The Whiteboard

A: Good interview programming projects

4:39 AM

@Weston.h

24

I've long-since concluded that nothing someone can do in a short time can tell me anything useful about that person. But every good candidate has personal projects already written which can tell you a lot. So I've replaced specific challenges with "give me a piece of code which you're proud of an...

Perhaps he has a good point here, instead of fiddling and frobnicating up some nonsense just for show, you should take some time and think up what type of coding interests you and do something more comprehensive with that

Put in the time for a week, struggle through making something cool, it'll be more fun than writing the Luhn just to show people "Look, I can write an algorithm"

or euler or etc

Create the guts of a small simple rogue like in Python, there's simple SDL bindings for it I'm sure, draw a stick man and stick monster png and make a room where the stick man and monster need to move around and react to eachother, or write a DSL or a mesh chat service or whatever type of coding actually interests you

It doesn't need to be pretty or good, but if it's something you enjoy it'll generate something far more presentation worthy than a pile of eulers and similar

Q: In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points

10:23 AM

prior bounty has expired, looking for volunteers again:

Aug 8 at 22:41, by gnat

looking for volunteers to put "draw attention" bounty on my question about f-fake-hotness-score. I was planning to do it myself tomorrow, but decided that if someone else does, it will look less like one man effort. (readers who'd follow the links sprinkled over the question would find out that it's indeed more like a ten man effort, but people rarely click the links)

Aug 8 at 22:41, by gnat

23

In current version of “hot” questions formula (Qanswers * Qscore)*, all answers are assumed to equally contribute to question "hotness score", including even those downvoted into oblivion. Suggest to discard answers when there is a strong evidence that these do not provide good data points for a...

1:16 PM

Gnat, can you explain why this is important?

Dynamic

1:34 PM

@Weston.h You wanted to talk?

Q: Answers quality in hot questions

1:58 PM

@Ampt to me it's important primarily because I believe that it does a lot of damage at Programmers. We also discussed at TWP chat that this makes indirect "brain-damaging" impact network wide,

15

For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me. These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked. Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by ...

discussion answer-quality hot-questions

in The Water Cooler, Aug 8 at 23:12, by gnat

...really, say guys at SO are protected from direct impact. Meaning when they see meh, they can flag no-code and get crap deleted. But thing is, it's SO users who look at collider and who visit "sticky" questions and who pick the crappy attitude and they get back to SO and get posting meh answers there

in The Water Cooler, Aug 8 at 23:14, by gnat

and, well, there are hundreds and thousands of them. And meh attitude gets spread over multiple questions and SO mods only can delete minor part of crap that has been influenced through collider

in The Water Cooler, Aug 8 at 23:14, by gnat

> they start thinking it's the norm. That's what low quality answers in hot questions teach readers. That's what "educated" readers spread further, to their answers to other questions. That lowers overall quality of answers in multiple other questions, that is the site-wide damage

in The Water Cooler, Aug 8 at 23:16, by gnat

> This makes it look like good questions are those having many meh answers, the effect that is amplified by these questions being highly visible to collider audience - hundreds and thousands of SE users. Misguided users spread acquired attitude further into other questions and answers, posting stuff that follows what they saw at the "cool" ("hot") questions.

in The Water Cooler, Aug 8 at 23:17, by gnat

nobody is really protected, collider spreads it across all the SE network

user55340

I know there's a dup for this somewhere...

user55340

-2

Q: What techniques are java developers using to stay abreast of industry trends and direct their skillsets for the future?

It seems with the growth of java's rich API's in the platform itself, the associated frameworks, diversity of browsers, coupled with the multi-platform devices: mobile, tablets, desktops, and blackberry's, there is only so much time for study and self-improvement. Going to a JUG or Java One do...

learning self-improvement self-teaching industry

@gnat What is collider?

user55340

user55340

Questions that get in there from P.SE often get lots of views and people coming by to answer them with their $0.02

2:09 PM

Ahhh, ok. So basically we are trying to keep the quality of the questions on Programmers up

but why does @gnats question require more sacrafice in the form of rep?

are we just trying to attract attention to the broken mechanic, or actually gather responses

user55340

Its not quite that... its more the "keep popular question get too much popularity that hurts the answer quality"

user55340

mostly the former.

user55340

And MSO rep is mostly a joke... well, not too much of a joke, but its value is even less valuable than main site rep.

user55340

MSO is special because its the only meta with its own rep. M.P.SE rep == P.SE rep (same is true for all the other SEs).

user55340

But MSO, because its the meta for the entire SE network (including area 51, and careers 2.0) can't be bound to SO rep.

