The Whiteboard

12:17 AM

Blog - Stack Exchange: Winter Bash 2013 is here!

Abby T. Miller on December 15, 2013

The gatherings of family and friends, the giving and receiving of gifts, the making and/or breaking of New Year’s resolutions – however you and yours celebrate, the end of a calendar year heralds many traditions.

Here at Stack Exchange, we wanted to get each of you an awesome, personal gift, and mail it to you as our way of saying “thanks.” But our accountant pointed out that there are 4.5 million of you, which promptly reminded us that the holidays aren’t about gifts. The real spirit of the holidays can only be captured with… …

user41796

1:17 AM

Okay, so what's the lowdown on how to get a Yannis hat?

user20683

@GlenH7 Secret hats are secret even from us

user20683

also the Defender of the Realm Hat will be very easy to get.

user55340

@GlenH7 As a mod, delete over 10% of the site in one day?

user20683

@MichaelT Be verifiably drunk in chat.

user20683

:P

user20683

1:26 AM

Also I am looking at building APL in Python

user20683

I am a madman

Matt D

2:03 AM

you just need more beerf

its a word i just invented which means beer and beef

user55340

2:41 AM

@MattD try a bull shot, ok, not beer... but...

user55340

(its essentially a bloody mary, but instead of tomato juice, its beef bullion.)

jozefg

5:23 AM

@JimmyHoffa I've got bored and decided to write type level lists in Haskell, here you are: lpaste.net/97044

MetaFight

10:49 AM

yay hats! What's an easy one to get?

MetaFight

11:11 AM

nevermind. I just found the site with all the hats.

enderland

11:46 AM

enderland, Midwest USA

18.4k 7 41 125

I love having this avatar during hat season. LOL

Jimmy Hoffa

2:04 PM

@jozefg yep, I don't get it. That would be why you're going to MIT and I'm not

Haven't taken the time to read all of the arcane church stuff enough to know church pairs, heard of them but that's all

enderland

@JimmyHoffa kids these days.. ;-)

maple_shaft

2:26 PM

1) boss asks the group to come up with a plan to combine all the on call pagers into a global on call pager for a team of about 15 dev ops professionals

2) Group is vehemently against the idea, some applications take a year or more to master and they feel management is undercutting just how complicated their jobs are

3) Nobody currently is 100% cross trained, such a wide variety of platforms, languages, and systems spanning the past 25 years

4) Being a professional, I take the lead on this at my managers request, try to organize meetings, take notes, build consensus, write up various proposals, gaps, risks, WBS, high level training needs and estimates, etc...

5) Meetings consistently devolve into bi___ sessions about how we are being treated unfairly, that management is clueless and that we keep losing people through attrition and they aren't hiring replacements

6) I understand and agree with everybody but remind them that we should stick to the agenda, knowing that when they see true LOE on this it will get swept under the rug in priority and it will never actually happen...

enderland

@maple_shaft mrmoneymustache.com/2012/10/03/…

maple_shaft

7) Open revolt... developers are sending direct emails to the director about all the problems and claiming a false unanimity as a group... shit...

wut do?

situation is spiraling out of control

@enderland Seen it, read it, loved it, bought 3 copies

I am thinking of throwing the three vocal members under the bus... they keep derailing my meetings

with their outrageous pessimism

user41796

@maple_shaft sometimes that's what you have to do

maple_shaft

I try to talk over them but they just get louder and more incredulous. I would normally ask a manager to step in but that implies actual leadership exist

if actual leadership existed they wouldn't ask a developer to do managerial work

user41796

I call those "come to Jesus" meetings. Mgmt + you sit down with them and explain that their toxic attitudes are preventing the organization from getting the information they need

maple_shaft

2:37 PM

@GlenH7 tell me more about this Jesus fellow... :)

user41796

Indeed. It's a euphemism. But the implication is they may be praying a lot (for a new job) if they don't get in line.

user41796

If you have already pointed out the irony of their kavitching getting in the way of actually derailing the project, then your options are limited.

user41796

alternately, since you may not have mgmt backing on that sort of meeting

enderland

it doesn't sound like you have any faith in your situation being improved

user41796

go to them one at a time. Explain that you are attempting to derail the project as well, but you're doing it in the way that mgmt has said is acceptable.

user41796

2:39 PM

point out that you need their help in identifying all of the major risks that will cause it to explode

Oded

It is possible to arrange meetings without those three? And when you do get anything constructive present it to them in a united front?

user41796

during a bigger meeting, they may be more interested in grand-standing than actually getting to the risk

user41796

And I was about to suggest the same thing Oded just said. If they won't get on board then leave them out

maple_shaft

Most of these guys used to be in what was an actual software dev shop... but managerial incompetence, and a high level directive to be a 100% vendor supported company has slowly morphed this team into DevOps, through constant lack of funding and inability to move support, maintenance and sys admin roles to an ever decreasing analyst pool

now they all are bitter that they have to do support and sys admin work

enderland

.... and? are you basically so pessimistic that you don't think you can change anything? I'm having a hard time getting a different vibe from you as you are complaining about your coworkers having...

