The Whiteboard

Ampt

6:00 PM

@GlenH7 I don't know why you keep asking, clearly it will NEVER be awarded EVER

user41796

system is broke!

Ampt

We should start a riot!! That'll teach em

user41796

I'd rage quit, but that takes too much effort.

Ampt

don't want to get too ragey, I mean it is friday after all

psr

Maybe rage take-a-break

gnat

6:02 PM

@psr yup. The question is, what would be default, either 1) collapsed and some user script to expand for those with non-default preferences, or 2) expanded and some script to collapse. I don't have strong feelings on that but option #1 just feels closer to officially stated party line,

29 mins ago, by gnat

> Rephrasing Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand, I feel that the world is awash in comments, but not answers...

psr

Either way you could probably manage to edit the script to fit your preference

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Practicing comment flagging approach now :)

Thomas Owens

holy crap wtf are you guys doing

o_o;;

user41796

@ThomasOwens is this one of those moments where the rest of us wish we could see the mod queues?

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 You don't want to see this. It's overflowing. I've never seen numbers this big.

user41796

6:11 PM

"pics or it never happened" :-D

gnat

@gnat in stack overflow my account locked, it says questions no longer being accepted from my account. i don't know how to access back my stack overflow account. — Ramkumar 4 mins ago

"Sancta Simplicitas!"

user41796

Programmers will pick up SO users trying to circumvent their Q-ban on SO. But I think it may be problematic to show mod of Site A that a user has a Q-ban on Site B — GlenH7 1 hour ago

gnat

forums.oracle.com/message/5303377#5303377

> It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion isn't it... You know it's going to end in tears, but you just can't take your eyes of it.

user20683

@GlenH7 particularly since Q-Bans are automatic

user41796

it would make life easier here, I realize. but it has broader implications that are perhaps not quite desired

user20683

6:15 PM

@GlenH7 it's the roach hammer problem

user20683

they'll just migrate somewhere else

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer A hammer made of roaches is gross?

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Tried to migrate that, it's not horrible, but he is indeed banned and the migration didn't go through.

thorsten müller

Wonder why he is banned, no votes on his questions or answers.

user41796

@thorstenmüller that you can see. We can't see his deleted questions / answers.

Yannis Rizos

6:19 PM

thorsten müller

Being banned on one site isn't enough it seems

Yannis Rizos

12 flags? Is the world coming to an end? Are we under attack or something?

gnat

@YannisRizos that poor guy would better edit one of the questions that were deleted at SO and flag for undeletion

but oh well

Yannis Rizos

@gnat If you are feeling charitable, you could tell him that in a comment...

thorsten müller

And the angel raised the 12 flag and there was silence...

user41796

6:21 PM

@YannisRizos apparently we're all hanging out in chat instead of keeping the site tidy

user41796

At least we've got 3 mods here to protect us

thorsten müller

I never know who is a mod. Is there a list? Maybe they should get a gloriole around their thumb

user41796

programmers.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

Jimmy Hoffa

@thorstenmüller The diamond next to their name, or the blue name in chat

user41796

protip - look at their names in chat. If it's blue, they're a mod. Italic (such as with Jimmy's) means room owner

gnat

6:24 PM

@YannisRizos I don't feel charitable but anyway...

@Ramkumar you'd better edit one of your deleted questions at SO (preferably without answers) into this one, then flag for undeletion. That in theory is one of officially recommended ways to work towards lifting question ban — gnat 50 secs ago

Ampt

How do you own the room? isn't this the generic room for P.SE?

user20683

@Ampt room owners can be appointed by mods

gnat

@thorstenmüller or, put other way...

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

user41796

@Ampt look here - show's current listing of owners. chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/21/the-whiteboard Doesn't garner any really special priv's. Just gives us the ability to help clean up a few things in chat.

user20683

Jimmy Hoffa and MichaelT are in here so much that they function nicely as "semi-mods" for it. Particularly since being a room owner doesn't do anything really.

user20683

6:27 PM

GlenH7 too

user41796

@WorldEngineer especially not those two (and three with me)

Ampt

aaaaaaaah ok

user20683

Dynamic is a room owner because he coruns the blog with me

Jimmy Hoffa

Hope y'all are enjoying the comment-flag-rep, I know I am

thorsten müller

@gnat I was thinking of this Aphrodite's Child album, but it's mostly the same theme of course

user41796

6:28 PM

@JimmyHoffa you say that despite having triggered fears of Armageddon?

