The Whiteboard

12:11 AM

8

A: Are flags for "immediate" problems or just problems?

Flags are not strictly for "immediate" problems. Expecting flaggers to know what is immediate and what is not isn't realistic; expecting moderators to always handle flags immediately is also not realistic. Moderators should expect that folks will flag whenever they encounter a problem on the si...

Thomas Owens

I know. I asked Shog to respond.

The last two sentences are key here.

durron597

@ThomasOwens Oh, thanks!

Thomas Owens

Mass deletions should be on Meta, not a flag + 1 moderator. In most cases, it's probably going to be clear cut.

But I don't want to miss something. If I delete, it may be hard to find and restore again. So I'd feel better not popping into a large number of flags. Plus, it would just be easier to open up a list of questions from Meta and blow them away.

durron597

@ThomasOwens The reason I support flagging so strongly is that it isn't +1 moderator. You don't have to be the only one to handle them

Thomas Owens

No. But my options are to handle or dismiss. I can't vote from a mod queue easily to give my opinion to another mod.

durron597

12:14 AM

Mods don't have a "skip" button?

Thomas Owens

Or wait. Either way, one moderator has to either let it sit in the queue, handle it, or dismiss the flag.

durron597

I certainly am not expecting them to be handled immediately

Thomas Owens

Yeah, I can skip. But that means World Engineer or Yannis or ChrisF or maple_shaft has to wade through them, too, and they need to decide.

And "skipping" still leaves it in the queue. It's not like a review queue that I don't see things I've skipped.

durron597

But ultimately one of you has to do the wading eventually

> expecting moderators to always handle flags immediately is also not realistic.

I never expected that of you or of anyone

Thomas Owens

If no one handles a flag, it just sits in the queue. And then the queue grows.

And it becomes harder to find the flags that we should be handling immediately.

Ixrec

12:16 AM

remembers that screenshot a mod took where the review number was literally over 9000

user20683

@Ixrec #StackOverflowProblems

Shog9

I'm pretty solidly against using flags for this particular purpose, @durron597. If you want to go back and delete a whole bunch of controversial questions, campaign for that publicly and let moderators take action as they see it is warranted. "Secret ballot" delete voting via flags, where no one else in the community can even know that a "vote" is going on, is unfair; if you'll notice, the flag link is entirely absent on a big chunk of those. — Shog9 ♦ 1 min ago

Reminder: the whole point of Historical Lock is to shove these things in a back room where they won't annoy everyone every day, and won't constantly get flagged by pedantic people.

durron597

@Shog9 These questions I've been flagging actually aren't historical lock

You can't flag historical locked questions. These questions I'm flagging are actually almost entirely rejected migrations that don't meet the roomba criteria.

They're supposed to. There's a bug floating around. A lot of them do get deleted though. — animuson ♦ Mar 16 '14 at 3:46

Shog9

@durron597 yeah, I know, that's on my list to fix.

(which makes flagging them similarly pointless now that you know it's a bug)

durron597

@Shog9 We can delete them on our own though. Unless you're saying it's preferable to wait for the bug fix and not bother now. I mean, that MichaelT / animuson conversation is 14 months old

Shog9

12:23 AM

Unless they're in your way or something, just ignore 'em. They'll eventually be cleaned up en masse.

durron597

Here's the timeline on this issue from my perspective. 1) MichaelT and I have a conversation in this chatroom about locked posts presenting a bad image to new users

2) I search and find hundreds of bad locked questions that ought to be deleted.

Shog9

You linked me to your posts which is half about HL questions, hence my assumption

durron597

3) I make the meta.programmers post and flag a few of them

Shog9

But I gotta run; dinner time.

durron597

@Shog9 Okay, thanks for your time!

@ThomasOwens Sorry to have bothered you

Ixrec

12:28 AM

and finally managed to spend all my CVs for today

good night

user55340

2:20 AM

@durron597 (and @ThomasOwens ) the historical locked questions that I'm most... interested in are the ones that are historical in this query

user55340

You find things like:

user55340

21

Q: Are programmers who read programming-related books still rare?

