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Duga
Duga
8:14 AM
This question would be better suited for programmers.se — px06 49 secs ago
 
 
1 hour later…
CaptainNemo
CaptainNemo
9:36 AM
Where can I put a question about recommendations for open source management tools ?
 
ratchet freak
ratchet freak
general recommendation of software is off-topic nearly everywhere
the one site that does allow these type of questions has strict requirements
 
Duga
Duga
10:00 AM
@Jesper: Frankly, I am not sure: I am coming from docs.scala-lang.org/tutorials/scala-for-java-programmers.htm‌​l — Make42 1 min ago
 
Duga
Duga
10:27 AM
First of all, this kind of question belongs to programmers StackExchange, not here. Anyway, here's my 2 cents on employing SPA: All security-related behavior must be fully implemented by back-end (WebApi2), SPA like Angular2 should only be used to enhance the UX (e.g. check role to show/hide CTAs). Last but not least, I don't see the problems you mentioned in Angular2 (history, bookmarking, etc.), they are handling them quite well imo. — Harry Ninh 30 secs ago
 
 
4 hours later…
Duga
Duga
1:59 PM
This seems to be more of a question for programmers.stackexchange.com — Philipp 38 secs ago
thanks people I'll take it to programmers.stackexchange. apologies — mike just now
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
2:44 PM
So, a recruiter sent me not one, but two emails for contract (6 month, convert to direct) positions at my last company, after "finding my resume online". Both were for two different groups in the last program I was working when I left, one in the software group and one in the imagery group. He clearly didn't look at my work history. There's a very good reason why my skills align almost 100% with the skills necessary for both those positions...
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
I have a feeling that half of the recruiters contacting me are trying to place me at my company. :D
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I'm still in touch with the hiring manager from the imagery group. I'm wondering if I should forward the email to him. I've been meaning to write to him, too.
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
Never hurts to keep in touch. I cast a wide net even though I'm perfectly happy where I am.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I guess I'm wondering if I should also forward the email. I'll probably write him this weekend.
 
enderland
enderland
probably would amuse him
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
2:52 PM
He should be happy his recruiter is actually doing his job.
Of course, barking up the wrong tree is not so great.
I have me a sleeper hit on money.SE!
 
enderland
enderland
I'm watching the John Oliver retirement thing, which is amusing
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
which thing?
 
enderland
enderland
it's old
but amusing and I've never actually watched it
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@AaronHall Is he, though? Is contacting someone who left the company 6 months ago really the right thing to be doing
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
Maybe, if they're desperate, they might offer you twice as much and a corner office to come back.
If they do, you'll need some retirement planning advice, may I suggest a whole-life insurance policy with an annuity rider?
checks if enderland is still paying attention
 
enderland
enderland
3:07 PM
we have a friend who asked if we wanted to talk with a Northwestern Mutual person they talked with
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
Nice, there's like 5 mutual(ish) companies out there. Make sure you get the participating policy.
 
enderland
enderland
I should probably buy load funds for my IRA too right?
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
They're less expensive over time than the C-class shares, and if you put over a million in, you usually don't even pay a load.
I know you want free financial advice, but how are you going to pay for it? :D
 
enderland
enderland
with the tears of all the insurance salesmen who get trolled trying to sell me overpriced shitty products
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
It's really hard to line up people willing to pay hundreds of dollars for great financial advice. It's not an easy business model. It's easier to sell people products with the compensation built-in.
If you're into economics - it's the market getting what the market is asking for.
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
3:26 PM
Anyways, I wonder what will happen if we force every financial service provider to be a fiduciary. If I was even thinking about going back to being a product compensated financial advisor, now I'd have to project making even more than I'd would have insisted on before to compensate for the risk. I was trying to go the fiduciary route before, but like I said, it's really, REALLY hard, without product compensation.
So fewer people will sell life insurance as a retirement vehicle. Will the people they would have sold make better decisions, or will they just buy more cigarettes and magazines and get buried in a potter's field?
Well, I hope they make marginally better choices.
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
I'd go so far as requiring the people at the bank who want to talk you into extra products as being fiduciaries. Going to the bank for a loan and getting sold products in the bargain doesn't seem right to me.
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
4:19 PM
I think you think that's going to improve your options. It's actually going to increase the risk to the bank representatives, and increase the costs of loaning money, which will be passed on to banking customers. I'm not sure you'd be better off for that.
Should the cashier at the grocery store be my health fiduciary? "Hey, those 'low-fat' snacks are actually loaded with sugar and starch!"
"Hey, that 'all-natural' peanut butter is half natural sugar and natural soybean oil"
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
Well yeah, liability is a good thing. I like the fact that people have to think about the consequences of their actions. We have to lock up unattended swimming pools because kids might get hurt. Don't get me on an all-natural rant. Cyanide and nightshade are all-natural. :P
 