Ampt

comment-flag-rep what?

is that some sort of pattern?

gnat

@GlenH7 I think there are no mods at all. All we see is just an illusion. These diamonds, that seemingly official mods list page, that blue color, are just a conspiracy. Some hacker(s) captured Programmers.SE and modified server code to make it up

@thorstenmüller haven't listened to Demis Roussos for quite a while, even forgot that it's his group name

►

Ampt

@gnat wouldn't that make you in on it?

user41796

@Ampt who do you think came up with the AI? And he did it in java-me; that's the amazing part.

2

gnat

@Ampt absolutely. All you see here is their conspiracy. the truth is out there, at SO

Ampt

6:32 PM

I want to believe

gnat

@GlenH7 that was conscious decision to pick a technology no one knows about, because no one in their sane mind can be interested in stuff where java.util collections span exactly 3: Hashtable, Stack, Vector That's 3, as in "three", not a typo

user41796

amazon.com/Daemon-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731/…

user41796

@gnat another brilliant part is that people are literally throwing away the hardware, so you can build a monstrous cluster for nothing.

gnat

Connected Limited Device Configuration

The Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) is a specification of a framework for Java ME applications describing the basic set of libraries and virtual-machine features that must be present in an implementation. The CLDC is combined with one or more profiles to give developers a platform for building applications on embedded devices with very limited resources such as pagers and mobile phones. The CLDC was developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 30 (CLDC 1.0) and JSR 139 (CLDC 1.1). Typical requirements CLDC is designed for devices that have limited processing power, memor...

@GlenH7 that's for sure,

> CLDC is designed for devices that have limited processing power, memory, and graphical capability. Devices typically have the following features:[1]

16-bit or 32-bit CPU with a clock speed of 16 MHz or higher
At least 160 KB ROM allocated for the CLDC libraries and virtual machine
At least 8 KB total RAM available to the Java platform

Ampt

@GlenH7 who's throwing away what hardware? (I may have an addiction)

user41796

6:40 PM

Java Platform, Micro Edition

Java Platform, Micro Edition, or Java ME, is a Java platform designed for embedded systems (mobile devices are one kind of such systems). Target devices range from industrial controls to mobile phones (especially feature phones) and set-top boxes. Java ME was formerly known as Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME). Java ME was designed by Sun Microsystems, acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010; the platform replaced a similar technology, PersonalJava. Originally developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 68, the different flavors of Java ME have evolved in separate JSRs. Sun prov...

Ampt

programming embedded systems in java?I'm in

user41796

@Ampt _lots_ of people throw away old phones. @gnat was smart enough to tap into those "recycling programs" to fuel has maniacal plans.

Ampt

@GlenH7 like taking over P.SE? What's he gonna do, clean up all the questions? haha

user41796

@Ampt check out SO's java-me then. Note that my tag here links to P.SE

gnat

@GlenH7 you won't believe how much has been thrown away since '2002, when the last substantial change was made in Java ME core APIs.

Ampt

6:45 PM

@gnat 's setup

thorsten müller

It can't do much but it still can mine a Bitcoin or two.

psr

Wow, an SO tag behind MUMPS in activity.

Ampt

@thorstenmüller at that point you're spending more on electricity to mine the coin than you get back

user20683

@Ampt Solar Power

user20683

or your own wind or hydro plant.

Ampt

6:51 PM

Good luck offsetting the cost of the panels/equipment to run it haha

I think you'd be better off selling your spare power back to the grid

thorsten müller

How much time would it take to mine a Bitcoin with pen & paper?

Ampt

considering they came up with a specialized computer architecture JUST to mine bitcoin... I'd say a long, long time

that's the point though, the more bitcoins that get mined, the harder it becomes

it used to be a piece of cake and now even the most powerful desktops won't get a cost return for electricity, so they built ASIC computers

Yannis Rizos

@thorstenmüller I wonder if that's on topic on bitcoin.stackexchange.com

user20683

might be on-topic for cryptography as well

user20683

or math

thorsten müller

6:54 PM

Don't really think so, wouldn't have a real answer

user41796

> The mining process involves scanning for a value that when hashed twice with SHA-256, begins with a number of zero bits. While the average work required increases exponentially with the number of leading zero bits required, a hash can always be verified by executing a single round of double SHA-256.