Both in Code Complete by Steve McConnell and The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt & David Thomas, they allege that most programmers don't read programming-related books as a habit, or at least not often enough. Does this still hold? Are programmers who do read such books still rare? I must ad...

books

user55340

Which have answers such as:

user55340

4

A: Are programmers who read programming-related books still rare?

I really love programming books. I have 150+ of them. And still room for more.

user55340

Or...

user55340

2:21 AM

30

Q: Most useful features of VIM that aren't standard in a IDE

I'm considering whether I should start using VIM again instead of an IDE. What are the most useful features of VIM that aren't standard in an IDE?

ide vim comparison

user55340

5

A: Most useful features of VIM that aren't standard in a IDE

The . command. It repeats the last command.

user55340

Or..

user55340

15

Q: What do great APIs have in common?

What is it about great APIs that makes them great? I think that adhering to the "do one thing and do it well" mantra is a good sign and being is a good mapping to the problem domain is important, but what do great APIs have in common?

api-design

user55340

2

A: What do great APIs have in common?

Great APIs have great documentation.

user55340

These are things that have not aged well.

user55340

2:26 AM

They need either some curation to bring them somewhat closer to current standards... or a reconsideration of why they were locked (they aren't high view, high vote, or a spectacular example of quality despite being off topic)

Robert Harvey

I'll say.

user55340

I believe it was more an attempt at preserving some of the polls from the NPR days that had some semblance of topicality. But really... they didn't age well.

Robert Harvey

Hey, @MichaelT... I told my wife about what happened with that company today. She had exactly the same reaction you guys did... She thinks I shouldn't have asked them whether they wanted someone who's not a dick, but she also said she didn't think it was a sincere offer for a job. She saw it more as a puff piece for the company, some free advertising.

user55340

Well, it costs money to place an advertisement on careers... so not free

user55340

maybe "lower cost than actually buying an advertisement on Stack Overflow" though

Robert Harvey

2:29 AM

How much, do you think? A couple hundred dollars? If you spent money, you'd think that you'd try to maintain some air of professionalism.

Ah, here we go. $495 for 30 days, $699 for 90 days. careers.stackoverflow.com/checkout/listing/choose?c=1

user55340

Stack Overflow real advertisement rates are by quote: stackoverflow.com/help/advertising

Robert Harvey

2:48 AM

Well, they gotta be making money somehow. They can't live off that VC money forever.

Robert Harvey

4:05 AM

Increasingly, I'm finding that my IT degree at Phoenix is not serving me well. I'm good at creating line of business applications, but not good at any of the University Computer Science stuff that they exercise in coding interviews.

durron597

@RobertHarvey How's hackerrank going/

Robert Harvey

4:25 AM

@durron597 I've been busy sending out resumes and following up potential leads. I know it's not an excuse, but I get bogged down in HackerRank. I do three or four problems and I've killed the whole day. I feel like I need some better background in Algorithms and Data Structures before I go there again.

durron597

@RobertHarvey Have you read CLRS?

Robert Harvey

Not yet. I now have a copy of Cracking the Code Interview, planning on going through that. I also have Sams Teach Yourself Data Structures in 24 hours. Yeah, I know; it's just scratching the surface. I have Corben's Algorithms and Data Structures book also, but at 1300 pages that looks like a bit of a slog.

@durron597 Honestly, learning Scheme seems like a bit of a luxury at this point.

durron597

@RobertHarvey My opinion, all the shortcuts are not going to do anything. Read CLRS

Scheme? CLRS is this: amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Edition-Thomas-Cormen/dp/…

Robert Harvey

Oh, I thought you meant SICP.

@durron597 Yeah, the Cormen book. 1300 pages. Jesus.

With math.

durron597

You don't have to read all of it.

