The Whiteboard

Jimmy Hoffa

00:16

eesh, I just setup LinkedIn. I feel creeped out now. Going to need another beer.

user55340

@Ampt @AshleyNunn reddit.com/r/books/comments/3m34oc/…

Robert Harvey

02:17

@JimmyHoffa Welcome to the grid.

user55340

02:35

TRON Legacy - The Grid (Long Version)

►

user15026

@MichaelT That was entertaining.

user55340

@AshleyNunn Its one of those "some sites do some things very well" - AMA is a core draw of reddit. Discussions work there.

user55340

Aside, check out:

user55340

amazon.com/Spellwright-Trilogy-Blake-Charlton/dp/0765356589

user55340

Make sure you read the author's bio: blakecharlton.com

user55340

02:53

@JimmyHoffa theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/…

Robert Harvey

Daft Punk is hit or miss. Mostly miss. That little bit of repetitious movie music is passable.

@MichaelT I especially appreciated the book review on Amazon.

They just did "Matt Damon in Space" because Matt Damon was in Interstellar.

> Just eat Martians. They taste like chicken.

user55340

03:30

A Walk in the Sun (short story)

"A Walk in the Sun" is a science fiction short story published in 1991 by Geoffrey A. Landis. It won the 1992 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, the 1992 Asimov's Reader Poll Award and was nominated for the 1992 Locus Award. == Plot summary == The story follows Trish, the only survivor of a terrible crash landing on the moon. After regaining her senses, she contacts Earth and learns that it will be thirty days before a rescue mission can reach her. In the meantime, she depends on a wing-like solar panel to provide power to her suit's recycling facilities, and lunar night is approaching. To stay alive...

Please Teach

06:13

Morning

Duga

06:46

Isn't that a question for Programmer rather? — Gilles 16 secs ago

Duga

07:04

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is not Tinder For Programmers — Paulw11 13 secs ago

Alexandre Vaillancourt

12:13

Hey, I was wondering something. If a company has a certain code base (code and architecture) for its applications, and desire to evolve it, is it a valid approach to design something completely new (while reusing some architecture and code), or is it better to design the ultimate desire and go towards it with each new app?

For instance, if we're currnetly using a 'classic' OO architecture and we want to go full component based but we have never done it, are we shooting ourselves in the foot if we're using a "hybrid custom" component based architecture? (e.g. we're not following exactly what's in Unity (for instance) or we're not going full ECS (where all the code is in the systems and the components are used to contain data, and where Entities are there only to 'group' components))?

Learner

how bad is it to use a web service as a library as well

amon

@AlexandreVaillancourt Rewriting your whole application can be an expensive mistake. Doing incremental improvements is more difficult, but provides immediate value. At the beginning, you would refactor your code base into clearly separated parts with defined interfaces, so that you can then do more aggressive refactoring in a part without breaking other parts. Testing the existing code before refactoring it is important!

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@amon This is the feeling I'm having. Now I'm wondering how engines like Unreal/Quake/Frostbite/etc evolve... I guess they hardly turn around on a dime, although Q3 and Q5 must be very different....

@amon I guess it requires planning and discipline, but mostly planning.

amon

12:30

Planning is good so that you know where you want to end up. E.g. you could first design a better interface to some component, then implement it using the old interface, transition other code to the new interface, hide the original interface, and finally reimplement the component under the new API. At all times does your code still work, and you avoid a big bang integration. I have found the Bridge Pattern to be very useful for API migrations.

Jimmy Hoffa

Happy Coffee Day

Duga

13:03

stackoverflow.com/questions/32757571/…

Learner

@JimmyHoffa you say that everyday

enderland

@Learner coffee day is every day ending in "day"

Learner

@enderland i don't do any coffee or tea overweekends though

user41796

13:19

@Learner Woah, woah, woah now. That's downright offensive to say in this particular room.

Aaron Hall

Put - that coffee(script) - down.

gif's get old after 5 cycles or so. media.giphy.com/media/MSixuOOVyQbF6/giphy.gif

user41796

s/5/1/

Aaron Hall

Yeah

user41796

<--- old curmudgeon.... :-D Who needs more coffee.

Aaron Hall

Switch to tea, I think you'd spend less time waiting by the coffeemaker...

