The Whiteboard - 2013-07-29 (page 1 of 2)

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Programmers Blog

12:06 AM

Programmers Stack Exchange Blog: Tools are not skills

Ed Woodcock on July 29, 2013

I always find it fairly amazing how many questions appear on Programmers.SE, and Stack Overlow, with the subject of “Which x is better?”. Equally, I’ve been involved in a conversation with co-workers and friends on many occasions where the subject line starts with “What do you think of x?”. The commonality of these two separate threads is that the x is always a language, framework, or tool.

I want to go out on a limb here, and state my conclusion at the start of my essay: …

2

12:28 AM

Haskell has some good libraries for web development. — Oded 6 hours ago

HA!

user20683

@YannisRizos actually, it does

user20683

but yeah

I don't doubt it does, but... read the question. Let's just say the OP isn't ready to Haskell.

Damn MSOpedians deleted one of my more thorough answers.

user image

user20683

12:46 AM

@YannisRizos I did, the OP is barely ready to breathe.

Morning~ :D

With programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/206073/… - and it's protection. Does full Java source code and an explanation count as a "good" answer?

@YannisRizos at least you put formatting and a full-stop. It shows effort in the answer provided. Typical MSOpedians judging performance on LOC :P

user20683

1:03 AM

@Deco sorta? Pseudocode would be fine

user20683

honestly it's more an experiment to see what pops up than anything else

@WorldEngineer cool. I still find it interesting how much attention the question got tbh

user20683

@Deco did you see the storm on M.SO?

user20683

it first got posted to SO

Yeah

That's what I was referring to

user20683

1:08 AM

yeah, it's weird

Only just came back to SE after 3 months away

[on hold] is new I see too

user20683

ah

user20683

the whole close system's been rejiggered

user20683

you now have a number of new options and mostly none of the old ones

interesting

heh, someone commented on an answer of mine a while ago asking for more information

oops :S

I'll update the answer - it'll just be 4 months late :D

1 hour later…

user55340

2:35 AM

@JimmyHoffa Oded is cruel...

user55340

Haskell has some good libraries for web development. — Oded 8 hours ago

user20683

7:40 AM

@MichaelT He's honest

user20683

stephendiehl.com/posts/haskell_web.html

user41796

1:33 PM

It pains me to see the close review queue backing up.

user41796

1:52 PM

@WorldEngineer - new variant on the loose. :-)

user41796

4

Q: Who brings the croissants?

This question is inspired by a similar question first asked on StackOverflow by Florian Margaine, then asked in variant forms on CS by Gilles and on Programmers by GlenH7. This time, it's a code golf, with specific metrics for success! In an office of ten people, it's someone's turn to buy croi...

code-golf code-challenge optimization croissant

user55340

Three answers to a question... answer #3 at 13:49:43. Answer #2 at 13:49:25. Answer #1 at 13:49:09. You can tell when people wake up and start thinking about it.

user20683

I kind of want to see Electrical Engineering do a circuit for this

I can see it now... textbooks 5 years from now with all of their examples referencing buying croissants

user55340

The real trick is to get it somehow into a circular linked list data structure and then start asking about who collects the garbage.

1:58 PM

user image

user20683

No the real trick would be to generalize the algorithm to work for a variety of pastries

anything particularly bad about this answer of mine? I got a DV on it recently, spent quite a bit of time trying to figure that

0

A: How can calculus and linear algebra be useful to a system programmer?

System Programming, as far as I know, is about osdev, drivers, utilities and so on. I just can't figure out how calculus and linear algebra can be helpful on that. With calculus it's pretty easy, as soon as one takes a closer look at the course contents. It is pretty closely related to algor...

user20683

not so far as I can tell

user55340

no clue as to what that would be.

somebody just really doesn't like calculus

user20683

2:11 PM

I got a downvoted question from the early days, killed that off. Then a downvoted answer which was also early and plainly wrong.

fine, okay. Someone just doesn't like me then. Most of DVs I've got here so far were helpful and pointed to my posts that sucked one way or another, that's why I asked

user41796

2:30 PM

@gnat - I agree with World, it's an okay answer and not worthy of a down vote. I may have drawn the OP more directly to the conclusions I was trying to make. But I'm not sure how to do that without the OP actually having an understanding of those two subjects. The relevance of your points are more obvious to someone who has that mathematical background.

