The Whiteboard

psr

12:26 AM

Hmm, it got reopened.

user20683

@psr it got one of the funniest answers I've ever seen

psr

The 1s and 0s?

user20683

@psr yes

user20683

it's a self demonstrating answer

Brant

Yeah, that was a great answer.

user55340

12:32 AM

@psr I am also amused by the edit to it.

psr

If he buried some meaning in there he can roll it back and I'll apologize.

user41796

12:49 AM

@YannisRizos - thanks for the results of the site evaluation. And now I know why I only saw 9 of the 10 questions for the eval. :-)

user20683

@GlenH7 I like how the apathy answer is basically the same for all questions

user41796

@WorldEngineer - I'm a bit surprised my corner case question didn't pull more "meh" answers. That's one that had way more popularity than I ever thought it would.

user20683

@GlenH7 some questions are "lousy" but useful

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Wikipedia -> offtopic, and they have more or less the same rules as us for NC and NARQ.

Yannis Rizos

1:15 AM

@MichaelT Yeap, that's the same old troll. Suspended. Next time please flag one of their post so we can deal with the account a bit faster.

user55340

1:35 AM

@YannisRizos I'll keep that in mind for next time. I'd be tempted to suggest to Robert that if there's someone who feels like's he's trolling and the question gets his hackles up to check... there's just something about him. It wasn't the question alone that got that hunch - its that it somehow goads Robert into responding.

user20683

2:15 AM

0

Q: What kind of programming projects are likely to impress the following potential employers?

Rogers Blizzard Entertainment IBM Microsoft Google Hospital High School Canadian Government Staples

career-development

user20683

This might actually hit all 5 close reasons

user20683

off-topic, NARQ, and too localized to be sure

user20683

but I'm sure it's a dupe as well and I doubt it's constructive

Yannis Rizos

3:22 AM

@WorldEngineer When you are posting comments mentioning the FAQ, if you write [FAQ] instead of just FAQ, a link (to the FAQ ;) will be added automagically.

user20683

3:52 AM

@YannisRizos good to know

Yannis Rizos

@WorldEngineer Full list of magic links here.

Yannis Rizos

5:06 AM

> The one thing I hate most of all at SO is moderators that close good questions, when they don't understand the subject, this guy looks like one of them. Look at questions he closed. Because of such people I have moved to programmers stackexchange where I can ask PRO questions without being closed. – Alex Burtsev - 11 mins ago

pKs

7:15 AM

Please help me with this

@YannisRizos

@Dynamic

pKs

7:55 AM

@ya

@YannisRizos hi

Yannis Rizos

8:23 AM

← 3 messages moved from Programmers Town Hall Chat

@pKs Hi. What's up?

pKs

8:54 AM

@YannisRizos hi

@MvanGeest hi

Yannis Rizos

So... What's up?

pKs

I asked a question but it has been closed

as they thought that I am asking offtopic

and actualy I didn't know is it right to ask there or not

1

A: Shall I take money from a friend?

This is essentially a business question more than a programming one. Programming is an enterprise, a business. When I was running my own business, one important detail I learned is "Anything you work on is something you spend time, mental energy and other resources on. The work is worth exactl...

this is the question by the way

@YannisRizos did you see the question.

Yannis Rizos

@pKs I'm afraid you are the only one who can answer that question, it's your friend, you're the only one who knows how he will react.

pKs

But would that be right to go for compensation for the same with him

@YannisRizos are you busy somewhere

Yannis Rizos

9:10 AM

Hm... There's no right and wrong here. If you feel you made a mistake when you told him you that you'll do the project for free, you should tell him just that. Apologize for your mistake, offer to do the project at a very good price and hope he will accept.

pKs

ok

I will give it a try

Yannis Rizos

Sorry I can't offer any better advice, but you've put yourself in a tough spot.

pKs

@YannisRizos I know I should have thought and then would spoken. But that is history. I have to deal in a diplomatic way.

@ChrisF hi, do you have some suggestion in the same context.

ChrisF

Nothing different to what Yannis said.

The only other thing I'd add is that the problem is not unique to programmers/software development. You'd be in the same position if you'd offered to (help) decorate the friends apartment for free but then realised you should have at least asked for a bottle of whiskey (for example) in payment.

