The Whiteboard

user114359

7:06 PM

@Ampt Nope. I generally never take off more than one week, maybe an extra day, but I see people take two weeks at a time and it is not unusual.

Thomas Owens

@Snowman Here, I think I'm taking both weeks off and only using 5 days of vacation.

Oh. No. This year it's 7 vacation days.

psr

@Ampt There's no 'I' in brillant.

2

whatsisname

@Ampt: almost everyone here does that

this next year I'll have used half of my vacation by the end of january

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt you're a consultant, you shouldn't be showing up in the office at all during December

Lightness Races in Orbit

"Office"?

Thomas Owens

7:14 PM

I wish I could be a consultant. I'd be like a process improvement consultant. But I like the regularness and benefits of a full-time perm position.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Look at McKinsey then.

user114359

@ThomasOwens Depends on the type of consulting. Many companies employ full-time consultants, not contractors.

Thomas Owens

McKinsey is in Boston...

user41796

They're also the best known firm for process consulting

user114359

I think the difference is "product consulting" not "process improvement consulting" or "your junk is broke and nobody there knows how to fix it consulting"

user41796

7:17 PM

So Bloomberg wants to fly me out to NY for interviews.... Or more specifically, their recruiting firm is dangling that carrot.

Thomas Owens

@Snowman I like tools and methods. I don't care if you want to make crap. I'll help you make crap in the most efficient way possible.

user41796

They'd have to offering one helluva nice raise to offset the cost of living adjustment

user41796

@ThomasOwens IBM Rationale might be out your way. I can't remember where they're based. rolfl should be able to dig that up for you if you're really curious.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 They are, I think.

Part of IBM is in Littleton.

whatsisname

be a clear case installation consultant LOLZ

Thomas Owens

7:20 PM

@whatsisname LOL NOPE SCREW THAT.

The problem with IBM is that they sell tools.

I don't want to be a snake oil salesman.

user41796

@whatsisname Nah, he'd rather be on the rationale product team. IBM's consulting division is still having challenges, afaik.

user41796

@ThomasOwens RSA is one hella nice tool though...

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 System Architect?

user41796

Rational software architect

Thomas Owens

I don't like it. I can't even reverse engineer a sequence diagram from Java code.

user41796

7:22 PM

it's the high end version of the rational tool suite

Thomas Owens

We have Rhapsody Software Architect.

I can't make it reverse engineer more than a class diagram.

user41796

Did it rebrand in there somewhere?

whatsisname

sounds awful

Thomas Owens

www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/ratirhapfami

We have the "Developer" version for C, C++, and JAva.

At least the version I have talks about reverse engineering, but it's only "here's how you manually make a sequence diagram".

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa that's a given - I'm really trying to decide if it's even worth pulling my laptop out of my backpack and turning it on to give the perception that I'm online for those two weeks

Thomas Owens

7:27 PM

I'm thinking about maybe getting an ASQ certification at some point. Maybe after or during my Master's program (which I need to take the GREs this winter).

Lightness Races in Orbit

GOING TO SEE SPECTRE SOON

Ixrec

wooo

Lightness Races in Orbit

wikipedia says it's popular

top Google News result says it's the worst Bond film in 30 years

guess I'll have to make up my own mind

shock

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt laptop? You're a consultant, all you need to do is make sure your phone is on and technically could get a signal to claim billable hours.

Ixrec

I heard it had positive reviews, but then with action movies it depends entirely on what kinds of reviewers you're looking at

user114359

7:36 PM

@LightnessRacesinOrbit False. They were all good except for On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and that came out in 1969.

user114359

Even Quantum of Solace was okay if watched back to back with the previous movie.

Ampt

@Snowman quantum of solace was pretty forgettable tbh. Casino Royale and Skyfall were much, much better.

