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Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
12:32 AM
@FranciscoNoriega Actually, Son of Obsidian looks pretty close. It's the first one on the first page of schemes.
 
Francisco Noriega
Francisco Noriega
@RobertHarvey yeah.. there's a few that are similar but not quite it.. it's also similar to Solarized (ethanschoonover.com/solarized) I just the other one more pleasing
 
 
4 hours later…
gnat
gnat
4:28 AM
Generic Java
Generic Java (Generic Java or GJ) is a programming language that is a superset of Java which adds support for generic programming. It was designed by Gilad Bracha, Martin Odersky, David Stoutamire, and Philip Wadler to offer developers a smoother transition and better Java compatibility than the Pizza programming language, previously created by Odersky and Wadler. Generic Java was incorporated, with the addition of wildcards, into the official Java language version J2SE 5.0. See also * Generic programming * Pizza programming language * Scala programming language External links *
> designed by Gilad Bracha, Martin Odersky, David Stoutamire, and Philip Wadler
 
 
5 hours later…
user3066819
user3066819
9:08 AM
 
delete this account
delete this account
9:40 AM
Anybody care to take a look at my question? Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236716/…
 
 
3 hours later…
enderland
enderland
12:45 PM
@MichaelT are you kidding? I grew up watching the vikings have lots of money and choke every year, how can one be a fan of that crap (I did grow up in MN though :P). The best part is what I just said doesn't really narrow down when I was born at all since it's true of most of the past 20+ years ;)
 
whatsisname
whatsisname
1:37 PM
that damn vikings stadium is a disaster
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
1:50 PM
 
user55340
@deletethisaccount The difficulty with estimations (average small project) is that each person is different. A nice, html/css/js portfolio website would take me longer than the graphic/js guy that I work with. On the other hand, a backend relational database, clustered java site suitable for demonstrating ecommerce would be faster for me than him. And my estimate for time (decade+ experience) would be different than that of our intern.
 
user55340
So trying to say how long something would take becomes very personalized. With doing estimations for projects, one person's estimate for time cannot be applied to another person's time because of different familiarities withi the code, understandings of the problem, and levels of experience.
 
user55340
Learning to estimate is a key skill for software development. Lowballing estimates is likely one of the worst things you can do long term. That said, doing an estimate and applying a multiple for the 'I'm probably optimistic about that time' doesn't help too much either.
 
user55340
There are lots of techniques for learning how to do good estimates - I would suggest getting and reading all of amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Developer-Practices/… which goes into various techniques and aspects of them.
 
user55340
A key thing is to look at the historical information "I thought I had a project that was 1000 lines, it turned out to be 2000 lines. I thought the 1000 lines would take me 1 month to write, turns out the 2000 lines took me 3 months to write. I have a project that I think is 1500 lines..." - learn from your past mistakes for estimation and try to account for them to make better ones next time.
 
user55340
2:02 PM
The other thing is to very specifically define the scope of what you are going to do ahead of time so that you don't get things added on to your project that might be within the scope of the original definition but add on more time.
 
user55340
@user3066819 Key thing to remember is not to repost on P.SE because you're not getting enough activity on Stack Overflow. The two sites have different scopes.
 
user55340
Beyond that, not sure if there are any powershellers in this room. Might be, but dunno. If you have a working script, you might consider posting it to Code Review.SE ( codereview.stackexchange.com ). Make sure you've read the on topic checklist: codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
 
user55340
2:18 PM
cv-plz programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194219/… - my vote expired back in June. This question demonstrates the worst aspects of the "what is the name for this thing" type question.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
2:36 PM
I don't suppose that anyone here is familiar with CORBA...I'm wondering if what I'm seeing is common practice.
 
user55340
@ThomasOwens I touched it long time ago... LONG time ago.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@MichaelT Is it normal to request the IOR string from the server over the network?
In order to connect, I need to open a Socket and the server sends me a String. I then use that String (which is an IOR) to instantiate my CORBA client.
That just seems...wrong.
 
user55340
@ThomasOwens Judging by Wikipedia (as I said, long time ago), looks like 'yes'
 
user55340
Interoperable Object Reference
An Interoperable Object Reference (IOR) is a CORBA or RMI-IIOP reference that uniquely identifies an object on a remote CORBA server. IORs can be transmitted in binary over TCP/IP via the General Inter-ORB Protocol (the encoding may be big-endian or little-endian), or serialized into a string of hexadecimal digits (prefixed by the string IOR:) to facilitate transport by non-CORBA mechanisms such as HTTP, FTP, and e-mail. The internal structure of an IOR may contain multiple components. Each component is identified by its integer code and has its own binary format. The codes are assigned ...
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Oh. So it's IOR or NameService. Interesting.
Other CORBA instances that I've seen use name service.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
3:03 PM
So apparently, we don't have a name service running. That's why I can't do that.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
3:24 PM
@FranciscoNoriega I've been using the solarized light scheme in visual studio for almost a year now and love it.
has just enough contrast while still being extremely easy on the eyes
@gnat yeah I know who did it; that link above I was pointing at was Wadler's Blog, but what I don't know is the year of the original generic java - I recall it being somewhere around ~99-2001?
@MichaelT interesting article about why bad practices spread..
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa While those are a bit exagerations, they do point out some truths.
 