user41796

@gnat - RE: snark in flag comments. Latest example: Ooooooh! Looky! It's reddit in the comments!

user20683

@GlenH7 I largely cleared the close queue out

user41796

"Not that there's anything wrong with" reddit. Just not the right format for SE. :-)

user41796

@WorldEngineer Props, and thanks for assuaging my feelings over our site. Sucks seeing 20+ in the queue and the "come back in X hours" message.

user55340

@WorldEngineer last night, after commenting about why "now" things are not good content on SE, I went on a bit of "seek and destroy" for questions that were temporal.

user20683

2:43 PM

I noticed

user41796

@MichaelT you had some "good" finds from that point of view. I nearly spat out my coffee when I saw the 2011 WWDC registration question

user55340

@GlenH7 heh

user55340

It started with this question...

user55340

-4

Q: Have I missed any developer conferences, conventions and major events in Canada?

I'm almost certain I've missed more than a few major ones. Please post any I've missed. My list: Polyglot - Vancouver Canada on Rails. - Vancouver (no longer running? Website gone) Interlink - Vancouver Balisage - Montreal PyCon - Toronto Fl...

conferences social

user55340

Which did have a satisfactory ending as to why it was closed...

user55340

2:48 PM

@MichaelT Thanks. Both your comments were insightful and fully addressed my specific concerns. — Kirk Werklund 23 hours ago

user55340

Looking for temporal questions also got a fair number of Visual Studio questions, which were tool more than temporal... but still in the wrong place (there are a lot more of them - I just took the most obvious because I was starting to run out of close votes).

user20683

The core principle that most people can't seem to fathom is that the answers to their questions are not primarily for them. They are for the next guy and the guy after that.

user20683

Hence community ownership of questions and answers as well as the CC license.

user55340

(I just realized, I'm user #177 on Gaming.SE)

user20683

I am user 6 on Blender

user20683

2:52 PM

and I hold the honor of first question on the site

user20683

:p

user55340

I wandered back over there to ask a Dungeon of Dremor question.

I'm user 4 on Prog...

user20683

@ThomasOwens Weren't you in the SO beta though?

user55340

Btw, did anyone see/notice the new SE site?

2:53 PM

@WorldEngineer 572 on SO.

user55340

user20683

@MichaelT yep

user20683

I notice all of them

user55340

I wonder how many Kerbal questions will get cross posted...

Hey man, when Jebediah Kerman's life is on the line in nothing but a space capsule with a parachute, you need answers fast

user20683

2:57 PM

@MichaelT funny you should mention that...

user20683

Ahem. We are STRICTLY an Orbiter shop.

user55340

Previous employment, many of my cow-orkers were kerbal players. We had discussions about what is necessary and best approaches to save various kerbals stranded in odd orbits.

I have a very large ship with many docking ports that is capable of quite a few trips around the system, so I use that to pick up stranded kerbals. Lining up orbits is always a PITA though...

user55340

@Ampt Part of one problem is that (IIRC), it was an early mission that didn't have ideally placed docking ports. Or something.

oooh. Abandon the ship and save the kerbal possibly?

user55340

3:00 PM

I'm not a KSP guy... if there's a choice between Dredmor and Kerbal, its Dredmor.

I'm waiting til they have some funding aspects of the game

like you have to land on the mun to get more funding to build bigger rockets etc etc

user55340

1

A: What are the choices today for orbital mechanics simulation software?

Apart from these serious software mentioned above there is an interesting game with quite realistic orbital calculations, quite suitable for teaching kids about space: Kerbal space program As for AGI non-free version is a lot more powerful.

@WorldEngineer "cleared the close queue" - Bill the Lizard should be envious, with his enormous 10K reviews he still can't stop SO queue from pumping up - stackoverflow.com/review/close/stats I guess that's how SE wants to have it though...

15

Q: Strongly separate duplicates from "the rest" in close votes review queue

Update: I wish I could downvote decline justification twice. "You can already filter down by close reason." Oh really , Do you see many reviewers using filter? Do you see Steward badges awarded for Close Votes as frequently as these would be to obtain with appropriately filtered review queue? ...

feature-request status-declined review vote-to-close exact-duplicates

> In the absence of a reasonable decline, why don't you just give it a try?

user55340

Its a challenge getting people to review. There are lots of people who are active who can review... but don't. I suspect its even "worse" on SO.