Robert Harvey

4:29 AM

How much do I have to read? :)

durron597

Half of it? :)

Robert Harvey

It's not just reading it. It's doing the exercises too. There's no point in reading it without also doing the exercises.

durron597

You don't have to do all the exercises

Robert Harvey

lol. We could do this all night.

durron597

See if you can find a class that uses it as the primary textbook

and then just do that class's homeworks

Robert Harvey

4:30 AM

coursera.org/course/algo

durron597

Learning how red-black and avl trees work (like, actually work) is a huge step of getting the real grounding you need

learning all the different types of quicksort also would be super valuable

heapsort is another crucial one

This is less about learning how these things work in practice and more about tracing through the algorithms, and really understanding them

I would also do all the MST stuff (dijkstra's algorithm)

and bellman-ford

Robert Harvey

OK, thanks.

durron597

I would say that's pretty darn comprehensive. balanced trees, quicksort (all forms), heapsort, (you don't need merge sort, it's easy) and spanning trees / shortest path algorithms. including complexity analysis of all (learn why all the operations are worst case log n in tree algorithms), that's more than most people learn in algorithms 1.

the only major things missing that we covered in algorithms is NP-completeness/complexity theory, and hashing functions

no one will ever expect you to understand how that works, as long as you know that a hashmap is O(1) for contains and insertion/deletion

Robert Harvey

I also need to put together an Angular application to show off. And advanced SQL Server (Stored procedures, everyone seems to want that). Entity Framework, HTML5, CSS3. You know the drill. The only good news is I know exactly what that application is going to look like.

Angular seems like a whole scene in itself.

durron597

what kind of work do you want to do?

i refuse to learn angular because i never want to be a web developer

if you don't want to be a web developer it's a waste of time

Robert Harvey

4:37 AM

The Full Stack stuff would be great. WPF wouldn't suck, there's still plenty of need for that.

But I think HTML5/CSS3/Javascript is the future, at least for the next 10 years until they replace it with something else.

HTML5/CSS3/Javascript is the only way you can write an application that will work on the desktop, on your phone, in your car.

durron597

assuming you're actually going to write code that it matters what it looks like

Robert Harvey

@durron597 Employers like purdy applications.

durron597

if i may be so bold, stop thinking about what employers want and think about what you want

Robert Harvey

I want to not become obsolete, like I let myself do at NASA.

durron597

i know a guy who works for nasa via lockheed, want me to give him your resume?

you'd have to move to houston ;)

Robert Harvey

4:41 AM

Sure, why not.

durron597

do you have access to my email address via your diamond?

Robert Harvey

I don't see one on your SO profile.

'Course, they moved all the cheese around, and I might just be missing it.

durron597

huh. stackexchange emails me my feeds directly to my primary email address. oh well i'll just (removed) it

Robert Harvey

OK, sent.

Thanks.

Apparently SE decided that mods didn't need to see email addresses anymore. I don't recall ever sending someone an email from their private account info.

durron597

i thought that was how they resolved certain kinds of issues, like if a very high rep user began to delete all their posts, you could email them to see if they had been hacked

shrug i think the key to finding a job is to first figure out what you actually want. it makes it much easier to write a good cover letter if you actually care about getting that job

all this talk about how the job search is like dating that we've had a half dozen times already

if you seem like you'll take any girl who comes your way, none of them want you

Robert Harvey

4:48 AM

My impression is that there are not a lot of jobs out there, relative to the number of software developers looking for a job.

I think we're still having a hangover from the last recession.

durron597

88

Q: Are there more open jobs than available developers?

A recent Stack Overflow blog post claims that: With nearly five open jobs for every available software developer, the need for qualified technical talent is higher than ever. I have seen this claim repeated many times, with different numbers cited, but I've not been able to get down to any ...

united-states economics software

stop me if i say anything wrong

Robert Harvey

OK.

durron597

you would only write a letter to an employer like the one you wrote this afternoon if you didn't respect them.