Lightness Races in Orbit

I was extremely underwhelmed by Skyfall

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm extremely I can't remember which of them I've seen save for Casino Royale

I saw at least one other one ... maybe two ... but only Casino Royale was memorable

user114359

@JimmyHoffa Definitely the best of the reboots

Lightness Races in Orbit

7:39 PM

Die Another Day was underrated and GOLDENEYE/TOMORROW NEVER DIES were great

not feeling the reboot

they need to stop being "gritty" and complaining about being old and just get on with it

anyway off I go to find out

wish me luck

user55340

7:51 PM

Hmm. Eric is active here today.

Ampt

@LightnessRacesinOrbit really? I enjoyed it a lot. the cinematography was phenomenal throughout, which may have played a part in it

plus he pulled out the old Aston Martin like 2/3 through which was awesooooome

user55340

8:06 PM

There will always be a shortage of good developers. I have no worries for my future, and even less so when I look at the code of neophytes learning Php from Youtube tutorials… — amon 2 mins ago

user55340

@amon the set of people who enjoy fighting with an infuriatingly literal little man in a box is also a very small pool.

user55340

Many who go to code camps and the like find that they really hate trying to code all day, even if they're not bad at it.

syrion

Also worth noting that, if/when there's too many programmers, it's still going to be better to be a programmer than anything else, because all the programmers are working furiously to automate the other jobs out of existence.

MetaFight

The next step is becoming an AI specialist who works furiously to automate all programming jobs out of existence.

user55340

Given that the curve has two humps, I don't think there will ever be a surplus of competent programmers.

syrion

8:19 PM

Oh, agreed. In reality, most people can't code to professional standards.

That's probably not a politically correct thing to say at this point in time, but having been an educator I think it's true.

user55340

blog.codinghorror.com/…

whatsisname

even if there are tons of competent programmers by todays standards, the goalposts would have moved and many of them would be the new-incompetent

syrion

Yeah, I'm familiar, but there were methodological problems, etc.

@whatsisname, that implies a progression of skill in the industry which I find to be, sadly, optimistic...

whatsisname

I'm saying that 90% of everything is crap

there will never be a surplus of "the best"

of anything

user55340

Visual programming languages don't fix the problem.

MetaFight

8:24 PM

The problem won't be too many competing competent programmers. The problem will be (and already is, in my opinion) knowing how to find the competent ones interspersed in a sea of idiots.

Jimmy Hoffa

@syrion so what you're saying is we're not a renewable energy source; our automation efforts will eventually reach an equilibrium at which point we'll be like so much factory workers ca. 1982

MetaFight

<-- has people skills.

user41796

We noticed

MetaFight

I have people skills

►

user55340

The thing is that in theory, anyone can be taught to be a factory worker.

user55340

8:27 PM

We've seen this isn't the case with programming. It's closer to art than laying bricks.

syrion

@JimmyHoffa -- not so much, but rather, at some point it might be hard to get a programming job, but at that point all the other jobs will be automated and impossible

user55340

And try as I might, I suck when there is a paintbrush in hand.

Thomas Owens

I'm pretty sure if anyone bothered to sketch out what this XML schema would look like before they sat down at a keyboard, they would have dome things really differently.

Like, for example, how this choice was implemented.

Jimmy Hoffa

I should have scrolled down before walking into the middle of this, can I get out please? This is no fun, this is not right, my feet stick out of bed all night

Thomas Owens

How would you model choice in a UML class diagram? I just have three attributes defined in my class and then an aggregation to the three types that could populate one of the three lists and a note saying it's a choice.

Duga

8:39 PM

I believe your question belongs to programmers.stackexchange.com — Adam Azad 27 secs ago

Thomas Owens

That's all I'm doing now...I can't think of a better way.

user114359

@ThomasOwens I don't think UML can do that in a standardized way. What you did is probably good enough.

Thomas Owens

@Snowman Yeah. I don't think that's a standard thing. There is an xs, ys, and zs in the class, and a class diagram is a static structure.

user114359

@ThomasOwens I will say that is a design smell, however. Perhaps that class should really be a template, and the template type should be an interface that X, Y and Z implement?