@MichaelT per my recollection of working through unfiltered SO close queue, it's more of a challenge to have people stay there

> Discomfort I felt when running through queue reminded me of old review system and of the reason why I didn't want to use it: items in queue were all too different and I just couldn't get into flow because of that.

63

A: Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow

Which action could be taken to clean it up? TL;DR Educate active reviewers to filter SO Close Votes queue by single close reason, with "duplicate" and "too localized" additionally filtered by their favorite tags. Based on my experience, this leads to substantial productivity gain. Bo...

3:10 PM

maybe that should be the default settings then?

@MichaelT Yeah, that was unambiguously intentional abuse of someone who posted a garbage question. I've no sympathy.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I read that as "suggesting Haskell as a solution to a problem is intentional abuse of the person asking the question"... Haskell is torture! ;-)

@Ampt yup I think to have filtered view as default could make a difference. At least that was my experience of working with that queue. Once you have a single reason prevailing, it gets much easier to go through it (and I don't mean go-and-close, leaving open also gets easier)

Our new blog is awesome

(Who's ed woodcock??)

we have a blog?

3:20 PM

@Ampt programmers.blogoverflow.com

There's a hand full of bad posts, but the latest one that just went up is genuinely really good

3:32 PM

I should write something for the blog at some point. But I'm terrible at self-motivation.

> Now, if you need to learn how quickly execution time will grow when N increases, you'll need derivatives / differentiation. Other parts of calculus you will need to grok are limits and asymptotic analysis - these will lead you to understanding Big-O notation, better scoring at programming interviews and possibly, better doing systems programming.

Is that true?

I don't know any of those things, but I have no difficulty doing big O space/runtime analysis

user55340

Also, if you fly on a spacecraft like Apollo, with reduced atmospheric pressure, not only will the cake bloat unaesthetically, once you light the candles, due to increased oxygen content, the candles will burn entirely in matter of seconds and then the cake will catch fire and burn up right to the plate, frosting, pastry and cream, all of it, with a very bright flame... (well, if you try "lite" with fat-free cream, that cream might survive). — SF. 5 hours ago

user55340

Space is fun!

user41796

@ThomasOwens you can co-edit the croissant writeup. :-)

@JimmyHoffa where did that grok come from?

is that a term from somewhere I should know?

user41796

3:38 PM

@Ampt all well read programmers understand grok

user41796

Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

that was what I feared

that book is terrible

user41796

it's pedantic at points

To grok is to intimately and completely share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. Author Robert A. Heinlein coined the term in his best-selling 1961 book Stranger in a Strange Land. In Heinlein's view, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed. From the novel: The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathise or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment". Other forms of...

user41796

the unabridged version is worse. There are some interesting scenes added, but ...

3:39 PM

I can't get past all the homophobia and misogyny

user55340

catb.org/jargon/html/G/grok.html

user41796

mind you, I like most of Heinleins work, including SiSL.

@gnat that answer looks goodish to me but I've always understood the algebras become important for system engineering (having never done it) because you often have to create algorithms that handle memory in algebraic manners in regards to processing I/O and especially anytime DSP is occuring but just thinking about even a general serial cable sending data; there's going to be a complex memory juggling and prediction you have to do to properly get that data publicized somehow

being wildly speculative here

@JimmyHoffa that's a good point, thanks. I'll do some wordsmithing

user55340

> [common; from the novel Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning literally ‘to drink’ and metaphorically ‘to be one with’] The emphatic form is grok in fullness.

user41796

3:39 PM

You misread the homophobia - he actually is very liberal as far as sexual mores are concerned. At the time, some of his writing was downright scandalous

user55340

> 1. To understand. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge. When you claim to ‘grok’ some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity.

user55340

> For example, to say that you “know” LISP is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary — but to say you “grok” LISP is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming.

I get the meaning of grok, I was honestly hoping that it wasn't from SiSL

@JimmyHoffa whatever, the word need there is not okay, you spotted it well

@Ampt 12 years as a working programmer, it's just analysis of your looping structures and shortcircuiting

and very coarse grained at that

if you asked me to give the precise fine grained definition I could likely do it but it would take a little more care.