Robert Harvey

Yeah, I was wrong with that. I've been wrong before.

durron597

you wouldn't say all that to someone you respected, right?

i actually don't think you were wrong!

that was a stupid crappy job posting

you knew you didn't want to work for them, but your background sort of fit so you felt obligated.

my number one biggest deal breaker with women is smoking cigarettes. i can't stand the smell and it gives me a headache

Robert Harvey

4:52 AM

Thankfully cigarette smoke is not nearly the problem it used to be.

durron597

if i was at a bar and a woman smiled at me while smoking, i wouldn't go over to her and flirt - i'm not interested. if i was feeling snarky i might go over and give her a lecture about how bad cigarettes are for you, but most likely i'd ignore her

it's the same with the job posting. you read the posting, and it was the equivalent of seeing a girl smoking for me

you decided to give "her" a lung cancer lecture

but you were never going to actually ask "her" out

Robert Harvey

It's a hard habit to break. Chiding people is a waste of time, and employers really, really don't care what you or I think about the way they run their business.

But I still do it. On Stack Overflow, Programmers. Here, behind their back.

Terrible habit.

durron597

@RobertHarvey I think you did it because you felt obligated to try all opportunities no matter how unlikely

And that, too

Robert Harvey

Yeah, but I could have done it without the dick move.

Still, it was nice to know I was right about them.

durron597

I think you'll find the search more rewarding if you limit your correspondence to employers where you actually think you want to work there

@RobertHarvey Sure it was!

Apply to fewer jobs, but spend more time on your cover letter and resume. Make it really targeted. Research the company first

And most importantly, make sure it actually sounds like work you want to do... not these "full stack" jobs where they expect you to be chef, waiter, busboy and maitre'd all at once

Robert Harvey

4:56 AM

I still think I need to step up my game. This isn't Imposter Syndrome; I'm genuinely behind the curve.

But I'll give that some thought.

durron597

But here's the key

if you figure out what kind of work you want to do

you don't have to learn angular AND stored procedures AND data structures AND blah blah blah

just learn the relevant stuff.

Robert Harvey

OK.

I have a Skype interview tomorrow. Guess I'd better go get some sleep.

durron597

good luck!

Robert Harvey

I have no idea what they're going to ask me. ;)

durron597

if they ask you what the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is, find out if it's african or european.

Telastyn

5:00 AM

"Could you tell us about a time you had a conflict with a coworker, and how you resolved it?"

</disdain>

durron597

@Telastyn I took her out for drinks and then invited her in for coffee

Telastyn

I doubt most companies asking such a question would accept "make up sex" for an answer.

Though kudos for the uncommon answer.

durron597

@Telastyn Sex? Dude, good-booze + jamaica blue mountain. glad to see where your head is at though ;)

Telastyn

And joking about the sex, that was perhaps not so implied.

10pm in Vegas? Yes, my head is not in interview mode.

Duga

8:15 AM

Perhaps this is on-topic on programmers.stackexchange.com but you'd better check their on-topic help page first to make certain. — Erwin Bolwidt just now

Duga

8:49 AM

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's mostly about software licensing and should therefore be on programmers.stackexchange.com. — Joachim Pileborg 56 secs ago

Yannis

9:13 AM

I've spotted more than a few delete votes on questions that would be auto-deleted.

If a question is closed, downvoted, and without answers, why are you wasting your delete votes on it?

Duga

This question sounds like Programmers — Krumia 17 secs ago

user55340

12:04 PM

@Yannis (1) at 39k I've got 30/day. (2) because we get enough "why is the newest questions filled with down voted closed questions" questions. I'd rather have newest questions be good and interesting questions. (3) because I'm tired of seeing a change of "it's" to "its" cause a reopen review for questions that should be deleted instead. (4) because I'm tired of seeing "its" and "it's" bump it to recently active. (5) stop the bleeding of the rep.

user55340

12:15 PM

(6) so that mods aren't the only names on speedy deletes when action is taken (you've got the support of part of the community).

Yannis

1:05 PM

@MichaelT #3 & #4 make sense, and I appreciate #6

I'm wondering if I should just delete the more egregious ones on sight. Letting them stay around for a while for the OP to realize what's wrong with them isn't necessary anymore (since OPs can see their own recently deleted questions, and are notified of mod comments on them).

Thomas Owens

I think the answer is more queues.

