The Whiteboard

user20683

12:25 AM

@telastyn Re: that linq question, my gut was to try and see if head == tail

user20683

then I learned that LINQ doesn't quite work that way

Ampt

1:22 AM

@RobertHarvey If you let them get to you, they win

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey fried chicken, fried mac 'n' cheese, put together -> then fried ?

HomeMade Vodka Pasta Sauce:
1. Drink 2 glasses vodka.
2. Lookup italian restaurants on yelp.

user15026

@JimmyHoffa This strikes me as a decent plan.

Ampt

1:46 AM

@JimmyHoffa It's not vodka pasta sauce, it's Russian Pasta Sauce

Vodka pasta sauce is where you repeat step 1 too many times and spill into the sauce from step 2

user55340

1:59 AM

►

Robert Harvey

4:35 AM

Chinese pizza yo.

►

user41796

1:59 PM

I have given up any hope of getting anything done today. I made the mistake of clicking through on the EpicMealTime videos.

user41796

TGIF

user55340

2:47 PM

@GlenH7 In Epic Mealtime parlance, that means "To Go In Fryer"

user55340

Note: chicken fried bacon steak sounds either delicious or awful... I can't make up my mind.

Robert Harvey

Seems like it would be too salty to me.

That Silver Bullet question turned out to be quite the water cooler magnet, didn't it?

user55340

I like my bacon on the crispy side... when holding it out it should remain straight.

user15026

@MichaelT I like mine more on the chewy side.

user55340

@AshleyNunn are you thinking of Canadian bacon? or non-canadian?

user15026

2:50 PM

@MichaelT Actual bacon bacon, not peameal

user15026

(I will generally specify peameal if I am thinking of it, which is almost never)

Robert Harvey

Farmer John's smoked, y'all. With maple syrup.

Dammit. Now I gotta go buy some for breakfast.

user55340

While EMT (heh - you'd need one after trying that... Epic Meal Time) has what looked to be 1" cuts of bacon... I think 1/4" cut of bacon could be cooked crispy enough.

user55340

I wonder if it would be possible to put on a grill with the right apparatus... drip pan to avoid flare ups... I like my bacon crispy but it has the distinct chance of being on fire and that is a bit too much.

user55340

@RobertHarvey Do something for dinner instead...

user55340

2:58 PM

►

user55340

You do know August is national goat cheese month...

user15026

I've never super loved goat cheese.

user55340

dcfoodies.com/2008/08/celebrate-natio.html

user55340

@AshleyNunn straight? Not a big fan of it. However, with the appropriate things to complement aspects of the flavor it can be quite good.

user15026

@MichaelT I think for me it is a texture thing.

user55340

3:02 PM

@AshleyNunn in that date + ham + cheese thing, its melted... closer to the consistency of mozzarella cheese on pizza.

user55340

Not quite as stringy/chewy though.

user15026

@MichaelT Could be good. I am still unsure about dates though

user41796

Would've been better with bacon.

user41796

@MichaelT - I'll frequently cook bacon on the outdoor grill. Keeps the mess and aroma outside, and my grill heats things up more quickly than the oven will. I don't like pan cooking bacon indoors anymore due to the mess it creates.

user41796

Those chicken fried bacon steaks looked underdone in my book.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:10 PM

Dinner Last Night: Chicken Thighs soaked in a bag of BBQ sauce and spicy bloody mary mix. Place on grill, turn over and baste with more sauce every 1-2 minutes for 15-20 minutes. Dinner makes happy.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa EpicMealTime would remind you that you forgot the Jack Daniels!!!

user55340

when I did my stir fries on a wok (cast iron) I'd occasionally cook some bacon on it to help keep the iron seasoned... Not full strips, I'd cut it up to small about 1"x1" squares or so...

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Do tell, how do I work the Jack into that? Just in the soak? I don't suspect I could do it in the baste...

user55340

and then I'd toss in some chicken (not much fat of its own, having the bacon in there made it easier to cook)... and some onions and celery and peppers...

Jimmy Hoffa

unless I mixed it in... would that be good?

@MichaelT genius... I hated seasoning my wok, I'd always use sesame and peanut oil, never thought about just cooking appropriately greasy things in it to season it... that would feel much less tedious

user41796

3:14 PM

@JimmyHoffa Um, let's see. Shots before. Shots during. Shots after. Something to sip while cooking?

user41796

And yes, mixing JD into that marinade would have worked really well. The alcohol sugars enhance the overall flavor. And help drive the marinade into the meat as a bonus.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa normally I was cooking beef which often had enough to keep it seasoned... but even just one strip of bacon would produce enough oil for cooking non-oily things without the addition of other oils.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I'll have to try that next time

user41796

JD is nice because it's still sweet but has a robust flavor to it.

