The Whiteboard - 2013-05-06

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10:17 AM

-6

Q: Should StackOverflow run a programmers' matrimonial service to prevent marriage-fraud?

My question may seem a little odd and long,but my grievance is genuine.And I hope the top-moderators and owners of StackOverflow would consider it.This is related to StackOverflow but not a direct programming-related question.I posted it in Meta but seems like people are not available there to an...

fantastic question, worth reading and re-reading

3 hours later…

user55340

1:36 PM

@gnat Alas, it appears to be 10k only now...

user55340

I can relax on the weekend now... I finally got the Fanatic badge... wait, you get a calendar when you click the days visited? Another one of the secret SE features.

user55340

Instead of the "Breaking the law" song... its "Raking the Lawn..." which is not against the law.

user55340

2:16 PM

I was so excited to see some blue in chat... that meant someone asked a perl question... conceptional perl questions can be fun... and then it turned out to be a noob. And that made me sad.

user41796

@MichaelT - our condolences?

user41796

Oh, friendly note to everyone - go hit the close review queue. We still have 13 sitting in the queue and I've used up all of my votes for the day. :-)

user55340

@GlenH7 Out of votes... 9 hours to go.

user41796

although it seems my reminder is a bit pointless since @MichaelT & @MadKeithV are about to max out their votes too. :-)

user41796

Just looked at the stats and overlayed based upon who is in the room.

user55340

2:19 PM

And I only see 1 in the queue.

user41796

Mine still shows 13, but it may have frozen me out. Dunno

stats and overlayed?

@GlenH7 I see 18; whoa.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa step on it, already! Max out like the rest of the cool kids

user41796

Mine is frozen then; showing 13 still

user55340

0

Q: Modify then sell another person's code

I am working, with a co-author, on a data modeling toolbox that will someday be sold. Part of the functionality is the extremely common PCA, which we are doing in a more robust way. Thus, we need a PCA function that has the usual algorithm with some modifications. For non-commercial peer-review a...

user55340

2:26 PM

Gah.

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/28855 I feel like requesting an explanation of how these technology's relate is a good question, but I'm not sure if it fits SE... Is that a question format that's ever ok (granted the way this guy formulates it is terrible) imagine:

"What is the relationship between AJAX, JQuery and Node.JS?" <-- is that a type of question that is ok?

(my example isn't that guys question, just trying to condense the concept of the question format I'm imagining)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa If you are uncertain of it, skip it.

Well I'm relatively certain what he's asking, what I'm not certain about is it that particular type of question is even acceptable, I think it might not be

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - I agree with MichaelT; punt if you're not certain. Nothing says you have to vote on every single Q that rolls through. There are quite a few where I don't feel strongly enough about it and leave it up for the community to decide

I know that, but if that type of question I'm referring to is acceptable, I want to work on that guys question (as formulated right now it's awful)

user41796

2:29 PM

if the question is truly as you describe it, then I would say yes "What is the relationship between AJAX, JQuery and Node.JS?" is on topic as it's answerable; could cite references; and it shouldn't create a flame war debate

Is it bad just because the answer is a simple google and bit of research on each one individually? I can imagine the relationships between a couple technologies bringing out particular details

Ok great, I'll have a hand and cleaning up the guys question then

user41796

probably ought to scope it to a degree regarding underlying mechanics; syntax; side-effects; etc...

user41796

your concern may come from a number of questions like "I've used Foo, Fiz, and Baz. Foo, Fiz, and Baz suck because of .... Is there a Bar?" Which is really a resource question in disguise with a basis for the future comparison of Bar

Yeah, the guy said he can research them individually just fine, but it's a common problem we all have exploring a new technology space, there's all these individual pieces and we can read endlessly about each one, but which you use when vs the others and why takes a little more guidance than just what each one can do

user41796

Those are marginal. I don't like them, but I've seen them be tolerated

user41796

2:32 PM

if he already knows them; has researched them; and is having trouble drawing them together; then that's a good Q for P.SE

Everyone know there's a bar and it sucks, what he really wants is a Quux which is what's actually wrong with the question because he doesn't even know about Quux

user41796

exactly So then we could say "two guys walk into a Quux"

How do you guys pronounce quux? In my head it's something like qoo-wux

user41796

And the review panel isn't frozen - it updated to show 16 Q's needing close review

sans one, I just stambled #5 on; burned.

user41796

2:36 PM

@JimmyHoffa - that's the same pronunciation I'm using. But I wouldn't consider my point of view all that definitive

user41796

I still think we should get a little firework display when we anchor the 5th close vote on a negatively voted question

user55340

'kwä ucks'

@MichaelT really? That seems odd 'kwea' without an e or a?