Yannis

44

Q: Allow non-bumping minor edits, but review them on /review

Every edit, no matter how minor, bumps a question to the frontpage of an SE site. This behaviour is important to allow the community to review edits, but it also creates significant problems when a lot of edits are performed at once. What I propose is to allow minor edits that are not bumped to t...

feature-request edits review moderator-tools bump

A minor edit queue could help, especially if it meant that minor edits didn't bump questions or put them in the other queues anymore.

Thomas Owens

I wonder if the new nav feature can help fix bumping.

It makes it very easy to find unanswered questions.

And by fix bumping, I mean make it so that edits don't actual bump unless you use a sort by recent activity setting in your view.

durron597

1:35 PM

@ThomasOwens Progs needs new profile before new nav

Thomas Owens

@durron597 Yes. I want to see how many people I've reached.

I'm over 7.5 million on Stack Overflow. I'd hope it may be bigger on Programmers.

durron597

@ThomasOwens has there been discussion of timeline on that in TL?

@ThomasOwens wait, we're not locking questions like x+=y now?

does that mean the recent historical locks i flagged for you should be unlocked?

Thomas Owens

@durron597 ??

@durron597 I think there's discussion on Meta.SE. It's a queue. Eventually, every site will be upgraded. No timelines anywhere, yet, though.

durron597

@ThomasOwens I flagged a bunch of learning STCI questions that you recently locked. It seems to me that the x+=y question is even more popular... why doesn't it get a lock? Is it because it's more on-topic than the STCI locked questions?

Thomas Owens

Can you link me to the x+=y question?

durron597

1:44 PM

225

Q: Why are shortcuts like x += y considered good practice?

I have no idea what these are actually called, but I see them all the time. The Python implementation is something like: x += 5 as a shorthand notation for x = x + 5. But why is this considered good practice? I've run across it in nearly every book or programming tutorial I've read for Python, ...

programming-practices

Meta: meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7375/…

Thomas Owens

Because it's not off-topic. Historical lock is explicitly for things that are no longer allowed on the site, but still add value.

If that question was asked today, I don't think it would be closed. There aren't even close votes on it now.

durron597

@ThomasOwens Got it. Whereas this is off topic. Sorry, the wording in your answer confused me

Thomas Owens

And @MichaelT protected it, and he didn't even vote to close.

durron597

@ThomasOwens Well, that isn't a good reason, as he's always out :)

But you're right.

Thomas Owens

Yeah, the text of historical lock is "don't use this as an example of what to ask". If it's still a valid question to ask, I can't historical lock it.

durron597

1:47 PM

@ThomasOwens What about this type of lock? not advocating, just brainstorming.

user55340

@ThomasOwens that was from the days of permanently expiring close votes.

user55340

I also might have been out of close votes. Or cast the first one, which expired but still garnered sufficient close votes in review.

user55340

Lots of options... I'd have to get a better idea of when I protected it (not in regular timeline) to see my close votes in that time frame.

Thomas Owens

2:03 PM

@durron597 That could get clumsy for a question like this.

Especially since someone would have to make sure that there is only one answer before applying it.

enderland

@RobertHarvey I just answered a question on Workplace about "out of field for 4 years" and it made me think about how much better your approach is than that persons >.>

(obviously not 4 years)

user55340

Oh, different old post that I protected.

durron597

@ThomasOwens Why? the linked question has more than one answer? I'm not following.

0

A: Locked questions cleanup

locked:yes views:0..2000 score:0..3 duplicate:no migrated:no 0 score: want to switch from Enterprise software development to C programming Have you read "Free Software Programmed in Haskell"? What did you think? 1 score: What are the duties of a software control management (SCM) engineer i...

user55340

(I will point out that my name is all over the red background there...)

Thomas Owens

@durron597 Yes. If there's more than one answer, it needs to be edited or deleted down to one answer before the wiki lock can be applied.

durron597

2:18 PM

What do you all think about attempting to edit this from "What programming problems are best solved by pointers?" to "I don't understand pointers. What are they good for?" or some such

@ThomasOwens But the question I linked you has more than one answer... what am I missing? Is that in a mod guideline somewhere?