2

pKs

9:30 AM

@ChrisF hah, you are right, But if it were just a discussion or stuff like "you should do it that way , or get this done that way" then I would have not even bothered about this. But now its like - I have to do this whole thing myself.

user58869

1:26 PM

Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Yannis Rizos I need to ask him about something

Thomas Owens

@axrwkr You could ping him in Chat. He comes around regularly.

Could someone else help you out?

user58869

I think that only a moderator can help me

user58869

your a moderator aren't you?

Thomas Owens

@axrwkr Yes I am.

I can make a private chat-room, if you like.

user58869

yeah, that would great thanks

Thomas Owens

1:38 PM

@axrwkr Can you get to chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/7709/conversation-with-axrwkr

I think I did it right. It's private, but I'm not sure if I gave you full access. It's been a while since I have done this.

Yannis Rizos

2:38 PM

ChrisF for SO mod

4

user55340

So many people for SO.

ChrisF

It's because it gets 90% of the network traffic.

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT The money is a lot better than on Programmers.

ChrisF

I'll also see about getting more of the good design questions migrated.

gnat

@YannisRizos only in exchange for Robert Harvey becoming Programmers mod - let them "giants" play in both sandboxes :)

user55340

2:41 PM

My biggest wish for SO is a "flag to migrate" culture rather than "suggest to repost".

ChrisF

@gnat Unfortunately he didn't nominate this time round. Maybe we can persuade him next year.

user55340

@gnat re strange attractors of poor questions... they do exist, even for good questions. It is troublesome, and I am conflicted about it. Hopefully, a substantial good answer discourages some poor ones from being written. Close fast / open fast isn't a bad thing for such questions... and I was there was a "sandbox" where one could write an answer and then have it approved before displaying it to the world.

Yannis Rizos

3:01 PM

The Definitive PHP Style Guide

user55340

@ChrisF (I was trying for wordplay on 'SO' and 'so')

ChrisF

@MichaelT Ah. Sorry to ruin your joke

user55340

@ChrisF My jokes are kind of hit or miss... sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they require pronunciation of the words, other times they require looking at the characters (when I spell them correctly).

user55340

@YannisRizos I heard that SO mods get paid 0x7FFFFFFF (32 bit floating point), so getting better pay here would be interesting to see.

user55340

(reporting that to the IRS would also be fun to see how they react)

user55340

3:13 PM

Ohh... now there's a question that could be 'fun' to troll Gaming.SE with (not that I support trolling at all... just an hypothetical question of how the community would react)... "I made what would be considered $20k if converted from isk to plex to usd on EVE... however I lost $10k with capital loss on investments. How should I report this to the IRS?"

user41796

3:25 PM

Is it wrong to change my vote for moderator based upon the answers to the curly braces question (same line or new line)? <just kidding>

ChrisF

@YannisRizos If I don't get to the actual election round I'll sulk :)

Clement Herreman

3:45 PM

@GlenH7 I actually could do that

user41796

@ChrisF - took me a moment to realize you weren't talking about P.SE's election. I was about to make a comment to that effect.... <sigh> Clearly I'm not fully awake yet.

ChrisF

I'll also be able to delete all "belongs on Programmers" comments from SO questions. Hooray!

3

Actually I'll be able to delete all the "belongs on <other site>" comments!

Don't worry I won't neglect Programmers - but the moderation load has reduced quite a lot in recent weeks.

Which is a good thing.

Rachel

4:03 PM

Would this question be suitable for Programmers?

4

Q: Why does nobody use references in PHP?

With some C++ knowledge, I know that pointers are commonly used there. But since I actually started to look at php open source code, I never saw anyone using references in methods. They always use a return value instead of passing the reference to the variable to the method which then changes tha...

php reference

Clement Herreman

@Rachel I'd say yes. It also is suitable for SO

ChrisF

It's getting close votes so it might be sensible to flag it for migration.

user41796

@Rachel - I agree, I think it's suitable. Needs a bit of clean up and editing, but they are asking about the conceptual aspects regarding pointers and php

ChrisF

Though they are "not constructive" votes.