Jimmy Hoffa

2:41 PM

@maple_shaft Time to play dumb. Act towards management as though those 3 don't exist. This'll make clear in management's mind you have nothing to do with that nonsense, and are simply trying to do the right thing. Devolution is an opportunity, take advantage and you may get authority to actually fix things.

maple_shaft

@enderland Oh ... oh god... I don't even notice it in myself until you point it out :(

user41796

@maple_shaft IIRC, this is the project you jumped to (were pulled to?) from the previous cluster-F, right?

user41796

With the hope / expectation you might be able to improve things?

maple_shaft

@GlenH7 Yes it was the parent company I jumped to

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 it's all cluster-F's in his neck of the woods. Professionals move away quickly so he's stuck with the dreggs whatever he does

maple_shaft

2:43 PM

things got indescribably worse despite my best efforts

I mean I have had several minor victories

user41796

Fred Brooks may have said it best then...

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft haha that sucks, perhaps you need to start taking a tablespoon of apathy a day and just focus your efforts on your bundle of joy, how's that going by the way? Are you living in sleepless zombie mode about now? :)

2

maple_shaft

but they are overshadowed by the complete chaotic breakdown

user41796

(which I hate to say, because that can be really frustrating)

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa He is sleeping somewhat well at night and we have gotten better about knowing how to calm him when he is fussy

Still I actually look forward to coming to work to escape for a bit

Jimmy Hoffa

2:46 PM

@maple_shaft I know the feeling, it's hard for a while but you'll miss it (which everyone tells you even though you feel like that is simply crazy talk)

user41796

@maple_shaft - perhaps the best you can do is to figure out a way to insulate yourself from all of the shellac going on.

maple_shaft

pictures coming shortly!

enderland

how much time off you have at Christmas/New Years?

user41796

It's what I ended up having to do at my previous role. There was just too much to fight against, and I realized I had to look after myself and my own mental well-being first.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Agreed. Sometimes this is more beneficial than you'd think, just staying away from this stuff at a previous job I ended up stumbling into a side-path which ended up giving me more authority to improve things than if I had continued directly against all the crazy like most of the folks were doing

Oded

2:48 PM

Yeah - not worth putting yourself on the line when the ship is sinking (and you have 0 control)

maple_shaft

6

user41796

If 20% of the new team is adamantly opposed to any change and they are actively blocking things, then that project is kind of effed. Without Thor's hammer, it's gonna be hard to effect change.

Oded

@maple_shaft Is that maple_twig?

maple_shaft

@Oded indeed!

Oded

How old?

user41796

2:49 PM

@Oded maple_twig is quite cute!

maple_shaft

My damn dog got in the way of the shot

Oded

heh. Brings back memories from my two boys :)

user41796

@maple_shaft Dogs are awesome that way. We have tons of photobombs from them.

maple_shaft

I tell him, Begone mongrel! You are now second place! REMEMBER... YOU ARE SECOND! ALWAYS SECOND!

lol

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft well done; you made a cute kid, not everybody's so lucky

enderland

2:50 PM

@maple_shaft good luck convincing him of this. lol

user41796

@maple_shaft wait until high-chair feeding. The doggy becomes awesome again.

2

Oded

lol

user41796

We had friends with twins but no dogs. The amount of cleaning they had to do after every feeding was ridiculous.

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa He looks much more like his mother, so he is incredibly cute

I am glad he is not an ugly baby... I don't know if I could live with that ;-)

brb... restroom

user41796

@maple_shaft You are biologically wired to think your baby is cute. I have never met an objective parent regarding the cuteness of their baby. But I gotta admit that maple_twig is quite cute. Hopefully he's not too much of a handful yet.

user41796

2:56 PM

Double whammy for me today. I needed to have blood drawn, so I had been fasting this morning. And it's "goody day" at work so everyone has brought in treats / whatnot to graze on all day. So I have gone from blood-sugar crash to blood-sugar spiked! It's okay to feel woozy, right?

enderland

@GlenH7 it's Christmas, basically, so sure!

maple_shaft

@GlenH7 Just drink a red bull and that goes away ;-)

user41796

If I fall over while standing up to go to my stand-up then I'll know it was too much sugar.

maple_shaft

lol

@glenH7 I actually think I could be objective about it. I am objective about everything else in life

or at least most things

user41796

I like simple metrics. Easy to know if I passed / failed.

user41796

2:59 PM

My google-fu is weak at the moment (I blame sugar), but I have seen studies demonstrating how parents are blind to their kids' cuteness. Then again, most kids are cute so it doesn't matter all that much anyway.