Learner

13:24

why people drink coffee ?

user41796

@AaronHall On-site barista and cafeteria with three other options for coffee. So I'm covered pretty well

user41796

@Learner Because the good stuff is delicious

user41796

warm, rich, nutty aromas

user41796

And the caffeine certainly doesn't hurt either

Learner

@GlenH7 it does at night

not let me sleep

i get more hyper @ day time, makes me feel hurt too

Aaron Hall

13:26

Ah, well we don't have those frills, we just overpay everyone and they use the several gourmet or cheap options on the street or make it in the pantry.

user41796

night time is for good-booze

Aaron Hall

I like to keep the difference in my pocket.

user41796

@AaronHall Understandable. I happen to work in a fairly large, single tenant office building and the company makes certain we have on-site food and coffee options.

user41796

We're a services organization, so every moment spent wandering around looking for a caffeine fix are moments not spent working on projects. :-)

Aaron Hall

There's a workshare upstairs that I can sneak in to and drink free beer. Not that I ever do. But I have a few friends there so it's legit.

user41796

13:29

Regrettably, that's one thing they won't let us do.

Aaron Hall

Regrettably? I'm kinda glad there's not endless beer here. I don't need to turn into an alcoholic, and it seems like my typo rate is going up regardless.

enderland

lol

Aaron Hall

Always Be ~~Cobbling~~ Closing

Alexandre Vaillancourt

13:47

@amon Yeah, that's a good way to do it! Thanks for your input!

user114359

14:03

I really like C++, but I admit that it can be quite ugly and difficult at times. Looks like Bjarne is trying to address it: Bjarne Stroustrup announces C++ Core Guidelines

ratchet freak

14:21

@Snowman half the uglyness I've seen comes from the horrible naming convention of "private" variables in generics

user55340

8

Q: How do I unscrew these?

I'm a college kid trying to sneak my boyfriend in my dorm window. The first section is the holder on the window, the second part is the end of the slider on the window. All I have to do is disconnect the slider. This looks definitely like a modification and is not integrated into the original ...

user55340

If you have a daughter and think that a couple of Torx screws is going to stop them shagging their boyfriend, you've got a hazy memory of your own youth. — micmcg 12 hours ago

enderland

hmmm team meeting has "team structure reorg" on agenda... interesting :o

this will be interesting I guess

user41796

@MichaelT For once, the comments on a post are quite hilarious

user55340

16

A: How do I unscrew these?

We were all young once. You need a Torx screwdriver of the appropriate size https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torx Actually due to the pin in the middle it is more technically security Torx. Harbour Freight will get you out of trouble cheaply.

user55340

14:35

Or into, I fear... — keshlam 13 hours ago

user114359

That question belongs in the Stack Exchange hall of fame

gnat

14:59

in Programmers CV-Please, 2 mins ago, by gnat

cv-pls blatant bikeshedding in hot list - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298117/why-are-the-sizes-of-progr‌ams-so-large

ratchet freak

@gnat needs protection at the very least

user41796

Not old enough to be protected by mere mortals. :-(

user41796

And since we're asking for close votes - Can we get this closed please? It's a "name my variable for me" type question...

Jimmy Hoffa

ugh my boss thinks if you "make it simple, it will support every browser" which is absolutely the opposite of how you get support for every browser...bla

user55340

HTML 1.0. With blink.

user41796

15:06

Awwww yeah!!! Bringing back the blink tag

enderland

Just make every page a pdf

user41796

every page a pdf in their own frames....

Jimmy Hoffa

apparently he could do it, just using tables....

He is a good engineer, but he's been in management long enough to have not kept up

user114359

user114359

Re: the blink tag

Duga

15:20

Oops, I meant this site: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions — kelin 7 secs ago

user41796

@Snowman Y U hatin?!

enderland

heh so if I can't get the tool to do automated system monitoring... votes on writing my own, really basic monitoring tool? yes/no?

user114359

Wow, even just googling for it is painful:

user114359

google.com/search?q=blink+tag

user41796

@enderland look at cactus

user41796

15:32

save yourself the effort of rolling your own

enderland

@GlenH7 hmmmm interesting.

it's probably against all sorts of policies to get that though :( probably be easier to write cactus from scratch than get it approved lol!

user41796

I've never used it, but have heard many good things

user41796

To my knowledge, quite a few shops with conservative policies use it. So it's worth looking into

user41796

It's a stand-alone app that doesn't tie into other things so there's no risk to internal IP

enderland

bummer, not in our internal system

user55340

15:35

@Snowman just be glad they removed the marquee Easter egg.