Tom
Tom
4:38 PM
nightshade plants can be quite useful. the bright red fruits from them are yummy on sandwiches
but then again, i've always liked tomatoes
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
I like to eat inorganic salads while experimenting with my chemical free chemistry set.
 
Tom
Tom
not sure i could do that myself, but i'm trying to lose about 30 pounds.
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
Yeah I am to. Not going to happen by eating organic ice cream.
 
Tom
Tom
or my brother's cheesecake...
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
It's all about the calories. No fancy diet will get around calories no matter how dressed up.
 
enderland
enderland
4:49 PM
certain calories are easier to consume lots of, though
I've never heard of someone getting fat from overeating lettuce :P
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
I have. Salad can make you fat. It's called dressing
 
enderland
enderland
dressing != lettuce P
 
Tom
Tom
can't only be about calories. there are too many other factors like glycemic index, minerals, protien vs fat vs starch vs fiber, etc... everything gets used differently.
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
nope sorry, it's just about calories. everything else is trying to somehow convince yourself that less calories are enough calories. So in the end it's still just calories.
The liberating thing about that is it means you can have some of your brothers cheesecake. It's not what. It's how much.
thing that sucks about that is dragging around food scales with you is a pain in the ass.
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
I think if we consider the prospect of certifying all grocery cashiers, bag-boys/girls, and other workers in nutrition, we'll realize there's a point of diminishing returns and where the benefits do not justify the costs.
 
Tom
Tom
4:56 PM
still not convinced calories are the only measurement needed. i've changed up my balance to reduce breads and increase fruits and meats, and have seen 10 pounds drop off pretty easily
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
calories are the only measurement needed to deal with weight. Not even exercise is as big a factor in weight. Protein, fat, and carbs are about other issues like diabetes. It's not that they don't matter. It's that they distract from the number one cause of excessive weight -> calories.
 
Tom
Tom
got a source to back that up? i'm always interested in studying different viewpoints
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
My doctor :)
Here's the thing that stinks about that. While it is objectively provable that a calorie restricted diet will control weight it is NOT REMOTELY provable that telling people about this does anything to improve their weight or their health.
 
Tom
Tom
just telling someone something doesn't always count for much. look at how many programmers still use anti-patterns and "code your own". but if you care, the two most recent books I've read that have been helping me are called Always Hungry by David Ludwig and Wheat Belly by William Davis. I'm not committed to them as the be-all and end-all of diet and weight loss, but they have benefited me
and they do make some attempt to back up their assertions with evidence
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
So when doctors bug you about this they already know it doesn't really help. All they know is that since you're overweight you have health risks they think you don't need to have. Guess what? same is true of athletes. Athletes are at high risk of many injuries. Yet few people give them any crap. They just happen to be in a sexier risk group.
 
Tom
Tom
5:09 PM
no argument there. i've seen too many football games where players were carried off the field with broken bones and dislocated joints
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
I understand doctors take like 1 class on nutrition.
 
Tom
Tom
depends on the school
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
If doctors make money treating sick people, do they have an economic incentive for the population to have good nutrition? If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, will the doctor tell the local population to eat apples?
 
Tom
Tom
all the doctors I've known would love to be put out of work (and that's a fair number as I used to be a pool guy)
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
Easy to say. But I don't think they went to 4 years of grad school and through 3 to 7 years of residency for altruism's sake.
 
enderland
enderland
5:16 PM
a lot of doctors are absolutely sick of the way healthcare is going
most want to treat people, not do pointless paperwork
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
It is the highest compensated profession that I'm aware of, aside from management.
 
