The Whiteboard

1:13 AM

@psr I think the same thing. Regardless, we've all had to work with some weener who needs to practically be cattle-prodded to actually properly analyze something and give an informed advisement

psr

1:49 AM

Yes, and it's good the answer isn't narrowly tailored to just that situation, but none of the answers started with "Step 0 - make sure you aren't the arrogant programmer".

Your answers does work pretty well even if that's true, though.

gnat

8:49 AM

@ChrisF would you mind giving this question a thought? It somehow feels quite complicated to me and I'd appreciate learning your perspective on that...

7

Q: Should "Programming with Kids" have a canonical post?

Questions like this one have me wondering if introducing kids to programming isn't a good candidate for doing a "one post to rule them all" that gathers all of the good ideas we've accumulated on the subject and curates them in one place rather than it coming up again and again and different reco...

ChrisF

It will have to be later today.

But I agree with the proposal in principle. The main stumbling block would be how to best merge the existing answers into one.

gnat

9:28 AM

@ChrisF great to hear that, thanks!

@MichaelT by the way, upon checking votes->downvotes sub tab in my profile, I can see that about 8000 posts of these 15000 are now deleted. Kind of makes me a bit more confident that most of these were justified...

3

A: Could it be that 124 posts I upvoted are all deleted?

You have up-voted 124 deleted posts. Such votes do show up in your totals, and also count toward various badges; they have the additional advantage of not counting toward the daily voting limit. They don't show up on your profile's votes tab, because that would mean showing you links to deleted ...

Have to admit, it's not quite comfortable to feel like a pale horse rider, but oh well

Pale Horse Rider - When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. — gnat Jun 8 '12 at 11:17

ChrisF

12:58 PM

@gnat - Choose one answer - I suggest the current highest voted one - and merge the other answers into that. When that's done raise a flag/meta question and the mods can delete the other answers, CW the question and answer and apply the lock.

Jimmy Hoffa

2:08 PM

@gnat Alternatively the causal relationship might be more directed than that; perhaps a mod is just following you deleting the stuff you downvote, so your down votes caused the deletion rather than the deletion validating your down votes. Isn't interpreting statistics fun! :D

@MichaelT root.cern.ch/drupal/content/cling

and that's not the only one I've seen, surprisingly people have made REPL's for near any language

they may not be a part of the standard toolchain, but they're totally usable towards the purpose of developing with a REPL. There's REPLs for C#, surely Java, most anything. And multiple implementations often times. neugierig.org/software/c-repl

Holy crap that's funny, I didn't even realize; that C REPL is written in haskell :D

5

A: Is there a REPL for C programming?

Seems like the code of c-repl can now be found at a Github repository. It seems to be a dead project, though (last commit was 3 years ago), so I'd suggest looking into alternatives as well: CINT ccons Cling, successor of CINT, but only supports C++ (which might or might not be a problem, depend...

user55340

2:30 PM

> I've been offered a job at a local company which I cannot disclose for obvious reasons, and I've been here for almost 4 months. It is a junior web development role. When I got this job, I got an empty piece of paper for my job description and they pretty much summed up what I'll be doing by calling it "website maintenance".

user55340

Welcome to IT.

Jimmy Hoffa

haha

Ampt

2:43 PM

Is that normal for people to take jobs with no descriptions?

gnat

@JimmyHoffa "mod following" made me think, maybe I should twit my delete votes. :) If seriously, I think doing stuff like that, especially on scale of thousands (even hundreds, maybe even dozens) posts could bring moderator into quite a trouble. Taking into account that all post deletions are visible and rather easy to track for 10Kers, this would be sooner or later (rather sooner) discovered and challenged...

I for one wouldn't hesitate to raise call for removal if I would notice that

105

Q: Handling Calls to Remove a Moderator

Stack Exchange has some of the best Moderators around — seriously — and that is due in no small part to the communities who scrutinize and vote in our Moderator elections. We have a rather formal process for electing moderators, but up until now the process for removing a moderator has been quit...

discussion moderators

I think the only safe way for them is to keep unilateral / not clearly motivated / documented mod actions at minimum, basically mostly act on flags (btw that's why I don't want to be a mod myself)

Ampt

I would venture a guess that if the company doesn't have the inclination to make one when they are trying to attract someone, they sure wouldn't after they already have what the want, which is someone to fill the position

user41796

How to handle arrogant programmers:

user41796

theregister.co.uk/2013/07/16/torvalds_potty_mouty_fight_back

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Take them to task on the linux-kernel-mailing-list? I kind of like this idea. Next time a colleague is annoying me, I'll just spam that mailing list with a tersely worded grievance at my colleague

user55340

2:51 PM

@Ampt Its more along the lines of "be flexible"... I mean... I'm a ~~java programmer~~ oracle dba (and solaris sysadmin).

Ampt

I'm all for flexibility, but stepping into a role with no defined objectives is something different...

user55340

Trying to say "I only do XYZ" does not match any reality I've seen in IT over the past years. I've been a web programmer working on a stand alone software, I am a java programmer doing ruby, I'm a java programmer doing oracle dba and sysadmin...

user41796

I like Scott Ambler's essay on generalizing specialist for those reasons. Added link.

Ampt

Ok, but that's not the point I'm raising at all. He wasnt told he would be XYZ and ended up doing ABC. He wasn't told ANYTHING

gnat

@GlenH7 in my experience, this was basically a function of how much you are being paid, relative to your value...