Rachel

@ChrisF That's why I figured I'd ask here instead of throwing a flag on it

user55340

4:07 PM

It needs some cleanup... it would get "not constructive" here too.

Rachel

Hrrmmm I go to login on SO and it tells me "Sorry, your request could not be completed because it looked suspicious. If you meant to perform an action on Stack Overflow, please return to the previous page and try again."

ChrisF

Eh. That's odd

Rachel

@ChrisF But anyways, should I flag it for migration?

user41796

@Rachel - I thought you only rattled cages around P.SE and not on SO. Is that user specific lock-out a new feature they implemented? (I'm just kidding!) :-)

Rachel

@GlenH7 I think it's specific to me ;)

ChrisF

4:10 PM

@Rachel Go for it. Though as others have pointed out it could do with a clean up.

user41796

@Rachel - I'd vote to flag it for migration

gnat

@MichaelT problem is, writing "substantial good answer" would take too long to discourage poor ones, given that (Carthage delenda est) broken hotness formula would artificially pump question score inviting garbage faster than community can handle it...

Rachel

But in actuality, I hit the "Login link" right as it tried to auto-login me so that's probably why I got the message (The top of the screen giving me that error message shows me as logged in)

gnat

...And, you know, given my recent habit to check collider score for hot questions, I can tell from "curly braces experiment" that close / open fast doesn't help fighting this problem. Look...

...per question timeline, it remained closed for almost 3 hours at the "first round". Soon after it has been reopened, I saw it at top of collider with totally senseless score 141 - while even modest topScore/10 correction would give it about half of that: back then there was 1 - one clearly well voted leading answer and 4-5 others that didn't even come close, go figure.

Rachel

@ChrisF What sort of cleanup does it need?

ChrisF

4:13 PM

@Rachel Hmm, not 100% sure (otherwise I would have had a go myself) but it reads like he's wanting to confirm his prejudice rather than learn anything. It needs to be in a neutral tone. @MichaelT and @GlenH7 might be able to suggest something too.

user41796

I'll clean it up if someone pings me when it lands in P.SE. I'm a low-rep nobody on SO, otherwise I would edit it there. It's more fun being a high-rep nobody on P.SE instead.

Rachel

@ChrisF Hrrrmm I can take a stab at editing it, but what phrases/words give you that impression? I don't see the question the same way

ChrisF

It's an overall impression, but maybe it's just me being cynical

user41796

@Rachel - I would draw out the ref vs. by-value question within there. Perhaps highlight / bias an expectation of "by ref uses less memory and should be faster, right?"

user55340

@gnat I know... and I'll say it again - I'm conflicted... there is a real answer, and there is a real reason to ask it (aside from curiosity - language design questions are ones that are of interest to anyone thinking of "I want to write a java preprocessor similar to cpp").

user41796

4:16 PM

I think the answer boils down to pointers requiring more programmer overhead and if you get good-enough performance with by-value, then by-value is good-enough.

Rachel

I think I see the problem... it can be taken as an Us vs Them argument against PHP coders.

I've edited it. Think it's OK now?

4

Q: Why are references rarely used in PHP?

I have some C++ knowledge and know that pointers are commonly used there, but I've started to look at PHP open source code and I never see anyone using references in methods. Instead, their code always uses a return value instead of passing the reference to the variable to the method, which the...

php reference

ChrisF

Looks better

user41796

Muoy bueno. Now it's definitely a good candidate for P.SE. I think I might just add that comment to the question.... ;-)

Rachel

@ChrisF Ok, flagged for migration

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 There's no difference in performance. In fact by-ref is slower than by-val in several common scenarios. Remember, this is PHP we're talking about.

ChrisF

4:22 PM

@Rachel Hopefully a mod will see it before it gets closed.

Rachel

@ChrisF Hurry up and become a SO mod already :)

@GlenH7 You may want to edit your comment to say it's already been flagged for migration, so the OP doesn't try to cross-post

user41796

@YannisRizos - apologies for pretending I understood PHP. I should know better and to turn the opposite direction and run away screaming. :-) But I hear there's some folk in Programmers that really know PHP and could answer a conceptual question like that.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 PHP references are symbol table aliases, they are not pointers.

user41796

@Rachel - how did you know I had already flagged? :-)

gnat

@MichaelT well I feel much less conflicted about it, and this is bacause of a real reason to ask / aside from curiosity. As long as question doesn't state that reason explicitly (and specifically, applied to curly braces, to avoid getting into overly broad NARQ), I feel comfortable about it being closed...

