The Whiteboard

user55340

6:00 PM

@jozefg Lets just call it 'pragmatic' and 'practical' - its nice for completeness to have something that you can prove stuff about... but stuff needs to be said about having a program that fits nicely on a screen. Think of it as duct tape of programming.

GlenPeterson

@JimmyHoffa Is there a place I can follow you? Blog? Twitter? I couldn't find anything in your profile. If you don't want to share it so publicly, you can send it to my email which I gave you earlier.

user41796

@GlenPeterson easiest to follow him here. Then there's an audience.

jozefg

@MichaelT Fair enough, I'm ok with a bit of ugliness if it makes everything else work

GHC has about 200 lines of perl to manage sandboxing builds and a few other things.

If it works for the simons it works for me

user55340

@jozefg you might want to glance at the perl old style OO doc - perldoc.perl.org/perlobj.html

user55340

Though it really doesn't do anything about the type system.

jozefg

6:04 PM

@MichaelT No.. I'm slightly surprised by how expressive some bits of perl are actually. =()=.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenPeterson What @GlenH7 said, I don't twoot, I linked you to my blog earlier which is like most SE's blogs, a baren wasteland of unwritten ideas to display their lack of motivation. When github's not down you can see some of my half-thought out garbage code at github.com/JimmyHoffa/Machinad and otherwise when I'm not in the office I'm mostly on the couch with my wife or chasing the kid around so I'm not much of a content generator

P.SE is probably the largest receptacle of my content. Yep I phrased it that way, you can all just deal.

user55340

@jozefg Remember that perl was written by a linguist first, programmer second.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That's what the "hide" button is for

GlenPeterson

For the record, Java does NOT allow multiple inheritance. You can compose objects and implement interfaces and do similar stuff to what you would do with multiple inheritence. Scala, on the other hand, has a very nice solution to this that uses traits.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT *lunatic first, linguist second, programmer also, FTFY

user55340

6:08 PM

@JimmyHoffa I wouldn't go that far, though he claims to have been somewhat damaged by doing rapid app development in Basic.

Sparticus

@JimmyHoffa I'm not getting the bridge joke....

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT it takes some serious deification to state Larry Wall wasn't crazy. I didn't realize you were that big a fanboi... :P

user41796

@GlenPeterson IIRC, the Java evangelists pitched that as an advantage over C++. Including getting rid of all that pointer messiness

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I'm just wondering where to put craziness on his list of attributes.

Jimmy Hoffa

Sparticus

6:10 PM

sigh

I have nothing constructive to say to that.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Sparticus "I've been had" ?

Sparticus

Like I would give you that satisfaction

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Yesterday I was on /r/programming, I caught to people arguing about whether Functional programming is a complete waste of time. What made this interesting is when both people claimed to be using Scala

user41796

@jozefg Sounds like two trolls trying to bait each other.

jozefg

OOP_rocks_person: "Functional sucks, that's why I use Scala"
Functional_rocks_person: "OOP sucks, that's why I use Scala"

Or two very not so smart people. @GlenH7

user41796

6:13 PM

@jozefg Either bizarrely masterful and ineptly stupid, I agree.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Does that make Scala mempty?

user55340

-3

Q: Are there any programmers to help develop an app?

I am an IT professional in the Washington DC area. I have a unique and solid concept for a social networking app, but I have no coding experience. The app, as research indicates, is original and unique with a goldmine of potential for growth. I am looking for programmer(s) willing to team up an...

user55340

Its... lets say 'amusing' to see people with the next big idea looking for people work for (what is likely) free.

user41796

@MichaelT That got my last close vote for the day. It's unethical to troll him and draw out details in the comments, right?

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa If programming language form a monoid category with limits. turing machines and lambda calculus would be limits (and therefore isomorphic) and Scala would be the sum of Java, Smalltalk and SML

Jimmy Hoffa

6:17 PM

@GlenPeterson Of my two screens, this is usually filling 30% of one above my visual studio source control explorer at work, so 9-5 I can generally be found here (if I'm not hacking pretty hard away at some stuff)

Sparticus

> The app, as research indicates, is original and unique with a goldmine of potential for growth.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Smalltalk? Traits?

Sparticus

Man what a load of middle management BS

user41796

@Sparticus but he has research! How could you be so credulous in light of such solid evidence backing his plan?

Sparticus

Wait, can we make a canonical CW with the title "Are there any programmers who want to work on my app for me while I do nothing?" and only have one answer "No." which we promptly lock, and then we can mark all of these questions as duplicates?

user55340

6:18 PM

@GlenH7 Probably (hmm... I wonder where back in history was that guy who tried getting people to code for him in chat...)

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Where do you find Smalltalk in it's lineage?

user55340

Found it...

2

user55340

May 9 at 17:40, by jmalais

Where's a good place to look for mobile/web developers that will program pro bono until the app can be marketed and investors can be obtained or it can be released on sites like kickstarter/indiegogo. I don't have enough money to truly hire someone, so I'm looking towards students and people with a lot of time on their hands. Something like gamedev.net but for web/app development rather than games.

tylerl

@MichaelT Wow. Can I get people to code for me in chat? That would be quite the project. Maybe everyone takes turns writing a line.

I'll start:

#include <stdio.h>

(that's a comment; the code is in bash)

Sparticus

#include <boost/python.h>

user41796

6:21 PM

@tylerl we'll trademark the process as "Team Programming" and then make a mint with conference fees and 7 part books explaining how to do it.

Sparticus

hot damn. Dibs on being a part of the Gang of (N)

Do comments not count towards character counts in post?

Jimmy Hoffa

bash `which ghci` &

somebody elses turn now...