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Haha thanks :P Actually I'm not sure if I'll be attending

I got accepted to CMU as well, urk decisions

user41796

@jozefg yowsers, that is a rough decision. Then again, there are a number of excellent Unis in that part of the country. Especially for the CompSci / SWEng arena

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg You know you want MIT, I've met plenty of dumbasses with a CMU degree, never met anyone from MIT who was an idiot (OK I never met anyone from MIT, though I suspect this is because they're playing on a completely different level from me)

user41796

@JimmyHoffa my current boss is from there. :-)

Thomas Owens

@jozefg I want to do one of the online programs from CMU for my Masters.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:01 PM

Genuinely though, when I was in Pittsburgh I did work with a few people with CMU degrees who really were nothing to write home about

user41796

@jozefg - are you thinking more comp sci or comp engineering?

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 CMU or MIT?

jozefg

@GlenH7 Comp Sci, I'm leaning research-y

Jimmy Hoffa

CMU is better for engineering I understand

maple_shaft

@jozefg Congrats on getting into MIT!

jozefg

3:02 PM

From a "cool research that happening there" standpoint, CMU has Twelf, and the spinoffs of the Fox project..

maple_shaft

not an easy feat

Thomas Owens

MIT has a good leadership program for undergraduate students.

jozefg

@maple_shaft Thanks :D

Thomas Owens

If you're into that kind of thing, that is. Things like running projects.

maple_shaft

OMFG.... I suggested to an architect here that the engineers could better conceptualize his design if he provided a Component Diagram... He said something to the effect, "Tell me more about this Component Diagram ..."

2

O_o

Thomas Owens

3:03 PM

...

maple_shaft

I hate Pittsburgh

bunch of fucking wannabe charlatan pretenders

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft haha ahh I'm sorry but that is genuinely funny

maple_shaft

Forward him a link to UML for complete fucking n00b beginners

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft Look at the bright side: A sandwich shop on every corner!!

maple_shaft

This is the best and brightest folks

now lets go stuff our face with grease laden french fry sandwiches

I will draw him an example component diagram on a greasy transluscent napkin

user41796

3:07 PM

@JimmyHoffa MIT. Sorry, stepped away for the stand-up. And I did not fail my metric (so I didn't fall down from the sugar high)

user55340

Of questionable thought processes (@maple_shaft I'm mentioning this thinking of you) - techland.time.com/2013/12/13/…

user41796

@jozefg - any other A-list schools you haven't heard back from yet? No sense in agonizing over A vs. B when C is about to be an option too.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 haha already had the blood drawn? You're supposed to have some sugar afterwards, have a salad at some point today as well; all the really green leafy things are mega high in iron (everyone knows this, but it's no joke: Some spinach or kale totally ruins my wife's blood thinner stats they're so effective in giving you iron)

@GlenH7 Is he mega-smart?

user41796

@maple_shaft Insulate yourself. I think that's the best you can do in this case. Contribute; give a little bit more than others; but keep yourself distant from getting wound up into the projects.

user55340

@GlenH7 got a response from Shog on that review thing...

user55340

3:10 PM

Now that... Is a refreshingly novel idea, @MichaelT. — Shog9 10 hours ago

user55340

(the thing being showing the number of reviews possible)

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Reasonably sharp; different skillsets than an engineer. So it's an interesting balance between his background and applied knowledge.

jozefg

@GlenH7 I applied to Penn U and the University of Minnesota. So Penn U is great, but CMU and MIT probably trump it. So I think it'll come down to: research and price.

maple_shaft

@MichaelT That is just wrong... I did just fine growing up learning technology from an IBM 286, that should be good enough for my child too

user41796

@JimmyHoffa This wasn't even close to a pint. It was just 5 vials, I think.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:12 PM

@jozefg If you go CMU listen closely to @maple_shaft right now to understand why you need to be ready to run the hell away as soon as you get the degree, do not get caught up working in Pittsburgh afterwards, it'll only drag you down

@GlenH7 You lose count somewhere around the double vision?

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa I'm pretty much planning on booking it out of there with "Sorry, grad school".