...Don't get me wrong, I feel / believe there's a reason and if I or someone else could spell it into the question (an interesting challenge by the way), I vould be the first to vote reopen

user41796

4:26 PM

@YannisRizos - I did not know that. I've learned my nugget for the day!

Rachel

@GlenH7 Hrrmm I thought I said in chat. Oh well. Anytime I leave comments like that I usually flag for migration and say so in the comment so the OP doesn't cross-post

user41796

@YannisRizos - and it's here. I await your answer to really see why by-value is better.

user41796

5

Q: Why are references rarely used in PHP?

I have some C++ knowledge and know that pointers are commonly used there, but I've started to look at PHP open source code and I never see code using references in methods. Instead, the code always uses a return value instead of passing the reference to the variable to the method, which then ch...

php reference

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 It's not better, it's just not worse.

user41796

I'm turning around and running away now.... back to my old-school languages... ;-)

Rachel

4:29 PM

@YannisRizos My answer would be that PHP has a lower barrier-to-entry and has a lot of newbies that don't know about reference variables :p

gnat

@MichaelT be the first to vote reopen... especially now that time factor (Qage) in broken hotness formula would finally sufficiently compensate the crap at the top of it and keep it out of collider lemmings view. Remember, "protect your own users from scale" - day in the closure box did it

user55340

Trying to write C++ code in php (or deity forbid, php code in C++) is a bad thing. Learn the language and use the language.

user41796

@MichaelT - but learning (thinking) is hard. I wanna do what I think I already know.

user41796

@ChrisF - apropos of nothing - is your dog a border collie?

Rachel

I'm curious, did 3 people here just downvote this answer because someone said it's incorrect, or because they actually think it's incorrect?

2

A: Why are references rarely used in PHP?

PHP is a web-oriented language. Web-pages being served fast and should be lightweight. Usual PHP program lives fraction of second and consume few hundred kilobytes of memory. There is no use for such optimizations.

user41796

4:37 PM

@Rachel - could that have been carryover from SO?

Rachel

@GlenH7 Nope - I can see up/down votes on the SO version and it's at +5/0

Honestly I thought it was a decent answer.... there's no need to use them due to the primary usage of PHP being a web-oriented language, and usual PHP programs live a fraction of a second and consume very few resources. All it adds is added complexity

ChrisF

@GlenH7 Nope. We fairly sure he's a dalmatian / Pyrennian mountain dog cross. Though we got him as a rescue dog when he was a year old so we're not 100% certain.

This isn't him, but looks remarkably similar

user41796

@Rachel - I agree, I think it's an on-topic question and is appropriate for P.SE. To some degree, it's a bit of a bike-shed question, but I think that represents a solid learning opportunity

Rachel

Oh well, apparently I can upvote that question twice - once pre-migration and once post-migration ;)

ChrisF

@Rachel Yep. A well known side effect.

user41796

4:41 PM

@ChrisF - Very cool, thanks for answering. I have a soft spot for BCs. The Pyrennians are amazing dogs too from what I've heard. And I have fond memories of a dalmation that simply wanted to be petted all the time.

Rachel

(also, the person that left that comment posted his own answer that really didn't match what was being asked, so he probably shouldn't be pointing fingers at other answers saying they don't match what's being asked)

user41796

it's fun watching the votes shake out on that question

user55340

5:05 PM

Thank you whatever mod did that delete.

Yannis Rizos

5:24 PM

@GlenH7 It's not really a good question for us. If you google for "PHP references" you'll find a ton of pages explained what I've written in my answer, with the first result being the manual.

Prior research isn't optional.

That said, right now I'm enjoying the rep from the answer, so I don't really care if it stays open.

user55340

@YannisRizos I lament (woe! woe is me...) that I only got 160 rep out of 49 upvotes on the {} question.

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT The rep cap is probably the most annoying feature we have.