user41796

> To compensate for increasing hardware speed and varying interest in running nodes over time, the difficulty of finding a valid hash is adjusted roughly every 2 weeks. If blocks were generated too fast, the difficulty increases and more hashes are required to find a block and to generate new bitcoins

user41796

Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mining#Bitcoin_mining

user41796

so I'd say, yes, you could do one with paper & pen. No, you couldn't do so in the timeframe that the miners actually do it.

thorsten müller

Dammit, Amarok could stop sending crap to last.fm if it doesn't know the name of am artist

user55340

6:56 PM

FWIW, my chat flagging started with "this question uses fliker images which are no longer there and have an ugly 404 page" so I took the pictures out of the question. Well, then there were half a dozen comments saying "+1 for the picture" or something to that effect which were then obsolete.

user41796

@MichaelT so you made an edit merely to enable you to flag comments and bump your counts?

user55340

@GlenH7 No, I made an edit to git rid of ugly 404 "this image isn't hosted at flicker anymore" images, and then flagged all the comments that were talking about the picture.

user41796

right, right. a little devious to bump your flag counts, but hey it works. :-P I flag "+1 for ____" comments when I see them. They're generally useless chatter.

Ampt

I think it provides feedback on what makes an answer good. Sure, they can eventually be deleted, but it is nice to know what people are looking for in an answer

Maybe my view of comments is skewed or wrong though

user55340

@YannisRizos hates comments. I like 'em, if they are applicable. I take special pride in having a comment to a question that has the most votes out of anything.

user55340

7:09 PM

ObXKCD - Is It Worth the Time — MichaelT Jul 13 at 4:40

user55340

More votes than the question or top answer. MHHHAWHAWHWA!

Ampt

I guess I see the comments as being useful to help get an answer, or a future answer to the best possible state. In that same breath, the +1 for ___ lets me know what people think makes an answer good. Feedback is almost always a good thing

user55340

Sometimes I add a comment, hoping to have the person come in and incorporate the idea into an existing acceptable answer... but if they don't, I'll post my own.

user55340

(heh, just spotted a comment that uses a URL shortener to bypass the block on lmgtfy)

Ampt

lol. Always love slapping people in the face with that one

user55340

7:15 PM

There are a few urls that are blocked from comments... the "whathaveyoutried" is another one.

Ampt

?? I'm unfamiliar with that one

user55340

mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried

Ampt

AHA! We got you now

mods, take him away

user55340

incidentally, I didn't link to the short version, which I'm not sure if is blocked.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I hope I trigger more than just fears!

user41796

7:20 PM

@JimmyHoffa perhaps, but I just don't see you triggering that many flags.

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm pretty sure if I can pull off @gnat level flagging, the fabric of reality will start to break down; I mean, this universe just wasn't structured to support 2 gnats

user20683

@JimmyHoffa @GlenH7

user20683

ಠ_ಠ

user41796

@WorldEngineer You knew what you were in for when you signed up for that pretty little piece of flair next to your name. :-D

user20683

7:35 PM

@GlenH7 yeah, but not from you two.

user41796

I am innocent, for once. At most, you can accuse me of inciting a riot, but I have done nothing wrong. :-)

user41796

And I'd argue that it's a bit unfair to accuse me of inciting a riot when yo look at the actor involved. I mean, he's just unstable in how he reacts to things....

user20683

@GlenH7 fair enough

user55340

.oO (I wonder if it will be easier to stay above 10k now? I mean, I can go back and work to delete the 1k or so answers I've downvoted and get my rep back!)

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT It's not.

user41796

7:40 PM

10k doesn't get to vote on answers. gotta hit 20k for that, afaik

user55340

@YannisRizos I was mostly joking with that... finding the low rep reviews gave me things of "Ahh! someone looked for that, and found it and said it wasn't helpful... well, they're right."

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Innocent? Hm... I'm not sure about that, let's wait and see what our friends at the NSA have to say...

user55340

@GlenH7 Have to go for the closed questions where I had multiple downvotes then...

user41796

@MichaelT it is a bit unfair, but do what you gotta do.

user55340

@GlenH7 The rate at which I could delete compared to the rate at which I downvote answers are vastly different.

user20683

7:58 PM

signup.notconstructive.com

user20683

huh

psr

@WorldEngineer This is going to kill my investor funding for notcoherent.com

user41796

@WorldEngineer not too surprising. there's always an undercurrent of complaint about things being closed as not constructive. Often times the answer is "go build your own site"

user41796

AFAIK, Rachel & Pierre303 had some conversations, but I have no idea if they are affiliated with that site or not.

user20683

@GlenH7 I think they were looking at discourse.

user41796

8:05 PM

it will be a good experiment to see if the naysayers are correct and that the world will implode by accepting not constructive questions. :-)

user20683

People love the high quality content on SE but can't really fathom that the so called "fascist" (they aren't, they are mildly authoritarian) policies are to cut out the noise that renders so many other forums less than useful.