user55340
That teams that don't have all their stuff together need more headcount (and managers like more headcount) and that in turn spreads the 'not togetherness' to the new hires.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
> In other words, software engineers that produce excellent code cannot easily pass on their wisdom to the next generation of programmers unless they go into academia.
He's missing a piece there
 
user55340
Another company in the area considers employment at my former employer a negative mark on the resume because of that (though through the network of 'yea, he's good' knowing the other guy, that can be erased).
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
His last statement is wrong because you can't train university students in the ways of good coding and engineering. It just can't be done; there's a basal level required before you can start picking up good practices at all, and they aren't there yet. It's one of the reasons CS folks come out of school not knowing how to do anything right
they need that first year or two in industry to get those foundational how-to-actually-make-software skills before they can pick up any best practices
> However, I write this because I value simple and understandable software and I want to start a discussion on how software engineering can culturally reward correctness and reliability. We need to think of ways to encourage programming excellence to spread.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
3:39 PM
There are remedies for people who bypass encapsulation with Reflection. — Robert Harvey 10 mins ago
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
3:55 PM
@JimmyHoffa You can train university students in the ways of good coding and engineering. Just not in the classroom. It's called co-op.
 
gnat
gnat
@JimmyHoffa earlier than that: "OOPSLA 98, Vancouver, October 1998. We present GJ, a design that extends the Java programming language with generic types and methods..." (homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/pizza/gj/Documents)
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@ThomasOwens at that point the fact of them being university students is completely circumstantial
@gnat ah there ya go. I had a feeling it was earlier even but it sounds crazy to think generic java was out that long back and the book came out in '06 ? I don't understand how that can be... (granted the book is related to the actual adoption by java which did take years, but not that many did it?)
 
user55340
(I wish we still had the too localized close reason)
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@ThomasOwens also, the "good coding" that can be taught pre-1 or 2 years in industry is super basic simplistic stuff that doesn't relate to actually generating quality software so much as generating relatively working software.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@JimmyHoffa It's still a good start. Also, university instructors who actually have industry experience is also another part to having a really good start.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
4:02 PM
@ThomasOwens I know it's all a good start, but what the guy is talking about in his blog isn't about "giving a good start" he refers to imparting the wisdom learned from years writing excellent software in industry in academia. Maybe at the post-grad level that's possible? But the techniques that make for truly high quality highly maintainable software elude many for years, I don't think those things are going to stick for any students. Even after 1-2 years in industry it's hard to make them stick
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@JimmyHoffa What article are you guys talking about?
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
2 days ago, by MichaelT
http://www.haskellforall.com/2014/04/worst-practices-are-viral-for-wrong.html (note: not about haskell)
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Hmm... Well, I do see his point about software libraries. "Why hasn't this library been updated in the last 24 hours? Is it dead?" "No, it was written correctly the first time, so it worked out of the gate, and it still works."
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa post grad acadameia has very little 'best practice' to it.
 
user55340
You could think of everything in academia as a spike solution - and nothing is maintained long term.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
4:15 PM
Academia is supposed to be the place where we preserve best practices for future generations. How well that works is debatable. Especially in a field like computing that is changing so rapidly.
 
user55340
And rarely are you working with large teams or cross project teams... and you don't care about a build server...
 
user55340
industry best practices are things the industry learns... and its hard to get the industry practices back into the ivory tower.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Can we get some close votes on this?
1
Q: How would you explain this line of code to a complete beginner?

ProgI am about to teach a friend of mine programming in Java. He has no experience in programming at all. We are both high school seniors. I was wondering: when teaching a complete beginner something that is very simple, but 'relies on' more advanced knowledge that the student has yet to learn - sho...

teaching
 
user55340
@RobertHarvey mine's on there already.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT I know it does - I'm just thinking at that level the students may be able to pick up best practices if it was taught. Granted it's not taught there
 
user55340
4:30 PM
@JimmyHoffa Nope... its not... there are too many other things that are an issue... and even 6 months isn't long enough for a project to be maintained.
 
user55340
The only times you do learn about it is if you work on external projects that are multi-year.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT you're not getting my point - I'm speaking about the abilities of the students, not the things they actually do. I know they don't learn that stuff, but under-grad students can't learn that stuff, I'm merely positing that post-grad students might be able to learn that stuff, even though they don't.
 