Jimmy Hoffa

Perhaps I'll cut back on the bloody mary mix then as the jack would bring enough spice on it's own I suspect

user15026

3:17 PM

@JimmyHoffa Ooooh, yum

user15026

I just made bruschetta although it was like a garlic bomb because I forgot fresh from the ground garlic is like uber potent

user55340

@RobertHarvey I know why they want the internet to be on that list of silver bullets - because when you post 10x questions to SO and get the answers in 1/10th the time it would have taken you to do one answer yourself... thats an order of magnitude improvement for the help vampire.

Robert Harvey

That's exactly what I was thinking. Granted, it's very convenient to look up things, but if you need it to get a 10x improvement in your productivity...

I just downloaded the owner's manual and schematic for a Mackie VLZ mixer. That may not seem like a big deal, but I can also do that for my Yamaha mixer that's 30 years old.

The internet wasn't useful for troubleshooting before SO came along. Even then, you still need some skillz.

user55340

It was... it just took the right place... usenet of old was quite good if you could craft the question so that it got answered rather than ridiculed.

user55340

Be too much of a pain and you found yourself in kill files... be too much of a pain even after that, and you'd find yourself in kill files such that all replies to you are also ignored.

Robert Harvey

3:28 PM

So, pretty much, same as it ever was.

Except now maybe you have a potentially bigger audience.

user41796

@RobertHarvey In some ways, exceptionally little has changed.

user55340

its moved from the personal kill files (which didn't scale well) to having individual posts removed (which is hitting trouble with scaling) and repeat offenders getting blocked from posting again.

user55340

The problem is the endless september is still bitting us with every time we find a place, it gets flooded with people who don't want to do their own work (arguably shouldn't have been programmers in the first place - but apparently there's a market for that).

Robert Harvey

Thinking about buying a new mixing board... The 30 year old one is starting to give out, and overhauling a mixer is apparently a major pain.

user41796

@RobertHarvey I'd go with the new one. There's something to be said for the fidelity on an analog board, but the components do start to fade. The newer boards are simply amazing for what you get and the price points.

user41796

3:36 PM

@MichaelT good old endless September. <sighs>

Robert Harvey

This one is $200 more, but for that $200, you get six more mic pres and everything on the back.

user41796

What are you recording so that you need that many channels?

Robert Harvey

A computer.

user41796

I rephrased what I was trying to ask. 14 channels for recording can either be a lot or definitely not enough. :-)

Robert Harvey

In a home setup, mixers are mostly for flexibility. I can do anything I want with that desk. I can take it on the road. At home, all I really need is my two-channel Focusrite.

I can record a live band.

user41796

3:42 PM

Which is awesomeness.

user55340

4:08 PM

Btw, some old (2012) P.SE stats: hewgill.com/~greg/stackoverflow/programmers/stats.html

user55340

One of the more telling ones:

user55340

Gah... google apis.

Oded

Tomatoes. Definitely tomatoes.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:43 PM

@RobertHarvey me too, I just hold my cell phone up in the air and press the record button.

Shahar

lol

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ...he's misusing the word histogram me thinks...

ah maybe not

I got used to that term having a specialized meaning from a past job, but I guess it's general meaning is fitting enough

enderland

5:20 PM

digital boards now are pretty ridiculous

user41796

@enderland Yay! for technology

user41796

5:39 PM

Making carnitas may be the excuse I was looking for in order to purchase a dutch oven.

user15026

@GlenH7 I love my dutch oven :)

user41796

I blame my years in boy scouts, but I love dutch oven peach cobbler

user41796

At our last trek, we discovered the benefits of adding some sprite to the cobbler mix. I had purchased canned peaches, not pie filling. So we added some sprite to add some additional sugar. Came out really well and I think the cake batter baked better that way.

Robert Harvey

A bit surprised that the variable naming question ran off the rails, given that it has a definitive answer.

The best way to get a read on good variable names is to study coding standards. Every programming platform has one; the coding standard for C# and .NET is here and here. — Robert Harvey 59 secs ago

Are environment variables really OS agnostic?