2:13 PM

ah ok

so its meta imaginary points

as opposed to regular imaginary points

user55340

Yep.

@Ampt collider aka stackexchange-button is explained in details here: meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/stackexchange-button/info

discussion support feature-request stackoverflow bug flags comments

Well I would volunteer my points, but alas, my MSO rep is but minuscule.

user55340

And then you've got MSO denizens who have even more rep than their P.SE account...

user55340

Yannis, Thessaloniki, Greece

37k 15 104 202

user55340

2:17 PM

Yannis Rizos ♦, Thessaloniki, Greece

23.6k 32 116 174

php programming-languages web-development history open-source terminology object-oriented

user55340

(For Yannis, that fateful day was August 14th of 2012 stackexchange.com/users/35162/yannis?tab=reputation )

Q: Can we get some more review queues - questions with delete votes, recently closed etc.?

I would go with the activity level being higher

may allow for more rep to be gathered in quicker succession

that or hes a traitor

user55340

MSO has higher volume than we do, and is even more 'subjective' than P.SE. And we like to make fun of him too.

user55340

@GlenH7 btw, the 'delete review queue' request..

user55340

56

The new /review queues are great, but there are some other lists on the /tools pages that could do with the same treatment. Recently closed questions Questions with reopen votes Recently reopened questions These would be useful to find those questions that need improvement to be reopened or h...

feature-request review

Q: How can I cope with every increasing/changing number of frameworks?

2:21 PM

@MichaelT easy peasy. 1) First tag in there is learning, click it 2) select frequent and take a look at first 10-15 question titles shown 3) pick one that seems close, open it and study 4) profit

2

I started coding with php, mysql, html, and javascript back in 2002 and heck that is all you basically needed to create any type of website. Over the years I picked up other languages, but what turned me off were all of the frameworks and JQuery that was popping up every few months and clients (i...

php frameworks

at MSO they even have a special term for this kind stuff - "master question"

user55340

Ahh... I knew there was a dup for it... just didn't think of (often look for) that approach. Thank you.

Nice find, @gnat! This suggestion has come up a couple of times in the past month and I knew there had to be a master question, but I couldn't track it down. — Josh Caswell Aug 8 at 19:13

...then there's the denizens that just troll MSO...

user55340

discussion feature-request title

109 5

user55340

-14

Q: Meaningless points? I've an idea: Meaningful points!

I've written a lot of good (and bad) content for you guys, because of an addiction. You did this to me. The least you could do is say, buy me a lunch? Eh? Is that too much to ask? Feature request: Every 5000 points you get on any one SE site, or maybe just for the first one, SE should send you a...

feature-request

user55340

2:26 PM

Back to the collider problem... glance at this question in SO which is in the collider now...

user55340

61

Q: What does this line of C++ code do?

I have a piece of code which I don't understand: d0=d2+(d1=A[i][j], fabs(d1)) * 0.01; Where d0, d1 and d2 are doubles, A is an array of arrays of doubles and i and j are integers. I do understand the meaning of the function fabs(), but not the +(d1=...) part.

c++ c comma-operator

user55340

61 votes?! Meh.

user55340

And then the top answer..

user55340

86

A: What does this line of C++ code do?

Comma is a binary operator that evaluates its first operand and discards the result. So, the expression can be transformed into a cleaner code: d1 = A[i][j]; d0 = d2 + fabs( d1 ) * 0.01;

user55340

But you also start picking up other answers...

user55340

2:27 PM

4

A: What does this line of C++ code do?