@gnat I was asking a genuine question actually; to the point of, when I analyze an algorithm to come up with the upper, lower, and average space/times, am I doing some kind of calculus and not even knowing it? heh

3:42 PM

I just found the book to be a little cultish and offensive at points. There are some good parts there, but towards the end it really starts to get carried away

user55340

@Ampt Ever read about the Hubbard Heinlin Bet?

Have not

I honestly don't know what a differential equation is

user55340

29

Q: Is there any evidence for the bet between Robert A. Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard?

It is widely believed that L. Ron Hubbard and Robert A. Heinlein made a bet in a bar one night either than L. Ron could not create a religion, or to see who could create a religion first. (In the second case, Stranger in a Strange Land is often cited as Heinlein's effort.) Ignoring calling any r...

robert-a-heinlein

lmao

that's what I got out of it

user55340

3:44 PM

Also quite a bit at everything2.com/title/The+Heinlein+-+Hubbard+Wager+Myth

"I want a religion where I can get laid as much as I want, and the women won't talk back. It's gonna be awesome"

"Oh, and did I mention that I'm a sex god who can make women faint with my kiss alone?"

user55340

The thing is, Heinlein took it more as a joke than an actual thing.

user55340

Hubbard was serious about it.

Was Hubbard an author?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Yep, though much more a pulp writer... I want to say he wasn't nearly as talented as other golden age SF authors.

user55340

3:48 PM

Battlefield Earth (novel)

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 is a 1982 science fiction novel written by the Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. He composed a soundtrack to the book called Space Jazz. The subsequent film adaptation, released in 2000, was a commercial failure and was criticized as one of the "worst films ever made". Synopsis In the year AD 3000, Earth has been ruled by an alien race, the Psychlos, for a millennium. Humanity has been reduced to a few scattered tribes in isolated parts of the world while the Psychlos strip the planet of its mineral wealth. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a young member...

user55340

The thing is Hubbard was churning out words... more words (penny per word) more money. So you get such stuff as Battlefield Earth which is 1050 pages long... and meh.

@gnat I tried poking around in "Numerical Recipes in C" at one point, and came away with the belief that I am not mathy enough to be a systems programmer, it's just how required complex algorithms are to work effectively at the metal level that is where the math comes from I would think, the only place you use algorithms so much is in scientific, very rare financial (predictive trading and such), and graphics stuff. Outside systems programming requires just as much focus on creating

algorithms, I would guess?

@JimmyHoffa well, yes, you're doing a calculus and not knowing it, right. :) This is normal, and it's really hard to tell whether you'd be better off knowing (because learning it takes time), and this also shows that wodr need in my answer is, shall we say, slippery

Woo! I know calculus! @gnat said so! Yay me, I can count myself among luminaries such as einstein and newton in knowing calculus! Winner!!

@JimmyHoffa "These forty years now I’ve been speaking in prose without knowing it!" :) (thehumanist.org/january-february-2013/…)

Even math isn't enough for some of the stuff in numerical recipes; for FFT as an example one would better have a physics background... or a friend with such a background to test the code :)

4:11 PM

@gnat Nothing like having established yourself as a fancy-pants talented engineer and all that only to have your mom put you in your place; my numerical recipes in C was an old copy of hers, and she can breeze through that thing. I'll get the last laugh though as she's started losing her marbles, woot!

user55340

@Ampt as an aside, did you ever read the Heinlein - Spider "collaboration" Variable Star?

SiSL was my first heinlein experience'

user55340

:For the astronomical object, see Variable star. Variable Star is a 2006 novel written by Spider Robinson based on the surviving seven pages of an eight-page 1955 novel outline by the late Robert A. Heinlein. The book is set in a divergent offshoot of Heinlein's Future History and contains many references to works by Heinlein and other authors. It describes the coming of age of a young musician who signs on to the crew of a starship as a way of escaping from a failed romance. Robinson posted a note on his website in 2009 noting that his agent had sold a trilogy of sequels based on the n...

I'm not sure I'm cut out for more haha

user55340

This is an early "juvenile" book (as they were termed back then) that wasn't ever written. Spider was offered to write it (he had the word choice dictionary that Heinlein used... and even his cuff links and coat to work in).

user55340

4:17 PM

Its a Heinlein book, but it isn't.

user55340

You might like Friday... though given your reception of Stranger, I'd stay away from Job, though taken in the right light, its quite amusing.