> I do it partly (mostly) because it's who I am, and partly because I honestly despise being subtle or "nice". The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle", and I mean it.

user55340

2:54 PM

@Ampt I'd contend that his employer is more honest with him than most are then.

gnat

...Once I've been paid monthly about 1/1600 of what our 4-month (and rather hard one) project has been sold for to customer, I passed fucks around so frequently and loud that guys from other rooms (located far away, behind closed doors) came to my boss complaining. He in turn, came to me and politely asked me if I could stop. And I in turn was telling him to shut the fuck off. And he shut off...

...This all changed after I got like 5x raise. I began watching my language

Ampt

@MichaelT I'm a Java/ruby programmer turned embedded systems programmer, I get being flexible

but not being given any direction seems like asking for failure

user41796

@gnat Ah, the joys of walking up the corporate ladder

user55340

@Ampt It goes both ways. The employee also needs to say "where am I going?" in those cases.

gnat

@GlenH7 exactly! one doesn't know the price while dreaming of a raise. And the price is not that low :)

user55340

2:57 PM

The "only" way to get into the "only doing one thing" is really to get out of IT and into big tech engineering (not consulting). Being in internal IT (development) still means you need to be IT and able to fix things that happen as an IT person.

2

user55340

Once you are an engineer in a big company working on the core product, then you only do that. The key is big company - if its a small one, you still become a jack of all trades. If you are in IT, you are a jack of all trades no matter what your job title says.

Ampt

@MichaelT I don't think that we are talking about the same thing here.

user41796

@Ampt That may be, but the chat has devolved into a bunch of gray beards reminiscing about earlier days. Just ride it out, we'll be back to normal soon enough. :-P

user55340

My previous employer, my job description (I read the contract) was amusingly incorrect compared to what I actually did. When I was at Netapp, my job description was "IT development and any associated tasks and responsibilities" - which means almost anything. For that matter, I was hired as a perl developer and became a java one (note, I was hired before 2000, java was still a "that would be nice" then).

user55340

At the flopped startup, I was an "operations and perl guy" - which meant that I did most anything needed to be done.

user55340

3:07 PM

... shoot, last night I saw the sysadmins and the CEO here painting the walls.

Ampt

@GlenH7 Hahaha duly noted

@MichaelT I'm not disagreeing with you, so I'm not sure what you are trying to assert. I agree, in most jobs you don't do exactly what is on the job description, that said, I feel that not having one at all is asking for trouble, especially out of a junior dev

user55340

There are a couple options for someone who doesn't like their job description and where the career is developing. Talk to HR, get a new job description, or get a new job.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt I would call it a hell of a lot more common than you might realize.. Perhaps you've worked at some better shops than many of us have heh

user55340

The only times I've seen a narrow job description that is actually followed is when I have been in Customer Support or Engineering (well, I've never been on that side myself, but the people there stick to what they are doing because it is company revenue - their managers make sure they don't waste their time setting up servers and the like).

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa Haha maybe I've been lucky so far, but I've never walked into a job and had no clue what the hell was going on

Jimmy Hoffa

3:13 PM

@Ampt I have.

user55340

Now, I'm a consultant and all my hours are billable, and so anything is game. And you know what, billing a client to learn how to do something is extra good on the books.

Rajan Rawal

Hello guys...

Need Guidance

any one please

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Consultant? So you like get to pop around different clients and projects every couple months?

Always thought consulting would be fun.

Dynamic

@RajanRawal Ask the question, I'm sure somebody can help

Jimmy Hoffa

Go ahead and ask your question @RajanRawal, there's a few of us around

Rajan Rawal

3:15 PM

ok then

user55340

@JimmyHoffa A week ago, I was working on a linux enviroment java app, moving some code from postgress to couchdb and tossing in internationalization too. Then I became an oracle dba on solaris.

Jimmy Hoffa

Oo that does sound fun

Rajan Rawal

I need to create an application which is basically an android application and which will be storing all data locally and when ever your goes online he can sync or we can say upload those data to server

I need to create android application for that

Jimmy Hoffa

Oh well, I do enjoy the bigger picture you get from having a single application you work on for a couple years (when it's at least decently architected and you get to have a say in the architecture and implementation)

Dynamic

@RajanRawal So what's your question?

Jimmy Hoffa

3:18 PM

Always a cool feeling when you get a problem or feature and you think through the whole big system and can come up with a perfect little change in the right spot to fit the functionality just right that changes the whole system in a certain way

Would be hard to get that with a smaller time period, a lot more blackbox work which is interesting in it's own way

@RajanRawal Are you a professional experienced software engineer?

Ampt

@RajanRawal are you looking for how to develop an application? Or how to design the system? or how to upload data??

Rajan Rawal

Yes, a php professional but have not work for android so want to understand

Jimmy Hoffa

@RajanRawal developer.android.com/training/basics/firstapp/index.html

Rajan Rawal

I want to understand the way to sync local data to mysql database

Dynamic

@RajanRawal Usually Android apps are written in Java.

Rajan Rawal

3:21 PM

yes I know that

Ampt

well I would assume there are sockets involved

Rajan Rawal

ok

socket programming right?

Dynamic

I'd say read through what @JimmyHoffa gave you and then you might want to get a book...

Ampt

@RajanRawal developer.android.com/reference/java/net/Socket.html

user55340

Typically, one doesn't connect to mysql from android, but rather android - web proxy - database.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:22 PM

@RajanRawal sourceforge.net/projects/mysqlodata

Dynamic

Android is a completely different beast

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt socket? pfleh. He wants an odata server in PHP and an odata client in android

of which I'm sure there are available libs for both

thorsten müller

Haven't done this with Android, but for an iPhone App we just had a Ruby on Rails backend and the clsses on the iPhone just acted like a browser calls for stuff

Rajan Rawal

Ok Ok, but just want a rough idea regarding that how would I be uploading local data to server database and keep a sync between then

them

thorsten müller

I didn't do the iPhone part, but what i have seen from the code it was rather simple

Ampt

3:23 PM

@RajanRawal use google drive?