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 carnitas from a dutch oven? I could see it, though wouldn't have thought... I should ask my mother in law how she makes hers...

user15026

5:50 PM

@GlenH7 sprite in cake batter is a thing I see periodically. :)

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey how do you mean "OS agnostic" ?

user41796

@AshleyNunn The extra sugars really help the crust brown nicely

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Traditional way appears to be using copper kettles, which would do the same thing as a dutch oven - keeping the moisture inside.

Robert Harvey

> The twelve-factor app stores config in environment variables, which are easy to change between deploys without changing any code. Unlike config files, there is little chance of them being checked into the code repo accidentally; and unlike custom config files, or other config mechanisms such as Java System Properties, they are a language- and OS-agnostic standard.

Jimmy Hoffa

Environment variables exist on all OS... They likely have different key character constraints from one OS to another, but...

user41796

5:52 PM

I'm also wondering how it would go on a rotisserie. That does a great job of getting the cut to self-baste.

user41796

I'm with Jimmy - environment variables are not OS agnostic. Even different Unix shells handle them differently.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa Presumably, there's a way to write a class that provides a Key/Value store in the form of environment variables that is OS agnostic.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Carnitas are one of few things I've always placed under the "magic" category of foods that I haven't the foggiest clue how you go from their ingredients to the dish

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 Well, I didn't think so either, but the 12 factor guys seem to believe it.

user15026

I don't know what carnitas is

Robert Harvey

5:54 PM

Static methods, if used properly, don't need to be mocked. Not sure what you mean by substitutability; written properly, a static method is perfectly substitutable. I think the grousing about static methods arises out of their misuse and abuse. — Robert Harvey 2 mins ago

user41796

> I have an idea I need to sell. Therefore I'm going to ignore inconvenient truths.

user41796

@AshleyNunn shredded pork. Typically pork butt (aka pork shoulder)

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey you could put an OS independent facade over them - languages often do. I guarantee you python's facilities for accessing environment variables are the same on Windows, Mac, and Unix...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa And they are soooooo yummy.

Jimmy Hoffa

but environment variables themselves are an implementation detail of a given process hosting environment

@GlenH7 Indeed.

Robert Harvey

5:55 PM

@JimmyHoffa I assume that's what the 12 factor guys mean. And every OS has a way to maintain and edit their environment variables, like a dialog of some sort.

user41796

@AshleyNunn - fair warning, they're just like flan. Done wrong, they're horrific. Done right, they're heavenly.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 good description.

user55340

At Employer^, I was trying to do what the 12factor config was suggesting (not sufficient ROI there... well... I differ but thats another matter).

user15026

@GlenH7 Good to know.

user41796

@AshleyNunn When you do the cupcake tour, I'll take you to some amazing Mexican restaurants as well.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:57 PM

I used to be surprised when I lived in KC how common and good carnitas were all over, but thinking it over it actually makes perfect sense - KC knows about meat and how to do it right. Pork especially. They may know nothing of Mexican Food but they know how to cook meat, the carnitas was just a side effect...

@RobertHarvey care to enlighten me what this 12 factor thing is and where you're getting all this?

Robert Harvey

12factor.net

user55340

mexican... cross country road trip in... 03 I think it was... my brother was in Charleston (navy) and getting stationed out in Guam for a bit. He had a car... he didn't see much use for a car on an island that was 8 miles x 20 miles (he preferred bicycles) and the price of gas was astronomical... so, I got his car and we had to get it from SC to CA.

Robert Harvey

-2

Q: 12 factor app config and Java

I was reading the 12 factor app manifesto. The manifesto recommends storing the configuration data for the application in environment variables. Does this mean that properties like the DB username / password, resource URL should be stored as a part of Java Env variables rather than as property ...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa There's a strong hispanic culture in KC now. SW Blvd, in particular, has some of the best Mexican restaurants in town. There's solid competition in that space now.

user55340

Lots of stories of the trip there... but the one in particular was we were driving through New Mexico and my brother sees that there is a town up ahead... calls a friend of him (norfolk) on my cell phone and asks him what the best mexican place in his home town is.

user55340

5:59 PM

One of these "town of 200 people" type places just off the highway and his friend was rather surprised that we were going to drive through there.

user41796

@MichaelT You can find some epic eats that way, but you need to have a local guide IMO.

user15026

@GlenH7 This sounds like an excellent plan to me

user41796

We need to add it to the stretch goals

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I suppose that makes sense.. still, I'm used to a different sense of "strong hispanic culture" -> I'm a minority in my neighborhood, as is the case around lots of Denver, or the neighborhood in Chicago we visit my wife's family in, KC didn't quite have that from what I saw..