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer you get spacemacs running?

user55340

Some esolangs are about beauty rather than byte count: esolangs.org/wiki/Funciton

user55340

19

A: Let us play the ocarina

Funciton, 4322 − 50% = 2161 Not really trying to golf here. Going more for the beauty angle. I think the main program looks really neat, a perfect rectangular box tucked away on the right. ┌─────────────────────────┐ ┌─┴─╖ ┌─┴─╖ ┌───────...

user114359

@MichaelT my brain hurts now

Robert Harvey

15:52

@MichaelT That looks like it might be an interesting minimalist language, if you got rid of all those boxes.

user55340

@RobertHarvey could always go with Piet.

user55340

dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html

Robert Harvey

Boy you guys were all over that C question. Normally it takes six hours to get questions like that closed.

user41796

@RobertHarvey If you've got a spare close vote. :-)

user55340

I suspect it was partly because he was flouting the rule. Knew it was off topic, tried to claim the broad and yet was still asking for an opinion poll.

user41796

16:02

The ones that seem to be most egregious are when the OP argues about the rules being wrong or there question is {special | different | unique | yawn} and / or they don't bother reading any of the guidance they've been linked to

Robert Harvey

It's not exactly a polling question.

user41796

More opinion based than anything with the C question

user55340

Or too broad with a half dozen questions.

user41796

"Tell me the magic formula for C"

user55340

Asking for a lesson plan for a hypothetical programmer.

user114359

16:07

This one?

user114359

-4

Q: What should a programmer experienced in high-level OOP language learn when moving to low-level C development?

Let's say that there's a developer who's been using a typical high-level OOP language (like C# and/or Java) for quite some time. He's familiar with patterns by gang of four, can read and write code reasonably well and is considered a senior by his peers. What skills does this person has to devel...

c skills assembly low-level

user55340

Yep.

user114359

I see what you mean. That is off-topic and too broad on so many levels, yet he still argues.

user55340

Unfortunately @MaxYankov, "education advice" is now usually interpreted to mean "questions where you're trying to learn something new instead of solve a specific problem." When it was decided to make education advice off topic, that's not what it meant. People enforcing this rule don't remember that. We have always been at war with Eastasia. — Karl Bielefeldt 2 mins ago

user55340

@KarlBielefeldt You are welcome to take this to Programmers Meta. This question, education or not is still a too broad opinion poll which has always been inappropriate to ask on here. The only answers that are applicable here are opinions - and that doesn't work well in this framework. — MichaelT 44 secs ago

Robert Harvey

16:15

Eh, I consider it a controversial close. Education advice is "which class should I take" or "which book should I read" or "which degree should I get," which is clearly categorically off topic. That question, not so much.

user114359

I take "education advice" to mean anything close to "how do I learn something," meaning "the process of learning" not just stuff about college or other classes.

overexchange

How web application(servlets/jsp/web.xml) different from Java EE application?

user55340

Flag it to be reclosed as opinion?

Robert Harvey

And despite y'all's protestations that it's too broad, it has a clear answer.

user114359

22

Q: Why are the sizes of programs so large?

If we look at the vintage program Netscape Navigator or an early version of Microsoft Word, those programs were less than 50 MB in size. Now when I install google chrome it is 200 MB and desktop version of Slack is 300 MB. I read about some rule that programs will take all available memory no mat...

programming-practices files delivery

user114359

16:16

So what you're saying is that a program that once took up $10 worth of hard disk space now takes up about 30 cents worth of hard disk space? I find this hard to worry about. — Eric Lippert 2 hours ago

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT The close reason doesn't matter, once it's closed. Reclosing things to change the close reason is a waste of time.

user114359

Sometimes, people measure things incorrectly

user114359

@RobertHarvey I prefer the analogy "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic"