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa +12049249 THIS

user41796

@jozefg Likewise, starting scoping out what types of companies you may want to work for. Most companies hire locally, so it makes sense to evaluate things 4 - 8 years down the road. (The adder is for grad school)

maple_shaft

@jozefg Good man

I have a family and a kid here.. it is all over for me

user55340

@GlenH7 Grad school? in 4 years?

maple_shaft

3:14 PM

save yourself

user41796

@MichaelT Yeah, I was on track to have my PhD in 4. It can be done.

user41796

@jozefg - if you haven't toured the campuses already, I would strongly recommend that. Try to get an understanding of what the labs are like and what the campus activities are. It's worth spending a day or two there if you can swing it.

user55340

@GlenH7 Apparently, I read too much PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) comics - phdcomics.com

user41796

Research the faculty ahead of time and find out how accessible they are to students. Just because so-and-so is listed as being a faculty member doesn't mean that undergrads will ever see them. From your point of view, you want the access.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg if you go to CMU, buy the large-belt now, I put on 20lbs within 6 months of moving to Pittsburgh. 6 months after moving back to Denver I lost it and some more... I don't know how people survive their entire lives on a diet of grease, arrogance, and potatos out there

jozefg

3:19 PM

So I spent the summer at MIT's PLT lab, and I've been to CMU twice and worked with a few researchers there.. Unfortunately there're both fantastic. Currently I'm leaning towards CMU because 1. MIT is better as a grad school (confirmed during summer) 2. CMU is more willing to accept some of my credits 3. Better to try to run away before grad school than after when I'm really gonna need a job

user41796

@MichaelT I had plenty of friends on 5, 6, 7 year tracks, including one who had to petition the University for an extension to finish up his program. In all fairness though, all of them relied too much upon their adviser and were pretty laisez-faire.

user41796

@jozefg Those are pretty sound reasons. Are the financial packages similar?

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg That's rational

user41796

Because you can play Universities off of each other with the financial offers they provide.

user41796

@MichaelT Apparently all of us rushing out to their site cause a problem with their server. I can't pull them up at the moment.

jozefg

3:21 PM

Pretty much, both are offering me reasonable prices within 3k of each other.. @GlenH7

user55340

@GlenH7 I had issues with it before I linked...

user55340

(though nice to know its not just me)

enderland

@MichaelT don't remind me how long this process is taking me

the problem in my research group was more that the focus wasn't on academics, so actually doing your MS/PhD research was nearly impossible to devote time to (alternatively you did absurd numbers of hours additionally)

user41796

@jozefg You can always try the "I have an offer from X along with your offer. I'm really torn between the two schools. Is there anything you can do to improve the financial package to make my decision easier?"

user55340

(btw, @enderland wins the 'best use of a hat award')

user55340

3:24 PM

user55340

(for posterity looking at the transcript)

user41796

And does anyone know how I scored Johnny three hats already?

user55340

Though I will admit that Yannis might be able to beat it with his Doom face.

jozefg

Oh goodness, my mother got ahold of my supervisors email at MIT and sent him a thank-you :$

user41796

@jozefg I have your first research project. Come up with a way to convert Silverlight into JavaScript.

jozefg

3:37 PM

@GlenH7 To get that published I think I'd have to compile it to dependently typed JavaScript (yes that's a thing)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 That's more an implementation problem than a research problem; the way to do it isn't terribly complex

user41796

@jozefg I can't see how that would hurt the world of JavaScript. Go for it!

Jimmy Hoffa

N/m I was thinking something else

@GlenH7 Interestingly, you could write Silverlight in JavaScript using JScript.NET...

user41796

At the recent anglebrackets conference, there was a lot of talk about how to structure JavaScript so you can reuse modules and encapsulate things.

user41796

It was an indirect bashing of all the potential evils of using a dynamic, unstructured language.

user41796

3:40 PM

@JimmyHoffa Honestly, I just want to recoup some of the effort we've sunk into SL now that we're migrating off of it. We have a number of items developed in an MVVM style and it's a bummer that we have to throw a lot of that out.

user41796

anecdotal feedback that I got was there are a lot of people in the same boat. So it's a bummer that MS has pretty much said they won't create a tool to port with.

maple_shaft

Uuuuuggghhh... the CIO sending out a congratulations to IS departments for us making Information Week #1 in innovation

My head is going to explode from everything wrong with this ranking

user41796

All I have is a wet noodle and I can't hammer in these nails. How should I use the wet noodle better?

user41796

0

A: MongoDB: Is this a good schema design?

Why are you using a non-relational database in this case? You said: When listing an event I have to manually join refs in order to show the actual properties of the employees and crews (such as name), it's a bit tedious but what worries me most is performance: and My biggest problem s...

Jimmy Hoffa

Yeah, there's a lot of bummers going around but you can't fault MS too much if you look at the decisions they made:

2005-2006, Flash is bonkers everywhere seems the internet has wholesale decided everything should be done in Flash and accepted this; MS decides "We should get something out their to compete!"

2009-2010, HTML 5 and quality javascript processing engines have all but destroyed Flash, Silverlight has still barely any adoption; MS decides "Well shit, everyone's going JavaScript, and this is *really* going to stick... we better get on the JavaScript wagon" and kills silverlight

user41796

3:49 PM

@maple_shaft irony is a bitter, bitter dish to deal with.

Jimmy Hoffa

Everyone bitches about what MS did with silverlight and it admittedly stinks that they did that, but what were they supposed to do, continue supporting a dying approach to web dev?

maple_shaft

Query: Can a CIO buy a ranking in Information Week? It is the only explanation that is tenable to me.

lol

Super mod view deleted message power ACTIVATE!