Thomas Owens

I think I may post and self answer this on Programmers to ~~gain internet rep points~~ help other people.

@Snowman Perhaps. I'm actually modeling an XML schema that gets converted into code.

The schema sucks, though.

Ampt

8:44 PM

@ThomasOwens if X, Y and Z are all interchangeable, wouldn't there be an interface that supports all actions one could do?

Thomas Owens

@Ampt Ideally, yeah.

Ampt

then you would put X Y and Z behind the interface, and use the interface name in place of X Y or Z

Thomas Owens

But that's not how the schema was written.

Ampt

so you have some sort of reflection or instanceof logic in your class?

or triplicate methods depending on the input?

Thomas Owens

Let me see what the code actually looks like.

Ampt

8:45 PM

OR BLACK MAGIC THAT MAKES YOU A WITCH?!

psr

@MichaelT For a second I really thought you were referring to project managers.

Ampt

@ThomasOwens This is java right?

Thomas Owens

@Ampt Yeah.

Ampt

Ok, so then there has to be some sort of stand in class that represents all of them, although it might be generic

tell the devs to do it over, and to do it right this time.

user114359

I don't care if it is just a tagging interface, you just need something to hang the T on in <T extends SomeTaggingInterface>

Thomas Owens

8:50 PM

Too late.

The schema was published years ago. It would practically take an act of congress to change it.

user114359

@ThomasOwens I don't think you need to update the schema, just inject some phony interface into the code that represents it to make that class safer to use.

Ampt

@Snowman problem is that that makes people think there is an interface, when there's not one

Thomas Owens

@Snowman The schema is turned into code by using JAXB and XJC.

Ampt

someone looking at the UML doc would have a wrong impression of the code, which is bad.

Thomas Owens

The point of this model is pretty much to show people visually the kind of crap that this schema is.

Ampt

8:53 PM

so you're using this to prove that the schema is bad?

then leave it as is - it looks the worst, visually.

user114359

@ThomasOwens well in that case, keep smearing crap all over your UML diagram.

user114359

Sounds like you don't want it to look better

Thomas Owens

Well, I'd prefer to have it be as clean as crap can be.

So that way the really bad stuff stands out.

user114359

@ThomasOwens Then I have to borrow a link from @GlenH7:

user114359

Dorodango

Dorodango is a Japanese art form in which earth and water are molded to create a delicate shiny sphere, resembling a billiard ball. == Etymology == The phrase 泥だんご, reading dorodango, is derived from 泥 (doro どろ) literally "mud" in Japanese だんご (dango) a type of round dumpling created from pressed rice flour. == Technique == Making the basic dorodango is a traditional pastime for school children, somewhat like English conkers. More recently the process has been refined into the art of the hikaru ("shining") dorodango (光る泥だんご), which has a glossy surface. Several different techniques can be used...

Thomas Owens

8:55 PM

If your model looks like crap, then the implementation is crap, too. So if it's cluttered and hard to read, it may not be obvious that it's crap.

Duga

It sounds like you did not write this code. Instead of asking on Stackoverflow, which is for code that doesn't work and requires help in fixing, this is a question you want to probably ask on programmers.stackexchange.com — Mike 'Pomax' Kamermans 13 secs ago

user114359

I wrote this code myself, will also ask there — devdropper87 52 secs ago

user114359

Grrr.....

whatsisname

if you are trying to model a choice in UML you've already made the wrong choice by using UML

Thomas Owens

Anyway, I have the generated code in .java form now. Let's see what it looks like...

There's no enforcement of this schema rule in the source code.

Ampt

9:03 PM

so... how does that work

Thomas Owens

So I could, in theory, set X, Y, and Z. But if I have validation against the schema turned on, operations would fail.

Ampt

ahhh, so its the same file repeated 3 times

gotcha.

Thomas Owens

No, X, Y, and Z are different types.

I'm looking at the parent class that contains a List<X>, List<Y>, and List<Z>.