It's a comma operator. It evaluates the first expression, discards its results, and returns the result of the second expression.

user55340

-1

A: What does this line of C++ code do?

d0=d2+(d1=A[i][j], fabs(d1)) * 0.01; equals to: mov d1, A[i],[j] call fabs(d1) mul result_from_fabs, 0.01 add result_from_above, d2 mov d0, result_from_above

Developers, Software Engineers, and Programmers are logical, rational, reasonable people right? Sure they are…until you disagree with something they believe in. Then they can become the most enflamed, outraged, foaming-at-the-mouth, intolerant, lunatics you've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Take for instance the goto command. It can create emotions as intense as those raised during the ancient 'tabs versus spaces' debates or whether or not curly braces should be aligned in columns. (For the record, developers who use tabs and don't line up curly braces also kick puppies and do not pract…

@Alizter Having a bad day and decided you wanted to kick the hornets nest?

@JimmyHoffa Nono its a quote

2:42 PM

I won't disagree with the parenthetical anyway

@JimmyHoffa What language do you code in?

2:55 PM

@Alizter Blub

@JimmyHoffa What non-hypothetical language do you code in?

user55340

Does Haskell count as 'non-hypotehtical'?

What saw does a carpenter use when building a house?

If you think the language a programmer uses has any reflection on the programmer you're gonna have a bad time

Nope I'm just curious

Well I'm curious why you're curious :)

3:00 PM

@Alizter Blub's hypothetical? Shit, this study guide tricked me..

@Ampt just divide both sides by zero and there is your answer

If you're looking for language recommendations for a project we'd be more than happy to help, but we'd probably have to know some details first.

@Alizter We have a resident python expert if you want some help there, there's more e-mails in the python mailing list from him than Van Rossum! He's had a hand in about half the Python wiki documentation

I'm not in need of help I just like to chat about things.

FYI C#

Idk, I think we are all pretty reasonable around here. Except for @JimmyHoffa. He's a real menace to society.

3:14 PM

Stackoverflow

@Ampt You don't tell me what to do!

is just paste your error and wait for bored senior programmers to answer them.

@JimmyHoffa I was thinking about my problem this morning and I thought that since what I'm doing in all these numerous methods is basically a template with different inputs, maybe I should make a table that dynamically creates the methods

so instead of 50 methods I have a table with 50 rows

Not quite sue on how to create functions on the fly but I'm sure its some sort of meta programming trick

using lambdas and monads

@Ampt Overkill

it's a simple problem, you're making it far more complex like that

Ooo do you deal with lambda calculus here?

Or is that more computer science?

3:22 PM

Have or don't have (I prefer don't have but having is acceptable) the get/set methods, but do have a single generalized method that takes the variants in the form of parameters

@Alizter We're working programmers here, some of us like to play, but aside from @GlenH7 who's a real engineer, the rest of us aren't so mathy

the rest of us are just psuedo engineers and all

I see

@JimmyHoffa Ok, ok, I'll admit to introducing complexity here. I guess this terrible smell comes from the fact that I'm making an API and therefore just have a ton of methods

I'll just hold my nose and pretend it's not happening

@Alizter I like playing with haskell and lisp and have spent the past couple years trying to bang the more mathy stuff into my head like lambda calculus and combinator calculus etc, but I'm of ill education so no authority

@Ampt An API should not have a ton of methods, that's bad API design

You know if you had an API design link you wanted to toss my way I'd be willing to read it. Promise.

3:27 PM

@Ampt I actually do if my Google-fu is up to par, I haven't seen this document in probably 4 years...

@JimmyHoffa That would be fantastic, thanks

I have a really hard time writing code that I know is bad and it's starting to become a blocker

I think that document might have been an internal MS guide, it was pretty good but I can't find it anywhere...

So just read this instead, it's close (and quite good)

microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=16236

but it speaks a great deal more to whole-system architecture than an API heh

and you can ignore any .NET stuff it mentions, just think of it as talking about Blub

This is from CMU, may have some good insights swiki.cs.colorado.edu/SAP-L3D/uploads/3/18th-stylos.pdf

I still strongly suggest against a grip of get/set methods, it's just a very procedural approach when a general get and general set method can complete the entire task with considerably less code to maintain in the future

3:42 PM

yeah, you may be right. I'm looking into changing it now

probably end up breaking out components like inputs, outputs

PWM

user55340

4:08 PM

(whee! internal Discourse site!)