My recollection is the umlauted a sounds like eh as in meh

0

Q: Migration path to Code Review please?

I know we don't want too many migration paths, and we definitely don't want ones that are likely to leech away our good questions, but I think of all the technology related websites, the scope of Code Review actually has likely the least overlap with us of any others. No part of our site scope i...

feature-request migration

How many close votes do I get per day? I've never run out before.

...feels like I might run out, this queue is clogged

@GlenH7 Dammit! Maxed out my reviews today. THE FLOODGATES, THEY HAVE OPENED? Anyone else noticing that the drive for quality here in the past months is starting to pay off?

> Thank you for reviewing 20 Close Votes today; come back in 9 hours to continue reviewing.

answers my question

user55340

2:56 PM

@JimmyHoffa Its the 'a' as in 'father'... though thats not quite right... hmm... (I was basing that off the qua from latin and my reconciliation from HS)

ehhh, that doesn't jive with me.. now I have to look it up

user55340

Lets go with kwŭ cks

user55340

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_pronunciation

user55340

If you try to cast a close vote in the first posts review queue and fail (because of out of votes), it still counts that you've reviewed it.

user55340

@ThomasOwens given these two, meta posts, shouldn't they have the same red tag? And I think deferred is the better one...

3:04 PM

@MichaelT that is very confusing.. german e sounds like american a, german a by default sounds like ah in fallen, umlaut e turns it into e like eve, and umlaut a turns it into eh is how I recall it from my german classes (many years ago), if umlaut a sounds like father, then it sounds identical to how a sounds by default in german. fahren, haben, machen, all a as in father sounding a's, none have umlauts

user55340

0

Q: Migration path to Code Review please?

I know we don't want too many migration paths, and we definitely don't want ones that are likely to leech away our good questions, but I think of all the technology related websites, the scope of Code Review actually has likely the least overlap with us of any others. No part of our site scope i...

feature-request status-deferred migration

user55340

-1

Q: Can we please add Project Management as a migration path from Programmers?

I just saw Can we please add http://sqa.stackexchange.com as a migration target? and in reading Tim Post's answer, I understand why SQA, or DBA would both make for poor migration paths away from programmers. However, his thoughts only made my belief that Project Management should be a migration ...

feature-request status-declined migration

user55340

@JimmyHoffa You've also got to add a little bit of my regional accent in there...

user55340

Northern cities vowel shift

The Northern cities vowel shift is a chain shift in the sounds of some vowels in the dialect region of American English known as the Inland North. Geography The name of the shift comes from the region where it occurs, a broad swath of the United States around the Great Lakes, beginning some west of Albany and extending west through Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Madison, and north to Green Bay; the shift also affects a corridor of cities along Interstate 55 southwest of Chicago as far as St. Louis. William Labov, a linguist at the University of Penns...

Do you have the she-caah-go a?

user55340

3:08 PM

Its the "Lowering of /ɔ/" as in 'saw' which has the tongue in a lower position.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa shaw ca go.

That pronunciation does sound familiar.. though iduno why, it's not the pronunciation I've heard from my wife's family out there, the identifier I found in the chicago accents I always heard was the a becomes a short a-eh sounding thing, "baggy" sounds like "baeggy" and chicago being she-caeh-go

user41796

@MadKeithV - yes, I've noticed it. Or at least chosen to perceive that it's there. From a meta point of view, this is what you would want / expect a community to do especially after a big shift. The "old guard" has faded back a bit and the "new guard" is now stepping up and providing the structure that newcomers need to understand the site.

user41796

please note that "old guard" and "new guard" are very loosely used in this case. Every community undergoes a degree of change as time passes. And I'm explicitly not trying to make any commentary regarding the "old P.SE" and the "new P.SE". That discussion has been hashed out to death

to death

user41796

3:23 PM

JoshK's participation arc is a good example of what I'm getting at. He stepped in; provided moderation and balance to the site. His life changed and wasn't able to participate as much so he moved on. Newer members of the site step up to fill the role that was being previously provided. And in this case, multiples have stepped up to help out

user41796

There's a french phrase from the revolution(s) to the effect of when one brother falls, three more step into his place.

@MichaelT did you see my macro? What fun. I started getting the hang of them on Saturday, when I finally remembered what homoiconic means and realized inside the macro I get to just map/cons the syntax however I want

user55340

user image

It's missing the section for "go crazy" where the arrow just spirals in every direction from it

user41796

Props @MichaelT! Exactly what I was trying to convey. P.SE has had an influx from insiders => veterans. And I've noticed quite a few Inbound => Insider migrations too

3:26 PM

probably ends somewhere near the other missing section "Banned"

@JimmyHoffa How do you think I ended up with "mad" in my handle?

user41796

@MadKeithV - industry veteran. duh. :-)

user55340

@MadKeithV I was thinking "mad madam mim" now that you mentioned it (a cow-orker was talking about disney movies he hasn't seen...)