It has a purpose, but...

gnat

5:48 PM

@MichaelT heck I got about 200 rep from 400+ votes on this answer...

414

A: My boss decided to add a "person to blame" field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?

Tell them this is only an amateurish name for the Root Cause field used by professionals (when issue tracker does not have dedicated field, one can use comments for that). Search the web for something like software bug root cause analysis, there are plenty of resources to justify this reasoning ...

...this taught me why both rep cap and CW are good. Effort I invested into it wasn't worth more than 300-500 anyway - even taking into account past industry experience that led me to spelling it the way I did. Getting 4K rep from it would be hugely unfair

user55340

One of my comments about the {} question - I'm perfectly fine leaving it closed... it means it won't become a CW question anytime soon and I can keep getting rep from the answer.

user55340

-1

Q: Projects with clean code?

Please suggest projects written in Java with a clean code. Are there some projects?

java clean-code

user55340

This is impossible to answer because it is impossible to write clean code in {insert language here}.

user20683

@MichaelT {0,1}*

user20683

cleanest possible language :P

user55340

5:56 PM

Acme::Bleach - For really clean programs.

Yannis Rizos

6:15 PM

> How do I file a bug on IE? Their bug report page is broken.

user20683

@MichaelT @YannisRizos Vigil github.com/munificent/vigil

user55340

@WorldEngineer I see your vigilant language and raise you by... Latin (sorry, not Greek) -- Lingua::Romana::Perligata - Perl for the XXI-imum Century

user55340

(coincidentally, written by the same person who did Acme::Bleach)

user55340

(And Quantum::Superpositions - that they found this useful and are adding it to Perl6 is amusing too).

user55340

(Lets see php try to incorporate that...)

user20683

6:28 PM

@MichaelT I want PHP to try and assimilate Haskell or Erlang

user41796

@YannisRizos - I saw you cast the decisive close vote on this question. Would you take a look to see if I was able to salvage it? I do realize the storied origins of the question. programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188657/…

user20683

it'd be like watching a Boa try to eat a T-Rex

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 All my close votes are decisive.

user41796

@YannisRizos I think you've mentioned that before. One of the aspects you love about being a diamond.

user55340

@WorldEngineer PHP and Haskell both target the Parrot VM... this means you could call a Haskell library loaded into the VM from PHP.

Yannis Rizos

6:30 PM

There's a backstory there that unfortunately I can't share in public. All I can say is that the user in question is currently suspended. — Yannis Rizos 14 hours ago

user20683

@MichaelT hmm

user41796

@YannisRizos yes, I saw that in Karl's meta question. Wasn't sure if that implied that question had no hope of resurrection or not.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Can't decide between a re-open vote and a delete vote. I'm letting this one on the community.

user55340

@YannisRizos Delete - don't encourage him.

user41796

@YannisRizos - that's fair, and thanks for taking a look at it. And @MichaelT - that hurts. ;-) I need all the encouragement I can get.

user55340

6:33 PM

@YannisRizos I wonder if the "merge taken away from mods" had anything to do with "what would happen if we merged all the admins to Goma" conversation back a few weeks...

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT No, it was announced long before that conversation. Also mod merges only worked on low rep accounts, after a certain threshold (that I can't remember) the merge just went into a queue and the devs took care of it. So... we couldn't really pull it off.

user55340

Alas... that would have been amusing to see the look on people's faces when they saw such things as "Merge Jeff with Goma [Y/N]?"

Yannis Rizos

The one thing that could possibly work (and would have been truly catastrophic) would be merging Community to... whomever.

user20683

@YannisRizos O_O

Yannis Rizos

The one time someone joked about this in TL, the response was something along the lines of: "we have no idea what will happen, don't even think about it".

user20683

6:38 PM

@YannisRizos It'd be like the Cy-Bugs out of Wreck-It Ralph

user20683

or Agent Smith

user20683

or something

Yannis Rizos

There used to be a workaround for the rep threshold, all you needed to do to merge anyone was to suspended them first (so their rep dropped to 1).