Ampt
Ampt
ugh. The joys of merging branches in SVN
Can we abolish SVN yet?
 
user55340
post grads are all about research and not practicality.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
yesterday, by Jimmy Hoffa
@Zeroth the source control server could have a terrible mishap.
 
user55340
4:33 PM
The thing is, I never saw grad students with an interest in the long term maintaibility of the code...
 
Ampt
Ampt
@JimmyHoffa Man, I'd be all for it if it weren't for the fact that this SVN server has been running since early 2007
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT yes - but they're also far more capable of understanding complex coding techniques than under-grad students, some of the techniques for making code maintainable are complex. Like how to use composition instead of inheritance, decomposing things to come up with an approach to implement code in that way may be in their grasp if it was taught to them - that technique is decidedly not within the grasp of an undergrad student.
 
Ampt
Ampt
@MichaelT they've never had to do it!
 
user55340
the code for their thesis will be thrown away when they leave... or worse, in a few years given to some undergrads as a senior project with the 'add these enhancements that are unreasonable'
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@Ampt it is then all the more prone to terrible mishaps.
 
user55340
4:35 PM
@JimmyHoffa its not about complex coding techniques... and if anything, that makes it even worse.
 
Ampt
Ampt
@JimmyHoffa I would highly disagree with that point.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT I'm confused, are you saying you think if a post-grad student was taught techniques for writing good code they couldn't learn them, or merely that they are not taught them? It sounds like you're stating the ladder.
 
user55340
 
user55340
I'm saying that they aren't taught them, and the pressures of the academic environment make the industry style code counter productive.
 
user55340
Note the '-' for has phd?
 
Ampt
Ampt
4:36 PM
I was just going to comment on that haha
> Has PhD (-1)
 
user55340
They've got all these big ideas that they've implemented but never had to maintain.
 
user55340
You want architecture astronauts? Find a fresh PhD in a programming job.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT I completely agree with you. I said they aren't taught them numerous times, once in every one of my counter-arguments to you because I was assuming you were argueing with me. Apparently you were argueing a totally different point though, I'm argueing about what they could learn, not what they do learn.
 
user55340
We were arguing parallel to each other about which lane is the right one?
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT haha iduno. Doesn't matter anyway.
expression trees have one loop construct: The loop. Woot... perhaps I'll construct the expression tree in a loop rather than handing an iterable variable to it and try to manually instruct the conditional and breakage conditions to the funky ass API.
Shouldn't be hard I guess... just need to create a list of expressions and put them in a block so the loop is unrolled in the tree by default
 
user55340
4:41 PM
My thing is mostly on the 'academic pressures don't match industry pressures and so the engineering aspect of much of the code is lost...' - they don't have the proper pressures on them to learn, store, and apply industry best practices in academia.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT that's only one of the numerous reasons they don't learn that stuff. I was simply saying I imagine they could learn those things because of their ability level whereas undergrad students could not learn them regardless of how someone approached the teaching of it; they're just missing too many things do be able.
 
user55340
I'm going to go with that I think that undergrads have a better chance of learning them because of the more structured enviroment - its just a matter of showing them the right tools and selling them on the advantages.
 
user55340
I learned how to use RCS to work with another person on a project... but grad students were still doing 'cp foo.c foo.c.orig1' because they didn't need to work with other people on their research projects or have the same 'next assignment' deadlines if they have a night of drunken binge coding.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT ah... Nah, I doubt it. They just don't have the ability to decompose problems from what I've seen, and it's impossible to apply any common practices more complex than "write comments" and "don't use gotos" without being able to decompose your problem domain
 
user55340
The types of tasks a grad student does vs an undergrad does - the undergrads tasks are more applicable to software engineering applications than the grad student.
 
user55340
4:47 PM
I'm not referring to first year... but rather 3rd or 4th year undergrads - when they start getting the real projects.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT I don't think someone with a BS in CS can do these things. You don't count, you are not the norm.
 
user55340
My compiler class for example (3rd year) was four assignments, where each one built on the previous one.
 