Thomas Owens

Did they change that?

Maybe they changed that. At one point, if it didn't have one answer, you couldn't apply the lock.

user55340

Note that some of those are too broad and on topic, with deleted good answers. They should be unlocked and undeleted (answers) but remain closed.

durron597

@ThomasOwens Here it is again for convenience. 7 undeleted answers, and a lot more deleted ones.

user55340

For example the offshore PCI question.

durron597

@MichaelT I don't have 10k.

@MichaelT I'll make my answer community wiki, feel free to move the ones you think ought to be saved

@MichaelT Do you see what I did there?

user41796

2:37 PM

@durron597 "I don't understand pointers. What are they good for?" would be too broad, IMO

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 the second answer claims the only reasonable way to count software developers in the labor market is people who are employed as software developers because schooling can't be used as a qualifier nor can any other predicates known, but if that's how they're counted, then how the hell can you count unemployment among software developers? He says it's 3.8% but he must be mixing numbers there...

Thomas Owens

I'm totally thinking something that will probably blow people's minds. Maybe not the people here, but for sure some people at work.

durron597

@ThomasOwens I'm having antecedent fail on "that". Oh, it's because you weren't replying to anyone. What are you thinking about?

@GlenH7 Is the question salvageable at all, then?

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens one time... I thought this thing...and it blew my own mind... like whoa.

durron597

@JimmyHoffa Was it whistling?

Jimmy Hoffa

2:49 PM

@durron597 never could whistle; still can't. :(

durron597

@JimmyHoffa If you did manage to learn how, it would probably blow your mind

Thomas Owens

I haven't figured out the details yet, but, in short, it boils down to the fact that detailed design and implementation are the exact same thing.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 if I ever learned how, I'd be so proud of myself it'd be like living in an endless andy griffith show for everyone within 20 feet of me. Given that, I think it might actually be dangerous to my person to learn to whistle...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa there is an app for that.

durron597

@ThomasOwens You really are studying haskell, aren't you.

Jimmy Hoffa

2:53 PM

@ThomasOwens welcome to why the first thing I reach for when working out a design is code. Most good developers prototype pretty immediately for this reason in my experience

Thomas Owens

@durron597 A bit. I'm kind of poking at it. I should be more active.

user55340

smule.com/apps - the ocarina

Thomas Owens

I still think that architectural design is a unique thing. But the separation of design and implementation is pointless.

3

durron597

@ThomasOwens the difference between design and implementation is boilerplate code

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens it's great for prototyping because it's so terse you can whip up code to try defining various kinds of relationships and behaviours real quick just to see what will happen.

@ThomasOwens this.

durron597

2:55 PM

In other words, the garbage you have to do to get your language of choice to do what you want but isn't really relevant to design.

Thomas Owens

If you want to make an analogy, look at electrical engineering. Electrical engineers make drawings, and do prototypes to test ideas. But the products are made by manufacturing people on a manufacturing floor or lab. Our manufacturing lab is the compiler (or interpreter).

Our drawings are our code. Of course, we actually do have drawings, but that's just a view of the code.

Our drawings are just visual representations of the code, instead of textual. We can go back and forth between different views in any order we want.

durron597

So during my google interview, one of the interviewers asked me "If you could make any change / improvement to Guice what would it be? I said "add support to be able to create modules that loaded bindings from configuration files

Jimmy Hoffa

Architectural design is great for deciding where your boundaries will be (I will segregate an accounting vertical from a shipping logic verticle), and what technologies will be used (I think this data makes sense as documents as it's never transactional and read-heavy, so the accounting vertical will have persistence in MongoDB). But separating your actual "classes will behave this way" from implementation just results in a design doc that will never be current with actual implementation

user55340

@JimmyHoffa there was also leaf trombone smule.com/sunset/leaftrombone

user55340

The apps would detect the noise of air passing by the microphone and translate it to a whistle based on screen touch input.

user41796

2:57 PM

@Yannis I'll drop a VTD on something I know roomba will pick up simply to get the garbage cleaned out sooner. I don't have as many as MichaelT does, but garbage is garbage and it can stink seeing it sit around.