I'm looking for a few good books about continuous integration with TFS. There are many books about TFS on amazon, but I'm not looking for something only about TFS or how to use it, but more about how to do builds, configuring settings for them, custom actions, etc. Maybe there aren't books solely on using TFS for continuous integration, but is there a book that concentrates on these topics that anybody can recommend?

@MichaelT ??

Oh, at your job?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Yep. Looking at it for moving support emails into something with more permanance and less 'email everyone'.

@M.R. Not sure how many of us use TFS

@MichaelT awesome!

4:17 PM

err..

interesting... does anyone know where I can get more information about it?

I would assume microsoft. They have a fair amount of documentation about just about anything .net related

@M.R. I did TFS CI work for years (been years since then now), and to be honest, I never saw any really great materials out there on it. Buck Hodges and his teams blogs will really be your best information source, and any reading materials you find linked from their might be your best bet, they would know where any books of quality are

6 hours ago, by gnat

prior bounty has expired, looking for volunteers again:

forgot to mention... bounty UI could make you think it should be 250 - don't believe it, 50 could do just fine (unless you already offered bounty or answered that question)

@JimmyHoffa So I guess the next question is: What do you use now, and why do you like it better than TFS

Q: Why bounty dropdown defaults at value larger than minimum allowed?

4:21 PM

red "why" at above screen shot is from my recent question

2

In this question, bounty dropdown defaults at value 250, while minimum allowed is 50 - why is that? To preemptively address ideas that this might be because question already had a 250 bounty (which btw would still make it confusing but whatever), dropdown defaulted at 250 even before any b...

support bounty usability

If you want my imaginary points they're all yours gnat. I trust your judgement on this matter.

Also, mine defaulted to 50 Rep @gnat. I'm guessing its relative to your total rep

lmao, I can't even upvote the question anymore because I put all my rep on the bounty. Whoooops

@M.R. I use TFS, I quite like it fine, I just haven't done any build related stuff in ages

I've not worked anywhere that used anything but TFS in years, I've worked at .NET shops all this time

I like git just fine too, I think TFS is a solid product for a comprehensive solution, sadly hardly anyone uses it that way which makes it just meh

4:37 PM

@JimmyHoffa - yeah, me too - I'm trying to get into automated builds and such... but finding resources scarce...

@Ampt it's not strictly relative to total rep, that's for sure. In my question, I tested two posts in parallel, one was giving 250 another 250. Also, thanks a lot, your bounty was really impressive (I didn't think that one can shell out assoc bonus for that:)

meta.stackoverflow.com/users/229423/ampt?tab=bounties

typo above, should read "one was giving 250 another 50"

> For comparison, in another question dropdown defaults at 50, not at 250. I would like to understand what causes such a difference, how default is picked here?

@gnat My guess: Bounty already existed of 250 on that Q, so it defaulted to 250, or perhaps when a previous bounty existed, it assumes you want to increase the bounty amount because the previous amount didn't attract what you wanted (presumably since you're entering another bounty)

@M.R. Yeah, they really are. I've trained a couple build engineers over the years but other than personal experience, I don't really know what to use in such a pursuit

@M.R. just trawl this guys blog and that of the rest of his team blogs.msdn.com/b/buckh

he's the director of the MSBuild engineering team and TFS Build engineering team and tons of shit in all of that

> Director of Development, Team Foundation Server

user55340

4:53 PM

@JimmyHoffa We might be doing a number of changes to its notification functionality... but its going to get worked into some of the workflow.

@MichaelT I'm sure it all exposes APIs to make that stuff easy

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Its a ruby app apparently.

Oh shit discourse

I was thinking SO

n/m

hahaha

you poor schmuck, back to the ruby docks for you

(rubyists are too cool for docs, they just hang out on piers instead)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa That actually is a problem... the documentation is on the light side.

Q: Design Pattern for data import of various source types and to various destination types

@MichaelT But there's like tests or something, sometimes, maybe, who needs docs?

0

I have to design and build an import script (in C#) that can handle the following: read data from various sources (XML, XSLX, CSV) verify data write the data to various object types (customer, address) The data will come from a number of sources but a source will always have one import format...

c# design-patterns

> What is an appropriate design pattern to solve this problem?

Iduno, the well-architected-system design pattern?