Ampt

yeah, but the methods are all repeated with different classes

Thomas Owens

Oh, yeah.

Well, they have some things in common. Other things are different.

So it's not like an exact copy three times.

Ampt

9:05 PM

if they're supposed to be interchangeable, it should be pretty close, no?

Robert Harvey

Here's a question that's squarely on topic but got four downvotes, presumably because the 4 downvoters think the answer is obvious.

Thomas Owens

There should be a parent of X, Y, and Z though that has the common stuff.

Robert Harvey

5

Q: Why is Math.Sqrt() a static function?

In a discussion about static and instance methods, I always think, that Sqrt() should be a instance method of number types instead of a static method. Why is that? It obviously works on a value. // looks wrong to me var y = Math.Sqrt(x); // looks better to me var y = x.Sqrt(); Value types ...

Ampt

or was creating a god object the goal :)

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa orig05.deviantart.net/f321/f/2012/262/e/c/…

Thomas Owens

9:08 PM

I do wish we had better reverse engineering tools. :(

Ampt

I was thinking your problem was too many tools haha

tools to generate your code (incorrectly) and tools to turn them back into uml and in the darkness bind them

Ixrec

maybe I missed something, but are you asking for better reverse engineering tools to reverse engineer your own codebase?

Ampt

@Ixrec Its my understanding that the code is generated, not written. He pumps his schema into a tool and it generates the code

which probably isn't the least bit readable

so he has a tool to turn it back into human readable code

Ixrec

ooooh that kind of tool

we have one of those where I work

Ampt

(correct me if I'm wrong)

Ixrec

9:14 PM

I'm not sure why anyone would want to read the output of it though

Ampt

he wanted to see what the code was actually doing

because the schema is odd in how it specifies what choices are made

Ixrec

interesting

for the services that we generate where I work, our schema specifies nothing but the request/response formats, the actual behavior is determined by how we fill in the stub functions the tool leaves behind

user41796

@enderland - Soooo... how'd it go?

Ampt

He's too busy celebrating to talk.

whatsisname

sounds like labview but more awful

Jimmy Hoffa

9:19 PM

@GlenH7 too early still

unless he bombed he should still be there

user41796

@JimmyHoffa my chat window shows he entered the room

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 auto-reconnect perhaps

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I demand answers.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 SCOTCH YOU!

user41796

Agreed

user55340

9:28 PM

-1

A: What are the different meanings of 'fixture'?

package com.usaa.selenium.test; import java.io.File; import java.io.FileInputStream; import java.io.IOException; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Calendar; import java.util.Collection; import java.util.List; import java....

user55340

20ks please.

user41796

needs 1 more

Jimmy Hoffa

CHECKIN! WOOT!

Gads I hate when I am bouncing around rewriting bits and bobbles all over for days before getting a checkin..

WOTD "Virtuality" O_o

user55340

Thank you @amon

Ampt

@GlenH7 He's showing the interviewer all these awesome programmers he hangs out with day-to-day

if that doesn't land him the gig, I don't know what will

user41796

9:39 PM

True, and that would explain the 30+ linkedin emails I just got from his neck of the woods

Robert Harvey

Though of course reducing bugs is a laudable goal for many reasons, it's important to remember that reducing bugs is actually a proxy for reducing costs. The SOLID principles are for the most part good principles, but designing types that are open to meaningful extension is a tricky design problem that can increase costs, and can itself be done wrong. The question that really ought to be studied is whether the additional design cost pays for the reduced cost of fixing bugs later. — Eric Lippert 2 hours ago

Thomas Owens

Yay! I just got permission to install Enterprise Architect to trial it.

Maybe this will help solve some of my modeling and reverse engineering issues.

Ampt

isn't that free?

Thomas Owens

Enterprise Architect? No. But it's hella cheaper than Rhapsody.

And has features that I need.

Ampt

ah, yeah, that's it, it's relatively cheap. we used it in my undergrad courses

Thomas Owens

9:50 PM

I did, too.

I hope it's good on software at the scale we have.