Rajan Rawal

but what if when offline?

Jimmy Hoffa

@RajanRawal pray

thorsten müller

There are somehow two questions, the upload (what kind of data? form input/text or binary?)

Ampt

You want to transfer data when you're offline?

Dynamic

@RajanRawal plus.google.com/+AndroidDevelopers/posts/G6YXn3t9Lqz

Ampt

3:24 PM

I think you have a misunderstanding about how the internet works...

thorsten müller

And the sync part. Sync several devices? That's more a job on the backend

Rajan Rawal

ok ok ok

let me tell you in some detail

first data store for any system is database right? so I would be storing android app user data in local phone database and then when user get online ( say wifi or mobile data network on) he would be able to upload those local data to server database. The same user will be using one web application based on PHP, so when he is having enough time to spend he can work on web app, and when in hurry he'll be using android app, so at end of day he will be uploading local data to server database

user55340

Have you looked at local storage in html5? diveintohtml5.info/storage.html

user55340

And the associated offline web app diveintohtml5.info/offline.html

thorsten müller

At least some tips you should get from this similar question: stackoverflow.com/questions/14789451/…

0

Q: How to Connect a Webservice to an Android Application

I am new to web services and I want to make a RESTful web service, and connect it to an Android application. I would like the steps or a tutorial on how to do this. I started to create my service using this link This link gives steps to create web service but I can't get why it is using entity ...

java android rest

Rajan Rawal

3:33 PM

yes, actually at initially i thought for web-services, but to access web-services, user must have internet connection enabled on mobile device right? but what when user keep on adding records(row, products etc...) when connection is not available?

I'll have to store then locally

user41796

Random Q - suggestions on a good base OS layer to run a hypervisor? I'm disappointed with the system I have to code on at work, so I was going to cobble together a low aesthetic, high performing system that I can run a number of VMs within. Was considering Fedora for the base OS since I'm comfortable with that distro, but haven't played with the other variants.

thorsten müller

Yes, store locally and when it's connected send everything that was added in the time since last sync (some flags on the data table should be all you need for a start)

Rajan Rawal

please may i know the ways, in android to store local data, like as our mysql database?

gnat

@RajanRawal consider SQLite: stackoverflow.com/search?q=android+sqlite

147

Q: What are the best practices for SQLite on Android?

What would be considered the best practices when executing queries on an SQLite db within an Android app? Is it safe to run inserts, deletes and select queries from an AsyncTask's doInBackground ? Or should I use the UI Thread ? I suppose that db queries can be "heavy" and should not use the UI ...

android database sqlite sqlite3

user55340

@RajanRawal developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage.html#db

thorsten müller

3:39 PM

various options depending on kind of data and how much:

developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/data-storage.html

@MichaelT you Google faster than me :)

user55340

@thorstenmüller Ahh, but I'm no match for gnat and his youtube powers.

gnat

@MichaelT this time, these are my java-me powers. I removed so many java-me tags from android questions mistagged with it that I learned about SQLite by heart from simply glancing over the questions I retag :)

Rajan Rawal

Ok :)

Yannis Rizos

3:59 PM

Hey @gnat's back! Yay, we have lots and lots of flags again ;) It's been a bit boring while you were on vacation...

Thomas Owens

I eat flags for breakfast. I think that's why I'm so hungry come lunch time. I don't think they have a lot of nutritional value.

Yannis Rizos

@ThomasOwens Zero nutritional value, but most of them are full of entertainment value...

user41796

I need to step up the level of commentary in my flagging then....

gnat

@YannisRizos flags, what flags? weren't you supposed to follow my DV twits?...

1 hour ago, by gnat

@JimmyHoffa "mod following" made me think, maybe I should twit my delete votes. :) If seriously, I think doing stuff like that, especially on scale of thousands (even hundreds, maybe even dozens) posts could bring moderator into quite a trouble. Taking into account that all post deletions are visible and rather easy to track for 10Kers, this would be sooner or later (rather sooner) discovered and challenged...

btw you can expect to get boring again in "6-to-8 weeks", after I am done with link-only answers cleanup...

re your other comment about jave me tag, your warm words are much appreciated, thanks. I plan to get back after a while. Currently, cleaning up link-only answers at Programmers takes a bit too much effort, I expect this cumbersome "janitorial duty" to be completed in about 2-3 months - after that, I hope to get back to nurture my favorite tag — gnat 4 hours ago

...unless of course I find a new "toy" to flag :)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 You could always just start going with lorem ipsum... maybe the occasional page of time cube pasted into a flag message

user41796

4:09 PM

@JimmyHoffa perhaps snippets about my current research topics to fill out the remaining characters? XenServer ....

user41796

Xen is actually looking pretty attractive. I had been thinking I needed a tier-2 hypervisor (eg vmware workstation), but running a tier-1 (Xen) is becoming more appealing.

Yannis Rizos

The great thing about @gnat's flags is how detailed and specific they are. Half of the time I'm like "how the hell does he know that???". Honestly, no idea how I could find out that "review has completed with 2:3 split"...

user41796

@YannisRizos reviews can complete before the question closes out? Does that mean a "leave open" vote or two can block a question from closing through the review queue?