Ampt
Ampt
Theres a lot of stuff in industry that you just can't learn, no matter how hands on your program is
 
user55340
I wish I knew about unit testing for that... and while I might wonder about its worth, a good testing framework could have saved me some time.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
but the research stuff that you see from people doing their PhD work shows they can decompose complex problems and come up with solutions. I suspect they could be taught to apply maintainable high-quality solutions
 
Ampt
Ampt
4:49 PM
like walking in to work and having someone go "Dude, why'd you make this branch 2 months ago and not commit anything to it?"
then you spend the rest of the day in self doubt, wondering if you forgot something important
 
user55340
I did learn about partial compilation from another student 2 years ahead of me who introduced me to make files and 'cc -o' - at which point I did lots of 'testfunc' which linked against one .o and did something.
 
user55340
A rather rudimentary unit test... and if I knew about them better, I'd have had that program done sooner.
 
user55340
The thing is, that that is the environment where software engineering principles could be introduced and taken to heart.
 
user55340
@RobertHarvey btw: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/194219/… (if yours hasn't expired...)
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
The answers you're getting are vague, because your question is unanswerable. Most career advice questions ask, not for guidance, but for assurances, predictions or guarantees, none of which we can provide, because we simply do not know. — Robert Harvey 1 min ago
@MichaelT Close vote?
 
user55340
5:04 PM
@RobertHarvey thank you. My close vote on that expired back in June...
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT some of these are wayyy wrong in my book. I would put "Previous job demonstrates similar skills" at basically the top of the list, and I would make the "Founded a company" as -4 rather than +4 because it shows they're a business/money focused person (more often than not) as opposed to an engineering focused person.
also "Generic cover letter" is in the negative but then he calls the objective section irrelevant, they're basically the same thing nine times out of ten, yet one of them is somehow good where the other is bad? whatever
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa I'd agree with that... there's also the 'ego' aspect that would typically suggest they don't want to be a grunt coder... but I've got different traits I look for.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
also the guy values grades a lot which is silly
 
user55340
In the past, when working with people who were 'found their own company' they were looking for a spot to hire some people away for their next big idea... or looking to move up in this one.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT yeah, I've seen the same, also the ego as well. people who want to code nine times out of ten never even bother with the creating of a company, no matter how good their idea is. They'll open source it if they can't stop themselves from creating it.
 
user55340
5:07 PM
Me, as a fellow coder, I want someone who is going to write good code and be there in a few years to help maintain it.
 
Ampt
Ampt
ITT: New grads suck, and why you don't want to work with them :P
 
Francisco Noriega
Francisco Noriega
@JimmyHoffa @JimmyHoffa Well I spent a little bit in StudioStyl.es and tried to create a style based on the very limited set of colors found in the image from the Source Code Pro blog post, it's here if anybody want's to check it out studiostyl.es/schemes/source-code-pro
 
psr
psr
5:24 PM
@JimmyHoffa What I wish was common practice would be for universities (mostly graduates) to participate in open source software projects, with a few people at the university serving as gatekeepers (because what project wants 300 barely trained grad students running amok through the code-base?). But I wonder if it would fail because the universities couldn't produce high enough quality for anyone to want their help.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@psr I've grown to wonder how high-quality the help wanted for open source projects is... it seems many have code that's oft barely passable. Makes me think about trying to help some out sometime... I ought to be able to write good enough code from what I've seen of the quality standards
 
psr
psr
@JimmyHoffa Your project to allow building serializable expressions sounds like a nice small open source project, though maybe it's too purpose-built for that, and I don't know how your company feels about open sourcing some libraries.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@psr expressions are serializable, I'm just writing some code that makes generating expressions for purposes of data model query and update easily so I can generate the expressions and send them over the wire for server-side models to be queried and updated arbitrarily
all the same yeah, it's proprietary code.
you know how companies are, suggesting open sourcing a library to most any manager is laughable
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa I think it depends upon the company. Even when I worked for very-large-international-software-and-everything-else firm, they would pick up an open source library and use it so long as the license terms were agreeable.
 
user41796
And my current place of work is very proactive in looking for existing solutions before we write our own. OTOH, immediately prior place had a horrible knee jerk reaction to the mere thought of looking for an open source project.
 
user55340
5:43 PM
Target warnings are usually an indication that nearby armed forces can't get a lock on your position. Please go outside to help your friendly neighbourhood invaders out. — Bart 5 mins ago
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@GlenH7 I was talking about open sourcing some lib we write - not using open source solutions, we use those here plenty.
though I have worked places where legal disallowed all open source code, we weren't even allowed to use google analytics services and had to write our own.
 
Ampt
Ampt
@JimmyHoffa ouch. You guys also print your own circuit board for your computers?
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa ah, that can be a harder sell. Now you're asking to give away the company's perceived IP.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@GlenH7 yeah, it's a demonstrably bad idea to even approach 95% of managers about doing that.
 
user41796
The return on "public good will" business case has to be pretty compelling, and that's hard to pull off.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
5:53 PM
fingers crossed this expression code I'm putting together is acceptable to my team, it creates a great API but the implementation is weird and will surely be foreign to them... presenting it for review this afternoon, got it almost entirely working which is truly pretty cool; behaves very much like Linq2Sql having a nice API but instead of generating SQL generates lambda methods to execute against in-memory collections.
 