I hear about hispanic populations on the rise everywhere in the country, but it still seems like much of the country is pretty far behind the southwest in that regard, and I suspect southern california makes the southwest look like Canada in that regard..

user41796

@JimmyHoffa KC does a slightly better job at blending the cultures together. The Nichols red-line scandal helped trigger a lot of that. It's by no means perfect, but you do tend to see more blended neighborhoods.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:05 PM

@GlenH7 true. I did quite like KC altogether, I recall this...farmers market? downtown that was really cool, or maybe it was just an outside asian market? Don't recall, was north side of downtown and they had one of the only vietnamese restaurants I found which was awesome

user41796

@JimmyHoffa If the vietnamese restaurant was just N of the downtown loop and S of the river, it's likely still there

Jimmy Hoffa

I remember that market and the region around it to be neat like that, but then that's somewhat normal of downtowns

@GlenH7 Bingo.

user55340

o_O meta.stackexchange.com/questions/238135/… (NSFW) - thats just wrong in place, thoughts, and well... wrong.

Jimmy Hoffa

and you had to wait forever because as run down as the place was, it was always packed

@MichaelT NSFW :o

enderland

@MichaelT lol yeah you needed a NSFW tag there

Jimmy Hoffa

6:07 PM

I should have looked at the URI before clicking heh

user55340

Though the question of 'how can I seduce a woman in an elevator' in text isn't exactly NNSFW.

user55340

btw, flagged it... something about it set off my andydar.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT it doesn't need to have anything to do with Andy to be flagged...

@MichaelT he was a proponent of the relationships site as I recall... or something of the nature

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Nope... though its a "if this is Andy then he's now trolling MSE" and while the people there are harder with idiots... the nature of the site is not one that bans people for being idiots.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I can find that url for you if you have some brain bleach handy...

Jimmy Hoffa

6:17 PM

@MichaelT fresh out, used the last on...uhh...on.... I don't recall...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa enjoy area51.stackexchange.com/users/98991/andy-harglesis

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT so not clicking.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That place has amazingly good food. And the downtown market still goes strong. There are quite a few regional / suburban farmers markets as well.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 yeah, for our part while we were there we mostly spent our free time around downtown areas or in Lawrence, didn't make any of the burb farmers markets to my recollection... we lived in Lenexa so we went to Lawrence quite a bit just to wander Mass street, was surprised how small their farmers market was

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Given the Uni influence there, that is kind of surprising. But you do have a lot of backyard gardens and better access to the farmers themselves so you don't need to go to a market.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:32 PM

@GlenH7 good point, it's no trek for someone local there to get to a farm...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - apropos of nothing, thanks for the tip earlier on how to read "=>" phrases. "Input params pushed to function body" makes a lot more sense and is actually sticking.

user15026

@MichaelT Oh man, I have so many responses for this person. None of them nice. Many involve a sledgehammer.

user41796

@AshleyNunn Don't let the trolls win.

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn a sledgehammer is useful in seducing someone in an elevator over text? I will never understand....canadians....

user41796

The more you react, the happier the troll is with that particular trolling. One of the primary drivers is to see the response they can create in others.

user15026

6:40 PM

@GlenH7 I am content to leave it, though. I have delicious citrus hard cider, a nice view out the office window, and in 2 hours and 20 min it is vacation o'clock

user55340

Your question would best be addressed to reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes — MichaelT 10 secs ago

user41796

@AshleyNunn Color me jealous. No drink; no window. But I'll be rolling out in about the same time.

user41796

Speaking of trolls, did our new one start trying to troll us yet? I haven't seen anything even remotely amusing roll through.

user55340

@GlenH7 Nope... haven't seen anything there.

user15026

@GlenH7 We have a proper beer fridge here now apparently

user41796

6:43 PM

We ought to ask for their name when they show back up.

user55340

though IIRC, he declared vs all stack exchange... so he might be somewhere else posting questions about the 5th force on physics or the like.

user41796

@AshleyNunn I need to get a job in Canada.

user15026

@GlenH7 Do it. Cupcakes will be closer

user41796

@MichaelT I thought that bit to be a little odd as well. Why declare the manifesto at Programmers?