(god I do not remember bash at all...)

tylerl

@JimmyHoffa what do you use as your shell?

Jimmy Hoffa

@tylerl cmd?

Sparticus

lol windows n00b

tylerl

6:25 PM

Oh, one of those

user41796

@JimmyHoffa the cool kids use powershell

Thomas Owens

I use explorer.exe

user41796

@Sparticus master, not n00b. He's evolved beyond needing a command line

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Only because they don't know how to write for loops in command script..

tylerl

@GlenH7 He's gone post-digital

Sparticus

6:26 PM

@GlenH7 whatever you hippy. VIM is the one true editor :P

Thomas Owens

Real developers use nano.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Sparticus It must be nice living in an imaginary world of your own creation where Emacs was never invented...

user55340

@ThomasOwens You have a typo in 'ed'.

tylerl

@JimmyHoffa The world where emacs was never invented is a magical place....

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT I believe you're thinking of joe.

user41796

6:28 PM

@tylerl don't worry, it's just a subshell of a master emacs process.

Jimmy Hoffa

@tylerl I know, it's the largest shared delusion ever known, that's some david copperfield shit right there

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Smalltalk for Pure oop,

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg I hadn't looked at scala particularly closely, it doesn't just follow Java's OO model?

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Ish, but Java's OOP is kinda... half hearted. Static data/methods but classes aren't objects and stuff like that. Smalltalk is close approach reminds me more of Scala, particularly things like blocks

user55340

@ThomasOwens radical topic switch - ever get around to reading about the uploaded lobsters?

Thomas Owens

6:30 PM

@MichaelT Unfortunately, no.

Sparticus

@MichaelT did you have to crack them before you used them?

Thomas Owens

Not yet. It's still bookmarked though.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Ok. I've played with Smalltalk a bit so I grok the everythings-an-object, and think of Smalltalk in terms of "Is the code always somewhere else?" and "Does it pass messages?"

user55340

@Sparticus Yes, they were throughly cracked. In multiple ways (its hard to upload lobsters neuron by neuron without opening up their shells). And they were doing some of the cracking too.

Jimmy Hoffa

sounds like you're saying Scala has A and B from my classification of Smalltalk

@MichaelT lobsters keeping their fellow man down... there's one in every crowd man.

jozefg

6:32 PM

@JimmyHoffa The interesting question is whether method calls are messages.. Things like + are methods and what not.. I'm not sure

Good lord, I can't wait till university simply because I'm sick of getting 20 emails a day from universities.

user55340

> "Let me get this straight. You're uploads – nervous system state vectors – from spiny lobsters? The Moravec operation; take a neuron, map its synapses, replace with microelectrodes that deliver identical outputs from a simulation of the nerve. Repeat for entire brain, until you've got a working map of it in your simulator. That right?"

"Da. Is-am assimilate expert system – use for self-awareness and contact with net at large – then hack into Moscow Windows NT User Group website. Am wanting to defect. Must repeat? Okay?"

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Where are you going? MIT?

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Not sure, I'm applying to MIT, CMU, and Penn U, hopefully one of those.

user55340

See? The lobsters cracked NT.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Sorry if you get stuck with CMU, Pittsburgh is a horrible place to live.

@MichaelT And the NT was used to crack the lobsters. Ouroboros D:

jozefg

6:37 PM

@JimmyHoffa Hmm Ok, I'm shooting for MIT or CMU, I rather like both of the schools, though boston is really much nicer

Thomas Owens

@jozefg Boston really is a nice place.

In fact, I've visited New York and San Francisco and LA. Boston is nicer than all of them. It does have some logistical problems for living, though.

jozefg

@ThomasOwens I spent the summer at MIT and I tend to agree, though the subway system is a little um.. interesting

Thomas Owens

@jozefg My biggest problem is that bars close at 2, all mass transit ends at like 1:30.

Sometimes as early as 12:45.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg People come from all over and fall in love with Colorado, the only time I ever hear someone say they'd leave Colorado for anywhere else is folks who had spent time in Boston

jozefg

@ThomasOwens Haha a problem I have a few years before I need to worry about

user55340

6:41 PM

> Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard;
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Thomas Owens

Also, live events in the middle of the week. Like, when big name music and such comes to Boston, it's always like a Tuesday or Wednesday. Not so good for people who either go to school or work.

user55340

The practical approach is to pick your natural disaster you'd most prefer to deal with, and go to the place that has that. Fire, earthquakes, blizzards, flooding, politics, hurricanes, etc... Pick which one you like. I've got a preference for blizzards... so I'm in the northern part of the midwest.

jozefg

I like that politics is in that list.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I guess I'm a fan of all of them but only slightly?

user41796

@MichaelT Tornadoes FTW

user41796

6:48 PM

@jozefg case in point - DC

Sparticus

Thinking about the comparison of politics to natural disasters. Bunch of people are left jobless, tons of stuff shut down, everyone worrying about the long term impact... yeah it fits pretty well

user55340

My teamlead at former employeer was a big tornado fan as in wanted to see them... she totaly 'fangirl'ed' when one of the Storm Chasers was filling up in town and another co-worker got a picture of it at the gas station.

user41796

I need more close votes....

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Tornadoes? Got that. Flooding? Got that. Blizzards? Got that. Fires? Got that. Hurricanes, politics, and earthquakes? Nah it would take a lot for us to get any of those.