Ampt
Ampt
@JimmyHoffa I say you ditch the DB completely and move to a more robust backend - Text Files
I could dig up some helpful links if you want to look into it
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@Ampt Oh this sounds great! Please do!
 
Ampt
Ampt
@JimmyHoffa shoot.. It looks like Haskell doesn't support file IO :(
the patch notes mention something about being too useful in real world situations
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@Ampt that's ok, just put it all in a monad and if there's no results nobody can tell the difference anyway
 
psr
psr
@GlenH7 The theory could be "this is plumbing and we would like other people to develop/debug it too". Still won't fly almost ever, but there are potential reasons to open-source other than goodwill.
 
Ampt
Ampt
5:57 PM
@JimmyHoffa if theres one thing that gets me interested in FP it's all of this laziness I hear about
 
user41796
@psr There's definitely a few routes to consider, but they are all hard sells.
 
user41796
Has anyone seen this technique before? Looks like they are logging a specific guid to indicate a particular error path has been hit.
`Log.Write(error, new Guid("guid_val_here")`
 
user55340
@GlenH7 The error may be displayed to the end user? and being able to search the logs for the error code if reported may be helpful?
 
user41796
@MichaelT That's what I was guessing too. I haven't seen a guid used that way though
 
user41796
for the most part, it's a different guid every time. But I have seen at least one case where they repeated a guid
 
user41796
6:04 PM
Seems like it would be easier to just pass a string message of some sort into the logger
 
user55340
Btw, I'm moderately surprised to see a valid and good licensing question there. They are so rare.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@GlenH7 never seen it before... seems a bit silly but it's a simple way of ensuring each error messages guid goes to a single label in all code bases the company may have - across products. There's some logic to that... I don't think I'd do it like that, but I wouldn't call it bad either
 
user41796
I'm seeing it within catch blocks. Beyond a severity, no other information is logged. Kinda makes me wonder why they bothered.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@GlenH7 ok that does kinda suck because the guid may be associated with an invalid error message/reason as the code grows and changes, and with nothing but a guid nobody would ever know to update it to a different guid
 
user55340
Several websites ago I worked on a website where the 500 error pages would spit out a md5 of the time and user name (and log the same) so that we could go back and try to reproduce or recover from any error as part of debugging.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
6:10 PM
your actual error message / reason is now too far away from where the actual handling is done to be maintained in sync
 
user41796
It's getting a bit more odd now...
 
user41796
this is code behind for an aspx page. Every function has its logic wrapped with a try / catch (exception e) block. So you have functions with a try / catch and only one line of code calling another function which is also wrapped with a similar try / catch
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@GlenH7 haha... I've seen that pattern, I call it the holy-shit-exceptions-are-scary pattern.
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa ding! you win today's name-that-thing game.
 
psr
psr
@JimmyHoffa You need to ask and self-answer that question on PSE before you are allowed to use that name.
 
user41796
6:14 PM
another random question - can you define custom styles within aspx xaml? I know you can with silverlight.
 
user41796
@psr better yet, I'll ask the question on main and he can provide that as an answer
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@GlenH7 heh aspx != xaml
vastly different, they're both XML but totally different templating engines run them with totally different behaviours and such
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa that makes sense
 
user41796
isn't there an equivalent of a custom style for aspc? ?
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
what do you mean "custom styles" ? you would generally define those in CSS, ASPX is still html and the elements accept the normal html class and style attributes
 
user41796
6:17 PM
in silverlight, I can create a custom style to capture properties that I'll be defining over and over again for similar looking controls.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
unless you mean in the code behind? in which case you need to set the attribute on the control object directly, usually control objects have style/class or "client____" named properties for things that should be rendered to the client but mean nothing to the server
@GlenH7 yeah, that's what CSS is for.
 
user41796
With a button, I might specify width, height, border, etc...
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
not done much web dev?
 
user41796
fortunately, no. I'm pretty light on my web dev. :-)
 
user41796
but I'm looking at some aspx code and see magic strings all over the place just begging to be cleaned up
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
6:18 PM
@GlenH7 eesh... yeah, you just need to define some css classes, and then on the button you want to have that width/height/etc you would just put the attribute class="yourButtonsStyleClassName" on it
magic strings make me cringe
 
user41796
@JimmyHoffa not only are they a maintenance headache, but they also make the code much noisier than it needs to be
 
user41796
regex within search and replace is awesome
 
Ampt
Ampt
7:37 PM
holy carp SVN is terrible at merging/branching. It's laughably bad
well, I would be laughing if I wasn't 2 hours into trying to fix this simple merge/branch
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
7:51 PM
3 hours ago, by Jimmy Hoffa
yesterday, by Jimmy Hoffa
@Zeroth the source control server could have a terrible mishap.
Downside to MSE: Now all the requests that SE get's only a fraction of their income from and really hardly care about at all are consolidated into one easy to ignore site rather than mixed in on MSO where they actually care about the issues
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
Horror mirth: opensslrampage.org
 