Unfortunately, I don't have rights to install and I just missed my manager.

So I'll have to install it tomorrow.

Ampt

yikes

Thomas Owens

Anyway, 20 floating licenses of Ultimate is $11,180. 1 floating license of Rhapsody is like $35,000.

Ampt

it's just tax money, anyway, amiright

Thomas Owens

And I think if you get Ultimate plus a few plugins, you pretty much get something that is close to Rhapsody in features. But without needing to pay for something like 1/3 of an engineer every year for a tool.

It's not that I don't mind paying for tools, but should tools really be on the same order of magnitude per license as the person using the tool?

user41796

Have you looked at SQL Server prices?

user41796

9:59 PM

Or other DBs?

user41796

Makes Rhapsody seem like a bargain in comparison

user41796

arguably, I'm comparing apples & oranges there

Thomas Owens

I think a DB is a little different than an engineering tool, though.

They are probably too much in my book. But depending on your business, your database could mean everything.

Robert Harvey

You get SQL Server with your MSDN subscription anyway. Granted, you can't use it on a large production server, but you only need one server license (and possibly some CALs) to do that.

user41796

That production server license isn't cheap depending upon the size of the production system

Thomas Owens

10:01 PM

Anyway, it's time for me to do my timecard and go home. Good night, Programmers.

user41796

Time to start the flagpocalypse...

user114359

@GlenH7 I just noticed I have a whole bunch of flags to use up in the next two hours. @ThomasOwens does not look busy enough.

Ampt

@GlenH7 You ever looked at the prices on the chairs they put in these offices???

user41796

I blame aerons

Ampt

ugh I want one so bad though

user41796

10:10 PM

they are comfy

enderland

@GlenH7 it went well I think

user41796

herman miller (?) makes some pretty comfy ones too

Ampt

@GlenH7 same brand

aeron is a brand of chair by herman miller lol

user114359

I want to buy one, I wonder if Herman Miller has a showroom anywhere near me. I haven't seen their stuff at e.g. Office Max

enderland

:25142781 haha. I mainly interviewed with their tech leads, I think? they wanted to talk/etc...

Ampt

10:11 PM

@enderland making sure the bank is big enough to write your checks ;)

enderland

lol

user41796

I was gonna say that clearly they don't know who they're dealing with. Horribly poorly played upon their part to not have their part ready immediately.

Ampt

I don't think it's unreasonable to at least interview more than one person lol

enderland

@Ampt they are hiring a bunch tbh though. :P

user41796

@Ampt Just playing. But seriously, they dropped the ball. :-)

user41796

10:14 PM

@enderland I'd take at least the CoLA on that

Duga

This q must be a better fit for programmers.stackexchange. See this anyway: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages — nawfal 47 secs ago

Ampt

Maybe don't take that then

user41796

Congrats on making it through the interview and apparently showing well.

enderland

I was expecting a more technical interview tbh

Ampt

Congrats on your ~~deception~~ interview!

when you start, make sure to keep a log

Robert Harvey

10:59 PM

@EricKing: Is excessive arity termed "vulgarity?" — Robert Harvey 19 secs ago

user114359

My kingdom for a spell-checker...

user114359

0

Q: The movie includes an article about mixing breakfart cereal

It's a movie in English, probably american. The main character is a girl who had this very important article to write and she was trying to find a good subject to write about.. She ended up writing about mixing breakfast cereal like her mother/relative taught her to do.

romantic-comedy

Lightness Races in Orbit

11:46 PM

@Ampt wow yeah that was great

Lightness Races in Orbit

11:56 PM

27

Q: Opt in "mentor" privilege at 7.5k

I am suggesting a Mentor privilege at 7.5k. It would be on a per-user per-site opt in basis. At some reputation level (perhaps 7.5k) there could be an opt in "mentor" privilege. If someone opts in then when a new user signs up, they become their Mentor. The new user is the Mentee. They will ge...

discussion feature-request reputation chat privileges

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