The Whiteboard

I would love to know what company is making money off a vowel-only string processing app

(yes, they all could have been tagged homework if that tag weren't blacklisted)

well we all know why homework is a terrible tag

presumably the good ones would get moved to recursion/regex/string-processing/etc

@Ixrec well, i mean, they were tagged java regex vowel blah blah

ah, right

Q: determining a consonant and vowel count in a string

12:20 AM

@Ixrec stackoverflow.com/search?tab=active&q=vowel

scroll down to the 15th (about 10 questions down)

-6

m=input("Enter A Word (in lowercase): ") i=0 length=0 for i in m: length=length+1 if "a">m>"z" : print("Input:" + m +" is incorrect! Please try again.") b=True elif "A"<=m<="Z" or "A">m>"Z": b=True print("Input:" + m +" is incorrect! Please try again.") elif "a"<=m<="z": ...

python

Ah crap because I edited it, it won't be gone for another week

12:57 AM

@gnat HUUUUUUUUUUGE sample size.

@durron597 you got to make just a few visits to SO LQ queue to see larger sample of what people dump into answer box

> Thank you for reviewing 20 low quality posts today; come back in 22 hours to continue reviewing.

@durron597 oh, then you sure know what I'm talking about

@gnat They're going to dump utter crap into answer box no matter what. Stub answers that use the word "Auto-generated" aren't going to change that much, in my opinion

7 hours ago, by gnat

> This is italicized, and so is this. This is bold, and so is this. Use italics and bold together if you have to.

^^^ your opinion vs my fact

1:02 AM

@gnat What autogenerated answer are they copying there?

7 hours ago, by gnat

^^^ worse than that

@gnat Meh. I still don't agree.

That copy-paste doesn't require bouncing between multiple different pages.

@durron597 man oh man. You really need to see what one of my colleagues did when he was bad in English but had to actively participate in email exchanges. He did exactly that, copied bits and pieces that looked worth reusing into a file, then pasting these pieces back into their mails, slightly tweaked. Why do you think I was that fast in "adapting" your stub. I've seen how people do just that many times before

@gnat I'll agree to disagree.

1:20 AM

@durron597 you'll disagree to agree?

by the way, that "question with markdown help", there is something weird about it...

interesting. Very interesting! This part of your question, "Use italics and bold together if you have to" - it is copied from markdown help, right? Thing is though, help text here slightly differs from that, it says "You can combine them if you really have to". That text you copied, it is in markdown help at Stack Overflow, means you also asked there? Would be interesting to learn what happened over there and where is your SO question (you don't seem to have SO account, how could you post there?) — gnat 1 min ago

@gnat Is there any way for someone with 10k to search deleted questions?

@durron597 no way. Deleted questions search is only for SE employees

@gnat Thought so. 30k rep request?

I bet it's already in that thread

1:32 AM

@durron597 iirc it's already there

great minds think alike

@gnat Willing to drop a cv on this for me?

@gnat also this

@durron597 your wish is my command (dupe suggestion in first one made me raise eyebrows, until I found that it actually comes from accepted answer)

@gnat I'm trying to recruit more brains into the source-code burnination effort as it gets more and more difficult

We're down to 575 open questions from almost 1400

@durron597 I once tried to get into that train, turned out a bit difficult. Too many cases where I have to skip. That said, I pick up some of source-code stuff in my daily raids over too-broad and most of it looks perfectly closeable. Can't figure why it's that different. Maybe system somehow prioritizes more troublesome stuff closer to top of the queue, I don't know

@gnat I know JasonMArcher is putting a lot of stuff in the queue most weekdays

1:55 AM

@gnat stackoverflow.com/users/2420922/i-do-not-like-stackoverflow

@durron597 not really creative name. Their linked accounts at other sites repeat the same. Should have tweaked to change site name at each new site, that would be... interesting

@gnat Who do you think will get 20k first, me on SO or you on programmers? my graph / your graph is apparently bugged

Q: Why one user's network profile reputation graph isn't loaded?

@durron597 I know who of us will be the first to get personal bug report at MSE...