4:59 PM

@JimmyHoffa my guess: it is picked somewhat randomly :)

@TimStone also, regarding idea that value defaults to previous (or perhaps largest) bounty, this doesn't look like the case: per recent discussion at Programmers chat, to another user it defaulted at 50, not 250. "Curiouser and curiouser" isn't it? — gnat 1 min ago

@gnat That user didn't have 250 rep so it wouldn't have defaulted to 250 for them

if they did, it may have defaulted the same as for you

@JimmyHoffa that doesn't fly either. In "previous round", to another user who had under 250, it was displayed at 250

@TimStone I'd say am 99.9% sure about that, based on my recollections about this chat discussion. That was only about a week ago and my recollection is, it was displayed as 250 both to me and to RhysW — gnat 3 hours ago

@gnat Maybe that question is just worth 250 and SO knows it?

2

@JimmyHoffa oh wow! ROTFL you made my day

user55340

Newbies believe things like this to be "hackish", more experienced devs just call it "idiomatic". — Doc Brown 4 mins ago

steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/02/portrait-of-n00b.html — Jimmy Hoffa 25 secs ago

5:13 PM

@Ampt and that goes doubly for you!

@JimmyHoffa oh ha-ha-ha. You callin me a noob? I'll P\/\/N U. 1m 7h3 m057 1337 h4ck3r EV4RRRRR

@JimmyHoffa @gnat my only options were 50 and 100, and it defaulted to 50. That's about all the insight I can give

There's a lot more polymorphism than that... Higher-ranked polymorphism, Rank-1 (prenex) polymorphism, Rank-k polymorphism, Rank-n ("higher-rank") polymorphism, Predicative polymorphism, Impredicative polymorphism, Bounded parametric polymorphism — Jimmy Hoffa 3 mins ago

1 point, 1 badge. That's gotta be some kind of record?

Also, worth reading @Ampt

I'll just push that into the back of the queue

You should really just make a Canonical "Junior Dev Reading List"

5:24 PM

@Ampt This is much funner

@JonSkeet -- as a website developer I do know all web sites will put first possible value by default. we can take example of age dropdown , most web site will have minimum age default selected the very first option , even if 80% users will be much elder then that .. this is my view only — Dhaval 4 hours ago

2

well most of these things just happen to slip out of the queue and never get read. Whoops :)

holy crap look at the balls on that guy, a "website developer" with an SO rep of 424 giving Jon Skeet what-for

Granted what he's saying is stupid, which makes it that much funnier

user55340

@Ampt @Weston.h has threatened @JimmyHoffa with asking him for a blog post about that.

@MichaelT He's threatened multiple blog posts at me

@Ampt Now this here is of supreme importance to read: codewonderings.blogspot.com/2013/03/…

@JimmyHoffa I'm sorry, you seem to have reached your daily limit of articles. Please hang up and try again.

user55340

5:32 PM

@Ampt Ok, you should read codewonderings.blogspot.com/2013/03/…

Et tu, @MichaelT?

That's two days in a row I've sniped myself with my own links. I've already read all of Yegge's blogs, but because I had the tab open I just had to read the Portait of a n00b one again (it really is a good article), and yesterday I was aiming for thorsten with what-if.xkcd and ended up reading a couple myself.

user55340

@Ampt Of course.

6:02 PM

@Weston.h I have a string of values that are seperated by , in python. How do I get a list of those values?

@RobertHarvey I'm not kidding either; if I was ever in the situation to write a desktop GUI app and couldn't stick to .NET, I would honestly be looking at SmallTalk first thing, MVC came from SmallTalk because GUI apps has always been at it's heart, and there are quite modern implementations of it.

user55340

@Ampt docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html

user55340

And combine it thus...

user55340

27

A: Python csv string to array

I would use StringIO: import StringIO import csv scsv = """1,2,3 a,b,c d,e,f""" f = StringIO.StringIO(scsv) reader = csv.reader(f, delimiter=',') for row in reader: print '\t'.join(row) simplier version with split() on newlines: reader = csv.reader(scsv.split('\n'), delimiter=',') for r...

@MichaelT Tried that, all it does it take individual lines out of a file and return them as a string...

but I'm only passing it one line at a time, so I end up with the same thing I started with

there is only ever 1 row in reader, and that row is the whole string I passed in.