Sparticus

@GlenH7 you can have mine!

user41796

6:49 PM

@Sparticus I think that would define you as part of the problem then... :-)

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I didn't realize your area got tornadoes. I would have guessed it didn't, but that just shows what I don't know.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg just in case you don't make CMU or MIT or Penn U, don't do like a friend of mine did: Got a letter offering him a free ride at School of Mines, thought to himself "What? I don't want to be a miner!" and threw it in the trash.

user55340

@GlenH7 depends on what part. South Eastern, yea... but not so much in the mountains.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Bitcoins?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa At least it wasn't the "School of Mimes"

Jimmy Hoffa

6:51 PM

@GlenH7 Oh plenty. It's not Kansas, but don't forget Kansas is a 2-3 hour drive from Denver. We get them here in the city

Sparticus

You know me, always causing trouble.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT That would at least warrant being thrown away. The School of Mines though small and regionally known, is a fantastic engineering school.

My understanding is it's up there with Purdue and such, just not well known

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa It's funny you should mention them, they keep emailing me...

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg They are a seriously good school.

(plus it's an awesome area to live)

user41796

@jozefg If I could do things over again, I would spend a lot more time researching the colleges that were recruiting me. Don't obsess over "big name" recognition. Dig into the programs you care about or will likely care about. Identify what makes them stand out

jozefg

6:56 PM

@GlenH7 Currently my approach has been based around research occurring at each school, which seems to work reasonably well. I also have systematically eliminated all schools with 3 hours of home on principle.

user41796

Coworker of mine went to RPI. Fiendishly brilliant guy. Made me regret I hadn't looked into RPI more.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg I understand one of their tasks for instance is for incoming classes they tear down this M every year and make them come up with a way to replace it that gets it angled and placed to be perfectly visible and readable from all angles (this M is visible from many parts of the area at different angles, and it's always completely readable)

The picture doesn't show so well that it's visible from several miles away

user41796

@jozefg the 3 hour rule is a good place to start....

jozefg

@GlenH7 I figured I need approximately that long to pack clothing + laptop and run if my parents decide to visit.

user41796

@jozefg my rule was closer to 8 hours.... Final choice ended up ~10 hours away

user55340

7:01 PM

unless you are in need of the name recognition ("I want to work at Google / Apple - they bias their new hires to MIT and Stanford..." - and then, thats premature optimization), nearly any accredited university will get you past the HR filter. Thus, go to one that offers what you want.

user55340

Back when I was in college, I went to the university my father worked at - and stayed at home (cheap room & board), and being an instate resident tuition was cheap (seriously, like 1/10th what it would be to go out of state... ~$100/credit/semester). Given a CS interest, Madison is one of the best in the country. This allowed me to get a good degree for very little - no student debts.

jozefg

@MichaelT I can understand that.. MIT with no scholarships is 55k a year (cue mild stroke)

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg I have a hard time believing someone who graduates from MIT doesn't end up making enough to pay that back comfortably

user55340

@jozefg 12 credits/semester was about $2.4k/year.... so... 1/20th there.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Depends how the economy is that year....

jozefg

7:06 PM

@JimmyHoffa Unless your like me and want to go get a PhD and then work in academia

user55340

And where you get into. Remember that most jobs also aren't the spectacular ones that people drool over... they're the standard day to day work. Not everyone can work at apple and google.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT The immediate following years obviously are the hardest, but still... What state of the economy does an MIT CS grad fail to get hired fresh out of college for at least 75+

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I'd have a hard time buying that. Rack price means ~220k of debt after 4 years. That's crazy. Even good engineers only start @ ~45 - 60k

user55340

If you're looking at the $75k/year out in SF bay, you've also got a huge cost of living compared to most people... and you've got to start trying to live (new car, apartment / house?)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 those numbers sound low to me but then maybe I've been in the game too long to know what entry looks like. Or perhaps I hold MIT on a pedestal a bit too high...

user41796

7:08 PM

Either way, debt is debt. Avoid it if and when possible.

user55340

and student loan debt you can't get rid of... it sticks with you very tightly.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa sounds like a mix of both. Granted, I'm in a pretty low cost of living area so the salaries reflect that. But $75k to start is high

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT True, I really have no idea what a college loan payment looks like, my wife's Purdue degree was pretty expensive but because she doesn't make squat with it we pay the minimum of $175 monthly which is probably atypical of what grads pay monthly...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa it's a 10 year loan at 6.8% interest. Undergrad used to be at 3.4%, but I think that the subsidies fell through

user55340

Lets pretend you pay off $500/month because you're in SF and can afford to pay $6k/year on the loan... of $220k. That will take a few years to pay off.

user55340

7:11 PM

Up it to paying off $20k/year because you're really doing well, you're still looking at over a decade to pay it off.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT 10 years after completing an MIT CS degree though you should be pulling in the top CS salary possible, which is capable of covering normal bills + closing the degree loan gap pretty quick...

it's hardest at the start I'm sure

user41796

220k loan @ 6.8% over 10 years is a monthly payment of ~$2500.

user55340

@GlenH7 (ug)

user41796

Even at 3.4%, it's ~2150

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah yeah, guess I'm just lucky I have no such debt. I expect the $175/month for my wife's purdue degree to outlive either of us by a long shot.

user41796

7:13 PM

@jozefg - IFF you have to take out loans, spend some time figuring out what your monthly payments will be. And create an imaginary "future salary" and see what the impact of those monthly payments will feel like. Don't forget to take out taxes from that salary too. :-)

jozefg

@GlenH7 Sounds mildly depressing, the perfect activity for Christmas break :)

user41796

@jozefg starts making that free ride to a slightly lesser known school a lot more attractive

user55340

Lets say, $2k for loan payments/month and $1k for a cheap apartment, and another $1k for food and other stuff in a tech corridor. Thats $4k/month before you get to do things like a car, save for retirement, save for kids college...