9

This is the user I am talking about, why the rep graph doesn't work in his profile (maybe the problem is he exhausted his rep graph by tons of bounties :D)? He obviously has accounts with over 200 reps, can be seen there. (And, just by the way, I noticed this bug about 3 or more months a...

bug network-profile reputation-graph

:)

I think I even understand the root cause of it

2:25 AM

@gnat Haha

user55340

2:36 AM

If you are further west than the Mississippi, take a look at the Moon, Venus and Jupiter.

user55340

@MichaelT eh?

user55340

The moon is young, Venus is right above it, and Jupiter is off to the side about 15 moon radiuses.

too much light pollution here.

user55340

You should be able to see moon and venus.

user55340

2:39 AM

Also went to Bristol ten fair today... had a bit too much excitement.

user55340

Most people avoided it in the morning (worried of heat advisory that didn't happen) - was rather crowd free until noon. Then everyone showed up. Then it started raining and really raining and tornado warning raining.

@MichaelT Heh. That is the only thing I can see. Venus was about 45 degrees above and to the right

user55340

I was in a tent... big tent for musicians to play in. And it blew down.

Zero other "stars".

user55340

Jupiter is brighter than a star - my parents and I saw it at dusk - before sun set.

user55340

2:41 AM

Took a bit to pick it out. But to the right of venus about 9 degrees or so. Its faint, but realize that we saw it with a lot of color still in the sky.

I have a bad angle, my apartment faces north

And there were trees. It's really low in my sky at the moment

A: Do you reply to questions on SO from your own experience?

2:59 AM

1

I cut all my answers off the backs of cereal boxes. I figure, not everyone eats cereal, so i'm providing A Valuable Service to the Community by pasting them together and dumping them on SO. Sometimes, i don't feel like eating cereal. Then i look to a Magic 8-Ball for the answers. Not everyone ha...

Pandya

9:45 AM

Can only author of programme/software upgrade license?

I mean if it is derivative work then who can upgrade license version (say gpl 2 to 3)?

10:19 AM

the author/owner of the program can put any license they want on any distribution they perform, including changing it to anything else later

anyone else with the program may be allowed to redistribute under some other license; if so that is dictacted by the license under which they received it

for GPL 2-3, the original author/owner definitely can (assuming there are few enough authors you can get them all in the same room), and if the original license said "GPL version 2 or higher" than I believe you're free to replace that with GPLv3 in your redistributions

12:32 PM

In this diagram, what are leaf nodes of a tree?

I would guess the numbers with dotted lines around only them

unless the empty list also counts as node

ok

which ever cell has data, that is a leaf node, correct?

Can I say all the nodes in this tree are leaf nodes? because all nodes have numbers?

no, a leaf node is a node with no children

the first picture is a slightly unusual case because only the leaf nodes carry any data

ok

which is probably a consequence of building a tree out of Javascript arrays

12:44 PM

but node with data 7 has children in this diagram.

ah you're saying "node" is the list, okay

with the first diagram it's hard to tell what would count since they're all of disparate shapes unlike a typical C tree

by that definitions the leaf nodes are any arrays that do not contain arrays, and their values are arrays rather than single numbers

Simon André Forsberg

FYI: My internet was completely down for almost 24 hours, which means that @Duga has been down as well. She should be back in business now.

this function is counting al nodes that has data, so am confused, what are leaf nodes?

def count_leaf(tree):
    if is_leaf(tree):
        return 1
    branch_counts = []
    for b in tree:
        branch_counts.append(count_leaf(b))
    return sum(branch_counts)

again, a "leaf node" is any node that does not have children

in the first diagram it's unclear what a "node" would be, which is why I've been confused so far, but once we decide that it's easy to tell what the leaves are

In that case, I see only 3 leaf nodes in this diagram

12:49 PM

in a typical tree every node is of the same type, a binary tree in C would be a struct with a value, a left child pointer and a right child pointer; the leaf nodes would be those with both pointers set to null

that diagram's a bit odd since every node has a different shape, so you can interpret it a few different ways

if we count each array/list as a node, then there are four leaves in that diagram, counting the empty list

yeah in retrospect I think that's more natural than the interpretation I initially assumed

struct node { *left, data, *right} in C approach has corrupted my thinking

this diagram is using list. this is an n-ary tree

yeah

node at any level can have variable number of data and variable number of children

leaf node does not have children defi is confusing me.