@GlenH7 That or "mutually assured destruction"

Kieth and V are in an arms race of which there can be no winners?

3:29 PM

I've been a project manager and a functional manager. Just let me code and leave me alone! ;-)

@MichaelT I don't think so. Mostly because fewer, if any, questions should be migrated to PM. The difference is that software project-specific PM questions are on-topic on Programmers. Having a migration target may make that seem to not be the case. However, code review questions are all off-topic and would go on Code Review.

@ThomasOwens I think he was just pointing out I'm the dingbat who asked the same dumb question twice

@JimmyHoffa Not the same question for. I'm personally opposed to a migration path to PM, but would support a path to CR.

Ah

OK. The caf is open and my teleconference is over. brb

3:31 PM

CR has been around so long (and I was participating there long before here) I have on multiple occasions forgotten it's beta\

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - CR and Workplace are still beta, which blocks them from being a valid migration target, AFAIK

I know it's beta, I just don't think of it as beta.. beta's are normally axed if they don't meet reqs in like ~6 months or some such right? but there are a few exceptions where communities sprung up but just didn't meet reqs

user55340

It's likely a good thing to an extent that workplace isn't a migration target here - we would likely migrate too easily there.

I think the key being where the scopes have no overlap

user41796

IMO, it's a bit frustrating because I like the efficiency that a few more migration targets would provide. But it's just as easy to flag those when they come up. Easy way to bump your flag counts... :-)

user55340

3:33 PM

I've only got 243 helpful so far...

@JimmyHoffa No. Most betas stay betas for at least a year.

@YannisRizos isn't there a relative cut-off where they axe them though?

I thought someone told me this at one point

@JimmyHoffa No.

> 1005 days in beta

user55340

Oh, the App Store area 51 proposal got closed because it hadn't reached commitment levels necessary in 2 years.

user55340

187

Proposed Q&A site for developers who have questions about the technical and business aspects of submitting apps to App Stores and Markets. (Typically for mobile, but not exclusively limited to.)

Closed before being launched.

3:35 PM

Money is the oldest one. It's finally graduating (sometime soon).

user41796

@MichaelT - I suspect that closure is what prompted Anna to post her meta question a few weeks back regarding the possibility of allowing app store questions within P.SE. SE may have been discussing axing it and trying to find it a home since it wasn't going to light up

user55340

It was closed April 11th. Anna's post was Apr 4th... so a week before. Makes sense.

user55340

The highest voted app store question still makes me look at it funny...

user55340

area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30702/app-stores/30703#30703

user55340

It needed 13 more committers - 187/200 - and it would have gone to the next state.

user41796

3:42 PM

Oy. My day just went from mildly bad to really bad. Windows software updates (I think) have trashed my ability to build our main solution. <sigh> At least I can do some research while working through the clean / build / tweak / rinse & repeat cycles.

Hell, just to help P.SE stay cleaner we should have gathered the 13..

@GlenH7 builds that are complex/take a long time have got to be one of the #1 detractors from productivity...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - nah; the response to Anna's question was pretty clear. The app store questions just don't fit at P.SE

@GlenH7 so do a bunch of other questions people ask here anyways

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - oh, oh how I know. A lot my rep is due to our build...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I think it would never have gotten far... there are a few answers "ask apple", "ask google", "ask your local lawyers" and everything would have been dup'ed to them.

user55340

3:45 PM

And the rest 'closed as NARQ or TL or TS'

user41796

We've got .... ~300 projects scattered across our codebase. Most of them live within our "build all" solution, which is the one that's DOA right now. I've been living in one of our smaller solutions recently, so I should have known this price-to-pay was coming due

user55340

Should I offer a free version with In-App-Purchase upgrade option or a free and a paid version? [closed]
This is a marketing question. I would say that it sounds off topic, although I wish it weren't.

user41796

@MichaelT - it's a difficult balance. I think the community benefits from having (some) freelance / business questions put in the mix. Devs need to understand the broader concepts of the business world that pays our salaries. OTOH, we end up with questions like that one where you just shake your head a bit.

user55340

+10 votes: Do more people purchase / download applications from the iOS App Store on the weekend or during the work week?

user55340

There certainly is a demand for App store help, but I'm not sure that SE is the right place for such questions.

user41796

3:49 PM

back on my rant - it really doesn't help when we haven't standardized what flavors of VStudio we're using as well as which toolkits are required. Part of the problem is a lack of awareness for what others have installed on their systems or what comes by default with various VStudio levels

user55340

0

Q: What is a name for when the sales team drives development?