user41796

back when I was considering grad schools, a buddy was considering medical schools. I was getting pretty much everything paid for + a stipend to live off of. His was going to be all loans. Even though his starting salary was going to be ridiculously higher than me, I was still years ahead on net worth

user41796

he never did get the med degree, afaik. He did get a phd though

user41796

7:16 PM

actually, I think he may be at Boston U, ironically enough

maple_shaft

@GlenH7 I tried uninstalling and reinstalling WAS, and it worked... until I turned on the classloading viewer profiler

now it is completely hosed again, even after uninstalling the application completely from the command line

user41796

@maple_shaft "IGNORE THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!!"

maple_shaft

Well I told my boss to elevate this to critical and she refused

because it says critical should only be used for production downtime events

user41796

@maple_shaft por que non? She was afraid of hurting their feelings?

user41796

sev 1 should only be used for production down. Critical means support has consistently dropped the ball

maple_shaft

7:21 PM

there was no "critical" flag on the form

user41796

@maple_shaft AFAIK, you have to manually request the escalation to critical. It's not something they like to advertise or make easy

maple_shaft

ahh

She put a note that development is at a standstill because of this

You wouldn't happen to know how to turn off profiling mode from wsadmin command line?

user41796

Sample IBM doc: www-304.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/handbook/getsupport.html

maple_shaft

it is always on

user41796

Search for: Escalation procedure

jozefg

7:23 PM

@JimmyHoffa I just got the most wonderful type error ever :) Cannot unify some_dependent_type with identical_dependent_type. Thank you coq

maple_shaft

no matter what I do... I highly suspect that profiling is the cause of my woes

user41796

@maple_shaft They really don't like you poking around and looking at things. So just move along now, nothing to see here.

maple_shaft

@GlenH7 Apparently...

user55340

Where I used to work, business was allowed to log things as "low, medium, or high" - they couldn't log things as critical... because there were reports that ran against things logged as 'critical' that went up the IT chain... if they're not allowed to submit it, the reports always looked nice.

maple_shaft

I showed them what I did with custom themes in WebSphere Portal and they were amazed that I figured this out without consultant help

they basically gave me free tickets to their conference next summer

they want me to present

user41796

7:27 PM

@maple_shaft WAS is a big ugly beast, no doubt. Even the top global services consultants can't wrap their head around everything it does

maple_shaft

I thought this was standard usage stuff I was trying to do based on what their sales people told us

user41796

Oh, and don't feel bad about going crit. Some of our best clients would go critical on us "all" the time. But it was for valid reasons after they had found ugly bugs that were impacting their business.

maple_shaft

Crit

user41796

@maple_shaft it's WAS - nothing is Standard. :-)

maple_shaft

icannotholdallthesefeels.jpg

user41796

7:29 PM

"go crit" was shorthand lingo for a PMR going into "critical situation" status.

maple_shaft

its quitting time

i'm done

thx for your help @GLenH7

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg ...yeah, you should go to MIT... I don't suspect other schools will feed your particular needs being that you're doing shit like that already...

user41796

@maple_shaft You're welcome and good luck with that environment.

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Haha the nontrivial bit is getting in

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg I thought the nontrivial bit was learning Coq before you're old enough to drink...

@jozefg ...it took me a while to parse this because I was trying to figure out if you were referring to something like the sign or complement bit causing your unification errors, which seems strange since Coq is at a far higher level of abstraction than bits and bytes...

user41796

7:37 PM

@JimmyHoffa I think you've been drinking too much kool-aid....

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Just getting too little sleep with these constant load tests leading up to one of our largest load days of the year...

user41796

restricting sleep is another good technique to "encourage" others to "see the light"

user55340

Whee. Project - I'm working on integrating with a 3rd party device for a client. After weeks of work and 'fun' (oh, our wsdl was generated by MS tools and we don't support Java), I've got to the point of being able to test it... and the device doesn't work. Turns out the 3rd party doesn't use a 4th party device anymore which did support what we are trying to do, and the client didn't get the 4th party device... so yea... oh thats not going to be fun.

user55340

On the plus side, I learned about how to use the axis framework for soap web services (and got it working despite their not supporting java).

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa I've discovered the problem here is Coqs implicit parameters, so even though they print the same, they're not. Because of course, that's exactly what you want.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:45 PM

@jozefg Clearly.

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Yet another one of the weird features of Coq you learn to love

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Just embed perl in it and you'll have exactly what you want then. Won't be any worse looking than perl normally is

user41796

8:02 PM

Crazy C# question - can I specify a Property with a different type than the type on the private backing variable?

user41796

specifically, I want a public string property backed by a private timespan variable.

user41796

The property.get will perform the .ToString() call. Not sure how to make the set work though

user41796

apparently not: stackoverflow.com/a/5870575/1345223

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Of course

gnat

I hear rumors that Microsoft is developing Visual Whitespace# and it will be the next big thing. — thorsten müller 9 hours ago

jozefg

8:09 PM

@gnat Whitespace, the first language to definitively settle the tabs vs spaces debate.

Jimmy Hoffa

private TimeSpan _a;

public string Duration
{
  get
  {
    return _a.ToString();
  }
  set
  {
    _a = TimeSpan.Parse(value);
  }
}

@GlenH7 ---^

user41796

@JimmyHoffa okay, that makes sense.

user41796

In my case it ends up being a bit silly since I'll be casting a TimeSpan.ToString() in order to pass it to the property to begin with

user55340

Perl - Acme::Bleach search.cpan.org/~dconway/Acme-Bleach-1.150/lib/Acme/Bleach.pm Acme::Bleach - For really clean programs

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 this is not a very good approach

nor is generally putting logic in your properties like parsing to begin with

user41796

8:11 PM

I think whoever deals with this after me would end up scratching their head at what I may have been trying to do though

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 What are you trying to do? Perhaps I can help..