Robert Harvey

@Snowman First time I've ever seen Eric Lippert use a straw man.

user55340

Yep. If I had a vote left, it would have been opinion. And closed a tad bit sooner.

user114359

16:17

@RobertHarvey Yes, but it is actually a valid straw man

user55340

I see education off topic reason a refinement of too broad and primarily opinion - trying to give better guidance as to why.

user114359

Rather than "making up a false question which I will tear apart" it is more "let me correct your assumption"

user114359

> What skills does this person has to develop to successfully move to low-level C development?

user55340

All of our off topic reasons fall into that model.

user114359

That is the crux of the question, and it looks clearly off-topic to me

user114359

16:19

There is no way to answer that definitively because it is too localized to a specific developer

Robert Harvey

See my comments below the question.

user55340

How do I learn C is a too broad topic.

Robert Harvey

Eh, that's not what he's asking.

user114359

Okay, so it becomes "give me a list of everything that high level languages do that C does not" which is definitely too broad.

user55340

hes asking for a condensed version of k&r along with "should I do this on Linux?" What tests of skill exist? What project should I take up?

Robert Harvey

16:22

It doesn't have to be a treatise. Did you read my comments below the question?

user55340

> May be there's a typical toy project that he should try to develop, that will force him to face typical challenges and problems?

user55340

You didn't answer his question fully.

Robert Harvey

Since when was answering questions fully a requirement of any stack exchange site?

user41796

always < cackles maniacally />

user55340

The third paragraph could be closed as a "what project to take up"

Jimmy Hoffa

16:24

@RobertHarvey since you were competing on P.SE bitch

1408

A: Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed?

I tested some different algorithms, measuring speed and number of collisions. I used three different key sets: A list of 216,553 English words (in lowercase) The numbers "1" to "216553" (think ZIP codes, and how a poor hash took down msn.com) 216,553 "random" (i.e. type 4 uuid) GUIDs For eac...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa The Zuckerberg style closing doesn't carry well in text...

user55340

@RobertHarvey it's an issue of focusing the question. If it isn't answerable fully, it is too broad. And you will get people latching on to one sub question and answering just that.

user55340

> get an ardunio and work with that

user41796

Re-reading the C question, I can't tell if he's trying to get into embedded development, device driver development, or just jumping into C programming.

user55340

Perfectly valid (not full) answer to the question.

Robert Harvey

16:27

Eh, I see what you mean. To be fair, I didn't read the whole question. Mostly, I just read the title. Which is really the only relevant text in his question.

user55340

Thus, more of the questions problem.

user114359

0

Q: Improving "What should a programmer experienced in high-level OOP language learn when moving to low-level C development?"

How can the following question be improved to allow it to be reopened and answered? What should a programmer experienced in high-level OOP language learn when moving to low-level C development? One could argue it is asking for education advice, or is too broad, or is asking for a list of things...

discussion closed-questions

user55340

Title is one question. Second paragraph is another. Third is yet another.

Robert Harvey

In other controversial news, #regions are really handy when you're trying to figure out a class with a thousand lines of code.

user41796

I like them quite a bit. Sometimes you ended up with a big ball o' mud and there's not much you can do about it. Declaring regions makes it a bit more sane to manage.

Jimmy Hoffa

16:33

@RobertHarvey In other controversial news, files are really handy when you're trying to figure out a class with a thousand lines of code.

user41796

So I'll see you in Programmer's Hell for acknowledging I like them too. :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

yuck..ick..blech..gross.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa We already have too many of those.

Jimmy Hoffa

At least start partialling it. If you're regioning your methods well... I'm just so sorry.

most of my files are well under 100 lines..

Robert Harvey

It's a scraper. There are a lot of moving parts, and they resist any sensible organization strategy.

user41796

16:34

@JimmyHoffa We have classes with up to a dozen partial files and thousands of lines each.... Just saying that sometimes you get big balls o' mud... You gotta deal with what you got.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey Blame the dev, not the application. Blaming the application for what devs did to it is just victim shaming.

user41796

And just to shut the door - No, I haven't yet managed to kill off that d*mn silverlight catastrophe that I created...