user55340

@AshleyNunn unless he does something like Vancouver or Yellow Knife or... heaven forbid... Quebec.

user41796

6:46 PM

@MichaelT Mais, je parle un peu de francaise.

user41796

I really liked Montreal when I was there a few years back.

user55340

@GlenH7 moi aussi, mai, j'obliout becoup.

user15026

@MichaelT shudders

user15026

@MichaelT *beaucoup

user41796

@AshleyNunn You know he said it with an awesome American accent as well.

user55340

6:47 PM

yea, my spelling in English is poor... trying to fight against auto correction and ~20 years of non-practice doesn't lead to great spelling.

user55340

Back in high school one of the other students did a 'Bonjour monsieur' in a John Wayne accent that drove the teacher nuts.

user41796

Should've used "bcp". Even the French forget how to / don't want to bother with spelling bcp.

user55340

College french was oddly easy for me... the three 'big' parts to the class were a report on a french movie (the one I picked was slapstick with less speaking than 2001), a reading comprehension test (the essay selected by the instructor was one that I had read in HS freshman english as a translation - I read the first paragraph and knew the entire story) and then a oral exam with another student... which got sidetracked into french politics spoken in english.

user55340

(don't recall what the politics were, but it was '91/'92 and the politics were world news at the time)

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT must have been the early 90's Australiancide they were committing...

user55340

7:01 PM

Btw - the short story:

user55340

The Necklace

"The Necklace" or "The Diamond Necklace" (French: La Parure) is a short story by Guy De Maupassant, first published on 17th February 1884 in the French newspaper Le Gaulois. The story has become one of Maupassant's popular works and is well known for its ending. It is also the inspiration for Henry James's short story, "Paste". It has been dramatised as a musical by the Irish composer Conor Mitchell; it was first produced professionally by Thomas Hopkins and Andrew Jenkins for Surefire Theatrical Ltd at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007. == Plot == "The Necklace" tells the story of Madame Mathilde...

user55340

Note: it had only been published in English 10 years prior to that French class... and I read it in '87 when it was quite new to English (english publishing date is 1982).

user41796

7:24 PM

One of my better check-in comments: Updates because [redacted] can't make up his mind.

2

user41796

And yes, I made sure to point out the check-in comment to [redacted]. He laughed.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 if a tree falls in the forest and [redacted] is around, does it make a [redacted]?

user41796

Probably, because he was likely the one messing around with the tree.

Ampt

7:52 PM

-1 for asking me to state a reason for downvoting. — Ampt 13 secs ago

can you tell it's friday afternoon?

user41796

2 more votes and it's gone.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt as of today beer Friday has been partially reinstituted

Robert Harvey

8:07 PM

Half-day today?

user41796

8:20 PM

I'm pondering if a C# parallel.foreach against the result set returned from an EF DBEntity is going to be a good or bad idea. I think the lazy yield nature of the DBEntity is going to mess up my attempts at parallelization. Thoughts?

Shahar

8:42 PM

php

php php php

where is yannis

Robert Harvey

@Shahar phpffft

Shahar

Robert do you know php?

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 What needs to be paralellized? Unless you're processor-bound, I doubt that it will make much difference.

@Shahar Enough to know I'll never use it.

user41796

@Shahar Yannis? Probably drowning the pain of this week's work away.

Shahar

Yannis* I always read his name wrong

user41796

8:44 PM

@RobertHarvey I was working on creating a pivot table.

user41796

And then I had the brilliant realization (after some googling) that sql server will take that pain away for me.

Shahar

How do I create a file in PHP that would delete itself right after execution is over?

so something like the $_FILE files

user41796

But it was going to be a partial pivot, and figuring out how to run that in parallel was getting to be ugly

Robert Harvey

How much data are we talking about? Stick it in memory first, and then pivot it.

user41796

Can that be done in C#?

Robert Harvey

8:46 PM

Sure.

List<MyRecordClass>

Or a two-dimensional array, whatever.

user41796

@RobertHarvey right; have that courtesy of EF

Robert Harvey

It won't go back to the disk, once you have the data.

Or it shouldn't, anyway.

user41796

@RobertHarvey That's been one of my fears as well.