how so?

because my teacher wrote the code like this which is counting all the data

he is from Google

this is the code inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/fa14/assets/slides/12.py

12:59 PM

that snippet is missing quite a few bits, what about it is confusing exactly?

def is_leaf(tree):
return type(tree) != list

that code gives value 7 leaves

oh, he's using the other definition of node, the one I initially thought

sorry? i did not get u

well you can see right there, in this code a leaf node is considered to be any value that is not a list

therefore, a node is considered to be a value (of any type), rather than just the lists

a node is considered to be a value (of any type), rather than just the lists and that node is leaf node?

1:02 PM

the nodes that are not lists are leaf nodes, yes

in that case...

in the original diagram, I believe every dotted blue line contains a single node (plus all its children)

i think this should be the ideal definition of leaf node

because practically only leaf nodes does nto have data

the definition of "leaf node" is always a node with no children, the issue here was I didn't know what they considered to be a node

well in a typical tree all nodes have data

that's one of many reasons it's very strange to treat an array of arrays of arrays as a tree

generally, all the nodes of tree has data. why would one care in counting leafs only?

I assume this has some relevance to the people implementing Javascript engines

in this particular case, it's guaranteed that all the data is contained in leaf nodes

but since an empty array is also a leaf node, yeah I'm not sure what use it is

other than perhaps an overly confusing way of defining the very useful flatten operation

or maybe it's more efficient somehow

this is python

A: How is Python's List Implemented?

1:06 PM

ah ok

23

It's an array. Practical proof: Indexing takes (of course with extremely small differences (0.0013 µsecs!)) the same time regardless of index: ...>python -m timeit --setup="x = [None]*1000" "x[500]" 10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.0579 usec per loop ...>python -m timeit --setup="x = [None]*1000" "...

yeah, this still just strikes me as just an academic exercise

with the right lead-in that clarified what part is supposed to be the node it wouldn't be so confusing at least

you mean practically we dont build trees like that using python?

I don't know for sure, but I would be surprised if this was the optimal way of building trees in Python

stackoverflow.com/a/2482610/2727470 is the first SO hit I get for a Python tree, it has a value next to the children array, which is what I would expect a tree to look like

this is my first class in learning trees, I want to learn am suppsoe to

all the hits I'm seeing have no mention of nested arrays at all

so it seems unlikely this is just me being bad at Python

we dont say it as array. we call it just list

1:13 PM

right, lists, duh

oh well, it's not an invalid way of creating trees, just an odd one

check this point

1:31 PM

and also this one stackoverflow.com/questions/31467062/…

@Ixrec after seing this diagram, my life is easy now

this is why 7 is leaf node in previous diagram ):

yeah, that is a much better explanation of it

hmmm

i was looking for this answer from past 3-4 days

but here extra empty nodes are would lessen the performance right?

that depends on a loooooot of factors

generally in C/ java we implement every node having data

here only leaf nodes have data

the main one being what you want to do with it

1:39 PM

ok

if you actually implemented a real tree with empty nodes like that, you're probably wasting a lot of space just because you'd need far fewer nodes in a "regular" tree

but the point is how can one implement a tree with non-leaf nodes also having data using python list

but in this case what we're really doing is reinterpreting nested Python lists as if they were a tree

presumably you'd do the same thing you do in C, like stackoverflow.com/a/2482610/2727470 shows

well that link is the n-ary case, there's loads of other SO answers showing the binary case of left/right ~~pointers~~ references

ok

I have no idea if the resulting Python bytecode would be as optimal as the compiled C code though, would be interesting to find out

1:43 PM

am learning datamodels in dynamic language, because it does not take overhead of static type and things are faster to implement

cool

as long as you know how Python implements its lists and dictionaries that should save loads of time

yes and mainly interviews would be more comfortable using python otherwise who would like to define a class{} and create attributes and member function of a class in java ): same problem with C

@Ixrec DS & algo is eating lot of time to learn, I never worked on trees before

3:31 PM

...that question apparently pressed my buttons :) — gnat 48 mins ago

Meh, your obsession with Hot Questions. "Hot Questions" is a reflection of peoples' almost unlimited capacity to bikeshed, nothing more. There's nothing wrong with Hot Questions, it's just not the feature you think it is.