6:20 PM

@RobertHarvey I wouldn't say there's any reason Fantom should genuinely not be looked at by pointy haired bosses and the like for exactly this. Why wouldn't you? Not enough people know it? It reads and writes near exactly like C#, any .NET dev could without even thinking write Fantom code. OxyGene is another choice, and it is literally pascal; not enough people out there who can write pascal?

6:32 PM

Idea: pascal.net

Starting language for people who are going into .net

Q: Is Java still king of cross-platform compatibility? Is the answer still Swing?

@Alizter I'm responding to RobertHarvey on

-1

So basically, my company is looking to create an app that can be distributed on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. We are hoping for a cross platform solution. I have experience working with Java Swing years ago and thought it was reasonable, but not great. It assuredly did however work on all platfor...

java programming-languages cross-platform

Guessing Pascal.net won't do MacOSX or mobile which Robert seems to think is a necessity

Pascal shouldn't be practical. It should be educational

Not even sure if he's getting my pings in here but whatever heh

@Alizter OxyGene is fancy new Pascal that compiles to JVM or .NET

user55340

(Neither of which show up easily on an iOS device)

@MichaelT Of course, but doesn't iOS basically support it's own shit that doesn't run anywhere else for the most part anyway?

6:39 PM

it's very object pascal

Im talking pure pascal

turbo pascal 6ish

user55340

Pascal was one of the Wirth languages... and yes, it was meant as instructional... but crazy people took it out of college and did industrial things with it. Thats what broke it - the fractured pascals in the industries.

Mac development is a pain. It basically says: Cross platform is difficult... so ill make it impossible :)

user55340

Because Turbo Pascal isn't pure pascal.

okay then before delphi made it wierd

user55340

Even then.

user55340

6:41 PM

Pascal doesn't support multiple modules as pure.

user55340

And Apple decided that battery life was key in iOS so made a rather slimmed down OS and runtime for it (it doesn't do automatic GC pools in iOS either - something OS X does).

@Alizter Yeah, it's easy enough to find options that will get your code working on OSx and other platforms, but as soon as you throw must work on iOS and other platforms in, your choices basically evaporate

user55340

And so, you won't find a a number of other runtimes on iOS.

This is my programming experience:
Pascal -> Object-Pascal -> C#
                        -> Java
                        ->C++ ish
                        ->Bearly touched languages such as Python and C

user55340

To an extent, Apple didn't even want cross iOS and OS X compatability - people would be too tempted to just port blindly between one and the other and the iOS experience would suffer.

6:45 PM

I think it's a silly premise altogether, as soon as you want your app to work also in mobile, you just need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and agree to write a thinclient with a web service driving it

user55340

Nor did they want to allow flash or others - because if they took off, they could be more popular than Objective C for development, which means that the flash IDE (cross platform) would be the lowest common denominator between mobile OS's.

I don't think there is any professional use of OS X?

Unless it's sufficiently small that rewriting and maintaining it in multiple languages isn't that big a deal (Think silly soundboard apps)

user55340

If flash was king on mobile, and Apple realeased new feature, it wouldn't be in the flash cross platform IDE until it was cross platform... and people wouldn't be developing for the new killer features in iOS>

user55340

@Alizter I know a number of only iOS and OSX shops (there's even one in Eau Claire) doing development for people who want stuff on those platforms.

6:47 PM

I'm talking buisness solutions

like servers

user55340

As am I.

okay

hmmm

So what do you think will take over in a few years? iOS, Android or Windows Phone

To me it looks like android is monopolsing

user55340

Windows Phone lost it. Its between Andorid and iOS. each have their place. I don't think there will be a clear victor there. This is a good thing.

@MichaelT Does apple make enterprise server systems? Like 3Us with fiber channels for san and shit?

You need to enter your credit card number to use them

user55340

6:49 PM

@JimmyHoffa They used to make the Xserve which was such.

They're not even trying to compete for that market right now are they?

user55340

(look at the picture, note the icons down the center of the cluster)

user55340

But no, they've abandoned that market.

6:51 PM

@MichaelT what the hell was nasa doing with apple servers? Editing photos?

user55340

Well, not completely... there is a Mac Pro server and a Mac Mini server.

user55340

But its not the traditional rack system.