Tom
Tom
hmm... proposal for new governmental rule: all new regulations must first be tested out by the governmental agencies that create them. Let's see how long the bureaucrats can do the doctor's/acccountant's/manager's jobs and their own before they crack
being a doctor is also super high risk, look at how much insurance they have to carry and how often they get sued for malpractice
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
@Tom are you trying to bait me into a political discussion? :P
refuses to bite
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
@tom real doctors follow their "fiduciary" responsibility. Others are more then willing to lay you down on the floor, put their hands on your neck and crack their knuckles so it sounds like your joins popping while they tell you about how your brain can heal most any ailment if it has an unblocked path to communicate with your body. That may sound like malarkey but It's malarkey that cost my mother thousands of dollars to experience.
 
Tom
Tom
wasn't my intention, no
was just a random thought from the existing discussion.
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
5:23 PM
I'm sure some people need chiropracters. Bad posture, crooked spines, etc. But yeah, there's a lot of malarkey too.
 
enderland
enderland
@AaronHall not necessarily per hour, though
I've a relative who's a doc (specialized in some of the higher paying stuff)
but having run some crude numbers, he'll be 40 by the time it pays off financially for him, even with a fairly absurd income, by the time he passes me as a software dev in terms of total earnings
 
Tom
Tom
Yeah, i've seen some of the fake stuff too. I don't argue for that, as I've seen it hurt people as well. I argue for the real doctors that keep studying, try to practice good medicine, and generally do their best for their patients
 
enderland
enderland
and that assumes I don't get meaningful raises
and that you don't really value work/life balance
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
Yeah well software developer is the number one job in terms of satisfaction.
Way back in the day I was looking to be an engineer. Looked up the salaries for the different kinds. Petroleum engineer was almost 50% higher than any other type. I was getting excited about the idea until I found out it meant spending at least 6 months of the year on an oil rig. Nope, sorry, I'll take a cubical.
 
enderland
enderland
I love what I do
 
Tom
Tom
5:33 PM
I mostly enjoy begin a software developer, though there are times I miss working outside
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
@enderland Yeah, even after all this time I do to.
 
Tom
Tom
thankfully, i have yardwork to keep me outside on weekends
 
enderland
enderland
I'm still sort of young,ish so I'm yet to become bitter
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
@Tom feh, that's what laptops are for :)
You've never lived until you've debugged in a hammock.
 
Tom
Tom
gets a little rainy around here for laptops at times
 
enderland
enderland
5:35 PM
oooh west coaster
I was working from our sunroom the other day
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
a rope and a tarp takes care of that :)
 
Tom
Tom
true, but i need somewhere to tie them off. most of my trees are bordering my property
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
I've basically built a tent around a hammock before. There is something either very right or very wrong with me.
 
enderland
enderland
I've a friend who sleeps in a hammock inside
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
You can get frames for hammocks. I had a nice heavy one that I combined with turn buckles. I could make it as tight as I liked.
 
enderland
enderland
5:39 PM
yeah he's got a standalone frame
 
Tom
Tom
hammock frames seem completely wrong to me. what's the point of it if it's not between a couple of nice trees on a warm afternoon?
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
big thing is lumbar support. Lack of that can seriously cut a good hammocking habit short.
 
enderland
enderland
now I want a hammock
I think we've got a few trees in our backyard which would support one
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
I have these nice thick wool blankets we picked up in mexico. I could sleep in them outside while others we running the heat in their trailers full blast. The hammock rolled them up around me snugly.
And that was without the tent
 
Tom
Tom
hmm... excel is giving me averages and totals of a column of ID numbers automatically in the status bar. wonder why microsoft did that
 
enderland
enderland
5:46 PM
MS doesn't know it's an ID instead of a number
 
Tom
Tom
yeah, they can be a bit oblivious that way, even though the header says ID
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
It looks like you're trying to embezzle funds from your company. Would you like some help with that?
 
Tom
Tom
no thanks, I don't need the paper trail
:D
 
enderland
enderland
@Tom maybe it's a subtle hint to stop using excel as a database :P
 
Tom
Tom
Thank God, we don't. I'm just using it to hold some numbers for a report
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
5:54 PM
Why haven't you typed them as strings?
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
That's how it starts. Soon your entire business model will center around those ID fields reflecting current inventory. Then a new version of office will come out and you'll be filing for bankruptcy.
 