I liked the first 1/3 of stranger.

Just like I liked Rondevous with Rama and found the subsequent books boring.

user55340

"Job" is sex and making fun of religions...

user55340

Job: A Comedy of Justice

Job: A Comedy of Justice is a novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1984. The title is a reference to the biblical Book of Job and James Branch Cabell's book Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1984, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1985. Plot summary The story examines religion through the eyes of Alex, a Christian political activist who is corrupted by Margrethe, a Danish Norse cruise ship hostess — and who loves every minute of it. Enduring a shipwreck, an earthquake, and a series of world-changes brought about by Loki (...

and those two I had no problem with lol. It was the homophobia and misogyny

wish I had the book here so I could grab a quote or two

user55340

4:25 PM

I'm not unfamiliar with it.

and it honestly wasn't the whole book

it was just jarring to see such forward ideas in one part of the book and then run headfirst into a wall

user55340

Then I'd certainly suggest giving Friday and A Moon is a Harsh Mistress a read. Maybe Job too.

I'll do so

user55340

4:39 PM

One of the other considerations for SF is how it fares on the hard/soft scale. Heinlein tends to be more about "society" and "people" than the technology. You just need to accept that the tech is such and such and avoid saying "it doesn't work that way."

user55340

If you want the "oh, it does work that way", read some Forward.

user55340

Dragon's Egg is a hard science fiction novel written by Robert L. Forward and published in 1980. In the story, Dragon's Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by cheela, intelligent creatures that have the volume of sesame seeds and live a million times faster than humans. Most of the novel, from May to June 2050, chronicles the cheela civilization beginning with its discovery of agriculture to its first face-to-face contact with humans, who are observing the star from orbit. The novel is regarded as a landmark in hard science fi...

what am I missing in this answer? all these "bolded parts", what's this?

0

A: Why was strict parsing not chosen for HTML?

Taking note of the part I've bolded, basically, they implemented a subset of the tags available in the SGML system they were familiar with, adding the new anchor tag, and choosing to ignore any of the many tags they didn't care about or wish to support for..this means that if you now create a br...

> ain't that strange? Very strange

5:05 PM

It feels like organized cheating when you tell someone what they need to add to their answer to get your vote, they do and you thus give them 10 points. I love this game, so unruly :)

5:25 PM

A segfault is an acceptable way to let the user know that the program reached it's end right?

(seeing who's awake on the monday afternoon after lunch)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa no, not cheating...

user55340

It is important to reinforce what you want to see with positive comments. — MichaelT 2 days ago

@Ampt I just spent the weekend moving; if being dead but still moving is called undead, then I think the allegory to my state this monday is unawake

lol unawake

I can imagine you sitting at your desk munching on brains

well not really

I don't know you

but you get what I mean

It's more like sitting at my desk munching on internet hoping some code get's checked in as I shamble about the office

1

Q: Graph theory problem (name unknown): flow related

I am trying to solve the following kind of problem. I do not know if there is already a name for this, or a solution; however, I'm willing to bet there is. I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of implementing a solution for it, or at least tell me the name of the problem? Suppo...

graph-traversal

What's the name of this; it's like sum max or min max or some such

5:41 PM

shoot.. thats like algorithms 101

though the different coin types throw in an interesting wrench that may make it undecidable on the realm of TSP, but I'm not completely convinced

can't recall the name though

I can picture in my head the folding approach but there's an optimal space which isn't at the edges in the event you have 4 gold and 4 bronze coins this means it's no longer a true min or max

oh and it's not a directed graph actually, so maybe it is TSP

@Ampt I should take one of these at MIT's open courseware or something some day

I've been saying the same thing for a while, but my regularly schedule courses take that motivation away lol

I know there's holes in my knowledge when it comes to well studied data structures and algorithms. While I can wing a lot of crap pretty well and am not oblivious to a hand full of the really common stuff, I know I'm missing an amount of depth in regards to that area

user41796

5:45 PM

@gnat whatever you're missing on that answer, so are the rest of us.