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Ask gnat. I have no idea ;)

gnat

@YannisRizos effort and determination, partner :) nothing but this. Open review stats page. Check today reviewers profiles->activity->reviews. Find the question, save the review link. Check periodically, flag when you feel that it's worth it... and don't forget that mod can't read your mind: write comment explaining why you feel that way

Yannis Rizos

4:18 PM

@gnat Who said I can't read your mind?

user41796

was kind of hoping there was more magic involved. :-)

user41796

I need more magic and less "grit & determination" right about now

gnat

@YannisRizos well, let's stick with official version, shall we? They already discovered about tweeted DVs, no need to reveal more of that little conspiracy

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Did you actually tweet delete votes? I remember a MSO request asking for a "tweet your reason for downvoting" feature...

-31

Q: Tweet your reason for vote

Sometimes Q/A gets some downvotes and some users will complain about the down-voters "not having guts to say why". We all have seen that. Now, for example, I believe that there are often good reasons to downvote, but also good reasons not to spam comment field with things that are either obviou...

feature-request voting twitter

@gnat That sounds... complicated. Right now I can't do complicated.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 We could all use this once in a while

Yannis Rizos

4:24 PM

24 hours ago, by Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa I've read your answer on Code Review, but... I'm here, and I'm finding it nearly impossible to concentrate. "Lazy loading" right now means coercing someone to bring me another cold one, so I won't have to walk the 20-25 meters to the bar.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos I need a vacation, and how.

gnat

@YannisRizos no and frankly, I wouldn't, even if there was such an option (btw I see I DVed question you referred, feels about right:). Broadcasting stuff like that may lead to bandwagoning (which feels already somewhat a problem to me)

8

Q: Bandwagon effect in close votes

I have suspected this for a while, because in the review queue I often see questions people have voted to close as "not constructive" that several people have marked as "not a real question", and similar. And now I have proof. There's a bandwagon effect going on: people are agreeing with existin...

discussion support migration vote-to-close review-abuse

@YannisRizos no worries, I'll keep the complicated part for self, so that it's easier for you to make a decision. Making binding actions (at your side) isn't easy I guess, so it's only fair to split effort that way

Yannis Rizos

@gnat It's not easy. It gets a lot easier with tequila.

user55340

@GlenH7 Three 'leave open' reviews will remove a question from the close review queue. Even if the question is still open. However, that doesn't stop people from looking at the question and closing it outside the queue...

gnat

@YannisRizos OIC. tequila... that explains about half of deletions I see. For the sake of completeness, another half feels rather beer-influenced

user55340

4:31 PM

Or stalking recent reviews (reviews are public) for "leave open" votes to see what got pushed out of the queue.

Thomas Owens

@gnat You are supposed to drink in moderation, you know. Doesn't that refer to consuming alcohol when using the mod tools?

2

user55340

BTW, I think this 'flashback' in oracle is really neat. select salary from employees as of timestamp sysdate - 1/24 where employee_id = 101

gnat

@ThomasOwens nope, 10Kers are considered to weak for that. They smoke pot at tools. Sometimes taking other _lightweight stuff. Come to our side, it's feels soo... fuuunnnnyyyy

►

@GlenH7 Here, I can't help. I know no magic way. It gets easier with practive but not much. Quite a pity you can't see my flagging summary page, it's filled with fun stuff (apparently written under influence)...

> please consider deletion or historical lock (the latter suggested only because it has 2K views). The question is an unsalvageable GTKY / polling ("How do you relate to non-technical people... about your job...?"), with over 20 one liner answers (including highly upvoted ones), totally lacking explanation and context, making very wrong impression on what kind posts are welcome at Programmers. (flagging per moderator advice at chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/9269313#9269313)

or,

> please consider historical lock. The question is an unsalvageable open ended resources request ("Helpful articles on the subject of managing programmers?"), with mostly link-only answers, lacking explanation and context. On the other hand, some answers (heck, all of them, including even deleted one!) provide valuable references - "meet Jeff Atwood's 3rd rule..." mentioned in meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/historical-lock/info

I try not to be repetitive. And try not to use f-word, although the latter is rather hard sometimes

Dynamic

What are some best-practices to keep in mind when you're writing an entire piece of software yourself?

Thomas Owens

About that one question...if he answers my comments (preferably in the form of an edit), I think it would be fine.

user41796

4:46 PM

@Dynamic - that's a bit open ended. More details?

user41796

@gnat Don't think I've ever cursed in a flagged explanation. Pretty sure I've used strong and condescending tones about the OP or the question though.

user41796

"crap" is probably the strongest I would use. Pedantic, inane, and worthless are other gems that I'll throw in.

Dynamic

@GlenH7 Which is why I did't ask on the main site ;P... I'm attempting to jump into an idea which I've been thinking about for about a year. Seeing as I have never tried to make anything too big before by myself, I'm trying to wrap my head around how I'm going to jump in.

user55340

62

Q: Agile for the Solo Developer

How would someone implement Agile process concepts as a solo developer? Agile seems useful for getting applications developed at a faster pace, but it also seems very team oriented...

agile solo-development

Thomas Owens

@Dynamic research.uni-sofia.bg/bitstream/10506/647/1/…

user41796

4:50 PM

divide & conquer. Break things down as much as possible. Start with your broad vision, lay out required components. Rinse & repeat at the components and so on down the line until there is a concrete instance of your vision

user41796

don't be afraid to scratch out components and re-assign them as evidence dictates. But also don't worry about getting it "perfect" the first time through. It won't be. It never is. :-)

Dynamic

@MichaelT @GlenH7 But how do you even know what component to create first?

user55340

Pick something you can do first It doesn't really matter which one.