Now if you will excuse me, it's time for Sunday morning coffee and breakfast.

(on to the important things)

if I had to pick one aspect of SE that could really do with improvement it'd probably be the migration system rather than the HNQ list

and now back to watching Doctor Who

Jimmy Hoffa

3:51 PM

@durron597 reddit rebellion?

4:06 PM

@JimmyHoffa I assume he's referring to this, and more recently this

5:03 PM

@Ixrec Correct

Q: What is the most frequently used way to abstract functionalities that can depend on outer scope in angularjs

6:09 PM

So, these "What is the most right/popular way to do this" questions... Is there a better way of explaining to folks that these questions aren't ideal?

1

I want to build a generic wizard facility into my web software. When I think about wizards, a couple of things come to my mind: Buttons: Next, Prior, Cancel and Finish. Tabs: It could have from one to N tabs. Tab: Each tab contains multiple elements, such as text, radios, checks, textareas, ...

javascript angularjs

6:42 PM

unfortunately I think these might be the type of question where only someone qualified to write an answer can judge whether it's actually too broad to be a good question much less how much narrowing needs to be done

I definitely lack the Angular experience required to tell if that question is okay in its current form (the wording makes it obvious that it might have a problem, but that's as far as I can go)

7:22 PM

One of those rare moments in my lifetime where someone shows me an ad of something I might actually be interested in, and the first thing I get hit with when I click on the ad is "Give us your email address for instant access to our website." What a turn-off.

7:45 PM

I honestly don't understand why a website would do that; you don't need someone's email to get money out of them

I sent them a pointed email. Of course, they have my email address now.

This whole business of universal logins is actually a bit troublesome. I have a Ralphs club card because I can't get decent prices there without one, but I never sent them my personal information (without which they can't link me to the purchases I make). We'll see how long the card works before they eventually invalidate it.

Companies are desperate for this information, because they know how valuable it is for marketing purposes, and people have no idea how much power they're giving companies by linking it all together, along with all of their Internet searches.

Actually, I just realized they can link me to my purchases if they cross-reference my credit card information.

I'm almost inclined to go back to cash for all of my routine purchases.

If you're a programmer (as am I), you're almost guaranteed to be perpetuating this new world order in some way.

I sometimes get the impression I'm the only one not terrified by the idea that nowadays I see video game adverts instead of erectile dysfunction adverts because somehow Google worked out I care about the former and not the latter

/awaits counter-flamebait

It's not their ability to follow you around with ads that is dangerous, though I do find that a bit creepy. It's what other possible uses that they might have for such information. Like petty crime-fighting, or other nuisance tactics. Or worse.

user55340

9:04 PM

@Ixrec at least it didn't work it out the other way.

9:29 PM

So I passed @gnat in Close Vote Reviews ~~today~~ yesterday

Hopefully some more questions will get put into the queue today

I wrote a little function to find the largest 3 numbers in an array without sorting the array. It has a while loop with three pointers, I am finding it hard to reason about the Time complexity. Is this a good question to post on the site.

sounds like something I'd upvote

as long as you show a complete, working code snippet and make it clear why you're having trouble reasoning about it

9:44 PM

Ok great

9:59 PM

I posted it programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290170/…

what language is that btw? I can't recall one where "break if" is supported

This ruby

ah, of course

neat, the syntax highlighting kicked in when I added the language tag

10:50 PM

grats @Snowman on entering the top 10 CV reviewers all time

looks like I'm not going to get 20 reviews today >:o

user114359

Really? I only have 1,641

user114359

1,643

user114359

I am #10 on the list now

user114359

Getting much higher than that is a pretty steep cliff to climb

A: Is the time complexity of a while loop with three pointers different than 3 nested for loops?

@Snowman yeah I hear that. 500 for me to hit my next one

Yusubov is gone but Dan reviews all the time.

user114359

10:59 PM

Needs more downvotes and rude/abusive flags:

user114359

-5

It isn't about the number of loops, it is about the number of operations, and to find that you need to analyze the code. Turns out to be O (n^3). That said, any software developer that is not an absolute beginner without any decent teacher writing a trivial loop in a bizarrely convoluted way li...

if you insist

user114359

Look at it and decide for yourself. I found it highly inappropriate.