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft The same way a government can buy their rankings in livability studies

user41796

Hypothetically speaking, one would need to be able to influence the people who make that decision. And while I'm sure the editors or reviewers of any sort of ranking are beyond reproach, there are numerous ways to influence thoughts.

user41796

I'm assuming it wasn't one of those public opinion, everyone go vote type awards. Those things are ridiculously easy to rig.

maple_shaft

3:52 PM

@GlenH7 At the very least they had to VERY CAREFULLY know what things they would allow the journalist to see and what ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOT ALLOWED TO SEE

like our disgrace of a PM group

lack of technical direction

user41796

@maple_shaft pshaw, that's easy. "Look at this, look at that. We're awesome, right?! Let's go have drinks."

maple_shaft

15 year history of failed projects

Like one thing: The article touts BlaBlaProduct as a monumental success for the company in creating something inhouse that they later turned into a product and sold to another company...

The product rollout was a complete disaster and user revolt left it mostly unused despite a support and analyst team that is close to 100 people

user41796

@maple_shaft - see the second snippet in this video

user41796

►

maple_shaft

Then an executive leaves and starts a shell company that buys that product from the parent company

now it is a vendor product with lock in

That is a commercial success?!

Nobody fucking uses it!!!!!!!!!!

Not even their only customer! This journalist is blind or corrupt

user41796

3:56 PM

@maple_shaft brilliant! Think of how easy the support calls are.

user41796

> You can work or you can get drunk. But the pay is exactly the same.

maple_shaft

lol

Information Week, getting drunk since...

user41796

I can't find the actual strip that one originated with. Absolutely hilarious.

maple_shaft

I lost all respect for that industry sham of a publication

A second year journalist student could have figured this out with even a modest amount of investigative journalism

user41796

stupid one-boxing

user41796

3:59 PM

@maple_shaft You didn't read the quote yet, did you.

user41796

There we go

maple_shaft

lol

Right Click Save As to the MAX

user41796

The truly insidious person would print off copies of that along with the contest results. And then pass them around together.

user41796

@maple_shaft - another article well worth reading: paulgraham.com/submarine.html

user41796

4:02 PM

> PR is the news equivalent of search engine optimization; instead of buying ads, which readers ignore, you get yourself inserted directly into the stories.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Never read that, good article...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa some of his stuff is crazy out there, especially around Lisp. :-) But a number of his articles are spot-on accurate.

jozefg

I'm a lisp hacker and I'm not even sure I agree with him

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I know, there's two fundamental truths most who've read much of his stuff should come away with about Paul Graham, first: He's an evangelist. This means he has bias and is actively attempting to bias others. second: He is really fucking smart and in the general case really knows what he's talking about.

user55340

Btw, in honor of the Desolation of Smaug, I present...

user55340

4:08 PM

►

user55340

(Yes, that is Nimoy)

Jimmy Hoffa

So long as you know the first truth you can let his hyperbole roll of your back, but knowing the second truth is important in making the things he's written actually useful to you anyway.

jozefg

Actually, I pretty much dislike all arguments that a programming languages more productive for everyone...

Jimmy Hoffa

Beating the averages isn't famous because it rejuvenated the LISP community, it's famous because the concept it speaks of, that your choice of technology really does matter is counter to what many say and well worth thinking about

user41796

@KGChristensen - you can use a pipe wrench to hammer in nails. It will take you a lot longer. Your hands will hurt a lot more. You'll bend a lot more nails, and you'll ruin the surface that you're working on. Finding and using the right tool to begin with will save you a lot of grief in the long run. — GlenH7 5 mins ago

user41796

4:11 PM

@JimmyHoffa I frequently find things that I disagree with him about, but nothing to the extent that I stopped reading his articles. He's sharp, and he has some good insights.

user41796

And I feel so dirty about adding on to that MongoDB answer. "Hey look, this is absolutely the wrong way to do it but let me show you a way to make it work!"

user41796

The things we do for rep.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Unfortunate that pragmatism is always right in the middle, between two extremes - both of which are easier to believe and follow because they have consistent fundamentals where pragmatism favors inconsistency in doing things that are effective regardless of whether they match. Extremism says if you have a hole in one shoe you should either tear a hole in the other shoe or sew a patch over both shoes, pragmatism says patch just the one and who cares that it's inconsistent.

user55340

I'm amused / intrigued by the ruby -> clojure migration that one recent question speaks of.

user55340

1

Q: Is there a reason for the crossover from the Ruby community to the Clojure Community?