Yannis Rizos

@Dynamic Flip a coin.

user41796

@Dynamic Wisdom that comes from the experience of having built many systems. :-D

user41796

4:54 PM

And I can hear you screaming at the screen from here....

user41796

Or throw your idea out to a bunch of gray beards and watch them decompose the system for you.

Dynamic

Ha alright thanks guys

user41796

Caveat - before you do that, remember that chat is CC licensed. So you're giving up some of your IP rights by doing so

gnat

@GlenH7 "Crap", let's see if I use it in flag messages. Okay..

> given large amount of low-quality answers (6 of 16 per my reading, including 3 that are deleted), please consider protecting this question or better yet, closing it as not constructive: "where do I find such guy?" basically begs for a list of one-liner crap / spammy recommendations

user41796

that raises an interesting IP question. If you post the thoughts here in chat, but then delete the posts, have you really released the idea? Mods & Room owners can see the history, but no one else can.

gnat

4:56 PM

...had to skip through to 7th page in flag summary to find it, guess I don't consider consider crap string enough (or maybe, expect Yannis to read it straight from my mind)

user41796

@gnat :-) I have a few where I'm just mocking the person making the comment or the question.

Dynamic

@GlenH7 I'm assuming yes, if somebody has read it.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 I think so. I wouldn't risk it.

user41796

Caution is the watchword with IP, no doubt. It's an interesting question to toy with though. Or interesting to me since I like those nuances.

user41796

For patent purposes, I'm pretty sure that it would "start the clock" for when a filing would be required.

user41796

4:59 PM

Not so sure regarding copyright of the idea though

user55340

@GlenH7 Ideas aren't copyrighted, code is.

Thomas Owens

I think for patents, it could be disclosure. I mean, if you make something and then start testing it in public, there's a point where it's no longer patentable. But that may have to do with the clock more than visibility, I don't remember that much about patents.

user41796

patents definitely have a concept of "first public disclosure" that starts the clock for filing purposes. Int'l law requires that the paperwork be filed before public disclosure. US law allows for 1 year between first public disclosure and filing.

user41796

@MichaelT Was thinking about that - the idea by itself, no. But the idea being broken down into components and sub-components, yes. Because that's the expression of an idea.

user55340

Isn't it a 'first to file' now? or something on that nature... if you disclose publicly, you had better get the paperwork underway.

user55340

5:03 PM

@GlenH7 I still doubt thats the case - its the tangible result. I can describe an image to you - describe all the components. But its not copyrihtable until the picture is taken or the brush meets canvas.

user41796

first to file comes into effect when there are competing applications / filings.

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT I believe it is first to file now in the US. Doesn't matter if you have all the proof you came up with it first.

@GlenH7 Before, if you could prove that you invented it first, you could go to court and get the patent thrown out. That's not true anymore. It's exclusively submitting the paperwork.

user41796

@ThomasOwens that's ringing a bell. Int'l law has "always" been first to file. US was "first to invent" so you could get into ugly discovery wars with documentation

user41796

One of many reasons why engineers were trained to keep a notebook of significant work.

Thomas Owens

Signed and dated, with any revisions also signed and dated. And witnesses and stuff too in work environments.

user41796

5:05 PM

and don't you dare tear any pages out of that book!

user41796

@Dynamic - back to your question. Assuming you don't have a facebook killer in mind, feel free to bounce your idea(s) off the room. A lot of it is wrapping your head around how the application will be used. Multi-user / single-user? What use-cases required? Authentication? Networked, etc ....

Dynamic

@GlenH7 In a nutshell, it's a hyped up personal knowledge base.

Thomas Owens

You should add complex event processing and the actor model for concurrency. Maybe a bit of high-speed reliable UDP-based communication protocols for network traffic.

gnat

@GlenH7 Interesting, let's see if I get it right... I just can't figure how "first to file" interplays with public domain. Say, Thomas posts an article in Scientific American, with detailed explanation of transmogrifier he just constructed. Year later, Glen copies construction from the magazine and patents it. What next? Can Thomas now sell his transmogrifiers? can readers of a magazine sell them?

user41796

so you'll need to start with a UI, a persistence layer (database), and a DB access mechanism

Dynamic

5:11 PM

Okay, what's your opinion on this: native vs web app for that sort of project?

user41796

DB can be flat file to start; which is why you wrap DB access within it's own layer. Allows you to change things out later on

user41796

@Dynamic "yes" What are you comfortable with? How do you want to interact with it? Mobile device usage? Desktop usage?

user41796

comfortable with can also mean "what do you want to learn?"

user41796

@gnat Thomas can sell, yes. He was first to disclose and created the prior art. My application (theft of) for the patent should be thrown out because of prior arrt.

Dynamic

@GlenH7 I like the idea of a desktop app

user41796

5:13 PM

prior art trumps first to file. A patent must be non-obvious to one skilled in the art. An article in SA would definitely qualify as prior art.

Dynamic

But web app means I could access it on my phone before creating a native mobile app.

user41796

@Dynamic The MVC / MVVM approach has a lot of merit in this case.

user55340

@Dynamic Make an api, expose it, test it, and then write native apps (or web apps).

user41796

Model will be your data access layer. Controller / View-Model will be some of your business logic and portable across UI technology (you hope). View is essentially throw-away as your UI tech changes

Dynamic

@MichaelT Which would mean start with a web appcorrect?

Jimmy Hoffa

5:15 PM

@gnat Transmogrify a transmogrifier and you now have a new and patentable design. Unfortunately people need only transmogrify your transmogrifier to make one that is not covered by your patent.

gnat

@GlenH7 hm curiousier and curiousier. How then "prior art" differs from "first to invent"? I suspect this has something to do with prior art being timely put to public domain, right?