No idea who figured that out and how. But it's fixed now.

gnat

10Kers and mods who can see deleted posts, could you please take a look. Did the rev 4 edit to this answer made it "easily readable by humans" as required?

programmers.stackexchange.com/a/188673/31260

user55340

Whelp, it got reopened...

user41796

6:41 PM

@gnat - I have to hover my cursor over the text area for the text to be shown

user41796

but it's otherwise readable

gnat

@GlenH7 wonder if a need to hover a cursor would qualify as answer not being sufficiently readable :)

user41796

@gnat - I'm using firefox, so it may be a browser issue. interesting linkage to the script from that other site

user41796

@gnat - NO comment. Kind of sad to see that answer deleted, but I certainly understand the reason for it too.

user20683

@GlenH7 yeah it's ridiculously epic but ridiculously epic does not a good answer make.

gnat

6:44 PM

@GlenH7 it's not a browser feature, just an official Stack Exchange feature called "spoiler"

meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/spoilers

user41796

@YannisRizos - random Q - does SE keep a list of "known" trolls? And / or do the trolls like goma hit multiple sites, or do they just focus on a particular one like P.SE?

user41796

@WorldEngineer - I know, it makes a great answer. ;-)

gnat

10

Q: What's the exact syntax for spoiler markup

Following the Do we want the “spoiler” feature turned off? thread on meta.tex.sx, it's clear that the spoiler markup has a wrinkle or two that I didn't at first appreciate. For information's sake, the spoiler feature is contentious because it collides with the syntax for Latex errors. Is there ...

discussion markdown blockquote spoilers

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Our list of known trolls is public, see here.

user41796

That's a pretty shifty looking bunch...

user20683

6:46 PM

@GlenH7 yeah one of them even looks like a pirate... :P

Thomas Owens

@gnat I removed the spoilers. Even with them, it was not what I would call easy to read. After that, I undeleted the answer.

gnat

@ThomasOwens wouldn't it be better off with spoiler on? my understanding is, this feature isn't prohibited

user41796

@gnat - swap the order of presentation within the answer. So the stream first, then the piece you added. Place a "Spoiler" banner in front of the update so people know to hover over it. I think that would bring it back to readable.

gnat

good idea!

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 On a more serious note, moderators can annotate accounts and that's about it. In general we only know our about site's trolls, except when someone is trolling multiple sites.

user20683

6:48 PM

@gnat @GlenH7 it's been undeleted

gnat

@WorldEngineer yeah, now we discuss whether it would be better of the way it was presented in rev 4:

programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/188673/4

with spoiler that is

user41796

@YannisRizos - thanks, had been curious. I noticed Goma has accounts across a few sites, so I presumed he trolled multiple sites and therefore got more "attention" that way. I wasn't so sure about other trolls like Leslar, and kind of wondered.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Goma doesn't need annotations, everyone knows Goma.

gnat

@GlenH7 that "spoiler" banner, it is expected to be visible, right?

user41796

@gnat - right. a banner saying: "Spoiler: Hover over the gray box to see the answer" or something like that.

user41796

6:52 PM

and I think swapping the order of presentation (binary then text) helps keeps the answer as epic

Thomas Owens

Readability is key. If I see 0s and 1s and have to scroll to see English, that's not readable.

user41796

epic vs. readable. Gah! that's a tough decision....

Thomas Owens

It proves a good point. The only reason I didn't add the text was because I was too lazy to translate it.

Having the binary there as a proof. But it should be secondary to the answer.

And...meeting time.

gnat

@ThomasOwens please take a look at revised version (I tried my best to balance epic and readable). Feel free to rollback if it still doesn't work

33

A: Why do "data types" in computers exist, if it's really all just bits?

If you find it difficult to read 0s and 1s below, scroll to the bottom of the post and hover over the empty looking "spoiler" the gray box. 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01110011 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110000 011...

psr

@gnat very nice IMHO

user20683

7:01 PM

@gnat yeah it's a good compromise in my book as it makes it clear that it's a self demonstrating answer and not trolling per se

user20683

In any cases time to go murder some NFAs

user20683

or maybe not, I really can't decide.

user20683

regardless, off-time

gnat

intuition I developed recently suggests that long-answers or 10-rep protection notice wouldn't hurt in just-bits question. It seems to be hot enough (and spelled well enough) to attract low effort lemmings

CodesInChaos

7:18 PM

@gnat question felt very trollish to me

user55340

I would love to see if something gets hot it gets a "you must have XYZ rep on this site or have an answer that is longer than ABC characters."

user55340

@CodesInChaos your intuition was correct.