I'm kidding, I flagged it a while ago but didn't think to downvote

user114359

I would hope that someone with that much rep (network-wide) would know better.

11:01 PM

hopefully he'll get the message

I think this is a good question. Thoughts on what to retag it to? concurrency locks application-design?

that almost sounds like a UX/design question to me, but it works here too

doubt I could come up with a better retag than your suggestion

looks like we don't have a race-condition tag

user114359

@Ixrec Probably don't need one, I think it would be too specific. concurrency covers it anyway.

yep

Jared

Hi guys, I asked a question that was a little too large here, and Ixrec suggested I get help with splitting it up and getting it answered here in chat. programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/290175/…

Q: Needing pointers on writing my first C++ library

11:10 PM

Added a tag wiki for locks if anyone wants to review it

user114359

@Jared if you put the link on its own line, chat expands it like this:

user114359

-1

I'm a CS undergrad attempting to write my first C++ library as a practical exercise, so I'm writing a rendering engine that uses the SFML library (link for the unfamiliar). Unfortunately, there's a lot regarding this they aren't teaching us in college. A lot of Googling has left me a bit frustra...

c++ programming-practices libraries

Jared

Thanks, I was wondering about that and just crossed my fingers.

user114359

> Is it bad that my library is based on using another library as a dependency? How often does this happen? I'm just using SFML right now, but what if I saw a good need for using something like Boost later?

user114359

The short answer: no, this is not bad. There are countless libraries that depend on other libraries.

Florian Margaine

11:14 PM

longer answer excerpt: NIH syndrome is bad

user114359

While not really subjective, that question would likely be closed as "primarily opinion-based"

@Jared here's my five-second knee-jerk reactions to each point (hopefully someone else will contribute a few opinions too):
1) It depends. In C++ this happens a lot, and there is value in avoiding "expensive dependencies" just as there is value in not reinventing the wheel, so you often have to make difficult choices. A question like this would only be answerable if it described a very specific scenario and a specific dependency you're not sure is worth it.
2) Depends on your audience. This one is probably not answerable in any form since we'd simply have to poll your users and find out wha…

user114359

> Since I'm using additional libraries, should I expect users to have the libraries installed (where g++ -l[library] ... is possible), or should the library source be added to my own source so that other contributors don't need to install dependencies?

user114359

Look at how other projects do it. Essentially, users will need to have the libraries.

user114359

> Is there a typical directory layout for C++ libraries?

user114359

11:17 PM

Sigh.

user114359

Have at it, guys:

already did

user114359

This wouldn't be the internet without the trolls.

Q: Why was my comment about using floating points as iterators deleted?

@MichaelT credit-cards

user114359

Anyway, there are some typical layouts for C++ libraries and "regular" executables, but nothing standard. I think the FSF might have something on this, as they host quite a few projects and try to standardize them.

user114359

11:20 PM

> This isn't a binary, so what's the typical method of testing a C++ library? My guess would be installing it and using it in an application, but I'd rather someone just tell me.

user114359

I suggest writing your own executable that exists solely to link against your library and test it.

user114359

I have done this before with good success.

user114359

> How do I even build and install a library? I'm using OS X right now, but the code also works on Windows and Linux. What kind of file (.a, .dylib, etc.) is output? Should I use a Makefile? Where should it be installed so users can link it? What I'm wanting my end result to be is that if I really wanted to, I could create a homebrew package out of my library so that users could install with brew install jpxy and immediately start using it (as is the currently the case with Boost, for example).

user114359

Depending on whether it is statically or dynamically linked the answer will be different. You need the .a files and headers no matter what.

user55340

-11

I made a comment in response to some idiot who thought it was a good idea to run a for loop using floats instead of ints. I basically said something like "using floats where you need ints is like putting your penis in the toaster, it's a pointless exercise in risk and you're asking for trouble" ...

discussion

user114359

11:22 PM

While undoubtedly amusing to some - surely you could came up with an analogy that didn't involve body parts and toasters? — Jon Clements ♦ 25 mins ago

user55340

CaptainCodeman

1 2 2

discussion vote-to-close

user55340

Suspended on SO, so came over to P.SE to swear at us.