Dynamic

@GlenH7 Any alternatives to the MVC/MVVM approach?

I, personally, find it more of a hassle.

user41796

@gnat correct. prior art implies knowledge within the public domain. Not necessarily owned by public domain but lives within it.

Thomas Owens

@gnat I think it has to do with protecting the invention. If two people simultaneous invent something, it's first to file. If one person publishes, they give up the ability to patent.

Dynamic

But that may be because I haven't worked on a large codebase.

Thomas Owens

5:17 PM

If one person is careless, someone else can do the paperwork.

user41796

@Dynamic It can be heavy for a simple app. But if you're planning for changes down the road, the investment in the scaffold is usually worth it. If it's too much, just compress / cheat the areas you can. Still a good logical separation for looking at the problem.

user41796

@ThomasOwens correct. IBM has a few journals that serve solely to publicly disclose inventions that IBM didn't deem worth the cost to pursue a patent on. Yours truly has at least one or two publications in those journals.

user41796

Not to be confused with their systems journals and what not.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 That seems smart, from a business perspective. They are destroying other people's ability to patent the thing and prevent them from using it should they want to in the future.

user41796

In effect, IBM creates a channel to publicly disclose the information and therefore prevent a patent from being filed on the idea.

gnat

5:19 PM

@GlenH7 got it. Your and @ThomasOwens explanations make good sense, thanks. Guess now Thomas and Glen from my example can live in peace...

user41796

Ding! exactly. IBM is exceptionally crafty in using IP capital to its advantage.

gnat

Dynamic

@GlenH7 I see what you mean. Now, does language really matter in this case? Do you think this is something that needs a "speedy" language?

user41796

@Dynamic Nah. Pick what you're comfortable with or what you want to learn or what you think will allow you to express the concepts best. I wouldn't get too hung up on a language at this point. And Hoffa can always tell you how to simplify 500+ lines into a single line of Haskell.

user41796

You'll never, ever, ever be able to do anything else with that one line of code, but it will be exceptionally elegant. :-)

Dynamic

5:28 PM

@GlenH7 Ha alright. In that case I think I'm going to go with a web app, with possible native apps down the road.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Nah, I'd just tell him to do it in .NET but that if it were in Haskell it would be better, at least that's what I do and tell myself... heh

user41796

@Dynamic - another thing to consider is looking at the architecture of similar projects. aosabook.org/en/index.html is a great resource from that point of view, although some of the articles are duds.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa As much as I dislike M$, I have a lot of respect for the .NET framework

user55340

@Dynamic start with a server and an exposed API. You can test that with whatever. Then write whatever next to connect to that api. Thats just my take on it though.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 ...of course you do, it was made by haskellers... ;)

Dynamic

5:36 PM

@GlenH7 Thanks!

gnat

@Dynamic no way. At early stages (guess at any stage at all), you better focus your effort on clean, maintainable, easy to understand design. With good design you'd have no problem to switch relevant parts of the app to speedy-bleedy-whatever language when there will be a need for that...

...Say,eplacing critical parts of the app from higher level to assembly language is classic, proven trick - "maintenance idiom" if you wish, all needs for it is reasonable good design. And Twitter had quite little problems doing similar trick exchanging ruby to scala where (and most important when) such a need arised...

artima.com/scalazine/articles/twitter_on_scala.html

Dynamic

@gnat So focus on good design and optimize when needed?

user55340

@Dynamic yep. More time is spent in fixing requirements than fixing performance.

user55340

Trying to optimize for performance at the start (if I do XYZ clever trick its 0.5% faster!) makes it much more difficult to fix changing requirements.

Dynamic

@MichaelT I feel like I'm reading Code Complete again...

gnat

5:42 PM

@Dynamic absolutely! and first of all, avoid picking languages for just being speedy, this comes at price of being harder to design way too often. Writing an app in assembly would be a royal road to losing the market nowadays.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT if you don't like smug lisp weenies because lisp is so old they just say they solved that problem ages ago, how about Mondrian .NET, I just found a paper which states under the title:
“A language for tomorrow,
brought to you today,
by people from the future”

It sure is smug, but they solved the age problem you have with a remainder..

Dynamic

@gnat In that case I should use the language that I'm more comfortable wit and then go from there, correct?

Thomas Owens

I dislike most recruiters. They send form messages, they don't tell you how their found your profile, they almost never say what particular skills triggered their interest, they don't read profiles to learn anything about the person they are contacting...

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens What do you expect, they don't have a degree

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa I would hope that any high school graduate would have the ability to read.

Am I being too optimistic here?

Jimmy Hoffa

5:48 PM

@ThomasOwens You miss the point, they lack the motivation, besides they're only getting paid ~$9/hr

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Really?

Jimmy Hoffa

They want commissions so they go for breadth not depth

Thomas Owens

Well, I suppose it depends. Our HR and recruiting staff are employed by the company.

gnat

@Dynamic Correct. Worth keeping in mind that optimizing compiler / JIT may eventually equal or outperform your hand-coded stuff. I lost such a "fight" once. Luckily it was on a purpose, but I would not want to get into this trap unintentionally. Just keep checking self, whether it feels comfortable to design / modify with the language you picked. If it gets feeling too hard, reconsider maybe you need to change language to one that's easier to design in... but still, be careful

user41796

@Dynamic pick by comfort or what you want to learn. depends upon your aim with the project.

gnat

5:49 PM

5

Q: Migration from a complex C++ application to C# a -- good idea?

We currently have a complex VC++ software application, which uses a library like ObjectARX to build the dll. I feel there are many features in C# like Collections, Generics, and other libraries which can be used to build the current application in a better and efficient way. I have been thinking...

design development-process software software-developer software-design

user55340

In SV, I recall head hunters got a 10% on year salary as comission.