@MichaelT Wisely. It would fragment their efforts too much right now, maybe in another 10 years after they've finally gotten real acceptance in offices for normal macs, then the threshold of their effort to push into that market will have severely diminished

doubt it will be 10 to be honest

user55340

@JimmyHoffa They've got a software approach to server... and it kind of makes sense for the workgroup company.

6:53 PM

there are a very large number of mac devs that I go to school with

boot camp has been their saving grace

user55340

apple.com/osx/server

@MichaelT They're not for serious enterprise workhorse applications though then, no? As in high-traffic web sites which have to do a lot of data crunching

user55340

For $20, you can upgrade a OS X machine to a server.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Nope... not the big iron. Its the share files, calendars, mail, backups, address book type workgroup server.

Yeah, which is a market but a completely different one

user55340

6:55 PM

VPN in, small web server, built in wiki... its a competitor to the exchange server for a company that wants to be bound to Apple rather than Microsoft.

user55340

It doesn't make too much sense to go after that big iron and workhorse though - thats getting more firmly locked into Linux every day. Cheap hardware, cheap OS. Neither of those fit well in the apple business model.

user55340

On the other hand, look at MS Exchange - expensive (certified) hardware, expensive software, expensive licenses.

user55340

That is something that Apple can offer a comparable product with a value proposition for.

@MichaelT Sure, but do you know how open to non-Apple products it is? I would expect it to be more closed off than MS workgroup offerings are in that way which would make the IT guys managing it more annoyed as they get requests for X, Y, and Z from management and can't supply it because the offerings aren't in the Apple ecosystem

Exchange supports apple product, android, and MS alike. Definitely pretty lenient.

user55340

7:10 PM

@JimmyHoffa The mail and calendar protocols are fairly standard. I can point Apple mail at Exchange, or Exchange at Apple mail without too much trouble.

user55340

And if you're an apple shop but keep exchange around for email, you're already doing apple support... and windows too. Going single solution simplifies support costs.

user55340

And there are pure apple shops outside of tech (more likely outside of tech). Design / marketing firms and such.

@MichaelT I know that, but it's still the exception not the rule; I suspect it will be vastly more common 5-10 years from now

Barring Apple fucking up the good thing they've got going for them (No more jobs now, it could happen)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Apple's push into universities is changing the business landscape. So yea... 5-10 years would be about right for those people who have their Macbooks coming out of college to get to high enough management positions to make a change.

With the way the landscape is changing to BYOD, it may be sooner than that

user55340

7:25 PM

BYOD is one step, but its the upper management that decides to toss out the exchange server rather than upgrade it and go with Apple. That's the critical part.

Good point

user55340

Its a "Either way, we're spending $20k on new servers, licensings and upgrades to exchange - or throwing it all out and getting new OS X servers, licenses (cheaper - ie non-existent), and training."

of course theres also the option of going google. My Uni is doing that

no more mail servers period. Let google take care of that

I retain my email address, but google does all the server side stuff and maintenance, plus we get more than 95MB for email

user55340

Yep. Some companies are going to the cloud... its another option. Has its own benefits and problems.

user55340

(Tangent: github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt )

user55340

7:31 PM

> Chrome extension that replaces occurrences of 'the cloud' with 'my butt'

lmao

do people really dislike the could?

enough to replace it with their butt anyway?

user55340

Have you ever read one of those buzzword compliant tech articles about it? Where they want to "synergize with agile business practices and put stuff in the cloud"?

ok yeah, I see stuff like that and just stop reading

doesn't mean I need to avoid the word like the plague

the cloud is a thing

user55340

Well, if it wanted to 'synergize with my butt'... would you keep reading?

user55340

And as an aside... go read businessinsider.com/…

user55340

7:43 PM

And then think back to that Windows advertisment... "to the cloud!"

user55340

►

51%

holy crap people are stupid

like painfully so

7:58 PM

@Ampt The "cloud" is a thing that's been around and around and around for a longer lineage than I or even @MichaelT could probably trace back accurately.

it's just a move back to the mainframe thin client idea

one central super computer that handles the processes and data storage for many clients

@Ampt you'll have to implement a buzzword some day just because a manager heard it, and on that day you will learn why we hate buzzwords. There are engineers out there implementing objects that inherit from ICloud right now just because some manager saw a dell commercial.