Robert Harvey

It's not a problem until it is.

user41796

Part of the challenge is I need to do this with about a dozen tables. The meta info for the tables is inconsistent, and the parameters I want from each table are also inconsistent.

user41796

8:51 PM

Which is why I had been playing with reflection and just letting the code figure itself out.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 SQL server pivoting is very restrictive, I've seen a tiny number of data scenarios that were able to utilize it, though numerous that would have made using it great, but it's main constraint (record grouping fixity) just screws 90% of pivot scenarios

psr

@JimmyHoffa Mostly start-ups.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa OK. I think you and Robert have convinced me to find a better way to pivot within C# then.

Shahar

don't do it

oh what finally worked yay

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 SQL server pivot is great -> just highly restrictive (because it's built as an optimization, and without the constraint the heuristic it uses is no longer an optimal)

so it's worth seeing if you can easily do it with a SQL server pivot

before moving what is a set operation out of a declarative dataset manipulation language

user41796

8:55 PM

Easily is always relative. <sigh> Especially when the beer-thirty whistle already blew.

psr

13

Q: Pivot data using LINQ

I am trying to see if I can use LINQ to solve a problem I am having. I have a collection of items that contain an Enum (TypeCode) and a User object, and I need to flatten it out to show in a grid. It's hard to explain, so let me show a quick example. Collection has items like so: TypeCode | U...

c# linq pivot-table

user41796

@psr Thanks! But I think that becomes official justification for calling it a day and picking up the remaining ingredients for making salsa instead of dealing with this anymore. :-)

psr

Making Mark Gravell's example into a Pivot extension method could work pretty well I think.

user41796

@psr I was looking that over. His is a full pivot, whereas I need a partial pivot.

psr

@GlenH7 I don't actually know what a partial pivot is.

user41796

9:05 PM

Essentially, I have a date and time across two columns; "categories" for the remaining columns; and "technologies" going down the rows.
I need to maintain the timestamp columns and pivot just the category & technology columns.

user41796

So if I use Marc's example, I need to exclude some columns from it.

psr

How can you aggregate timestamps?

user41796

Think of it as date in one column, time in another.

psr

But if you are keeping timestamps in the final result, how do you end up with fewer records in that result than in the initial one?

user41796

@psr Hadn't said I would end up with fewer records; I'll actually end up with more. Average table has ~80 categories and ~20 technologies.

user41796

9:08 PM

So for each slice of time, I need to pivot from 80 wide by 20 high into 20 wide by 80 high.

user41796

Because then I'll move each of the ~80 categories into their own table.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - it seems like I have to name each column I want to pivot if I do it through SQL. Does that jibe with you memory of using PIVOT?

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Yes - which hints at the constraint I referred to. You want 4 pivot columns? It will pivot groups of 4 rows. There is no pivot N rows into N columns. Doesn't take much thought to see how much more efficient it is when you have a fixed pivot..

psr

9:42 PM

@GlenH7 It would be relatively easy to make a generialized pivot extension method if it is feasible to write a lambda that, for example, takes a Technology object and returns an enumeration of Category objects (1 per column). Also one that takes a Technology object and returns an enumeration of your excluded columns. Not sure what to do if the column types vary, though.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr C# can't enumerate categories, it lacks higher kinded parametric universal quantification

psr

@JimmyHoffa If each category column is a string it can enumerate strings

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr yes but the yoneda lemma says for monoids an empty string is the identity element so you can't derive an arrow from the homomorphisms supported in C#.

psr

@JimmyHoffa On the other hand, strings.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr I knew you'd see my position on this topic. How 'bout that Friday?

psr

9:47 PM

X=>new List<string> {X.Column1,X.Column2,X.Column3};

@JimmyHoffa I'm assuming this is the mathematical explanation for why you're screwed if the columns aren't the same type.

(In C#)

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr the fun thing is nobody else here caught the utter nonsense I was stringing together (in both this and my previous comment)

psr

@JimmyHoffa Actually that one. No idea what the second one might mean

@JimmyHoffa The second one sound like nonsense. The first one sounded plausible.

Also, there were only 2 other people here, and they left. Coincidentally, no doubt.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr they'd have no idea it was nonsense either... or rather, that it could be anything other than nonsense...

@GlenH7 I love writing data manip functions... give me some reqs and I'll have something to waste time in my chrome console with this weekend

there are already data pivoting libraries out there for what it's worth...

Heck I wouldn't be surprised if the DataSet object had them built in, the whole DataSet and related classes section of the .NET library is surprisingly robust if you ever go look back at it... old, legacy, sure, but comprehensive and easy to work with as well - though inefficient largely, thus why legacy (both runtime and space)

Transcript for