CS was never my strong suit... I know enough to choose between algorithms for my purpose, but making new ones and really getting into the math behind it was always something that eluded me a little

user41796

@Ampt this blog post may shift some of your thoughts on Heinlein. It's important to remember the time when he wrote his material. What's now blase was scandalous then. scifiwright.com/2010/08/ignoring-the-debt-you-owe-heinlein

@GlenH7 Oh, I agree it isn't out of line with the times by any means, and it's not like I hate him for it, it just really brought me out of the book when I ran into a section like that, so it was difficult to enjoy it.

user41796

It's arguable about the duality of his biases or if he was injecting then radical thoughts but immediately covering it with a "but that's patently absurd" cliched comment. Many of the moments in SiSL are like that.

user41796

I get a kick out of his pushing non-standard mores for the time. For example, suggesting polyamory during the buttoned down 50's & 60's.

user55340

5:54 PM

Oh, side bit... favorite short story from Heinlein is Green Hills of Earth. (Delila and the Space Rigger is good one and shows some of his views on women).

user55340

@GlenH7 Chain marriage in Moon is a Harsh mistress?

user41796

And there's arguably some symbolism behind it. Many of the radical thoughts were pushed by the younger characters, and it was always Jubal (father figure) who poo-pooed it

user41796

@MichaelT excellent example, yes. It's a theme that runs through almost all of his books

user55340

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool green hills of Earth.

user41796

his style was so much more picturesque than Asimov's

5:57 PM

I like asimov

but yeah, Heinlein's characters are more 3 dimensional than Asmiov's as well

user41796

And I agree with your assessment of Hubbard's writing. Plodding at best, but that makes sense given how he was paid

asimov's characters were there because he couldn't just tell you about science fiction concepts directly

user41796

and asimov certainly gets the nod for complex technology or visions

user55340

Though... his technology was more as a prop for serving the "what if" of robotics and clashing of cultures.

user41796

We did get the 3 laws from him... :-)

user55340

5:59 PM

(I place Asimov rather in the soft sci-fi, but on a grand scale rather than personal one... Heinlein was more about the personal impacts of the future)

I feel like if Asimov could have written a manual on robotics semantics and gotten away with it, he would have

user41796

@Ampt I think he did, we just weren't smart enough to see it.

user55340

@Ampt You really need to read some Forward. (Sometimes, a chapter (or the whole) book will feel like a science paper with a plot)

Woohoo, figured out my segfault. Matt - 1, Program - 0

user41796

<shopping question> Should I get a new nexus 7 or not?

6:06 PM

friend has one and loves it

but he also has a flip phone so thats his main tech piece

user41796

By choice, I have a basic phone at the moment as well. My wife has a kindle paperwhite, which she loves. nexus 7 has a slightly larger screen

1,920 x 1,200 IPS display, 2GB of RAM, a rear camera, a quad-core processor, wireless charging and the latest version of Android, Jelly Bean 4.3 for 229?

hot damn....

user55340

@GlenH7 do you have anything that pushes into one ecosystem or another?

user41796

@MichaelT not yet

user41796

mail / on-line files / calendar / etc ... is primarily through google, so android makes sense. but I use an ipod for my music

user55340

6:09 PM

What do you want to do with it? Preferred applications? (I'm a board gamer which keeps me firmly in iOS).

user41796

torque is one of the apps I'm interested in - bluetooth reader of OBDII codes from your car

user41796

also wanting something to target for mobile dev. iPad / android are a toss-up there although I know more java than obj-C

torque is so slick

user41796

but I'm quite comfy with C & C++ so not worried about migration to obj-C

user55340

Do you have a mac?

user41796

6:11 PM

I've been amazed by torque and even more amazed there isn't anything comparable on iOS or mac. @MichaelT - yes, preferred platform at home

user55340

( torque-bhp.com/software/torque-android-obd2-adapters mentions PLX devices kiwi Wi-Fi OBD which is on Think Geek as thinkgeek.com/product/dcf4 which is iOS.)

wow. Just... wow

0

Q: How to develop confidence about programming

I am doing B.Tech in IT(i'm in 3rd yr now). never really did any programming before university though most people on my class had done. never thought of doing in the first year(didnt like it at all). i dont have any confidence in programming. i dont know how to gain more skill. people say that on...

programming-languages c++ programming-practices c language-design

user41796

@MichaelT good find and I'll have to keep that in mind. I had picked up a bluetooth OBDII adapter before realizing my existing el-cheapo tablet didn't have bluetooth on it.