Tom
Tom
sadly, the SIS we use (I work at a school) does keep these IDs stored as strings
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
Why is that sad? Were you hoping to calculate the averages and totals of those id's? :)
 
enderland
enderland
I definitely took an excel database and turned it into a real SQL server app once
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
Q: "What's the best practice for storing numbers as text in Excel?" - A: "Don't use Excel."
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
5:58 PM
@AaronHall LOL
 
Tom
Tom
because the master records for all entities (students, faculty, alum, donors, etc) are in one table
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
sounds like you have bigger problems than string ID's
 
Tom
Tom
buddy, you have no idea
 
enderland
enderland
the team I worked with doing this had $5M-$10M worth of project data stored in excel, lol
 
Tom
Tom
ouch, we're not that bad at least
anyway, time for me to head off. cya all later
 
CandiedOrange
CandiedOrange
6:00 PM
l8r
Two things have repeatedly amazed me with their ability to thwart attempts to automate workflow. Excel and post it notes.
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
6:33 PM
I'm certain that when I set up that support desk 3 years ago that setting them up with Jira/ticketing was the right thing to do. I'm not so certain that using tickets are right for me right now, though. Anyone able to straighten me out?
(I work on an architecture team - it's a neverending process of modifying config files, creating directories, setting up access, etc... my boss likes it done good rather than fast, and I'm largely self-directed in terms of knowing specifically what to do.)
hmm... just took down some post-its...
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
7:11 PM
JIRA is a lot more than tickets.
You may want some other plugins or change the categories and workflow states, but it's really nice.
 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
7:42 PM
yeah... I'm going to stick with my whiteboard and post-its, I guess.
I wrote "Done, & Gets Things Smart" on the whiteboard. It's aspirational, but I've been way productive since I read that essay.
 
Duga
Duga
This question is probably too theoretical for this site, if you want to learn about brute force and other solution optimization techniques you might be better on Programmers or Computer Science. Either way, good luck learning more about algorithms. — Vality 43 secs ago
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
7:57 PM
I'm rather proud of this answer of mine on The Workplace:
4
A: Is it OK for a senior engineer involved only in design?

Thomas OwensIt sounds like your boss subscribes to the idea that software engineering is more like traditional engineering disciplines, where the engineers draw up detailed designs and specifications and hand them to laborers who go off and build the thing. In this idea, the junior engineers are the laborers...

 
Aaron Hall
Aaron Hall
8:41 PM
So you could write up that nice answer, but you couldn't fix the grammar in the title? :P
 
 
1 hour later…
Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag
9:49 PM
Hi, y'all! For no particular reason whatsoever I just wondered what popular and/or mainstream and/or influential programming languages support pass-by-reference, either exclusively or optionally. The ones I came up with: C++ (and thus also Objective-C++), D, C♯, VB.NET, and PHP. I am a bit confused about Perl and Perl6. Unfortunately, I don't know either of them very well, and information I could quickly google was confused. Any that I missed?
Swift is another one that supports pass-by-reference, I just learned.
 
Tom
Tom
Delphi is one influential (though not very popular) language that also supports it
 
Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag
@Tom I deliberately didn't define those terms, so that everybody can use their own judgement about what exactly "popular" etc. means. I'd probably even include it under popular, at least in a certain niche, and e.g. compared to languages like Haskell. Good find! Now that I think of it, some of the new-ish systems languages might also have it, e.g. Rust, Crystal, Ceylon.
 
Tom
Tom
Delphi used to be immensely popular, but mismanagement has dropped the language's popularity quite a bit in the last decade or so (looking at TIOBE).
 
Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag
10:05 PM
So, Rust has pass-by-reference with the concepts of "lending" and "borrowing" references, including a full sound semantics for lending and borrowing and a static borrow checker ensuring "borrow safety".
Pass-by-reference is actually more popular than I thought. Interesting.
@Tom This entire business of breaking up, selling, buying, renaming, re-renaming and whatever else happened to Borland that I forgot surely hasn't helped much. There's a lot of Delphi-ish stuff in the kernel of C♯'s design (not surprisingly), though, so a biologist would count that as "success" (i.e. spreading your genes).
 