Jimmy Hoffa

it depends, but large amounts of them are just call-center staff

Thomas Owens

They are a pleasure to work with. As have other recruiters that actually work for the company they are recruiting for.

user55340

Placing a $1M C?O netted you $100k.

user41796

@ThomasOwens finding a good tech recruiter can be hard. Most of the cold-calls I've received from them have been underwhelming. But the good ones I've worked with have simply been amazing. Good ones understand broader tech but aren't experts. And they know how to read. :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

5:50 PM

@ThomasOwens Oh company-employed is a WHOLE 'nother story. The ones who do that crap you're referring to though are usually just litterally telemarketers, they make cold-calls and pass the leads off to an account manager (who's just some salesmen jerk that managed to convince/impress a manager somewhere)

user55340

Even netting a $50k support staff (remember cost of living out there) was $5k. Getting a company directory to cold call could get you a few $100k engineers placed somewhere.

Jimmy Hoffa

or give him perks like box seat tickets to ball games which my old boss used to get along with gifts and all sorts of stuff just sent to him all the time

user41796

@MichaelT In the midwest, a 20 - 40% commission isn't unheard for a senior level role. No idea what c-level comm's are though

user55340

amazon.com/books/dp/0375502777

user55340

Good book for nostalgia of the dotcom boom days.

Thomas Owens

5:51 PM

@JimmyHoffa Maybe it's more of a defense industry thing, but I know that my company, BAE, MITRE, and Raytheon all have recruiters who are employed by the company.

I think Lockheed and Boeing also do.

user41796

@ThomasOwens many mid to large firms have their own recruiters. Quality can vary. My experience is that they are generally higher than external cold-calls. Not always....

Thomas Owens

They are all great to work with. They may not have the technical knowledge, but they don't waste your time with crap.

OK. Meeting time. Let me close some of my to-do list items.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens Likely. Many company's do, but disfunctional organizations are rampant in HR/management portions of companies. Previous place I worked had plenty large HR organization, had recruiters et al, my boss for all his trying could never get them to actually call anyone or get any contacts in. Only contracting company recruiters would ever get anyone to him. The HR recruiter folks were only there to serve some other portion of the company apparently, but having extras for us would have been

redundant so...

user55340

> but disfunctional organizations are rampant in HR/management portions of companies

user55340

oh, the stories I could tell...

Jimmy Hoffa

6:19 PM

@gnat that's right, perspicuous is the word of the day. Englished!

user55340

6:40 PM

I understand why @JimmyHoffa thinks that Haskell is good... thinking that Prolog is cool has damaged his brain. ;-)

gnat

@JimmyHoffa I've been englished myself today,

@gnat, naughty gnat naughty smack smack (now this is a joke, please don't ban me! hahahahahah) — Yve 6 hours ago

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT sure it's not the other way around? In reality you gripe on Haskell because you know if you learned it, you too would love it. It's ok, don't risk it, just keep calling it silly ;)

gnat

what's interesting in that "perspicuous" question is I could not find spec (JLS / VM) statement that supports this. There are tons of explanations at SO but I was interested in spec

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat that closure question is great aside from the pure-speculation nature. That's really stupid that java's closures work that way

gnat

:10367031yeah braindead Oracle dropped link that could probably be of help and I feel at loss - java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/guide/innerclasses/spec/….

it was referred to from VM spec 2.14

Jimmy Hoffa

6:49 PM

It's another "we didn't make that decision" Q which rarely gets the historical citations needed

gnat

docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jvms/se5.0/html/…

user55340

That prolog question though - I think the real answer is "why do prolog when there is a good one in your favorite VM language and that will play nicely with the rest of your VM languages?"

gnat

> interested persons should refer to the Inner Classes Specification, which may be found at java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/guide/innerclasses/spec/….

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT true, though that makes me think I should create a 3rd party rules engine in P# (prolog that runs on .NET)

@gnat ah, the closure's created as an inner class.. Still, the stack captures need only be passed in to the constructor on that inner class. Disassemble a .NET closure and that's what you see.

gnat

7:04 PM

@JimmyHoffa I understand mechanics of that, it's explained many times at SO. What drives me mad is I can't find spec statement that I could derive it from - so far, I always could...

57

A: Why are only final variables accessible in anonymous class?

It's basically due to the way Java manages closures. When you create an instance of an anonymous inner class, any variables which are used within that class have their values copied in via the autogenerated constructor. This avoids the compiler having to autogenerate various extra types to hold ...

"edited Aug 29 '11 at 6:52" by... "gnat" he he

eureka!

Jimmy Hoffa

haha you just wanted to correct the SE demigod didn't you?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa It's like when I extracted a point on a test from Dr. King on a technicality.

gnat

7:23 PM

@JimmyHoffa that time, not quite, that was merely "linkifying" of the term, to help readers unaware of what "closure" means. Though I recall DVing Skeet once or twice when he wrote something wrong about Java ME (those Java SE / .NET guys quite often do mistakes when it comes to Java ME, there are just too much differences)

wayback machine is great, found a snapshot I needed: web.archive.org/web/19991129005014/http://java.sun.com/products/…

now gotta have some fun deriving explanation for final in AICs from that

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer Dr. King? You clearly live in the south; but how did you get points from Dr. King? What are you talking about?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I had him for Programming Language Concepts

user20683

he was also the ACM student chapter advisor

user20683

I got a single point back on a test

user20683

he's a notoriously difficult instructor

Jimmy Hoffa

7:38 PM

@WorldEngineer I love my version of what that all means in relation to the only "Dr. King" I'm familiar with. It's way more entertaining in my head than the reality is.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa The King in question is the one who wrote that C book

user55340

I was just reminded of some code I worked on before... you know how in java, anon inner classes within Foo.java are Foo$1 and Foo$2?

user55340

And if you have an inner class and an inner class in Foo it is thus Foo$2$1?

user55340

Well, this was Foo$3$2$1$1$1

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer no idea

user55340

7:40 PM

Think about it... that many anon inner classes nested within each other.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ..? How many? Why? What?

user55340

Why is a very good question.

user55340

Related - c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThreeStarProgrammer

user55340

c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThreeStarJava

user55340

(and some beautiful perl...)