CodesInChaos

7:30 PM

Though it can't live up to the practical troll language with a similar philosophy. Called "c" I believe.

user55340

While the end result is the same, I am curious about the troll - is it one that is after attention - enjoys seeing the conflict that ensues? or truly believes what is being said and doesn't realize the issue the resulting conflict?

user55340

A branch of c2 that condensed around virtual communities (rather than programming) - the meatball wiki. meatballwiki.org/wiki/WhatIsaTroll

user41796

7:48 PM

@CodesInChaos - that was a troll question, yes. Fortunately, there was something to be salvaged from it.

user41796

@gnat - normally I would agree with protecting a question in those circumstances. However, with that question, CW would be an okay alternative as it would prevent the troll from earning rep on the Q. Just my sense of fairness. They intended to troll; the community salvaged the question. They shouldn't earn rep for that.

user41796

And ... Would a question about declining to interview someone because of a bad code sample be on-topic / appropriate? Not saying I've done that (yet) but the idea is working in my mind currently.

gnat

@GlenH7 well I am not against CW, I am thinking about protection from the flood of crappy answers. CW or not, I would not want to see it stuffed with 20-30 ueless chatty bits - this would damage our image after all, not that of the troll (they likely don't care)...

Thomas Owens

8:11 PM

@gnat I really don't like it. Maybe @YannisRizos can weigh in with another opinion. I still think it's less readable this way and is detrimental.

user55340

9:13 PM

@gnat that {} thing - and asking for the diary of Ritchie.... is an essay by Kernigan sufficient? (section 5 - cosmetic issues)

gnat

@ThomasOwens well you have a point here. as @GlenH7 noted catchy vs accurate distinction is quite tough here; that's why I wouldn't mind if it gets rolled back. As an editor though I am naturally biased towards @WorldEngineer evaluation: "good compromise in my book as it makes it clear that it's a self demonstrating answer..." :)

@MichaelT I don't think so. I studied this article when working on my answer and it doesn't feel close enough... By the way did you notice this bit in cosmetic issues, _"One generally accepted experimental result in programmer psychology is that semicolon as separator is about ten times more prone to error than semicolon as terminator.(16)"_? that one feels like a real hit in the article to me

user55340

@gnat And yes, I did see that... and there is a clear example (I believe) in javascript for more modern issues.

gnat

as for Ritchie's diary I believe Second Edition Unix source code is as close to it as it gets

@MichaelT Javascript example? sounds interesting, could you please elaborate?

user55340

Back when I lived in Cali, it was my quest to get the covers of books signed by their authors... Wall, Schwartz, Fridel (I like RE)... and K&R on the K&R.

user55340

52

Q: Do you recommend using semicolons after every statement in JavaScript?

In many situations, JavaScript parsers will insert semicolons for you if you leave them out. My question is, do you leave them out? If you're unfamiliar with the rules, there's a description of semicolon insertion on the Mozilla site. Here's the key point: If the first through the nth tokens...

javascript

user55340

9:26 PM

11

A: Do you recommend using semicolons after every statement in JavaScript?

What everyone seems to miss is that the semi-colons in JavaScript are not statement terminators but statement separators. It's a subtle difference, but it is important to the way the parser is programmed. Treat them like what they are and you will find leaving them out will feel much more natural...

gnat

@MichaelT thanks, that's a good one. So, you have K&R signed by K&R, right? that's cool

user55340

@gnat That I do. Framed.

user55340

It was not too difficult to find the great names at the open source conferences or at open lectures given at Berkeley or Stanford. Randall Schwartz was actually a trainer at the contracting company before he made it 'big' with perl - (the first time I met him was at a lecture given to the contractors about "what not to do as a contractor.")

gnat

9:46 PM

@MichaelT conference/lecture + celebrities signing your book + such a beautiful place as Stanford (I don't remember if Berkeley impressed me, it was too long ago, but Stanford is terrific) = what could be better :)

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