Yannis Rizos

-3

Q: Is SO's programmers site a better place for advanced questions

Two questions I asked received some downvotes on Stack Overflow. Has anyone encountered random script errors on comment lines in IE8? Does object literal notation containing functions execute faster than plain functions? Question one is not a poll, it asks if this is a known problem. Quest...

I was going to answer "Hell yes", but then I read past the title...

Ampt

asciiflow.com/#Draw

that's a neat little site for making highly portable diagrams

user20683

@Ampt It's cute but I like Draw.io better.

user20683

you can do everything from UML to circuits to AWS.

Yannis Rizos

8:16 PM

@Ampt He's a mod, his opinions are fact.

user20683

@YannisRizos My opinions are canon, they may or may not be fact.

Ampt

Help help, I'm being oppressed!

user20683

surpressed

user20683

we haven't restricted you yet.

user55340

@Ampt Just flag a bunch of comments...

Yannis Rizos

8:19 PM

I spotted a company email today that said:

> We're approachable people and encourage you to ask us as many questions as you like.

user41796

@YannisRizos I hope that wasn't from your current company

Yannis Rizos

I think I should add something along the lines of: Except Yannis. He'll probably just close your questions and move on...

user20683

@YannisRizos Can we ask them questions with you as our proxy?

user41796

binding vote and ... closed!

user41796

nanosecond later and ... delete.

user20683

8:21 PM

@GlenH7 MMMMMONSTER Close!

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 It's a small start-up I'll be helping get a bit organized for the next 6 months or so. One of the things I've asked for is a copywriter, most of their promotional material sucks.

user41796

@YannisRizos Stateside, when a company says something like that then it's a clear indicator to put your resume on the market immediately.

user41796

Generally indicates fundamental problems within their communication channels. So run, don't walk, from that "opportunity". YMWV obviously, and it sounds like you're in a peripheral role anyway.

user41796

I vote that they should all have to get StackExchange IDs.... :-)

Yannis Rizos

Meh, I don't care. I'm a freelancer, I'll be working as a consultant. Come September, expect a ton of rants about meetings in here... That said, I should clarify that it's the English language promotional material that suck. The Greek ones are decent.

user41796

8:28 PM

sounds like they need people with better translation skills then

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Consultant? No longer at the PHP firm you were at?

user20683

@YannisRizos Did they finally run out of VC money?

Yannis Rizos

Not just translation, we need a proper copywriter with some serious English skills. The company has a few clients in the Balkans, and they are looking to expand.

Ampt

What is LSP?

Eat(Plant p) and Eat(Meat m) both violate LSP. — user61852 51 secs ago

user20683

@Ampt The Liskov Substitution Principle

Jimmy Hoffa

8:30 PM

Liskov substitution principle

Substitutability is a principle in object-oriented programming. It states that, in a computer program, if S is a subtype of T, then objects of type T may be replaced with objects of type S (i.e., objects of type S may be substituted for objects of type T) without altering any of the desirable properties of that program (correctness, task performed, etc.). More formally, the Liskov substitution principle (LSP) is a particular definition of a subtyping relation, called (strong) behavioral subtyping, that was initially introduced by Barbara Liskov in a 1987 conference keynote address entitl...

Yannis Rizos

@Ampt Lumpy Space Princess

Jimmy Hoffa

22

A: What can go wrong if the Liskov substitution principle is violated?

I think it's stated very well in that question which is one of the reasons that was voted so highly. Now when calling Close() on a Task, there is a chance the call will fail if it is a ProjectTask with the started status, when it wouldn't if it was a base Task. Imagine if you will: pub...

Ampt

@YannisRizos that's what I came up with too

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos You shouldn't know of this, you don't have children. To be fair, children shouldn't watch that show though either.

Ampt

Anyone care to explain why that diagram I made violates the LSP?

because meat and plant should be replaced by food?