Jimmy Hoffa

Everytime I've worked on something where there was a detailed design document on what classes and et al would behave in what ways, I get part way into implementation and realize there's a better design if I modify it slightly here, and there, and I'm either stuck updating the document, or sticking to it because it's my orders even though it's not as good, or just claiming I followed it while writing a better design

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa I think there is something important to consider, though. You need sufficiently detailed requirements. They don't need to be necessarily "complete" in the sense of a 100% finished specification for the finished product, but the requirement that is being "designed/implemented" needs to be detailed enough to be understood.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I sincerely doubt I would get the same satisfaction from that as I would from having magically learned to do a stupid thing I haven't been able to do since a lad. I can however one-up people by purring like chewbacca which most folk can't do; also I can wiggle my ears independently and have taught my kid to purr too, so there!

@ThomasOwens requirements of course are important, use cases are best, but they should always be user-based requirements, never technical based ones.

user55340

@ThomasOwens welcome to waterfall. Can't move to implementing until the design document weighs enough for the pm to notice the toner depletion when printed for today's meeting.

user41796

@durron597 Not sure, tbh. I'd say we should close it and review to see what can be deleted off to make it tolerable. Hard to edit something with that many views & answers without invalidating things.

Thomas Owens

3:00 PM

@JimmyHoffa For me, "requirements" means some combination of use cases, user stories, shall statements, constraints, and more.

I'm using it very generically.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens same here, but if you only get to pick one or two, use cases are best.

and often you don't get to pick any. Hooray for put engineers-in-get-money-out business model of Teh Future! :)

Who called me a cynic? I'm too pessimistic to believe you!

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Absolutely. If I need to, I can derive all of the functional specs from use cases.

Apparently, this isn't even that novel of an idea.

c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhatIsSoftwareDesign

durron597

@GlenH7 Hmm. Anyone else have thoughts? @GlenH7 and I are talking about how to edit this

Thomas Owens

And people are even making the same points I came up with. About the compiler and interpreter being the manufacturing floor/lab and the source code being the the only true representation of the design and other diagrams or models are just views.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens no, like I said; good programmers I've worked with often design in code first. If people demand documentation that comes second by way of documenting what you did, rather than what you'll do, it's the only way to get accurate documentation afterall.

user41796

3:07 PM

@JimmyHoffa Really depends upon the size of the system and the size of the widgets you're building that day.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 there's a distinction between architectural design I pointed out above, I agree you can't just design in code first your architecture

user41796

When I worked a waterfall process, we would prototype smaller portions of things we weren't certain about. But we certainly wouldn't prototype the whole spec

Jimmy Hoffa

11 mins ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

Architectural design is great for deciding where your boundaries will be (I will segregate an accounting vertical from a shipping logic verticle), and what technologies will be used (I think this data makes sense as documents as it's never transactional and read-heavy, so the accounting vertical will have persistence in MongoDB). But separating your actual "classes will behave this way" from implementation just results in a design doc that will never be current with actual implementation

Thomas Owens

To address this in my work context, I need to flesh out how we conduct a design review. People here tend to equate design with text and models. I'm now asserting that code is design, and English and models are views of the design.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens welcome to why the only people who belong in a software company are those that can read code

Thomas Owens

3:08 PM

We're a phase-gated process. How do I reconcile this? Maybe a "design review" is just an architecture review.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens the only people who review an engineers work should be them that can read code. Make it so, and you can do design reviews by having folks display code, module by module

user55340

Employer^^ we had to write a design document such that all classes and algorithms were spelled out to that a first year cs student could translate it to code.

user55340

This meant writing and debugging pseudo code. It was painful.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ISO9001 we had to be pretty detailed, but not to the point of pseudo code. We would put class and schema diagrams in though, just generated usually.