When we look at the the overlap between the Ruby Community - we see the following overlaps: Think Relevance (now Cognitect) has switched from Ruby to Clojure Jay Fields has switched from Ruby to Clojure David Chelimsky - author of RSpec - has left the Ruby RSpec project to join Cognitect Is t...

ruby clojure

Jimmy Hoffa

4:14 PM

@MichaelT Yeah I was curious about that as well...

I have a feeling it's just hipster trending direction though; two languages that nobody uses, one group moving from one irellevant language to another

doesn't really amount to meaning anything

user55340

One of the 'nice' things about ruby was the ease of which the script-types who moved from php to something that was a bit less ugly were able to do it.

user41796

@MichaelT I upvoted Frosty just to help get him past 17k and to get him another delete vote. :-P

user55340

@GlenH7 Frosty has all the delete votes he wants...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Hey, the 12 people writing Ruby are offended by that statement.

user41796

@MichaelT I know, that's what makes my reasoning funny (to me)

user55340

4:15 PM

He could even go for the Yannis secret hat of "delete 10% of the site in one 24h period"

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 They would be if they weren't writing clojure now

user41796

@JimmyHoffa So they're drinking tequila to drown out the pain?

user41796

@Oded - since you're in here. Meant to say thanks for the periodic insta-closes you've thrown onto new questions as they roll out. We have appreciated your efforts in keeping the site's quality up.

user55340

The thing with ruby was the 'be clever' code that I kept finding in there... that was, well, clever. Too much clever code in ruby projects. In clojure and lisps, its not clever... its just the way it works.

user55340

@Oded I'll certainly second @GlenH7 's sentiments there - Thank you.

Oded

4:26 PM

Thanks guys :) nice to get a pat on the back @GlenH7 @MichaelT

user41796

You're welcome. It's always a pleasant surprise when you click on the title of what's guaranteed to be a crap question and see it's already closed.

2

Oded

Well... I know what doesn't belong and what is utter crap and happy to see it... gone.

user55340

We see the popup of the question in chat and go 'that's probably bad' and go to the question to see 'closed by Oded'

Oded

Ahhh... I should go on the rampage more often.

user41796

Then you would be giving Yannis a run for his money. He periodically purges the site of crap. This weekend was witness to that.

user55340

4:33 PM

Oh... idea... (too bad its not friday anymore... though Iceland...) - you could give a 'screen shot' of your 'developer's version' of Stack Exchange with doom graphics!

Oded

lol

enderland

21 mins ago, by GlenH7

@Oded - since you're in here. Meant to say thanks for the periodic insta-closes you've thrown onto new questions as they roll out. We have appreciated your efforts in keeping the site's quality up.

this applies to workplace, too, from my perspective

Oded

@enderland happy to help ;)

Yannis Rizos

Oded

4:48 PM

Where is my BFG-3000?

user55340

Hmm... in that mythical time of MSO and MSE splitting... does that mean MSE will have its own mod elections that are independent from SO?

Yannis Rizos

@Oded Here: meta.stackoverflow.com/a/211492/162704

@MichaelT Probably not.

user55340

@YannisRizos Aww... would be such amusement to see you be a MSE mod...

user55340

I mean... it can't be worse than Politics.SE.... can it? ;-)

Yannis Rizos

Don't have any details yet on who will mod MSE, but there won't be any elections. It'll either be the employees only, or employees and some mods (the crazy ones).

user55340

4:52 PM

...

Yannis Rizos

The Workplace is worse than Politics (right now). I see flags on the Workplace, and that's only supposed to happen when there are too many of them (which, almost never happens on a beta site).

user55340

I wonder / suspect that Workplace is going through its own shift of "we want/demand quality" that P.SE suffered through.

user55340

There is a not-insignificant number of pre-change P.SE contributors there.

user55340

1

A: Let's get critical: Dec 2013 Site Self-Evaluation

Final Results How to handle and engage employees in a secretive company culture? Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 3) How to determine in an interview if people enjoy working for the company or the work they do? Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 4,...

user55340

8

Q: How can we improve question quality without closing *everything*?

Seriously, the front page is currently a wall of closure (7 of 10 closed) and the few questions that aren't closed have close votes (5 close votes in the remaining 3 questions). I understand the site review is driving people towards higher standards for questions, but simply closing them all prob...

discussion

user55340

5:01 PM

Just reading over the workplace meta, one of the things that appears to be an issue is drive-by questions that are one offs - either because of, well, drive by questions, or people using a throw-away account to dissociate themselves from the question.

user55340

One of the aspects of this is that it works against the community - that people aren't investing in their questions or the handles associated with them.

user55340

> 1.) If you were going to build a piece of social software to support large and long-lived groups, what would you design for? The first thing you would design for is handles the user can invest in.

user55340

So Workplace has a bit of the onstartups problem of drive by poor questions and the resulting quality loss that has, but it also has the combined issue of people who are invested in the site actively separating themselves from the questions they ask for some reason or another.