Ampt
Ampt
@JimmyHoffa I don't want to completely destroy everything on the server, I want SVN to suck less
a lot less
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
Hmm, accurev is clunky, but its a pretty smart merge
Usually, we just have overlap issues based on branch issues(like you'd get in git/mercurial) but diffs and merges go pretty well.
Ampt, why aren't you guys using mercurial/svn?
 
user55340
8:12 PM
Btw, Software Licensing area 51 closed recently. Might find this question useful to read:
 
user55340
4
Q: Did you know licensing questions are explicitly on-topic at Programmers SE?

Tim PostProposal: Open source licensing I'm not sure if the folks behind this are aware that licensing questions are explicitly on-topic for Programmers SE. Yes, there was some debate as to what extent they should be allowed, but questions about any OSI-approved license (as well as others) would fit the...

technology
 
user41796
8:32 PM
@MichaelT The only part in the now-dead proposal that makes me squirm is "which license is best"
 
user55340
@GlenH7 I went back and looked at it as part of researching this MSE answer:
 
user55340
1
A: Is there a Stack Exchange website to discuss software/app licenses?

MichaelTYou've got two examples there. The first (dual licensed software and distribution) is something that can fall in the scope of Programmers.SE. Note that if the question gets too deep into the legal aspects of the licenses that go beyond what a programmer can give an expert answer to it tends to...

 
user41796
One minor quibble. In the original Open Source Licensing proposal it suggested included questions of "which license is best". That sort of request would be off-topic for a Programmer's question as they are generally too broad and have too many potential answers or would delve into opinion fests. — GlenH7 10 secs ago
 
user41796
I will not go silently into the night. :-)
 
whatsisname
whatsisname
 
user55340
8:41 PM
@GlenH7 Thing is, there's an easy answer - "BSD and be done with it"
 
user41796
No! It has to be MIT! :-)
 
user41796
Or Apache
 
user55340
X11!
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
Just as long as everyone remembers - open source does not guarantee good code.
 
user41796
And should it be BSD 2-clause or 3-clause...
 
whatsisname
whatsisname
8:42 PM
I think for me it boils down to "MIT, GPL, or gtfo"
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
looks at openssl
 
whatsisname
whatsisname
i think using anything besides MIT or GPL (or LGPL) in almost all circumstances is dumb and a waste of everyone's time
 
user41796
No license model guarantees good code. In fact code quality is completely orthogonal to the license
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
Exactly.
 
whatsisname
whatsisname
yeah
I could license my stuff under MIT or GPL, wouldn't make it any less awful
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
8:44 PM
Which is what pisses me off about ESR "Many eyes make bugs shallow."
 
user41796
@whatsisname I think you miss the finer intricacies of the WTFPL
 
user55340
9:13 PM
@Zeroth Only if people are looking.
 
user55340
However, the use of the application doesn't mean someone is looking.
 
user55340
To pitch two big names against each other...
 
user55340
Linus's Law
There are two statements named Linus's Law: one by Eric S. Raymond concerning software bug detection by a community, and the other by Linus Torvalds about the motivations of programmers. By Eric Raymond Linus's Law as described by Raymond is a claim about software development, named in honor of Linus Torvalds and formulated by Raymond in his essay and book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" (1999). The law states that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"; or more formally: "Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly a...
 
amon
amon
@Zeroth I prefer my rants to be correct and contentful. Let's look at the actual quote from The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and notice the “given” and “almost”, and at the end, “tend”:
> 8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
>
> Or, less formally, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.'” I dub this: “Linus's Law”'.
>
> My original formulation was that every problem “will be transparent to somebody”. Linus demurred that the person who understands and fixes the problem is not necessarily or even usually the person who first characterizes it. “Somebody finds the problem,” he says, “and somebody else understands it. And I'll go on record as saying that finding it is …
 
user55340
> In Facts and Fallacies about Software Engineering, Robert Glass refers to the law as a "mantra" of the open source movement, but calls it a fallacy due to the lack of supporting evidence and because research has indicated that the rate at which additional bugs are uncovered does not scale linearly with the number of reviewers; rather, there is a small maximum number of useful reviewers, between two and four, and additional reviewers above this number uncover bugs at a much lower rate.
 