Jimmy Hoffa

8:33 PM

@Ampt The guy was confused thinking your eat functions were the same, they're two different functions though

gnat

@user96307 "all interview questions will get closed" consider getting your facts straight, this skill is one that Chief Software Architect will likely look for in a job applicant. As of now, there are total 546 questions in this tag and 365 are open. Would this qualify as "all closed" in the eyes of an architect? — gnat 23 secs ago

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa Ok, thanks. I purposefully didn't expose the eat method in the animal interface. He had me worried haha

user41796

@gnat resisting urge to down vote due to whining.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt You know that thought that crops up from time to time when you're implementing some interface for a special purpose and for one of the methods you think "Ah, for this special case I don't really need this method, I'm just going to throw an exception so no one calls it" that's LSP violation

Part of you know's it's wrong but until you can really formally see where and when it's going to blow up, you just kind of figure "meh, what could go wrong?"

Ampt

ahhh ok

so its basically that the classes implementing an interface must implement all methods as they are

user41796

8:39 PM

@JimmyHoffa Thank you for such a clear explanation of LSP. I'd seen it; hadn't pondered it too deeply; definitely hadn't gotten it yet.

user41796

"Don't cheat" :-)

user20683

using "pass" in Python for finished code is an LSP violation.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt Yeah, formally it's something like "can't strengthen pre-conditions or weaken post-conditions" which roughly boils down to don't require extra stuff before the Open() method on your implementation can be called that the standard interface doesn't indicate required, and ensure upon exiting the Open() method on your implementation, you have made the object into a state consistent with what the interface indicates

@GlenH7 Yeah, more or less it just means "Make your implementation behave like the others, or there'll be trouble"

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Nope, still there, I'll be doing both. I usually tackle 2-3 projects at the same time from Sep to May, and then take long sabbaticals during the summer (thus the more frequent tequila references in here lately).

gnat

@JimmyHoffa alright! "Two men enter, one man leaves."

the best thing about being 10Ker is ability to pull off funny pictures from deleted answers

user41796

8:45 PM

@gnat I like the sleuthing it allows too. I have a number of the troll questions flagged, so I can go back and review to figure out their MO with asking & baiting.

Ampt

Ouch. Tough crowd this afternoon

got my first downvote in a while haha

user41796

@Ampt - "first in a while"? we can fix that.... ;-)

Ampt

errr...... I take it all back.

psr

@WorldEngineer Not necessarily. Think a dispose() method that has nothing to dispose

user41796

don't worry, I'm sure the serial down voting algorithm would detect things and roll it all back. Really. Positive about that. No doubts.

gnat

8:50 PM

43 mins ago, by Yannis Rizos

I was going to answer "Hell yes", but then I read past the title...

it's a bit ironic that for the same question, I went to user Yannis profile at MSO, picked their 4th top voted answer and cast a vote to close as a dupe of the question answered by that "Yannis" user.

user55340

Co-worker: "I wouldn't call it a drinking habit, its more a hobby."

Yannis Rizos

@Ampt I think you're over-engineering a bit there.

Which isn't necessarily bad, and if the asker is brand new it might even be preferable.

user41796

@YannisRizos @Ampt - agreed, although your answer is fundamentally the same as the one that user61852 just posted. The new one called out the interfaces / virtual methods a bit better

user55340

@Ampt one of my parents cats throws up an UpsetStomachException after she eats grass... so that might be the proper approach to handling the wrong type of food.

user41796

In some ways, I'd write that off as a communication issue and how different languages handle interfaces, abstract, and virtual methods

Jimmy Hoffa

8:54 PM

FP; screw hierarchy based on types of things, structure it based on available facilities

user41796

The reason I mentioned not using multiple inheritance is because the languages we use here do not support it: java, php, ruby. — Michael Irey 41 mins ago

user55340

Or just ducktype it. "Is it a duck?" --> "Yes" --> "Yummy!"

user41796

Amen to that. I think MI should only be enabled after passing exceptionally stringent licensing exams.

user55340

(I have had duck once... very good, it was at Emril's in New Orleans...)

user41796

duck is tasty, no doubt

Ampt

8:56 PM

@MichaelT ahh, but using my newfound knowledge of LSP (which the new poster pointed out to me) I know that I am, infact, not supposed to do that

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt that's pretty funny, that guy down voted you and said your implementation is a violation of LSP, then proceeded to showcase a more clear and concise form of an LSP violation heh

user55340

It was with everything2, we had a party in New Orleans. Some of us didn't have flights out until the next morning, and one wanted to eat there. This was Fall of 2001, cell phones not quite as common. We knocked on the door, person opened it, told us we had to call in a reservation. Closed the door. So one guy pulled out his phone and called from 10 feet away from the guy answering the phone.

user55340

"No, sorry, no reservations are available tonight" (why couldn't you have told us this 2 min ago?) "but you can come and see if there is any open seating at the bar." -- We did, there was. And it was really nice to have a "dedicated" waitress in the bartender who told us about the restaurant and food with much more attention than a typical waitress would with a table.