user41796

@gnat Darn Thomas. I was going to suggest close as dupe of my answer here: programmers.stackexchange.com/a/206160/53019

user55340

o_O - what is this doing in "car gadgets"? thinkgeek.com/product/141f

6:18 PM

@MichaelT I've been enjoying straddling platforms having windows phone for me and android for my wife, some of the windows phone stuff is awesome; I just wish the phone company's weren't screwing it delaying updates (and that it didn't have a hand full of annoying buggy bits)

android is more to phones what windows is to pc's; it just works, well, and let's you do anything you want or need

user41796

@JimmyHoffa that's one of the appeals of the nexus for me. It's running stock android so will be amongst first to patch

user55340

The thing for me, I don't want to futz with my phone. I haven't found anything that makes me wish that I could rewrite the code... or when I do I realize I'm the only one that would want such a feature and rewriting it would involve months of work that isn't really reasonable.

user55340

Back in college, I was linux (Slackware!) when possible. I could make it do everything I wanted and would spend hours just tinkering with (and reinstalling when I fscked something up). Now, I realize that I want a computing device that "just works" and does 95% of what I want... because I don't want to spend hours tinkering with it and reinstalling it.

user55340

(If I do want something to tinker with, I get out the Raspberry)

@MichaelT Early days of slackware was awesome, when linux continued getting bulkier and slackware updates grew slower I had to migrate to FreeBSD to get back to the basics of that stuff

user41796

6:23 PM

@MichaelT I hear ya there. There is value in that constant tinkering stage just as there is value in the "get on with it and get things done" stage

user41796

I'm not quite ready to drop down to RPi / arduino levels yet, but that will come in a few years

user55340

I've got the confidence and know how and understanding that tinkering gave me... I don't need to prove it to myself to make the "oh thats cool!" thing on the phone.

user55340

@GlenH7 The RPi is my tinkering in home automation. Better lighting control in my bedroom than the mechanical timers...

user41796

I think part of the problem with phones is that they're so volatile. "No one" keeps their phone past 2, maybe 3 years. It's a constant upgrade & update cycle

@MichaelT For sure, I always liked macs for that "it works out of the box" peace of mind. Mind you I use windows for all my devices because I think it's a nice balance and because I'm poor, but I've been looking at those new macbook pros for my main programming platform for a while

user41796

6:25 PM

@MichaelT I hear that. One of my pet projects that I'm specifically avoiding is building a DNP/IP SCADA system for the house.

user55340

I want it to have (in effect) a timer for each day... and a web page (app) that I can hit that will turn on the light for so long when its in dark mode.

@GlenH7 Yeah, I think it's an important stage; I would wager almost every decent engineer I've ever worked with I've had the occasional nostalgia conversation of tinkering with that stuff endlessly with, but at the same time I don't know of any I've worked with who still does that. functioning emacs on whatever OS and I don't really need to meddle with anything further

user55340

So, going back to phones... I want a device that has the apps that I want that works. I've been Mac for a long time... and iPhone and iPad just work the way I want them to.

user41796

@MichaelT makes sense

user55340

As a board game geek, boardgamegeek.com/blog/164 would make me switch to iOS if I wasn't already firmly entrenched.

user41796

6:29 PM

we gotta get our fixes, no doubt

Wish I could recommend windows phone; the usability of the metro design is genuinely amazing, but it's just missing the polish, support, and stability of the android and mac stuff

user55340

MS partners are getting a bit annoyed at the slow progress on the windows phone - theverge.com/2013/7/29/4567046/…

user41796

Yeah, winphone is just a non-starter for me. M$ is so fickle in how it chooses to support things. And it just doesn't have a big enough independent development group behind it.

the UI is way more responsive than any other device though because the APIs are all 100% asynchronous, some really super smart stuff they did like that with the windows phone makes certain things about it great, it's just...not there yet, and probably never will be

user41796

Windows phone has always been the way to demonstrate your blind loyalty to the mothership

user55340

6:31 PM

You know, I'd be a Board Game Geek fan of Microsoft... IF they had done the surface right back in the early days... it was targeted only corporate with no consumer for it.

the surface table?

user55340

Board gamers were just wishing to have a coffee table where they could play virtual games... back in... what was surface released.

or the tablet

user55340

table.