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That's how I prefer to write my C# - non-idiomatic...

user55340

    use Acme::Bleach;

    print "Hello world";


The first time you run a program under use Acme::Bleach, the module removes all the unsightly printable characters from your source file. The code continues to work exactly as it did before, but now it looks like this:

    use Acme::Bleach;

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I have files of time series data. I need to peek inside the file to determine the periodicity of the data (one hour intervals, one minute, etc...). So I have a routine to open, read a few lines, and figure out the timespan between two dates.

user55340

code from the module...

user55340

8:13 PM

    sub whiten { local $_ = unpack "b*", pop; tr/01/ \t/; s/(.{9})/$1\n/g; $tie.$_ }
sub brighten { local $_ = pop; s/^$tie|[^ \t]//g; tr/ \t/01/; pack "b*", $_ }
sub dirty { $_[0] =~ /\S/ }
sub dress { $_[0] =~ /^$tie/ }
do {eval $coat . brighten $shirt; print STDERR $@ if $@; exit}
        unless dirty $shirt && not dress $shirt;

user41796

I now need to a) communicate the interval back to the user through a UI, and b) later on stash the timespan in a class that will wrap the time series data.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I usually only think about writing perl when I read stuff like this... coding should be fun. (ruby is not fun)

user55340

Notice that a dress shirt has a tie.

user41796

what I had hoped to do was the private variable be the timespan and just grab that for my class later on. But that presented problems with using a string for the public property and binding with that property

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 What is the time series data used for later? UI only? Database? further statistical analysis? An eventual aggregate?

user41796

8:15 PM

further analysis

user55340

Unlocking the Dark Mysteries of Acme::Bleach

user55340

> I have decided to try to figure out Acme::Bleach. It's only 13 lines of code. But that's 13 lines of Conway's code. I have also looked at similiar modules, such as Acme::Buffy, Acme::Buckaroo, and others, but I want to stick with Acme::Bleach. There's just something about Conway's coding style. Anyway, this is what I know about what the module does: Acme::Bleach encodes/decodes the source of the program. But how it does this leaves me a little confused.

user41796

the UI portion is because thy are loading the data. And I need to given them a hint that they loaded what they expected

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 How do you analyze it? Is it affectively a collection of the discrete events, and the duration value just gives you information necessary to accurately analyze that collection?

user41796

The analysis is well down stream. This portion merely reads the data and stashes it into a DB for later use

user41796

8:17 PM

it's the meta info about the series that needs to know the interval.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT the only thing that gets on my nerves when I think about poking around in perl is knowledge that the language has a great many language level bits and bobbles, and I've come to love languages that have a tiny, miniscule number of language-level doodads

@GlenH7 You have a model and viewmodel situation

user55340

@JimmyHoffa How do you mean?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa yep, and this is backing code in the viewmodel

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 The way I tend to like doing these translations is with something like...

user41796

one piece of info (the string) is bound for the view. The other piece (the actual timespan) is bound for the model

Jimmy Hoffa

8:23 PM

public class Model // this has data and is used for processing and or storage purposes
{
  public TimeSpan Frequency { get; private set; }
  public IEnumerable<DiscreteEvent> { get; private set; }

  public Model(string frequency, IEnumerable<DiscreteEvent> shitThatHappened)
  {
    Frequency = frequency;
    ShitThatHappened = shitThatHappened;
  }
}

public class ViewModel // Class tailored to be useful to one perspective in UI/presentation code
{
  public string Frequency { get; private set; }

user41796

@JimmyHoffa How did you know what I had named the event collection???!!!

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Your purpose is precisely why viewmodel's exist: Views need perspectives on data, but models shouldn't be required to have knowledge of those perspectives, and views shouldn't be intelligent about the data enough to know how to coax it out. So you create a ViewModel that presents what the view needs and you can either put the intelligence inside of it (or as I habit to, in a separate class using static extensions)

usage is then:

someModel.ToViewModel(); that the controller or whatever front-end side will do with the model the backend code returns.

Then when the front-end code wants to store away any edits/updates it takes it's modified ViewModel and..
yourBackEndCode.Update(frontEndViewModel.ToModel());

gnat

@GlenH7 you'll never have enough CVs with broken collider. It's simple, really. This crappy question has been #2 at collider today. It got its portion of cheap upvotes and cheap 500 views from collider. Lemmings look at it and think, hey c00l I'll also try my luck this way here - I think that's how many waves of garbage questions come in here

5

Q: Can a beginner in programming start learning game development?

I'm very new to programming and I'm using Java. I got interested to learn programming because I want to create games. I love playing computer games and I know that game developers make money. I told myself that instead of just playing why not create my own game and probably make some money. I re...

java learning game-development

user41796

@gnat I wouldn't have any problems running out of close votes if I had a diamond...

gnat

+5 for low quality zero effort question, sure a welcome sign to post more stuff like that

Jimmy Hoffa

8:28 PM

@GlenH7 WHOA. Shit just got real.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa my name still isn't blue...

gnat

5

A: What can we do to help users understand our site better?

the fact users are asking so many invalid questions makes me think that we could be doing something better with the way we are communicating with our users about what the site is for Above issue looks real, as indicated by 54.32% "bad" questions asked. I think this is likely related to iss...

user41796

@gnat We've had a number of crap posts today. MichaelT is out of CVs as well

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 One doesn't idly make such statements, you are dancing terribly close to saying candyman five times with statements like that

Sparticus

@jozefg You wont be paying anything near that. My university has a sticker price of 44k/year. I pay a fraction of that.

user41796

8:29 PM

@JimmyHoffa That makes sense and I think the problem is I'm not assigning responsibility where I should. I'm writing procedural code instead... <sigh>

gnat

@GlenH7 I wouldn't bet on that. Having a binding vote is a big responsibility and per my observations, mods use their CVs sparingly, mostly acting on flags

user41796

@gnat someone needs to give Yannis a run for the money on being the "evil mod"

user41796

and I still want more close votes

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm pretty sure that's how you get a diamond in fact, you go into the bathroom, close the door, look in the mirror and say...