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa The comedy was not lost on me haha

user55340

And so we all got different things, and even shared with the next group down the bar. It was great. I had my first reisling there with a pear salad (can't remember what else, but the pear and reisling complemented each other very well).

user41796

9:01 PM

@MichaelT That's back when Emril was really, really big, wasn't it?

user55340

@GlenH7 That it was.

user20683

Leslar has been sighted, keep your eyes peeled on Programmers.

user41796

@WorldEngineer he's usually pretty easy to spot. His MO is a blatant calling card

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt enhance your answer, go look up the circle ellipse inheritance problem and read up on that, that Q smells largely of circle-ellipse conundrum

user55340

Circle-ellipse problem

The circle-ellipse problem in software development (sometimes known as the square-rectangle problem) illustrates a number of pitfalls which can arise when using subtype polymorphism in object modelling. The issues are most commonly encountered when using object-oriented programming. This is the L in the acronym S.O.L.I.D. which is known as the Liskov substitution principle. This problem arises as a violation of that principle. The problem concerns which subtyping or inheritance relationship should exist between classes which represent circles and ellipses (or, similarly, squares and re...

Ampt

9:08 PM

:D

user55340

@JimmyHoffa heh... scroll down far enough in that wiki article and you see the work of a LispWeenie solving it (this isn't a problem if you use the right language).

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I was just about to respond to say this isn't a problem in Haskell ;)

typeclasses ftw

Though I guess the key factoid there is neither LISP nor Haskell have subtypal inheritance

Ampt

and here I thought this was an open and shut question....

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt :) You're learning right, that's the whole point of this place.

Ampt

Well I'm taking Test-Driven Development for Embedded C and Programming Ruby 1.9 as reading material on vacation with me, so you can tell how much I love learning haha

user55340

9:12 PM

@JimmyHoffa Need to go to C2 and create a page SmugHaskellWeenies.

Yannis Rizos

Ruby? brb, suspending @Ampt for coding in a toy language...

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Says he who wrote a brainfuck interpreter in PHP??

user20683

@YannisRizos Pot Kettle Black.

Jimmy Hoffa

Speaking of, are you sober yet to see if my code review response made any sense at all?

Ampt

@YannisRizos It's the language that has been dictated to me by my senior design backing company haha

user55340

9:13 PM

@Ampt I'm sorry.

Ampt

Am I missing something? It seems cool so far?

user41796

@Ampt Tell them that a whole bunch of strangers in a programmer's chat room told you it was a really bad idea.

Ampt

we're doing RoR if that changes anything...

user41796

Site ban in 3, 2, 1....

Ampt

@GlenH7 I was drafting the email as we speak

user55340

9:14 PM

@Ampt I'm really sorry.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Or @MichaelT.sorry() or @MichaelT.has(sorry) or @MichaelT.sorry.is? after all, @MichaelT is a humane interface

Ampt

I've made a terrible mistake

user41796

We jest. Mostly. I've never used Ruby or RoR, so I can't speak to it. Others in here have stronger opinions

Yannis Rizos

Sober? brb, suspending @JimmyHoffa from chat for foul language...

(I'll look at it during the weekend, promise)

user41796

@YannisRizos I was about to flag it as offensive, but didn't want to trouble other mods

user55340

9:16 PM

Ruby has some very odd things in it. It wants to be all things, and tries too hard. There are 4x methods that have different names and do the exact same thing in the Hash class. Some design choices in the language make me go WAT?

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos My mistake, you just seemed coherent today, must just be building a tolerance I guess

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 I haven't used RoR either but... you don't really have to drink rat poison to know it's bad for you, right?

user41796

@YannisRizos That got a literal LOL from me.

user55340

That said, Ruby also has some really neat things that allow for metaprograming much easier than most other languages. The problem with this is people try to use it to be clever and end up with very difficult to maintain code. "We wrote a DSL over in that class!"