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 yeah, at employer^ we had a "REST api" that was a huge facade of hundreds of methods all crammed in one class, so they partialled the class out for the different parts of that facade...all because the devs didn't know how to assign different classes to different sub-folder URIs in WCF...

user41796

Project got de-prioritized

Robert Harvey

That's too bad. Fayde is cool. My boss is a real XAML evangelist; we don't do anything in HTML5 here.

Jimmy Hoffa

16:38

@GlenH7 haha +1 for calling something you did a "catastrophe that [you] created" - devs cut themselves off at the feet sooo much by refusing to admit their failures only to repeat them..

Using EF recently was a massive fuckup on my part. I should have just done ADO.NET like normal, would have taken a quarter of the time I spent trying to make EF behave, only to give up after it sorta-kinda-worked. Yuck. Not repeating that mistake, EF can blow.

user41796

Oh, I absolutely own that one. And I know when I made the technical decisions that created that debt. I understand why it happened, even though I'm not happy that it happened.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa I'd love to see examples of your work in ADO. People seem very enamored with the idea of EF, if not the actual reality.

I can haz the crudz.

And there's a dozen different ways to do it, even in Fowler's book.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey ADO.NET is really fairly uniform... execute command, iterate results or pull from output params

Robert Harvey

Do you use Linq?

Or do you need EF for that? Do you write bare metal SQL?

Jimmy Hoffa

it's ADO.NET, you can't. The point of a repo is to do the low-level scrubbing over a data-provider to return domain content that you can use linq on.

I typically stick with sprocs.

Robert Harvey

16:43

Do you do any code generation, or do you write all those by hand?

Or perhaps you eschew CRUD altogether, and only write those queries for domain-specific results that you actually need.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey by hand typically; when working in larger database environments where you do it a lot I've written helper classes in the past. You can put extensions on IDataReader to take column->object mappers and such to clean it up a bit, but really there's not much to it. Helper methods for handling nulls and type conversions because IDataReader only returns object etc

@RobertHarvey a mix. The more complex/large/etc the data, the more domain specific I make the calls. Always best to lean towards the primitives (CRUD) though because those will provide the support for the maximum number of future scenarios that you can't predict

That rule is true of primitives universally; the more primitives you provide from your APIs, the more scenarios your APIs will support naturally.

GetPeopleByName() vs GetAllPeople(), it's important for performance and other reasons to have the first a lot of times, but the second will meet way more desired scenarios (you can get people by age or odor with the second etc)

As much as performance constraints allow, aim for the second type of API

MetaFight

EF is a great rapid development tool. It's not as flexible as traditional ADO.NET, but it makes coding your data access much quicker. In my experience, the problem with using EF isn't EF itself, it's developers forgetting it's only a tool and not a religion. You can and should drop it the instant it creates more work.

I start almost all my projects with EF and switch to stored procs or ADO.NET as needed for performance reasons. It rarely happens though.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MetaFight for me the killer was not having an atomic upsert; I need that to support an appropriate amount of concurrency. Then I went in and added my own upsert sprocs for it to use and it started barfing on changes to it's underlying data that it didn't do and the whole thing became more hassle than it was worth. I think it's perfectly fine for reads, but it tries to protect me from executing inserts/updates that are perfectly valid- it just got in my way too much

MetaFight

That sounds like a reasonable case for dropping it and rolling your own solution.

(for that specific operation)

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm relatively comfortable with using it for reads, but then I wonder why am I bothering to maintain a hand full of ADO.NET methods and EF methods? The difference between them is negligible; the inserts/updates/upserts I write always read out the most-current version of the record that was touched which maps to the domain models identically to how a read does... so then what's the point?

Robert Harvey

16:59

I've often thought that you could code-generate very robust CRUD for your entire database using ADO. The problem with EF is that it is very generalized, and I think most people new to it see it as a CRUD generator, not the generalized data mapper that it is.

Highly-generalized tools come with the problems that generalization brings.

Jimmy Hoffa

eh, I don't agree; I think it's highly specific. It constrains you significantly into it's special scenarios and cases. It's so specific, it doesn't even work with a standard connection string. It's the opposite of general.

If it was general, it would allow me to command it to do things, and it wouldn't presume to know better than me - generalization is taking constraints away and creating facilities that can be instructed. EF requires it's users to do things in its specific and precise ways or else it fails.