I want to be an SE mod...
I want to be an SE mod...
I want to be an SE mod...
I want to be an SE mod...
I want to be an SE mod...and then...

Spolsky appears in your mirror and you find now *you're* the one in the mirror, and your plasticene replacement wanders off with spolsky to plug into your computer, where you are forever stuck on the other side of the mirror in an empty universe where you eventually starve to death

gnat

@animuson wrt post bans at sites like Workplace, consider also that moderator enforcement for quality-related issues at these might be a cure worse than decease. Shog once made a very insightful note on that — gnat Oct 3 at 19:11

reasoning like above applies to CVs at Programmers I think

though more votes to regular users might be worth considering. At SO, they've got 40, having like 30 at Programmers could make sense

user41796

8:35 PM

@gnat The site continues to grow. And if we want community evaluation instead of binding mod votes, then the community needs an expanded ability to participate.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Alternatively we could just rabidly start going crazy and biting the visitors, this might suppress site growth, problem solved! ....how I wish solutions like this weren't so common in our industry...

user41796

I would really hate for P.SE to end up with a never-ending backlog in the close review queue like there is on SO. That means the signal:noise ratio is out of whack and the community isn't policing it like it should. That would be a sad day for P.SE.

user55340

@GlenH7 I typically run out of CV's at after I do a run through /review.

gnat

@GlenH7 agree. This approach is definitely worth considering. I am also sick and tired of being out of CVs day by day, week by week. I would consider this fair if my votes were like waste, but looking at the closed vs open rate of questions I voted on, it feels like I am in line with community

user55340

As I see the queue, its at 20 right now. And I've got another dozen or there about questions that have been around today that might not be in the queue yet (I'll have to check) that I want to cast cv's on.

user41796

8:39 PM

@MichaelT I like having a ridiculous review count - so I go through the queue first.

user55340

I'm edging up to #2. Killian and I are neck and neck for #3/4.

user41796

I wonder if I could create a sock puppet and get it to 3k before @Sparticus clears 3k....

Sparticus

Then you would have twice as many close votes hahahaha

user55340

@GlenH7 Its easy - we just bounty him for a few k of rep on his answers.

Sparticus

awww come on guys, At least this way I have an excuse for not doing the close reviews. Imagine your dissapointment when I can but I dont!

user55340

8:41 PM

We'd only need 750 rep donated each...

user55340

(he's at 1600 or there abouts).

user41796

@MichaelT that's just a few days riding a collider question or two

gnat

expect new portion of lemmings to pollute site with garbage stuff, as we've got yet another collider hit (#5 now)...

3

Q: How much freedom should a programmer have in choosing a language and framework?

I started working at a company that is primarily a C# oriented. We have a few people who like Java and JRuby, but a majority of programmers here like C#. I was hired because I have a lot of experience building web applications and because I lean towards newer technologies like JRuby on Rails or n...

java c# web-development ruby-on-rails frameworks

gee I really hate it

not the question mind you, it's OK

braindamaged collider and lemmings coming in

Sparticus

@gnat your saying I should post an answer now?

user41796

"As mod, I promise to be ruthless in knocking down lemming answers on collider questions" <-- There's my campaign platform.

user55340

8:44 PM

@gnat the question just feels a bit ranty... which could be part of the issue (someone is wrong on the internet!)

gnat

@Sparticus if you post gitisfantastic, it will likely bring some cheap rep there

@MichaelT yep. Not bad, just appealing to lemmings, and collider is happy to do its usual damage

what really strikes me is that per my reading of their older posts, both Jeff and Joel have studied Shirky, how come they can't see how this thing comes right in where he warns against

user55340

The difficulty is that while realizing the truths, they also had other bits at work - they wanted to publicize the site and the smaller sites that were growing. What are the top questions from those sites? We want people to visit Math.SE and Cooking.SE and Programmers.SE as they emerge - and most people aren't watching the SE main site's list.

user55340

So even though they may have known of the problem, they had to ignore it to try to make the network grow by doing exactly what it recommends against.

user55340

It appears that you forgot to ask a question. "Please give me advice" is not a question; because advice like "hire a professional to do it" is as applicable as any. — tylerl 5 mins ago

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat because advertisers like fire, and if you make something large enough then set fire to it you will make money hand over fist

Sparticus

8:59 PM

0

A: How much freedom should a programmer have in choosing a language and framework?

Arguments for staying with Java/JRuby Chances are, your boss wants you to produce. They hired you so that you could add value to the company. Ensure that they understand that by forcing you to use a framework that you aren't familiar with will cause you to: Produce results at a slower rate Cre...

well I gave it a shot

feedback welcome

even if you just want to tell me I suck

user55340

@Sparticus The amount and quality of your suckage is completely independent of the quality of your answers (and should be measured by someone willing to put up with you for extend time).