A: Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative Phase II

12

payment This tag appears to have two uses. One is with regards to implementation of payment systems and transactions and the other is with respect to getting paid as a contractor, freelancer, or employee. The second type of question is off-topic. This tag could be removed from the off-topic ques...

user55340

@durron597 I'd point out that pci is a possibly a useful one.

user55340

2

Q: Is using external repositories PCI-DSS compliant

We are considering using BitBucket rather than hosting our Git repositories internally. Does anyone know if this breaks any rules of PCI compliance? I haven't been able to find much information on this.

git repository project-hosting pci

user55340

11:24 PM

2

Q: PCI Compliance with Offshore Development

I run an offshore development team that produces a host of financial products. We are currently planning the work needed in order to gain PCI compliance. The offshore team is run by an outsourcing operation who employ the staff directly. In other words the developers are not directly employed by...

outsourcing offshore pci

Q: In terms of Software, what constitutes a quality control plan for ISO 9001 compliance?

Okay I won't burn it just yet.

user55340

Its similar to asking about ISO standards for quality.

user55340

3

I am bidding on a government contract (my first) and there is a section requesting that I provide a high-level outline of a quality control plan that would ensure that the end product is ISO-9001 compliant. I don't know much about ISO 9001 so I am certainly doing my own homework and research on ...

code-quality quality qa iso

Jared

@Snowman I've yet to dip my feet in static/dynamic linked. Considering the library consists completely of standard, non-template classes right now, I would assume it's static.

user114359

I think PCI is a good topic in general, not talking about any specific questions though.

user114359

11:26 PM

It is an industry standard that programmers may need to be in compliance with, and which may affect system design.

the contents of the library are usually unrelated to whether it should be static/dynamic, often the best projects just allow you to build any combination yourself and provide binary downloads for the popular ones

user114359

@Jared Well you have to pick one, unless it is a header-only library.

user114359

Then there is that. if you look at wxWidgets for example one may build either static or dynamic, 32 bit or 64 bit, debug or release.

user114359

Anymore I would just do static linking. Disk space and bandwidth are cheap.

@MichaelT I just added isv to the freelancing post.

user55340

11:28 PM

Unless you are specifically expecting the shared libraries to be updated, static.

user114359

Plus, a smart linker can elide entire modules that are not referenced anywhere. I have actually compiled against a static library and had the final executable be half the size of the library.

yep, in practice static has always been simpler for me (there's certainly fewer ways it can go wrong), and the benefits of dynamic are kinda not a big deal unless you're one of those libraries everyone on the planet depends on

user55340

harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking

user114359

@MichaelT That brings up another good point, stealth-updating if you are not careful with naming the library. It could be possible to slip in an updated library that breaks an application.

user55340

@Snowman or the library that a library uses... oh joys.

11:30 PM

and if you are one of those libraries (say, Win32, OpenGL) then dynamic linking is basically mandatory anyway

user114359

Yep. And while Windows has the historical reputation of "DLL Hell" the same thing exists in other OSes including Linux.

user114359

I am writing an application right now and I am using static libraries except for libstdc++.so/msvcrt.dll

user114359

WTF the same user asked another question that sounds innocent enough, but at his rep level he should know it is off-topic.

same, the "standard" library is the only one where I have the option of static linking but stick with dynamic anyway

@Snowman check his activity: programmers.stackexchange.com/users/134375/…

only 3 questions (one new, the others highly upvoted)

2 off them off topic

user114359

11:34 PM

@ratchetfreak so, mostly active for the past 9 months or so and rode the wave that is the hot network list.

maybe a reaction to being suspended on workplace and SO?

that was the theory posted above, yeah

Stop voting to close my questions! This is a very good question, if you don't like it at least be a man about it and tell everybody what you think is wrong with it! — CaptainCodeman 1 min ago

oh boy

user114359

@WorldEngineer @ThomasOwens you guys around?

hopefully @Jared got enough advice in between all the damage control that suddenly came up

user114359

And the other mods that for some reason I can't ping in chat

11:41 PM

you can ping if they have been active in the last day