It's a common issue to see a company's sales team promise new features in order to close a sale. Many times these new features are still in development or are still being designed. Sometimes features are sold before the development team even knows about them. Is there a word for this phenomenon?...

release-management sales product-features feature-creep

user55340

"Monday". Alternatively, "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", and "Friday". — jcmeloni 3 mins ago

user41796

4:11 PM

@MichaelT - I couldn't resist kicking that hornets nest.

5:10 PM

-2

Q: My account changed suddenly

For a year and 4 months, my account was: http://stackoverflow.com/users/1025285/premkumar It was working until last Friday. Then, on Saturday, I logged in but - although the profile information is correct - my user id and reputation were changed. My new user id is: http://stackoverflow.com...

support user-accounts

+18 before the answer, -2 in about 10m after the answer appeared...

@YannisRizos am I to understand a standard zend on apache website will oft involve every request causing 50-100mb of runtime to be loaded?

@JimmyHoffa What's a "standard zend on apache website"? What gets loaded on each request highly depends on apache's version and build (apache on windows is a... f'ing mess), and how mod_php is setup (cgi? fastcgi?).

@YannisRizos *nix, and let's say I know nothing else, is there a relatively common configuration that would have such result?

@JimmyHoffa Yes.

the general concept doesn't sound utterly ridiculous to you? (not knowing PHP at all, that any web site would do that sounds ridiculous)

5:23 PM

This doesn't have anything to do with PHP. It's how Apache works.

Ah

Ok. That's nuts. So moral of the story, you would avoid PHP for any high load websites?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I think you can put a period after the 2nd capital "P".

No. Moral of the story is avoid Apache's default configuration for any high load websites.

Also, if you are relying on a single Apache instance for anything high load, you are doing it wrong and you deserve all the grief you are going to get.

user55340

-13

Q: Take a pic of yourself and upload it right away

Cool feature request: use the getUserMedia() API to take a picture using the webcam and upload it right away. Sometimes I want to share my bearded face, or a cool thing hanging around in my office. Having the webcam integrated in the chat, using a recent and fun API could be really nice.

feature-request chat

user55340

There are non nefarious uses for this (many do this with a Git commit hook so their facial expression is captured upon committing) - but I'm not sure that it wouldn't add more noise than value to chat. I personally think it would be hilarious, but I'm sure some would rather not have the additional noise. — Tim Post 1 hour ago

user55340

5:26 PM

Gah... think of that git hook.

6:38 PM

@YannisRizos Apache I thought used to be known for it's good performance metrics.. I'm guessing it's brain damaged compared to IIS these days...

That whole apache world is so strange to me

People don't generally stick with apache anymore do they? There's something else more common these days for non-IIS high load web apps?

@JimmyHoffa Apache was never known for its performance. It's (and always was) known for its modularity, stability and huge ecosystem. IIS is a toy compared to Apache.

sorry, I'm referring only to the web server

@JimmyHoffa Me too.

Huh, yeah I guess I really don't know anything about apache

What's the "huge ecosystem" ? I mean, it's just some hand full of languages and that's all, no?

@JimmyHoffa Ah, yes, I meant its web server specific ecosystem. For example, there's a huge variety of load balancers.

6:42 PM

I don't really understand what a web server will do for you other than act as an interoperable endpoint to tie into various programming languages, of which I presume everyone sticks with a hand full for web programming

load balancers? like software ones?

@JimmyHoffa Yes?

Ah, everywhere I've ever worked load balancing is done by an appliance, never really thought about doing it in software

doesn't that create a lot of overhead right where it's trying to mitigate overhead?

I guess I could imagine that the same way I think of active-active sql clusters perhaps. Same endpoint receives the request, but various machines may actually execute it

@JimmyHoffa The principle is the same.

Apache has two problems: 1) the default configuration sucks. 2) configuring Apache is extremely challenging (at first. then it gets worse).

If you are looking for a fast out of the box web server, try nginx.

I'm not doing anything with it, new jobs front-end is apache/zend, I'm just trying to understand a little about that since we've seen some performance issues

Nothing I'll ever touch though. Just a curiosity.

Are you using the threaded or the non threaded version?

I don't remember which one Zend server installs by default.

6:53 PM

Does the non-threaded version all run in a single apache thread?

Yes. There's a hybrid mode that mixes multi-processing with multi-threading, but no idea if it's on by default (in the zend specific setup).