ADO.NET is general: You tell it what to do, and it does it. Nearly identical approach to creating/executing a stored procedure, as arbitrary SQL. Reading the results of a stored procedure or reading the results of arbitrary SQL? Same code; that's generalization.

Robert Harvey

I always thought the point of EF is (essentially) to allow you to write Linq queries against your database.

Instead of T-SQL.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey That's LINQ2SQL

Robert Harvey

Well, I like Linq to SQL.

EF seems a bit... heavy-handed in comparison.

Jimmy Hoffa

The underlying engine to EF is LINQ2SQL (MS has publically stated that they never intended for LINQ2SQL to be used, rather they simply created it to create EF with)

@RobertHarvey Agreed. I've used LINQ2SQL quite a bit and frankly have very little to complain about in regards to it.

other than the fact that the code-generator (L2S is db-first only) is prone to a bit of bugginess at times.

MetaFight

17:37

I've only used linq2sql once, and I vaguely remember it having a fatal flaw in its code generator... can't quite remember though, but if the dev before me had saved a file and generated the code again we would have been fucked.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MetaFight yeah the code generator is squirrely as heck. Especially regarding stored procedures

Robert Harvey

You can get better Linq to SQL codegen with things like this. It's a great demonstration of what you can do with T4 templates.

That said, nowadays I would lean more towards a micro-ORM like Dapper or Massive.

gnat

18:02

-8

Q: Can iOS programmers think for themselves?

increasingly what I'm seeing in the iOS programming community is a tendency of some exhibit no ability to think for themselves; programming has become like a religious experience insofar as people just do whatever they believe the great Church of Apple says his best and smartest; in reality ...

ios apple

^^^ this "question" lacks a tagline "typed from my iPhone"

Duga

It's not off-topic here, but architecture questions might find a better home on Programmers. It's one of the things they're geared towards: programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic — Josh Caswell 49 secs ago

user114359

@gnat Who TF voted to reopen that flamebait?

user114359

(rhetorical question I know)

user41796

Probably OP

user114359

@GlenH7 1 rep?

user41796

18:15

I want to say that you can vote to re-open your own question even if you don't have normal vote-to-close rep

user41796

But I'm probably wrong

user55340

@RobertHarvey should consider writing a blog post on "going to embedded C after C#"

user41796

Playing Star Wars Uprising is reminding me why I don't let me kids play multi-player games with public chat.

user114359

@GlenH7 the internet is full of trolls

user41796

Trolls and the ... poorly educated.

user41796

18:19

I really, really, really wish they would offer a way to turn off global chat.

user41796

1/2 the traffic is people looking for co-ops or cartels. Whatever, just noise.

user41796

The other half is so ... banal that words fail to describe it

user55340

Rude? Or another speedy delete? programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/298182/…

user114359

@MichaelT I flagged it as offensive

user55340

That works too.

user114359

18:30

Who knows when/if a mod will take care of it. It should only take 3 20k'ers to handle it anyway.

user55340

Two are there already. Six rude / offensive flags will do it too.

user55340

(Without mod intervention)

user41796

@MichaelT I dropped a VTD on it

user55340

18:41

@GlenH7 delete votes and flags work through separate channels. Two delete and four flags doesn't delete it.

user41796

Yes, but 3 deletes does. :-)

user55340

That requires another 20k. Six delete takes six 50 rep.

Aaron Hall

ok, I contributed a flag too

user55340

At this point, only at most three more flags are needed.

enderland

18:56

@GlenH7 play world of warships with @Telastyn and me

Aaron Hall

I have an edit pending review, may I post a link here?

enderland

cultural differences FTL :(

Aaron Hall

Is he smart?

enderland

yes, but Americans are all about individual responsibility and "give wide range of decision making to people" and most other cultures are not

you want me to do things? give me responsibility to do things without having to ask permission anytime something would be a process change/etc

user41796

@AaronHall sure

Aaron Hall

18:59

programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/118633

yay, accepted!

user41796

@AaronHall and improved. :-)

Aaron Hall

aw...

yep, good catch

I used to be better at removing poor disclaimers.