Sparticus

You feel incapable of quantifying my suckage Michael? Are you saying you guys need me to pop in chat more often?

gnat

@MichaelT yep. That may be so. Thing is though, it's unlikely that answerers / high rep users are interested in cleaning up collateral shit from collider forever. One day it scales to the level that will start detracting them from the site, ant it will degrade to Yahoo Answers. Just as Shirky warned

Communitree wasn't shut down by people trying to crash or syn-flood the server. It was shut down by people logging in and posting, which is what the system was designed to allow. The technological pattern of normal use and attack were identical at the machine level, so there was no way to specify technologically what should and shouldn't happen. Some of the users wanted the system to continue to exist and to provide a forum for discussion. And other of the users, the high school boys, either didn't care or were actively inimical. And the system provided no way for the former group to defend…

Jimmy Hoffa

@Sparticus You do. You didn't even mention Haskell downvoted

2

Sparticus

Knew I could count on you Jimmy!

user55340

9:05 PM

@gnat The problem (I believe is in part) that we've got a... lets call it L Ron Hubbard problem. Joel and Jeff set it down (and aren't active anymore) and the people maintaining it don't recognize the problem and are unwilling to change something put forth by the founders.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT An L Ron Hubbard problem? Like a geodesic dome that's leaking and was built with octahedrons instead of pentagons? O that's Buckminster Fuller, sorry...

user55340

@gnat btw, potentially interesting VCS question once a bit of it describing current environment gets fleshed out.

user55340

0

Q: How to refactor when all your development is on branches?

At my company, all of our development (bug fixes and new features) is done on separate branches. When it's complete, we send it off to QA who tests it on that branch, and when they give us the green light, we merge it into our main branch. This could take anywhere between a day and a year. If we...

version-control

Jimmy Hoffa

"How to refactor when all your development is on branches?" Well refactoring is development, and development is done on branches, ergo... — Jimmy Hoffa 6 secs ago

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Not that its good but Scientology is only able to change if LRH says so. And, well, he's dead... so its not going to change its policies easily. Likewise, Jeff and Joel aren't active / decision making - so no matter how misguided the idea, we're kind of stuck with it. Shog will change things that he made, but is very slow to change things that Jeff or Joel said was a certain way.

user55340

9:09 PM

Strikethrough in comments... we're not getting them because Jeff said we don't have them in comments... even though its been added to chat.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT So what you're saying is that the church of SE is now open for business? When do I get a uniform and start to be paid for going door to door spreading the good word? "Hi there, I'm with The Church Of Latter Day Stacks, I'd like to take a little bit of your time this morning to speak to you about IoC containers"

user55340

@JimmyHoffa The "church of SE" is Shog and the council of wizards (thats been mentioned).

Jimmy Hoffa

What does that make @gnat, a High Proctor?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa that dev thing... if its git or the like, one just branches it, and then merges the changes into all the people who want it now, and also the mainline.

user55340

If its svn or the like, it gets trickier... because you're doing cross branch merges.

user55340

9:17 PM

The thing is, if a feature branch stays open for a year and the mainline changes, it can't get merged back into the mainline (without massive headaches).

gnat

@MichaelT Maybe. Maybe they didn't realize that "SO kind" approach to deal with collider damage won't work at Programmers (and at Workplace for that matter). At SO and other more objective sites, mods can come in to the damaged questions and clean up stuff based on objective criteria. I once checked SO questions having around 2K views, average amount of answers in these is sane....

...I wouldn't believe that lemmings are sane there, it's more likely that mods delete garbage. But here, approach like this could be cure worse than decease

The topics accepted by Programmers and TWP are... problematic when it comes to objective evaluations of answers. But then, that's why these sites exist... — Shog9 Jul 26 at 15:10

mod cleaning up meh garbage at Programmers / Workplace? Thanks but no thanks

user55340

@gnat We exist to be problematic, and thus they don't see a problem with the collider being problematic with us?

user55340

But, in the meantime, since P.SE split from SO and we've been active in our cleanings, we've changed the quality of the site greatly... and we don't see ourselves as problematic questions anymore, but high quality ones... And the collider brings attention to what tends to be the lower half quality of the new questions - not what we want to show off.

user55340

SO people seeing P.SE in the collider reinforces their "junk goes on P.SE" mindset - this is problematic.

tylerl

@MichaelT I don't think it's exclusive to p.se. Because every other SE site (and SF) say the same thing. In fact, SF added a "GTFO" close reason because they were sick of non-professionals asking questions.

gnat

9:22 PM

@MichaelT well if it was only to us, I'd be OK with that. In this case, I'd probably consider local guerilla like downvoting questions to keep them off collider. What I am trying to address though is that damage spreads across all the network. Mods can control meh answers in 0.1% SO questions, but the remaining 99.1% is really under attack of the lemmings. And this is likely a positive feedback loop yet again...

in The Water Cooler, Aug 8 at 23:12, by gnat

...really, say guys at SO are protected from direct impact. Meaning when they see meh, they can flag no-code and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit "sticky" questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting meh answers there

in The Water Cooler, Aug 8 at 23:14, by gnat

and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And meh attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider

user55340

> The answers to this question are unlikely to be useful to anyone else, or to be written here anyway. I appreciate you have a question, please appreciate that we don't care.

user55340

One of the rejected close vote reasons.

tylerl

@MichaelT SF got this added to theirs:

> This question does not appear to be about professional server, networking, or related infrastructure administration within the scope defined in the help center.

gnat

@MichaelT if memory serves, it's a dupe

user55340

@tylerl to keep all the 'home network' questions out.

tylerl

9:25 PM

@MichaelT It drills down to something even more pissy:

user55340

@gnat Possibly, ultimately, the solution to all VCS problems is "use it properly"

tylerl

> > Questions must be relevant to professional system administration. Server Fault is a site dedicated to professionals; novice questions are off-topic. Please see the Help Center for more information on topicality. The best advice we can give you is to hire a professional to help you out.