user55340
9:18 PM
Having every person on the team do a code review does not mean that all bugs will be found. There's a core group of people who can find useful bugs from a code review.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
:P
 
user55340
Everyone after that is just noise. Not that the noise isn't useful - they can learn things (a code review isn't just "you have an overrun bug here" but also "I don't understand this structure you are using" from a jr. programmer)
 
user55340
The thing is open SSL does not have a large enough beta tester base (of people looking for bugs) or a co-developer base.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
9:34 PM
Its a fallacy mostly because everyone thinks that everyone else is looking at the code to make sure it's good, so nobody is actually looking at it.
Well, almost nobody. Certainly not a legion of users.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
9:54 PM
Nothing like software that suddenly behaves very very different on something you just tested it on...
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Something changed.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
and I think what worked was faulty validation that happened to work correctly
then when I fixed it, suddenly this other functionality starts failing
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
10:18 PM
Woot I got ~75% buy in on the expressions, they just want me to show the perf won't be dangerously bad
even though they all basically said they had no idea how any of it worked, but liked the clean API
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa Is that a 3/4 or a 6/8?
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT 768/1024
 
user55340
I'm getting so many good stack overflog questions from co-workers.
 
user55340
There's one with an aggressive static analysis not warning about a paticular structure... and then this latest one is ARC and a property that starts out with 'new'.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
congratulations Jimmy, you just made yourself unfireable
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
10:32 PM
@Zeroth just because they don't know it doesn't mean they can't learn it; that's like saying the first guy to start writing OO code at a company whose devs have only written procedural code makes himself unfireable, whatever the results of the decision to allow OO coding in that shop shouldn't change the fact that it's a good step for that shop to allow it.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
True.
My coworkers can certainly learn the monkeypatching hack code I wrote in Delphi if I am ever fired or leave. They just don't want to.
(Trufax, in Delphi, if a class has the same signature as another class, you can cast between them without problems. )
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
Besides, if I thought these guys couldn't manage to figure it out I wouldn't have even bothered with the approach. I've worked places where my colleagues were all lacking in most any ability's newer than '95, and I wouldn't bother in those jobs. Here, my team is quite good.
@Zeroth modern delphi isn't terrible from everything I've heard
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
Its not terrible.
Its pretty nifty.
It just horrifies me that I can do the above, even though it helped me fix an extremely critical defect.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@Zeroth plus it has a nice path to Oxygene in simplicity of syntax translation I would wager, no?
@Zeroth that shouldn't horrify you, that's a nice feature I say
just like in .NET you can cast any method with a given type signature to a delegate with the same signature and use them interchangeably anywhere that delegate type is used.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
That makes sense, and would have made my fix easier.
I had to copy the signature for an entire sys object
because we couldn't compile in modifications to the VCL.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
10:37 PM
oh class - I read method
that is interesting that two classes with identical signatures are interchangable - I assume by sig you mean properties and methods all identical signatures?
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
yep
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
lexicographically equivalent
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
They just do nothing. But it allowed me access to private members of the object
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@Zeroth heh now that sounds like a hack on many levels...
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
Yep.
I actually wrote a whole document explaining the thing. After reading it, my coworkers broke out beer
at 11am
"I think we need to be less sober to be okay with this."
8
Q: Patch routine call in delphi

Rahul WI want to patch a routine call to be able to handle it myself with some modifications. I am writing a resource loader. I want to patch the Delphi's LoadResourceModule and InitInheritedComponent routines with that of mine. I have checked PatchAPI call in MadExcept.pas unit, but couldn't figure it...

delphi monkeypatching
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
10:41 PM
Hello
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@Zeroth sounds like a good place to work heh
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
I don't drink much, so the booze is a bit less welcome for me.
hello Dark Mirror.
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
Is this the right place to get help with C++?
 
user55340
I'm actually putting a local winery season opening date on the calendar so I can get a few bottles to bring to work... for a wine tasting.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
Possibly. Granted, its been after 7 hours of banging my head on C++, so I might have an averse reaction...
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
10:42 PM
@Zeroth I just mean that their response wasn't castigation, but acceptance with recognition of the problems
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
ahh, yeah.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
plus having some fun with it - whether or not you drink, at least they have fun
alternatively, you might be working with a group of lushes.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
The latter has occurred to me.
The product manager did bribe us with expensive champagne if we completed a feature on time.
It was very good champagne
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@Zeroth I wouldn't tarry on such thoughts; just presume they're all very jolly and be glad for that
 
user55340
>
Idealists that think design, or analysis, or complexity theory, or whatnot, are more fundamental are not working programmers. The working programmer does not live in an ideal world. Even if you are perfect, your are surrounded by and must interact with code written by major software companies, organizations like GNU, and your colleagues. Most of this code is imperfect and imperfectly documented. Without the ability to gain visibility into the execution of this code the slightest bump will throw you permanently. Often this visibility can only be gained by experimentation, that is, debugging.
 