user41796

I still approved too. :-)

user41796

@enderland Sounds like you've got an old school line manager

enderland

@GlenH7 nah, I think it's a cultural difference - hierarchy matters not at all here (USA)

Aaron Hall

19:03

Manage up. Have him make the important decisions about the color of the bikeshed, and you take care of the petty architecture stuff.

user55340

Interesting. When post with rude flags is 20k deleted, flags marked helpful and flag implied down votes removed.

enderland

I think the biggest thing is I don't feel actual empowerment to make decisions

since I have more or less been explicitly instructed to not make them, without running them by him

and naturally the easiest reaction to that is to just avoid making decisions lol

user41796

@MichaelT and it has an undelete vote on it

user41796

@enderland You should run that decision by your boss, y'know...

Aaron Hall

Be sure to run your paint options by him too.

enderland

19:07

@GlenH7 I am torn on all this, on the one hand, he is super busy apparently (and as a new manager doesn't really know how to delegate) and so I could very easily help him with that

and I am somewhat lacking in actual responsibilities

user55340

Owners? Dunno. Could find out if we really wanted to, but I'd want another 20k to coordinate with.

user41796

@enderland Some lessons have to be learned the hard way

user55340

Make sure it is clear that the critical path for each decision lies through the manager.

Ixrec

if he doesn't have time to make all of your decisions for you, either you end up making some decisions yourself or you never get any work done; eventually he'll figure that out

enderland

I'm just used to a lot more authority and decision making ability, I guess

Aaron Hall

19:11

I exaggerate, but run the decision for lunch by him too.

enderland

"oh, problem, I can solve it, I will solve it"

not, "oh, problem, I know a solution, let me verify I can solve it first"

Aaron Hall

I had to deal with aggressive & overbearing compliance people when I was a financial advisor. How did I solve it? I gave them copies of thank you notes that I sent to clients. I succeeded when they dropped by and complained that it was unnecessary.

enderland

I mean on the one hand, I could fight that and try to take actual responsibility

user41796

C'mon Progs repz!

Aaron Hall

Don't fight it. Just go with it. Information overload the guy. The sooner he realizes it, the better for the both of you.

enderland

19:17

@AaronHall yeah, that's something I was thinking about too

Ixrec

not much else you can do really

enderland

the biggest thing is I am so not used to having to "get permission" for fixing things that it'd be annoying as heck

user41796

You should get permission before you decide to be annoyed

Ixrec

"Permission to speak freely, Sir?"

user41796

> Permission denied

enderland

19:21

you guys. lol.

user41796

"we're helping"

enderland

though I'm probably making this sound worse than it is, since I suspect he more wants me to discuss meaningful decisions with him (though I suspect he has a much narrower meaning of that than I do)

Ixrec

yeah, you won't know for sure what he means without guessing and waiting for him to tell you if you went too high or too low

user41796

Likely, yes

Aaron Hall

Just give him all the information you can without coming across as passive aggressive (that means in all sincerity as you're trying to cooperate with him to the fullest extent possible), and it will take care of itself.

enderland

19:27

idk, I think I should really just quit

;)

user114359

Quitting is for quitters

Aaron Hall

That's a viable option as well. Do you know Python?

enderland

@AaronHall a very basic amount, not remotely enough to say I know it

but it's funny you say that, there is a company in town that is STARVED for people since they are growing insanely and I'm about 90% sure I could get a job there (they do python) :P

I almost took a job with them several years ago, still not sure if that was my best choice or not

Ixrec

come to think of it, what do you do now? somehow I've yet to hear about it

enderland

I've thought several times recently about applying there again, but my wife isn't a huge fan of the area...

Aaron Hall

19:30

Go talk to them.

enderland

@Ixrec I'm doing more ETL work, than anything else (right now most of my development work is smaller scripts or side projects in my company)

which I do like, in general, surprisingly

@AaronHall they are having a "tech days" thing tonight, too, I was thinking about going. this is getting creepy.. :o

Aaron Hall

I only mentioned Python because we have a platform with 3000 Python devs.

So it was more selfish than anything.

enderland

lol

Thomas Owens

I don't like that you can size columns in a JTable by characters.

Aaron Hall

I promise I'm not stalking your regretful career decisions.