@GlenH7 Yeah, generally, I did it more of curiosity so I could have android + something else to play with

user41796

6:33 PM

@JimmyHoffa makes sense. I'm looking at the Moto X or the iPhone 5 after the 5S releases as my next phone update. Those will stay "stock" as I don't want to risk futzing up my phone

user55340

I remember one of the early demos for it was a chess board.

user41796

@MichaelT I have only seen pictures of the fabled table. But badazz it was.

@MichaelT I have a hard time believing MS is dragging their feet, it seems way too brain dead, but maybe they've really gotten that stupid since gates left...

@GlenH7 We had one in the lobby of the MS office I worked at, it was stupid. literally.

Chess, a piano, and finger painting, it was a display gag for marketing folks

user55340

Microsoft makes most of their money from corporate office and windows installs. Consumer and retail is a rather new thing for them. They don't understand what consumers actually want.

I can't imagine a use of it for real people, not at the like 60k price point or whatever it was

user55340

6:35 PM

@JimmyHoffa Picture what it could have been if it was able to be for consumers back in the day... and let them program it.

user55340

The pent up demand for virtual board games on iOS was huge... people bought iPads for Small World and Carsconne.

@MichaelT I know the first point, never really connected the second point because it's not entirely true; but they did walk away from consumer probably '98 when computing became so much more prevalent and necessary in business... It's like they took a two decade hiatus from consumer and that does make sense as to why their consumer work stinks

@JimmyHoffa but, then, in the same thought you have to remember that both the xbox and xbox 360 were resounding commercial successes

I always pidgeon hole msft as being dumb, but the worst is that some of the stuff they nail

user55340

@Ampt Different division that wanted to go toe to toe with Sony and Nintendo.

so they know how to do it, but it's like they choose not to

user41796

6:37 PM

diff division that purposefully lost money for years in order to enter the market

user55340

They wanted to make games, and needed an outlet for those... they bought bungie (still bitter) for Halo and needed a platform for it.

@Ampt True.. Microsoft is an extremely vertically segmented company though, success in one space really has absolutely zero relation to another; I don't know if you guys saw the recent publicized internal e-mail there, sounds like they're finally trying to integrate across those boundaries (good luck, those have been their a LONG time)

user55340

The xbox division didn't have any toes to step on to do what they needed. The office and windows divisions were fighting (and killed their early tablet).

I'm not saying that they should emulate the xbox division completely, but somewhere , someone is being paid by msft for making a product that meets consumer needs

@Ampt There developer division for instance, they have never skipped a beat. from visual studio early days, through .NET, the MSSQL from early versions on, their developer stuff has always been extremely competitive if not fantastic in the face of it's market space

6:39 PM

admittedly, they really screwed the pooch with the xbox one, but we'll see how that fares in the long run

but then you see stuff like the surface (table) and the zune

and it's well put together stuff that has 0 support

just not marketed for crap

I had a zune HD and it was FANTASTIC

but the lack of ANY peripherals or 3rd party support was really tough at points

and when google music came and turned my phone into a media player, it drove a stake strait through the heart of my poor little zune and I sold it

user55340

MS doesn't quite know how to play well with others... they demand things of OEMs and get their way. But when getting someone else to make something for you where you don't have that leverage? Nope.

2

thats a good point

and that may be their undoing, because all the products that fail, fail because they lack 3rd party support, not because the device is bad

well.. not all

but the consumer products do

user55340

Early XBox stuff was all microsoft brand. It took them awhile to get other people trust that they weren't going to try to screw you over the next day.

user41796

@MichaelT oh, just like windows phone. :-P

and the surface RT

and the zune

user55340

6:45 PM

And the Kin.. (or was it the sidekick or something like that)...

I'm about ready to put the surface pro on that boat as well

engadget.com/2010/05/05/kin-one-and-two-review

it was kin

and you know what? all of those devices were awesome, solid pieces of hardware, with software to boot

user55340

Microsoft has a lot of smart people who know how to make good stuff (and are encumbered behind lots of bad stuff). They also have a corporate culture that is composed of "Battling Business Units" where the success of one comes at the loss of another... somehow, somewhere. This leads to political infighting and sabotaging of other's projects. Combined with the "corporate is all" mindset in marketing, this often spelled doom for consumer goods.

user55340

nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/…

user55340

> When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet.

user55340

> So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

6:59 PM

thats why they used that pop up box?

holy crap the stupid makes my head hurt

user20683

pop up?

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