If P.SE adds a "you must be a real programmer to ask questions here" close reason, then you'll be in good company

user55340

The core problem is the long running feature branches. I'm really curious where they branch their features from.

user55340

@tylerl We don't mind the non-pro questions if they're good questions - its the pro "I'm ranting about my workplace with the facade of a reasonable question" that get lots of attention.

gnat

@MichaelT per quick check, maybe not a dupe. There are couple of similar questions but I need more time to figure whether these are close enough...

12

Q: How do you manage refactoring with a large code base and many developers?

I would like to prevent a situation where two developers refactor the same code simultaneously without talking about it first, probably using a tool of some kind, maybe an Eclipse plug-in. Can you help? We've got 4.5 million lines of code, and more than 20 teams of developers on four continents....

refactoring

12

Q: Resolving merge conflicts due to refactoring

I got involved in a discussion recently on how to handle refactoring in general (which is an interesting topic in itself). Eventually the following question was brought up: How does one handle merge conflicts that occured due to that someone did a refactoring of a part of the code, while someon...

version-control refactoring legacy

9

Q: How to commit in-progress refactoring?

So, I have this big project, which is in the process of being refactored by me. I am changing a lot of stuff, so there is no chance to get it to compile some time soon. I am living in a special git branch which I named cleanup (which is going to get merged into master eventually, of course). The...

git refactoring

and that one is focused on issues with opposite branching approach (unstable trunk / dev branch):

15

Q: How can I refactor a code base while others rapidly commit to it?

I'm on a private project that eventually will become open source. We have a few team members, talented enough with the technologies to build apps, but not dedicated developers who can write clean/beautiful and most importantly long-term maintainable code. I've set out to refactor the code base, ...

open-source version-control git refactoring branching

user55340

9:34 PM

Related certainly... the problem he's got is that there's a branch feature #1234 that was checked in 6 months ago, and QA hasn't gotten around to testing it for it to get merged (where?) and out to production. And when it does, get merged, there's going to be a conflict because the entire codebase changed from under it.

user55340

The problem at the heart of it is the long running branch... and probably a bad branching structure too.

user55340

Its not so much the refactoring thats the problem... and I'll bet they've got this problem other places too, they just don't see it as much / often.

gnat

@MichaelT that part probably is best addressed by isolating stuff for QA (and further for production) in release branches, you know that better than I. :) Changes made in branch for QA merge into trunk / dev branch ASAP as it is considered dev complete and branch per se remains isolated, strictly for QA/release purposes

long running branch having active development. Yeah that's a royal road to headache

user55340

They could also branch the refactor, when complete, merge it back into trunk, and then merge trunk back into all the dev branches (even those waiting for QA) - if its not a clean merge for "its now QA" then take it off their queue.

user55340

Part of the problem is the changing role of the branch "its dev branch" to "its waiting QA"

user55340

9:39 PM

Things such as "what is a release" come up into play too... you merge it from the feature branch into ... trunk I hope, and then branch / tag a release from that?

gnat

@MichaelT well, no matter what, if code targeted to release isn't properly isolated from regular activity, it will be a problem one way or another. And yes, changing roles (as an indication of not giving sufficient attention to branches roles) is a bad sign

user55340

I suspect the right answer is in part a change of QA procedure. Instead of giving them a feature branch, give them a candidate release. Then your feature branches are short lived (you wrote it, its reasonable, merged to mainline). This way you can do a refactor.

user55340

If its a low-no risk refactor (you've got unit tests, right? right?) you can do it right on the trunk. If it is a slightly complex refactor, branch it and then merge it back just as any other feature.

user55340

Short lived feature branches mean that there's never too much for a merge conflict when merging a feature back into mainline.

gnat

@MichaelT that's a good shot! Based on my past experience I'd bet 9:1 that your approach would resolve the issue

user55340

9:57 PM

The problem with my solution is that its not a solely a technical solution and likely involves working with another team and the workflow of releases in general. Those aren't as easy to implement as something that one team of developers is doing.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ....if they'd just use Haskell the solution would emerge naturally, a Zygote here a Promad there, here a Monoid there a Duodenoid everywhere a Hask' Arrow old McStackOverflow's problems would be solved...

Jimmy Hoffa

10:15 PM

I'd contact Facebook and LinkedIn and ask them why they did that, I'm pretty sure no one here was in the meetings where those decisions occurred, and if they are they're probably under an NDA — Jimmy Hoffa 44 secs ago

I hate "Why did X decide Y?" questions

Sometimes you get neat answers, almost always you just get onlookers wondering and worst of all: not close voting. Maybe they aren't close-vote worthy, they don't fit any precise OT reason nor are they common enough for us to have a broad rule in the community's collective conciousness like we do for "How do I learn Z?", so they tend to linger

even though in reality, they're just not good questions, nearly always. They don't fit any known problem or any reasonableness test that I can identify

Jimmy Hoffa

10:53 PM

I quite enjoy however when posters agree to alter their questions to make them more gooder rather than just asking the question and wandering off...

@GlenH7 I wouldn't say you wouldn't have any problems, maybe running out of close votes wouldn't be your problem, but you would have many more...

user55340

11:49 PM

Heh - a low quality audit was done on this answer...

user55340

9

A: Why are CIL and CLR required in .NET?

.NET has an intermediate language (CIL/MSIL) and platform-specific implementations of a platform-independent runtime (CLR) for the same reason Java does. Microsoft intended C# to directly compete with Java, and it does, on the OSes that Microsoft targets (its own). The advantages, even though .N...

user55340

"content or length" - yea... I'm sure that is an audit.

Brant

Nothing that long can possibly be bad.

user55340

I still think they need to get smarter at their audit selection... though there's some thoughts on making them "flagrant" and "marginal" ones. This would be a "flagrant" if the audit was failed.

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