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt Queue @MichaelT ranting about ruby for- oh wait, he's out of that job, maybe it won't happen anymore

user41796

9:17 PM

That's okay, I've got two guys arguing about contracts to compete against for the peanut gallery to overhear things

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Oh, yes, I'm a high functioning alcoholic, it's my most valuable skill. Haven't found a way to market it yet, though.

user41796

@YannisRizos Presumably too much supply and insufficient demand in Greece

Yannis Rizos

And on that note, it's 15 past midnight here on a Friday. I'm late for the first tequila party of the weekend. Bye all.

user55340

And open classes freak me out when I was dealing with financial transactions for the past two years. The idea of "Here's a 16 digit value assigned to a string... lets just open the string and when that is assigned, we'll send an email with that value to someone.ru and tuck that code away hidden in some other class where no one will ever find it."

Ampt

have fun @YannisRizos

pleasedon'tbanme

Jimmy Hoffa

9:19 PM

@MichaelT You know someone.ru too? He's great! Keeps asking me strange questions though, and his english is kind of wanting...

user55340

Haskell typechecker is not turing complete unless you bludgeon it into it with several extensions. — jozefg 19 mins ago

user20683

@Ampt If he bans you I will un-ban...unless you had it coming.

user41796

@WorldEngineer The evidence is pretty clear cut, I'm afraid

gnat

I would rather the question and answer stay at Programmers, but oh well :)

10

A: Why can't an anonymous class access variables of its 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...

And anyway, it was quite a relief when OP corrected their code example to match the title. In the first revision, discrepancy was so painful that when I figured it, I seriously began pondering whether to delete my answer

@user102008 You know what?, when I was writing this the first time it did make sense someway, because I was trying to get rid of the error and then I started to read that article from Oracle and I did something by creating a method, I don't remember now if it was in the enclosing class or the inner/anonymous class but it worked. Or may be that was another error I was facing and I mixed the two and messed up, like with the other example code I wrote :/ I'm removing that sentence now, and buying some more caffeine :D — Adrián Pérez 21 mins ago

user55340

irb(main):001:0> "foo".bar
NoMethodError: undefined method `bar' for "foo":String
        from (irb):1
        from /usr/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'
irb(main):002:0> class String
irb(main):003:1> def bar
irb(main):004:2> "beer"
irb(main):005:2> end
irb(main):006:1> end
=> nil
irb(main):007:0> "foo".bar
=> "beer"

user55340

9:22 PM

Thats the "it freaks me out".

user41796

@gnat bad example code can doom a question, no doubt

gnat

@GlenH7 yes, and that was pretty much the case here...

@user102008 that's a good observation, thanks! Code in question indeed contradicts to what is written in original title: "Why an anonymous class can't access local variables but local members of it's enclosing class?" I usually prefer questions like that to be closed to be sorted out through editing. Unfortunately I am out of close votes today, will flag for mod attention to help in that — gnat yesterday

Jimmy Hoffa

woo, 3rd day of 200 ever today, just a day after my 2nd. Yay me.

Ampt

5 minutes til I leave for vacation. I have lost all productivity.

user41796

@Ampt kudos for lasting so long. :-)

Ampt

9:27 PM

@GlenH7 Thanks! It's been a long week but I'm looking forward to some R&R

user20683

@gnat sorry, I misunderstood the flag.

user20683

and it was 3 votes to send to SO anyway

user20683

or maybe 2 and one to someplace else

user41796

@WorldEngineer Seems like it would help if you could see the chronology of a question. Flag, flag, edit, ... Might make it easier to decipher things like that

gnat

@WorldEngineer no worries. The situation has been quite complicated, and although you failed to read my mind :) your decision was sensible anyway (otherwise I'd already break hell loose in meta or chat:)

user20683

9:34 PM

@gnat It's one of those border cases that's right on the line between SO and P.SE

gnat

@WorldEngineer right, and you may note, additional benefit of this migration is, it allowed to set a strong link to really connected question (to the dupe actually)

possible duplicate of Why are only final variables accessible in anonymous class? — gnat 11 hours ago

user55340

@gnat tangent to another thing... a good chunk of the interview are interview puzzles/questions rather than questions about interviews. The puzzle / questions are using the tag like homework was... tag cleanup time?

user55340

13

Q: Why is 2^16 a "special" number?