user55340

The drive by questions can be handled if the community decides to heroically edit the questions into something better. But that takes an active community to do so. The disassociation of question... thats something that needs to be looked into and addressed by the SE software.

user55340

That last bit has been mentioned before:

user55340

5:08 PM

0

Q: Anonymous posting

Is it possible to post anonymously through my subscribed account and still track the answer properly? I recently did this by signing out, posting, then coming back onto my account, however, I was unable to edit the question later when some people had commented on it, since it was an unregistered ...

feature-request

user55340

It should be looked at more carefully - it might be necessary for long term survival of 'sensitive subject SE sites' such as workplace, (on startups), relationships & dating (still in area 51).

user55340

(and that's enough blue on my screen... unless someone wants me to continue my thought dump)

Robert Harvey

5:35 PM

I had an interesting discussion with a fellow programmer at a Christmas party yesterday. He is writing a web application, and intends to use ASP.NET Web API with a Javascript/HTMl5/CSS3 frontend.

He says that he doesn't like any of the existing Javascript frameworks, and plans on writing his own. He says that DI will figure prominently in his plans, and that the existing frameworks are too inflexible to allow application evolution.

user55340

(btw, when the repcap bites hard - programmers.stackexchange.com/users/22982/… -- 75 upvotes on first answer in one day...)

Robert Harvey

Does that make sense to anyone here?

Ampt

Hmmmm

user55340

@RobertHarvey First, everyone wants to write their own framework, until they actually do.

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Anything that bites Godaddy in any way is good, in my book.

Ampt

5:37 PM

Yeah, writing frameworks is hard. Getting good DI in them isn't impossible though

the probelm is that it leads to needing a lot more about the inner workings of the framework

and isn't the point of the framework to make things simpler?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT nonsense, tons of people write their own framework and then afterwards decide "My framework is the best! Everything will go in my framework!" and henceforth have this abomination that they don't realize is horribly untennable that they use for everything...

user55340

Every developer has a bit of Not Invented Here in their blood.

Jimmy Hoffa

I've definitely worked places where they built their own framework and instead of realizing the error of their ways, they were so pleased with themselves for their accomplishment that they just required everything be done through it.

@MichaelT A bit is necessary...

1 hour ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Unfortunate that pragmatism is always right in the middle, between two extremes - both of which are easier to believe and follow because they have consistent fundamentals where pragmatism favors inconsistency in doing things that are effective regardless of whether they match. Extremism says if you have a hole in one shoe you should either tear a hole in the other shoe or sew a patch over both shoes, pragmatism says patch just the one and who cares that it's inconsistent.

user55340

My framework was a simple (actual OO in perl) form generation, parsing, and report spewing thing back long ago... It worked for what it did and I realized the challenge of writing it and the inflexibility that it had for other problems.

Robert Harvey

What about the DI part? Is there any merit to that? Where would it be applied? He described a REST API with fairly complex JSON objects, which sounded like rudimentary ViewModels (without logic) to me. I can't visualize where you would put DI in the Javascript, though.

I mentioned Data Binding, and he said that would be useful, but in a limited way.

user55340

5:42 PM

So, there's the desire to write it... there's also the astronaut architecture... "lets toss everything that is seen as good into it, and it too will be good". Not that DI is good or bad... its a tool. It shouldn't be something that is a feature, but rather an implementation detail if it comes up at all.

Oded

Sounds over engineered to begin with

user55340

I'd be tempted to say that most green field attempts at writing one's own all encompassing framework will be over engineered. This is actually where agile principles would work better - do the simplest thing that works first.

user55340

Provide a simple API and then implement that simply. Then start expanding it form there - and stop and back up if the code gets hairy.

Ampt

@MichaelT As a counter point, doing the simplest things first leads to a little bit of uncertainty when you're actually done

unnecessary features are easy and therefore seem attractive, but the ones you actually wanted to accomplish are hard and possibly left out

user55340

@Ampt If you know where you're going you can steer it in that direction... but starting out with so many design patterns at the start won't make it easy in the long run.

user55340

5:45 PM

I didn't say "implement the simplest feature first" - you could implement the hardest one first... but do it the simplest way.

Ampt

@jozefg congrats! You're a working professional right? Or is this for undergrad??

user55340

Starting out writing a framework by setting up all the DI, and factories, and abstract clases and whatnot first - that's where it goes astray.

Robert Harvey

@Oded That was my initial impression as well, although to be fair, he did say that it would be the simple form of DI ("providing dependencies through a constructor or method"), and not an actual DI framework.

Oded

Poor man's. Still.

Robert Harvey

He says that his motivations are to be able to plug in new functionality and reuse existing code.

He says that the existing Javascript frameworks are too rigid to do that.

Ampt

5:48 PM

@RobertHarvey Tell him he should put all of his code in a database.