We're using the threaded one then. One of the known issues they've had is something like hitting X number of threads and the whole thing going unresponsive

There's a max threads conf value somewhere...

You're probably using MPM (the hybrid mode). ThreadsPerChild is a likely culprit.

7:11 PM

What is with the close queue, I plunked 20 down, a few of you others are all out of queue votes too, and there's 4 more in queue already.. Seemed for the longest time I could barely find anything in the review queue

@JimmyHoffa No idea, I avoid the review queues. Not really mod friendly.

user41796

I see 12 in there now. And there's 6 on the leaderboard that have maxed out their close votes for the day.

yeah for sure. Just makes me wonder though, do we have less people monitoring them, or more bad questions lately, both?

user41796

@YannisRizos - you should have some fun with the close review queue then today... ;-)

user41796

12 => 0 in no time at all...

7:14 PM

Yeah, maybe today's the day to go on a Moderampage

user41796

it's been running fairly heavy all weekend long. Sat & Sun had high counts although I didn't have time to review them all.

user55340

My review queue shows 8, but I'm still several hours from getting more close votes.

8:03 PM

This guy must be a member of one of the QA teams I've worked with...

0

Q: Debugging crashing of JSP page

My JSP page is crashing; sometimes server respone is 30 s and sometimes it's 300s. How to debug this kind of situations efficiently?

"There was an error." yes, detailed information, very helpful.

user55340

8:28 PM

@ChrisF Thank you for your work cleaning up migrations and your multi-site modness.

@MichaelT note the tags

0

Q: want to learn a surface amount of command prompt language

I am working on fiddling with some LaTeX options in TeXworks, and am getting hung up on command prompt language. It is difficult to find the meaning of terms I am looking for, and not sure if there are any tutorials matching the passive learning found at Code Academy. For instance, I find it hard...

learning windows command-line elearning

user55340

The command line options are still likely the same... and you can find the man pages online.

...for windows?

user55340

many times, yes.

OH you mean for latex

user55340

8:39 PM

Yep. Thus the suggestion to do a search for 'man page tex' to get those arguments.

I was thinking forall. windows ∋ programs

user55340

I have a few common apps installed on my windows machine... perl for example. Exactly the same command line arguments as the unix version.

user55340

windows on a pitchfork of programs... hmm... (yes, I know its real meaning)

@MichaelT Creep Features

user55340

@psr I was the one that wrote the answer on feature creep...

8:48 PM

@MichaelT ?

user55340

11

Q: Where does the the term "feature creep" come from?

There is a decent Wikipedia article on the "Feature Creep", but it doesn't state an origin. A Google search only leads to some vague article claiming "Earl Rich" coined the term, but there isn't much backup for that claim. There is a Dilbert comic from 2001 on the subject, but the tone seems to i...

terminology history features

user55340

I will certainly say the other answer is also very worthy.

9:34 PM

Never heard 'featureism' before, I always heard it called 'featuritis'

user41796

@MichaelT - I'm afraid I have to down vote your feature creep answer for implying that anything could possibly be wrong with emacs.

haha, and you're a visual studio guy aren't you @GlenH7?

user41796

Visual studio suffers _greatly_ from feature creep. Emacs is a gift to the programming world and therefore immune from such sniveling terms.

user41796

I work within Visual Studio simply because no other IDE presents as many features with the .NET stack

Though accurate, I was more going to comment on the fact that the only other reasonable place to go for those who appreciate the tooling of visual studio is emacs, it's my home away from .NET

user41796

9:39 PM

I'm in VS2012 now. There are a number of benefits to it; but they seriously effed over the interface. I hate them for that

yeah, everyone does. if you use TFS like I do, that's the absolute worst part. Why in god's name did they decide to take away the developer-style informative UIs for interacting with TFS and replace it with that user-friendly "We know what information you want to see" garbage

user41796

I think they promoted the guy who oversaw the Zune interface

I can get over the different look of 2012, I bloody hate the different functionality bits though. The only changed functionality I like is the find's auto-highlighting

user41796

worst case of 2nd system effect ever

I just wish we didn't have to wait another 2 years for them to fix it. I also wish I could finally get away from .NET, as well as I know it; I'm tired of all of it's failings. There is literally no better desktop application development framework out there, but this server stuff it's become so prevalent in is really showing it's weaknesses compared to Erlang and the like..

user55340

9:55 PM

@GlenH7 You haven't seen my other emacs disses then...

user55340

Apr 25 at 16:42, by MichaelT

emacs is an operating system pretending to be a {fill in the blank} - it can do everything

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