The Whiteboard

12:27 AM

@gnat did you really need to bubble this old one to the front just for a typo? :P Not that I'm complaining, great question with better answer; I tried to upvote it before realizing I already did long ago...

programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/163658/revisions

user20683

@JimmyHoffa yes because he's gnat (insert Ada compiler joke) we're walking, we're walking...

Jimmy Hoffa

...huh? @gnat wrote an Ada compiler?

...i am so confused

user20683

@JimmyHoffa GNAT is the Ada compiler under GPL

user20683

GNAT

GNAT is a free-software compiler for the Ada programming language which forms part of the GNU Compiler Collection. It supports all versions of the language, i.e. Ada 2012, Ada 2005, Ada 95 and Ada 83. Originally its name was an acronym that stood for GNU NYU Ada Translator, but that name no longer applies. The front-end and run-time are written in Ada. JGNAT is a GNAT version that compiles from the Ada programming language to Java bytecode. GNAT for dotNET is a GNAT version that compiles from the Ada programming language to Common Language Infrastructure for the .N...

Jimmy Hoffa

Oh yeah, I did hear a reference to the GNU Ada compiler a while back

user20683

12:42 AM

@JimmyHoffa if you've got a unix-like box handy, it's probably already installed

user20683

Ada's actually really impressive for its day.

user20683

powerful type system

user20683

very much Haskell as applied to structured programming

Jimmy Hoffa

1:27 AM

Yeah, my understanding was it's pretty interesting from some of the poking I did, though surely old school as hell and the only folks who write it are doing horrible things and being miserable

user20683

@JimmyHoffa it tends to get replaced by C++ for modern stuff

user20683

even in Avionics

user55340

2:38 AM

Gah...

user55340

4

Q: So are we ever getting the technological singularity

I´m still waiting for an AI robot that will pass the Turing test. I keep going back to http://www.a-i.com/ and nothing. I don´t know much about AI but, did anyone ever tried to make a genetic algorithm whose evolution algorithm itself evolves? Or how about one whose algorithm that makes the gen...

artificial-intelligence

user55340

Things you find from the days of old.

jmort253

4:44 AM

Hey @WorldEngineer, or another Programmers SE expert, can you take a look at this SO question? I flagged it for migration to this site, so I wanted to drop a link here.

0

Q: As a best practice, where should I put my database so I can easily update it?

I have a database that stores one table with five columns and around 100 rows. It's small. I am currently storing the db on the user's local drive (as an .mdf). Can I store the database on a file server and manage it from my PC? What would be the most effective way to manage the database? ...

vb.net

This does sort of seem like it could be a Whiteboarding question.

The op is new, but he's trying, and several of us have edited the question to clean it up and insert necessary details.

user20683

1:55 PM

@jmort253 I want a second opinion on that. It seems too unfocused and rough to me still.

Jimmy Hoffa

Yeah my thoughts exactly, I was about to suggest it be broken up

there's like 2 or 3 really good focused questions in there, starting with "If I have 5 columns and 100 rows in one table, do I need a database, or is another data storage technique more appropriate?" With a litany of statistics about the environment; like number of users, network latency

I have half a mind to write that question myself on P.SE and then just link PhilJFry to it, there would be some great answers

user20683

Basically it just boils down to "At what point do I need a database?"

user20683

from what I can tell

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer that would be wayy to broad though, his specific question is more of a "Given these constraints, what type of persistence technology should I use?" Which is very different because the standard RDBMS is but one persistence technology

user20683

yeah

Jimmy Hoffa

2:03 PM

(and I would actually not suggest it for him)

I have half a mind he's got static data, at which point it could go into an XML file

@PhilJFry chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/21/conversation/… little conversation I had with a fellow about this. I think you have some great questions and would get great answers on Programmers.stackexchange.com, just need to ask the questions separately and with details about your use case (Do you ever write updates to the 100 rows of data? Do you insert new rows?) — Jimmy Hoffa 15 secs ago

@WorldEngineer do you hear about the kentucky derby living in the south?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa not really

user20683

horse racing isn't really a thing the way football or nascar is

Jimmy Hoffa

ah

user20683

football (college in particular) is a huge huge deal

user20683

it might be in tennessee but in georgia no

user20683

2:12 PM

there are really like 4 souths

Jimmy Hoffa

And they all sound ridiculous

:)

kidding

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I have a flat California accent so what do I care?