Thomas Owens

19:32

I want to make sure that my column default sizes are reasonable for the data in them.

Ixrec

we have bits of Python here and there, mostly used for build scripts and integration testing and the like

Robert Harvey

Is web scraping considered a form of ETL?

user55340

@enderland I learned how to program on an LPMud with ed. Vi is fancy.

Aaron Hall

Great answer here:

0

A: How to program without a mouse?

Welcome to like 1970. You will find religious holy wars about Vi vs Emacs, both of which are effectively designed for mouse-less editing/development. There are disciples of both religions editors which continue to this day.

enderland

@AaronHall that question will get deleted anyways

user55340

19:36

@RobertHarvey I'd say yes.

Aaron Hall

No wonder no one ever gets a reversal badge.

Robert Harvey

@AaronHall [resists urge to downvote]

user55340

You can get a reversal on a self answered question if you try.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa: Yeah, this scraper could use some significant method refactoring.

Aaron Hall

Oh, I could see that happening...

But any reason that wouldn't also be closed/deleted?

enderland

19:38

@AaronHall only if enough people upvote my answer and I don't self delete it

Ixrec

Mouse, mouse, lovely mouse. [pets mouse] — Robert Harvey 11 secs ago

Aaron Hall

I have a few self Q&A's, where the Q isn't well received at all, but the A is.

Ixrec

that's a strangely common pattern

user55340

-16

Q: Remove rep loss when down voting with a comment

No, I'm not suggesting this be the case... just every time I see it come up, I can't find the dup to flag because it was deleted voluntarily. It's annoying to lose reputation when you down vote an answer. And people keep asking why the down vote. Let's kill two birds with one stone and make it...

feature-request reputation down-votes

user55340

As to the mouse question... For some reason I thought I recognized that gravatar. I suspect it's on the way to another rate limit or ban.

user114359

19:44

@MichaelT I don't get why users don't try to get 200 on the first site before creating new accounts at other sites for the free +100. That user is one of them.

user114359

Not like 200 rep is hard to get

user55340

Just overheard: project manager: "is it time for another team cuddle? I mean huddle."

user41796

@MichaelT Woah, woah, woah now PM. That's taking things a bit too far...

Ixrec

@Snowman how many users are even aware of the association bonus?

user114359

@Ixrec given how many people RTFM (help center) probably not many.

Ixrec

19:45

I don't think I knew about it until the first time I got a +100 and went "wtf, my last answer wasn't that good"

user55340

Completely slip of the tongue.

user114359

@MichaelT I have had a few PMs I wouldn't mind cuddling with.

user41796

@MichaelT Next stop: HR

user114359

@enderland what were you trying to do with that answer? Is there some sort of badge the comments were alluding to?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT wow, your scrums are nothing like the scrums I've been in...

enderland

19:49

@Snowman no, just bored in a meeting (I fully expected it to be deleted :P)

user41796

@Snowman programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/50/reversal

user114359

Ah, I see. Not enough time for that to happen.

user41796

> 3.. 2.. 1.. Boom. – GlenH7 8 mins ago

user41796

That's what I commented just prior to putting the 3rd VTD in

enderland

:24314319 hahhahahahahaha. I just don't feel I have any authority to take initiative, and that bothers me, since I feel like I am by far the most effective when I have more initiative/independence. guess I need to get a senior level position :P

or take up consulting

user41796

19:52

@enderland I bet Ampt can tell you of a gig that needs a UI expert.

enderland

on a role psr. :P

psr

@enderland I hear you. Most people who aren't just trying for a purely cushy job are more effective if given enough leeway to sometimes fail.

enderland

@psr my job right now is SO cushy if I want it to be, SUPER SUPER cushy

@JimmyHoffa maybe, but at least I'll get paid more :P

Ixrec

and in a technical context like most of us are in, the only tasks that don't require thought and decision-making are the ones that can and should be automated

Jimmy Hoffa

You know what my favorite thing about being a software engineer is? Selling the fact that I'm actually a skilled professional who knows what he's doing to re-authorize myself in the eyes of others to do the job I was hired to do in the first place. Every single day. It's great!

psr

19:58

@JimmyHoffa - Wouldn't a real skilled professional know how to implement cross-browser applications?

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