Robert Harvey

Oh, stop it. :)

Ampt

and that he should put the code that interperets the code in the database

lmao

user55340

(btw, half tempted to clean up the colors on this old photo of mine and switching my avatar/icon based on the season...)

user55340

Robert Harvey

Seems a bit dense for an avatar.

Ampt

5:49 PM

@RobertHarvey I'm only kidding :) IT does serve as a cautionary tale though

user55340

@RobertHarvey Well, realize that its a clean up... this one is actually...

Oded

@Ampt I worked on that code base.

user55340

Robert Harvey

That's a good one.

Oded

That is. I came in as a contractor to help out

Ampt

5:50 PM

@Oded you poor, poor, poor soul

Oded

And by code, I mean XML.

user55340

The thing is, I'd crop it to fit correctly and be not quite so dense.

Oded

XML that described stored procedure parameters.

And yes, it was stored in the database.

user55340

And then for April 20th... I could use...

user55340

Robert Harvey

5:51 PM

@Oded Holy mother of all rube goldbergs batman.

user55340

(thats a Japanese Maple)

Oded

@RobertHarvey yeah. That codebase was full of beauties. Remoting code that would instantiate objects on a separate server. After investigating a bit, I found out it wasn't required - just overhead.

user55340

The problem with XY questions - the actual answer doesn't answer the question

user55340

1

Q: Is using os.environ to store the value of command line switches pythonic?

I write CLI-executable Python 3 scripts regularly to do data compilation and some maintenance tasks, and try to adhere to PEP 8 and the Google Python Style Guide when doing so. Google's guide says to avoid using global variables, while PEP 8 offers naming conventions but doesn't really encourage ...

python environment python-3.x

user55340

might want to consider using logging module in your app. That way when you initialize logger when the app starts, you can look at the option and select between two logging levels (e.g. "logging.WARN" vs. "logging.INFO"). That way you won't have to sprinkle if-statements all over your code. — DXM 1 hour ago

user55340

5:57 PM

@DXM: I just read up on the logging module and I can't believe I hadn't noticed it before. Just what the doctor ordered, and I'm loving how it can be configured, especially in how it can output to both the terminal and a file in one call, with each destination able to have its own independent settings for format and level. — p0lar_bear 35 mins ago

Ampt

6:10 PM

How important is job title in our field?

I have Project Engineer or Associate, Developer

Robert Harvey

@Ampt Kinda the difference between President and Administrative Assistant.

Although in all fairness, you can give anyone any title you want. It only matters if it comes with a pay raise.

Ampt

Really? Project Engineer is that much more desireable?

its from two different companies

Robert Harvey

It suggests some degree of responsible leadership, or at least autonomy. Whereas Associate Developer suggests Apprentice.

user55340

@Ampt The word "senior" has a bit more value than the same title without.

Ampt

maybe unsurprisingly the Associate, Developer has about 30% more compensation...

Robert Harvey

6:15 PM

How could that be?

Ampt

much much bigger company

Robert Harvey

Well, like I said. Titles don't always mean much.

Ampt

so 5 years from now will that title difference make a huge difference to future employers?

user55340

When I was with Taos, the title given to all the contractors was "Member of Technical Staff" -- at SGI (my first contract), they were a bit offput on that title because that was the title given to the R&D people who just thought of ideas.

user55340

@Ampt None whatsoever.

Robert Harvey

6:16 PM

When a business card says "President, CEO and Chairman of the Board" on it, I always know that the company is very small.

Neophyte mistake, meant to make people seem more important than they actually are.

user55340

If the business card says "Guru of the cubicle" I know its a hipster place.

Ampt

@MichaelT but saying I did consulting with the world largest consulting company will right?

user55340

The thing the next employer will look at is where you where, what duties you had, and what you accomplished.

user55340

Everything else is fluff. The title helps them get an idea of where you stood on that relative pecking order within the company and how they should direct their questions.

user55340

If they title says "architect" they know to ask about the high level architecture and your golf handicap.

Ampt

6:19 PM

how high can your handicap go?

lmao

user55340

(was kind of joking about c2.com/cgi/wiki?ArchitectsPlayGolf and the truths behind it)

Ampt

I was joking that I'm terrible at golf

user55340

But thats just 'meh' - titles from other companies mean nothing to the next employer. It determines where you are in the pecking order at the company - nothing else that is really transferable.

user55340

At my former employer, "Team Lead" meant "Former coder who is now a secretary for the manager" -- but "Team Lead" at Netapp meant "Coder who goes to 25% more meetings and takes the key role in integrating software with other teams." At SGI tech support, "Team Lead" meant "person who is next in line to be manager, but still does all the work."

user55340

Sure you put the title down on the resume. Its expected layout. But all it indicates to the person in the next interview is the direction they should ask questions.

user55340

6:31 PM

See also c2.com/cgi/wiki?JobTitles - C2 Job Titles.

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