user55340
10:48 PM
Heh - I like 'your are surrounded by and must interact with code written by major software companies, organizations like GNU, and your colleagues. Most of this code is imperfect and imperfectly documented.'
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
how can i convert int to char* in C++?
 
user55340
@DarkMirror itoa ?
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@DarkMirror first you have to marshall it across COM usually
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
sprintf
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
OH sprintf sounds good
how do i use it?
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
10:49 PM
What have you looked for or tried first Dark Mirror?
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
I can't use itoa it's class assignment
 
user55340
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
yea i did
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
(I'm looking to develop your self-learning skills)
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
>.>
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
10:49 PM
@DarkMirror just do it with untyped lambda calculus, and then you don't have to worry about casting.
 
user55340
If its a class assignment, sprintf is likely off limits too.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
OHHH, I've done assignments like this.
You remember the ascii table, right?
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
I am sorry, I am a very noob at C++ and I have no idea they are.
Yes i do
 
user55340
You will need to walk the integer, dividing by 10 and taking the modulo 10 value and build it from that.
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
^^
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
10:50 PM
@MichaelT you sure he shouldn't use a rotate or shift instead of division?
 
user55340
256 / 10 = 25
256 % 10 = 6
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
I am building 2048 for final project lol
using arrays of pointers and it's killing me
=S
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
snicker
 
user55340
M[16],X=16,W,k;main(){T(system("stty cbreak")
);puts(W&1?"WIN":"LOSE");}K[]={2,3,1};s(f,d,i
,j,l,P){for(i=4;i--;)for(j=k=l=0;k<4;)j<4?P=M
[w(d,i,j++)],W|=P>>11,l*P&&(f?M[w(d,i,k)]=l<<
(l==P):0,k++),l=l?P?l-P?P:0:l:P:(f?M[w(d,i,k)
]=l:0,++k,W|=2*!l,l=0);}w(d,i,j){return d?w(d
-1,j,3-i):4*i+j;}T(i){for(i=X+rand()%X;M[i%X]
*i;i--);i?M[i%X]=2<<rand()%2:0;for(W=i=0;i<4;
)s(0,i++);for(i=X,puts("\e[2J\e[H");i--;i%4||
puts(""))printf(M[i]?"%4d|":"    |",M[i]);W-2
||read(0,&k,3)|T(s (1,K[(k>>X)%4]));}//[2048]
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
Wait until you figure out an array is just a series of points.
pointers*
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
10:52 PM
^yea i did
XD
 
user55340
33
Q: Create a simple 2048 game clone

Doorknob2048 is an incredibly fun and addictive game in which the goal is to create a tile with 2048 on it. Here's a short description of the game: Pressing an arrow key will slide all the blocks in the stage in that direction. For example, if x represents a block, and you pressed the up arrow in thi...

code-golf game
 
user55340
Though, noting that its code golf, not sure that's good examples.
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
lol
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
oh that';s just mean
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
thanks
and I have to use borland graphics
which sucks
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
10:53 PM
what language was that @MichaelT?
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
I think javascript
 
user55340
I think its C.
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
oh no it'snot
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
@DarkMirror I have a pretty good career with Borland.
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
lol
 
user55340
10:54 PM
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
are you serious? Is it even useful?
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
It pays for my food, my rent, my drug habit(Magic: the Gathering) clothes, toys, computer stuff
so aside from it being useful for not
I'm paid to work in it.
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
lol nice one.. =D
I have a long way to go in programming
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
So what really matters is - what are the coworkers like, what your manager is like, is the pay and hours and conditions good, and at that point, it shouldn't matter what you have to work in.
 
user55340
(You did give me an idea for a code-troll question on code golf... the "convert an integer to a string")
 
Zeroth
Zeroth
10:55 PM
Its painful at times.
hahaha @MichaelT
 
user55340
19
Q: Help!! How to do square root!

qwr Hi guys, for my class I need to make a number square root but it doesnt work !!HELLPP! The challenge: Write a function or program that will "make a number square root". Note: This is code trolling. Give a "useful" answer to guide this new programmer on his/her way to programming succes...

popularity-contest code-trolling
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
why is it a troll question?
 
user55340
The answers kind of work, but are wrong in various ways.
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
lol ok
 
user55340
> This takes about 3 seconds to do sqrt(99.9999998); for me. Looping through (up to) a billion doubles takes some time I guess.
 
Dark Mirror
Dark Mirror
10:59 PM
hmm.. i don't know how to use the sprint thing
 
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