Thomas Owens

Our formal project reviews are System Requirements, System Architecture, System Preliminary Design, System Detail Design, Component Preliminary Design, Component Detail Design, and Test Readiness.

durron597

3:12 PM

@JimmyHoffa God I hate ISO9001

Jimmy Hoffa

haha maximum waterfall, please tell me they're doing it all "agile" too @ThomasOwens because that would be hilarious

user15026

I love interviews where "I am not afraid of cows" is a valid and helpful statement.

2

user41796

@AshleyNunn But fear the geese.

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa It's phase gated. But some reviews are actually roll-ups of other reviews. FOr example, a system detail design review is after component preliminary designs, I think.

user15026

@GlenH7 geese are nasty. Cows aren't scary, just big.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:13 PM

@durron597 meh, so long as the company gives appropriate time for all the overhead I don't mind. I got used to generating documentation, it's really no harder than when I write answers here- all very technical and detailed.

user15026

(the interview was for tech support for a mostly rural isp)

user55340

@AshleyNunn have you gotten to the hidden levels on Blizzard products? What is the most feared monster that you have encountered?

Jimmy Hoffa

If somebody tells you you have to comply with ISO9001 but gives you little time and says you must do it ASAP, then it would be major suckage

user55340

@AshleyNunn remind me to tell the story of one night at a Boy Scout honor society story... In a field.

user15026

@michaelT geese, man. They're the worst. Cows just blink at you til you shove them out of the way. Water buffaloes are like really excited cows who don't really realize you can't handle a one ton high speed snuggle.

user15026

3:15 PM

@michaelT Oh, now I am curious.

user55340

@AshleyNunn but the cow level!

user55340

vg247.com/2015/05/18/…

user55340

@AshleyNunn the story needs a real keyboard to type.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 and to be honest, I kind of liked all the required input from others the process forced; irritating as all the meetings could be, I've worked lots of places where you get barely any input from others and you end up working in a silo making mistakes with nobody checking your blind spots

durron597

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, but I worked at a place where you never had enough time for anything and projects were always multiple months behind schedule

user41796

3:20 PM

@durron597 Once worked a project on the waterfall team where the project was at least 6 months behind. Absolutely zero letup in required process that we still had to follow....

durron597

@GlenH7 Whee

user41796

One of the worst grinds I ever worked on. But also some of the most amazing code...

user15026

@michaelT I never played any blizzard stuff long enough to encounter fancy things like cow levels. :)

user15026

Know they exist, but their games have never really grabbed me.

Thomas Owens

"...it appears that the only software documentation that actually seems to satisfy the criteria of an engineering design are the source code listings."

user55340

3:24 PM

@AshleyNunn but I was giving you a question where "I am not afraid of cows" would also be a valid answer.

user15026

Hahaha yeah, that's true.

user55340

Diablo II- The Secret Cow Level

►

user15026

As long as you always remember cows can kick in any direction, and are cautious, it's totally fine.

user55340

diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Hell_Bovine

user55340

And they carry cool pikes too!

Jimmy Hoffa

3:30 PM

@MichaelT Goat Simulator's cow level is the best

There IS a Cow Level in Goat Simulator! 1080p60fps

►

...also if you go into the sewers in one of the levels you find the teenage mutant ninja turtles in their lair with pizza 'n all, and they start attacking you

my kid loves the game

user55340

Did you get the zombie version?

Duga

I'm open to dissenting views, but I'd think a question on API design would be a better fit on Programmers than SO. — jonrsharpe 53 secs ago

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT don't know? I got the full with MMO version

user55340

store.steampowered.com/app/344450

user55340

> GoatZ. Mandatory zombie survival DLC, because that's what everyone is doing now. You even have to eat every damn five minutes to survive because Dean Hall & Garry Newman said so. GoatZ.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:39 PM

@MichaelT hahaha

I'll have to grab the DLC

Have you played the game? It really is pretty good fun to fool about with

user55340

Haven't yet. Might look at it at the next steam sale.

user114359

@MichaelT really? GoatZ? Terrible pun.