Jimmy Hoffa

7:44 PM

@MichaelT Are you referring to some code you just stumbled across?

user55340

 sub removeDupesButPreserveOrder () {
   (%_ = ()) || (return [ grep ( !($_{$_}++), @{$_[0]})]);
 }

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ...and people call haskell hard to read

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Yep. I wouldn't write that at all. It messes up debuggers and breakpoints something awful.

user55340

Its not that hard once you get past what its doing, and its rather elegant in that.

Jimmy Hoffa

what's $_ ?

parameter?

(should it choose to exist)

Thomas Owens

8:07 PM

I'm disappointed that this question is not more popular.

6

Q: Does software reuse preclude process repeatability

TL;DR - Does the ability to reuse software prevent process enhancements that come from repeating a project? For example, the construction of a bridge relies upon the accumulated knowledge of the bridges that were built before. Does software reuse prevent that accumulation of knowledge? I was...

development-process code-reuse engineering

user55340

$_ is the default variable. Its used for many things.

user55340

Within grep, $_ is the value that is being examined.

user55340

So, grep ( !($_{$_}++), @{$_[0]}) has three different $_. You have it in hash, array, and scalar contexts.

user55340

` @{$_[0]}` @_ is the argument list, so $_[0] is the first argument (an array reference that is being derefrenced).

user55340

Then you have !($_{$_}++) which is checking to see if $_ (default value within grep) exists within %_. Well, actually, its returning the value there. If it is 0 or undef, the expression is true (you want the item). If it is 1 or greater, it is 0, and thus filtered. The value is then postincremented.

user55340

8:13 PM

Its kind of neat how thats done, and to a profficent perl reader you can read it and say ah ha... but its kind of done obscurely.

user55340

You can see the initialization of %_ being done at the start, with the ||.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Ok, so usually there's default values, but perl just goes nuts and decides, if you don't have any other variables, you'll just work on an globally default one? Sure, that seems reasonable. ;P

gnat

done at last... Turned out not as hard as "Jon Lord tribute" but still...

2

A: Why an anonymous class can't access local variables but local members of it's enclosing class?

This comes from early version Java Inner Classes Specification. Official specification URL, referred eg from VM spec 2.14 is gone for link rot: http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/docs/guide/innerclasses/spec/innerclasses.doc.html January 17, 1999 snapshot can be obtained at wayback machine t...

►

user55340

sub removeDupesButPreserveOrder () {
   my %seen = ();
   my $argAr = shift @_;
   return [ grep { !$seen{$_}++ } @$argAr ];
}

user55340

Broken out into slightly more readable code. Haven't actually tested that though.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:22 PM

What is in that picture at the top of the pictogram??

user55340

Cookie, frosting, printer.

Jimmy Hoffa

I see things that looke like stuff, but I can't genuinely identify any single artifact in the picture as a thing I know

ohhh

I had the scale all wrong

Ampt

thats cool. Cookie frosting printer

Jimmy Hoffa

I see it now, I was picturing that thing as a dinner plate which made me wonder what the other quite large thing was and confused me because the dinner plate didn't look like a dinner plate

user55340

If you look, you can see the ribbon cable. It is printing a tan color (burning? different frosting?) on some white frosting on a cookie.

Ampt

8:25 PM

imagine how accurate your cookies could be

it's probably a laser

and its moving very fast hence the blur on the image

infact, it's probably a standard laser printer that happens to use java

user55340

It could also be an inkjet with food coloring.

user55340

Remember this would be mid-late 90's. Lasers aren't that powerful then.

user55340

To get one that would be big enough to caramelize frosting would be... bigger.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Alternatively it's an inkjet with ink. Don't eat the cookie, just saying.

user55340

I remeber having a special ribbon for a dot matrix printer that could print iron on transfers.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:28 PM

@MichaelT I remember those.. they had similar setups for ink jets at one point

then they realized the key was in selling the toner (honestly, what is that stuff made of that costs that much?) and said screw everything else, let's just get really rich

user55340

This was mid to late '80s. My parents ran the scout troop and we made a printed image for each person who went on each camp out. They were done the next scout meeting and had something in them that people could relate to.

Ampt

@MichaelT could have been a thermal printer from a receipt machine. Those have been around for a while

gnat

gee I still love Deep Purple

►

user55340

@Ampt Very true!

Jimmy Hoffa

computerworld.com/common/images/blogs/HPinkjetImageQuality

user55340

8:50 PM

Oh, a weekend ago (not last one, one before) took my niece (3 years old) and nephew (1.5 years old) to a ren fair. My father (her grandfather) asked what she wanted to do. She wanted to go to the renfair again. Apparently, she had a good time there.

user55340

(two pony rides, $5/each. 3 carasol rides, $3/each. Flower thing, $10). Compared to the ~$100 or so a typical adult does.

user55340

However, if the weather is good, they'll come up to my place to go blueberry picking.

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