 4x walls and a number). Pick two rooms at random with a wall between them that have different numbers. Remove the wall. Set all rooms of the lower number to the higher number. Repeat until all rooms have same number."

Jimmy Hoffa

I would have thought of doing it as a tree

user55340

The ML one I couldn't figure out how to do that. So I took the maze and cut it in half along its longest axis (or vertically if the same). Then I did that for each sub maze. I would end up with either 2x2, or 2x3 or 3x3 mazes. I enumerated all the possible ones and selected one of the appropriate size. When going back up, knock out a wall between the two sub mazes.

Jimmy Hoffa

11:04 PM

gotcha

user55340

Maze generation algorithm

Maze generation algorithms are automated methods for the creation of mazes. Graph theory based methods A maze can be generated by starting with a predetermined arrangement of cells (most commonly a rectangular grid but other arrangements are possible) with wall sites between them. This predetermined arrangement can be considered as a connected graph with the edges representing possible wall sites and the nodes representing cells. The purpose of the maze generation algorithm can then be considered to be making a subgraph where it is challenging to find a route between two particular no...

user55340

The Recursive divion method was the one I used, but not quite as elegant... though it still had the same artifacts in it... long walls with a single opening in it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT you used a list in ML didn't you?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I don't recall anymore. That was over 2 decades ago.

Jimmy Hoffa

heh

If you did that would explain why it was a huge pain

user55340

11:06 PM

I couldn't figure out how to do a mutable thingy in ML.

Jimmy Hoffa

yeah, that's cuz you can't

user55340

Yep... and thats how my original one worked.

Jimmy Hoffa

so the algorithms always come up very different than their counterparts in mutable languages

user55340

upl.cs.wisc.edu/~m_turner/java/Mazer.html

user55340

Realize that code was written LONG ago.

user55340

11:07 PM

The maze generation code is there.

Jimmy Hoffa

Just the java one though?

Mechanical snail

@MichaelT "To Do: Kill the bug that kills my mac"

user55340

Just the java one - I could applet it.

Jimmy Hoffa

data Maze = Room [Maze] | Wall

wallOrRoom max | (mod (2*max) rand) > max = makeRoom max-1 | otherwise = wall
makeRoom x = Room [wallOrRoom x | y <- [1..4]]

or something..

except ml isn't exactly syntactically like haskell, just similar

user55340

I don't remember... It was also frustrating because a semester before, I had a class in AI that did lisp, and I was ok with that... but I just couldn't think in ML.

Jimmy Hoffa

11:21 PM

I'm not sure anyone actually thinks in all of that stuff, I think a bunch of people just try to really hard (it all gives me a headache too)

and a bunch of them just make shit up, like hylomorphism, honestly what a load of bull

Mechanical snail

@MichaelT Try Agda or Coq.

Jimmy Hoffa

I caught someone talking about a semigroupoidoid the other day and was pretty sure if I shouted bullshit right then I would have won the game

Mechanical snail

@JimmyHoffa You mean encrypted.google.com/search?q=semigroupoidoid?

Jimmy Hoffa

sounds about right

Mechanical snail

Normal backwardation

Normal backwardation, also sometimes called backwardation, is the market condition wherein the price of a forward or futures contract is trading below the expected spot price at contract maturity. The resulting futures or forward curve would typically be downward sloping (i.e. "inverted"), since contracts for further dates would typically trade at even lower prices. (The curves in question plot market prices for various contracts at different maturities—cf. term structure of interest rates) The opposite market condition to normal backwardation is known as contango. A backwardation star...

Jimmy Hoffa

11:28 PM

bullshit!

do I win?

psr

11:43 PM

@JimmyHoffa you're just not a semigroupoidoidoid

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