Tom
Tom
Yeah, my biggest complaint is that when Embarcadero bought Delphi (and CodeGear), they had the opportunity to make it really popular again, especially with all the awesome stuff they've done with it. However, they seem to want to keep it as obscure and underutilized as they can...
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
-1
Q: Loading My Custom OS from USB flash drive

HumbleUserSuppose I want to create a portable OS, that needs a USB flash drive only to work. and i wrote my boatloader in the first sector to be loaded by the BIOS, from here on, what can I do to load my OS kernel, which is located somewhere in a USB drive?

operating-systems kernel bootstrap usb bios
Gives the phrase "Boat Programming" new meaning.
 
Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag
@RobertHarvey Very punny!
 
amon
amon
@JörgWMittag Perl has pass by reference, but it's rarely used. Elements in the argument array @_ are aliases to the arguments. So if we assign to an element (rather than copying it), we can have out-arguments: "sub f { $_[0] = 2 }; my $x = 1; f($x); say $x" will print 2. In Perl6, there's the is rw trait for pass-by-ref: "sub f($x is rw) { $x = 2 }; my $x = 1; f($x); say $x"
 
Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag
Ah, how small the percentage of users must have dwindled by now who even get the reference.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
10:19 PM
@JörgWMittag At the risk of being accused of troll-baiting, C# is not actually "pass by reference." Unless it's a value type (or the ref keyword is used), it actually "passes references by value."
 
Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag
@amon Thanks. I found some articles about this, but I also found some articles about Perl that claimed that Perl has pass-by-reference but clearly meant passing references by value, so I wasn't sure.
@RobertHarvey I know. I asked about languages that support pass-by-reference either exclusively or optionally, C♯ falls under the latter, with pass-by-value being the default, pass-by-reference being optionally available using ref and a restricted form with additional semantics available using out. I actually have a StackOverflow answer demonstrating the 4 cases of passing a value type by value, a reference type by value, a value type by reference and a reference type by reference in C♯.
2
A: Am I correct about how pass-by-reference in C# works compared to C++?

Jörg W Mittagtl;dr: Yes. I am not intimately familiar with C++, but AFAICS, your explanation looks correct. In C♯, there are two independent axis to consider: pass-by-value vs. pass-by-reference value types vs. reference types Note that the word "reference" is used twice with two different meanings abov...

There's a lot of confusion about the terms pass-by-value and pass-by-reference, e.g. with people wrongly claiming Ruby, Python, ECMAScript, Java being pass-by-reference and leading to articles such as this rather famous one: Java is Pass-by-Value, Dammit!. C♯ is the perfect example to dispel those myths, because it so clearly distinguishes between value and reference types and pass-by-value vs. pass-by-reference.
Supporting all 4 combinations nicely within the same language.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
10:49 PM
There's a lot to like about C#. Despite its size, it's become my favorite language, though TypeScript looks even better in some ways.
 
Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag
11:09 PM
Yeah, somehow Microsoft has managed the impossible and evolved C♯ both more aggressively and yet at the same time more tastefully than, say, Java or C++.
 
Tom
Tom
Was probably Anders' influence keeping MS from screwing it up too much
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
It's all about Anders. He's a genius. He's the guy responsible for the Borland Turbo Pascal Compiler, a piece of software that could accomplish in 10 seconds what it took the Apple Pascal compiler 10 minutes to do.
He's been thinking about language design for a really long time.
 
Tom
Tom
@Ro
@RobertHarvey no argument there. He's one of my heroes in the computer world
 
enderland
enderland
@RobertHarvey that logging question. sigh
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Yeah, apparently people have a lot to say about logging.
 
enderland
enderland
11:18 PM
I'm trying to imagine when I read logs and when it would ever not be super inconvienent to have them in binary vs text
and I'm pretty sure that it's always annoying
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Focusing on one aspect (storage space), while ignoring all other considerations.
 
enderland
enderland
I often grep/cat/vi logs
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Not unlike pattern programming.
 
enderland
enderland
not to mention if the logs are viewed in any sort of ssh session
 
Jörg W Mittag
Jörg W Mittag
@RobertHarvey Having people that think about language design is one thing. Listening to them is another. Just look at Java. Among others, Guy Steele (Scheme, Fortress), Gilad Bracha (Newspeak, Animorphic Smalltalk, Strongtalk, Jigsaw), Martin Odersky (Scala, Funnel, Pizza), and Phil Wadler (Haskell) were involved in the design of Java. And it really does not show at all.
I can instantly imagine lots of reasons to store logs in a structured format, but that can – and should – just as well be textual.
 

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