OK, I feel stupid asking this - but in Jeff's article: Getting the Interview Phone Screen Right and originally stated in the 5 essential phone screen questions: They shouldn't stare blankly at you when you ask with 2^16 is. It's a special number. They should know it. I've been a develop...

interview

gnat

@MichaelT that's a good observation. Your reasoning makes good sense, I'd certainly expect quite a bit of mistagging there... both in open and in closed questions

meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/meta-tags/info

> Meta tags are tags which describe something other than the question's content--such as the author's skill level, motivation, or current take on it. Alternatively, they may be ill-defined concepts which make consistent application of the tag difficult or impossible...

yet another misguided "expert" recommends to send crappy questions to Programmers...

programmers.stackexchange.com seems most appropriate for your question. You can view all of the stackexchange sites at stackexchange.com/sites. I'll edit your post to look more like something I'd consider answering. I'm taking out the term 'memory graduation' because I haven't a clue what it is. I'm guessing some sort of academic paper... — eebbesen 7 hours ago

►

I said 'mama, he's crazy and he scares me
And I don't want him by my side
Cuz' he's wild and he's bad
And sometimes just plain mad
I don't need him to keep me satisfied'

> Misguided angel hangin' over me

or, should we say, common disaster...

►

gee how I love Cowboy Junkies

Jimmy Hoffa

10:01 PM

@eebbesen I would encourage you to refrain from telling people to move their questions to P.SE until you've spent a bit of time there getting accustomed to what is and isn't acceptable there. If you're a programmer you might quite like it, and we appreciate all the participation! — Jimmy Hoffa 2 mins ago

gnat

@eebbesen This question is a polling / resource request question and isn't appropriate on Programmers.SE either. If you do believe something is appropriate elsewhere, please flag it for migration so that the moderators can move it to the appropriate site. Encouraging people to repost often leads to multiple closures (on multiple sites) and a scattering of comments and answers across sites if it actually does belong on one of them. — MichaelT 7 mins ago

now that gotta make poor guy feel like some old engine that's lost their driving wheel

►

Jimmy Hoffa

10:18 PM

@gnat ahh I actually clicked that one hoping it was

►

gnat

@JimmyHoffa gee that's their favorite song of mine!

The train won't stop going --
No way to slow down.

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat I love that whole album, it's surprising how well some of their music stands up even today; hardly sounds dated at all

gnat

tho' I prefer the original version, from Aqualung - the one I heard first

►

ah! great minds think alike

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat Yeah, that's what I meant to link

gnat

@JimmyHoffa I recall seeing them live in '2003 or '04 in Israel. what a drive

user20683

10:30 PM

@gnat You're in Europe somewhere right?

user20683

that's what 2000 or 3000 miles?

gnat

@WorldEngineer yup, not in Israel tho, that was a business trip

in 2003 or in 2004

I love business trips

fun for free

about 10 years ago

haven't been in Israel since, miss it much

somehow felt very very comfortable there

and, of course, Jethro Tull added some fun to that

user20683

Reminds me of California

gnat

@WorldEngineer where in California?

user20683

@gnat I was born in Palo Alto, 7 minutes from Stanford.

gnat

10:39 PM

by the way San Francisco and Lisbon have very much in common

@WorldEngineer Stanford, yes I was guessing it

user20683

went to Germany when I was 2, came back when I was 5.

user20683

stayed in Palo Alto till I was 13 then moved to Chico, CA in the central valley.

user20683

Then to Georgia a year later

user20683

hopefully I'll escape soon

gnat

@WorldEngineer feels about right: as a "world" engineer you have to go all over the world :)

user20683

10:42 PM

@gnat the handle was chosen when I wanted to do game dev or 3D work.

user20683

once upon a time when I was younger and stupider than I am now

gnat

@WorldEngineer World, Camera etc?

Mesh and other 3D

user20683

@gnat world building as a thing has always been something I've enjoyed.

gnat

@WorldEngineer ambitions I see. In game API, World typically matches :)

user20683

yeah

user20683

10:44 PM

I love maps, it's a pity I didn't pursue cartography. I suppose there's always GIS work.

gnat

11:31 PM

yet another attempt to send crap to Programmers. Gee where these guys get their ideas from? He doesn't even have an account here

This is not really the place for this question. Try Programmers instead. — Pheonixblade9 1 hour ago

Rachel may have a point, after all

1

Q: Change the name of Programmers to something that more accurately reflects the site scope?

This is a follow-up to the discussion on renaming the site to match its FAQ, or changing the FAQ to match the site name. That discussion is one of the highest voted questions on here, so this feature-request is to try and get a definitive answer from Stack Exchange about the possibility of gett...

feature-request status-declined site-attributes

or maybe not :)

> I've heard that into every life A little of it must fall

►

A little of it must fall But you'll never catch me complaining

user55340

11:59 PM

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