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer well, I understand my wife got shit for being a foreigner when she lived in Alabama because she didn't have the accent (she's from Chicago)

user20683

@JimmyHoffa oh, that's just Alabama

user20683

they're...special

user20683

2:14 PM

giving Alabama grief is a Georgian pasttime

Jimmy Hoffa

Atlanta is particularly cosmopolitan I understand, I don't really think of it as being much similar to the rest of the south

user20683

@JimmyHoffa parts of Virginia

user20683

and parts of the Carolinas

Jimmy Hoffa

but (aside from the extremely creole bits) louisiana, mississippi, arkansas, and alabama are likely one of those 4 souths

they're pretty homogenous between them: Broad spread poverty, and a minimum of high-population-density areas

(or so goes the geography in my head)

user20683

Louisiana/Texas, Arkansas-Alabama, The coastal deep south and then appalachia

Jimmy Hoffa

2:17 PM

tvg.com Everyone's in the office just in case of a fire, so I say to the internet today, surf's up..

user20683

florida doesn't count

Jimmy Hoffa

Florida just has part of alabama, and then it turns into the midwest before turning into cuba

user20683

more or less

Jimmy Hoffa

My sister in law lives an hour outside of Charlotte, been there a hand full of times and quite enjoyed the culture, reminded me of what I'd imagine Austin is like only less so

user20683

Asheville is nice

user20683

2:22 PM

sort of college/hippie

user20683

good place to go vacationing in the south if you want as close to a fusion of colorado and the south as possible

Jimmy Hoffa

heh yeah I've actually heard that before now that you mention it, people compared it to boulder

my sister in law is smack half between charlotte and there, maybe next time I go see here we'll try and spend some time there

user20683

it's California - the wealth

user20683

a good chunk of the gaming.SE high reps live in Charlotte

Jimmy Hoffa

It's very interesting, through the 90's there was an enormous influx of Californians moving to Colorado, definitely changed some things, specifically they stopped building houses for less than $400k... :| interesting how California wealth can float around the country changing places

Changed some things for the better I'm sure, depending on your personal political bent

definitely a boon for the local economy

Jimmy Hoffa

6:11 PM

..slowly wrapping my head around macros, ripping at them all morning... I made a macro that lets you do haskells lambda notation with single parameters.. and been trying at multiple parameters... they are indeed pretty cool, feels strange to think through

Jimmy Hoffa

6:53 PM

Yay, haskell lambdas for clojure, I made a macro

rwong

10:00 PM

I'm in need of information on how to implement the "Controller" part of the "Blackboard Pattern". I have a concrete need from work, but there's nothing I can share (due to patents) and I had a hard time coming up with a suitable analogy.

I already have found a number of high-value references, namely http://hillside.net/plop/plop97/Proceedings/lalanda.pdf , Slide 10 of http://www.slideshare.net/tcab22/blackboard-pattern-presentation ,
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/451326/Type-safe-blackboard-property-bag ,
http://www.andypatterns.com/index.php/blog/blackboard_architectural_pattern/

Most modern references are able to point out that the decades-old Blackboard System can be broken down into several architectural patterns; these sub-patterns are more widely known in modern times than the old one. The sub-patterns are Dependency Injection, Mediator, etc.

However, there is a critical part of Blackboard Pattern, called "Controller", which is not an architectural pattern but rather a Artificial Intelligence design pattern. The references point to Forward-chaining, Backward-chaining and Opportunistic-reasoning as the method of implementation. (Each has its own Wikipedia article). But that still doesn't teach me how I can implement this part.

Lacking a concrete example, I'm not sure how this question could be asked on P.SE.

There are also a few discussions on SO and P.SE,
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132995/modern-java-implementation-of-blackboard-pattern
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1204667/anyone-have-thoughts-on-using-the-blackboard-pattern-in-this-way

(ironically, the discussion appears to be more in-depth than some online resources I can find.)

gnat

10:39 PM

@JimmyHoffa of course not, I wouldn't bump an old question with such a trivial edit. Thing is, it was already bumped by a new answer so I simply piggybacked it to fix the title

Transcript for