then I'll be making concrete clouds, which is actually kind of a funny thought.

probably be pretty hard to get all the smooth edges just right

user55340

Buzzword bingo

Buzzword bingo (also known as bullshit bingo) is a bingo-style game where participants prepare bingo cards with buzzwords and tick them off when they are uttered during an event, such as a meeting or speech. The goal of the game is to tick off a predetermined number of words in a row and then yell "Bingo!" (or "Bullshit!"). Concept Buzzword bingo is generally played in situations where audience members feel that the speaker, in an effort to mask a lack of actual knowledge, is relying too heavily on buzzwords rather than providing relevant details. Business meetings led by guest speakers...

2

user55340

> Buzzword Bingo was invented in 1993 by Silicon Graphics Principal Scientist Tom Davis, in collaboration with Seth Katz.

user55340

8:04 PM

I was there in '96.

@MichaelT Seth Katz, if a relation to Phil Katz then that explains where he got ideas like that

user55340

The original program - geometer.org/sgi

On a side note, have you ever read much into the story of Phil Katz? and @Ampt called me a menace to society...

That dude epitomized hard luck stories

8:16 PM

> When you get 5 in a row, be sure and stand up and yell "Bingo!" to announce the fact to all present at the meeting. We've been informed that this is an effective means of ensuring maximum meeting productivity.

user55340

hacks.mit.edu/by_year/1996/gore

The funny thing is you know there's been a tech conference where halfway in, somebody stood up victoriously shouted bingo! and walked out

@MichaelT wouldn't that lead to everyone having the same card?

user55340

I think that was just a demo card. Not sure.

@Ampt It's MIT, I'm sure they had some severely random algorithm mixing up the words on the cards

8:20 PM

Ah yes, it says they were handed out right before graduation. I'm assuming whoever did it must have randomized them

I love how they were worried about the men with the earpieces and guns back then. You yelled at a VP speech today and you'd probably be dead before you held your card up.

user55340

From everything2.com/title/Al+Gore+Buzzword+Bingo

user55340

> Gore, however, was more clever than the hackers had given him credit for. He figured out that when giving a speech at the nation's premiere technological university, the listeners probably knew more about technology than he did, and he used almost no buzzwords in his speech. Apparently, someone had tipped him off to the hack as well; at one point during the speech, the Architecture majors burst out laughing from some inside joke and Gore asked "Did I say a buzzword?"

user55340

I'm not sure it mattered even if they were randomized then.

8:32 PM

> Oxygene 6 2013
> The major new feature for Oxygene 6 was the addition of Oxygene for Cocoa as third major platform.

@MichaelT there ya go, oxygene will compile also to iOS

it specifically targets dalvik as well as jvm, .net, mono, and cocoa

and this isn't a flash in the pan, they've been rolling out a new version every few years since '05, roughly keeping up with .NET releases it looks like

> complete tool-chain integration into Visual Studio, including:
> Profile and Certificate management
> Build, link, .app-pack, code-sign, IPA generation build cycle integration
> Support for working with .XIB and .Storyboard UI files

That actually sounds like a pretty handy platform to develop in

> Oxygene lets you target these platforms not only with the same language, but also from within the same development environment, based on the Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 IDE (which comes included with Oxygene). You get the same great development experience, the same great code editor, the same visual debugger, regardless of which platform or platforms you target.

Sounds too good to be true

@Ampt Unfortunately it's still Pascal

user55340

@Ampt The typical approach... what I'd guess... is that they have their own runtime and that is packaged with the appropriate environment, targeting the given native code.

user55340

The thing that you also miss out on, is you can't code for iOS 7 yet.

@MichaelT Nah, it's compiler back-ends, it compiles to IL or JVM or LLVM

user55340

8:42 PM

I'm also not sure how well it handles feature discrepancies between the different platforms.

@MichaelT Why not? Does the LLVM objective-C backend need updating for iOS7?

user55340

It doesn't, but the API between 6 and 7 changed... so how does it update its pascal-ish to api mapping?

@MichaelT Those probably are runtime specific packages of it's own that it packages with the code, it's own frameworks basically. It has the most modern of .NET features including the async blocks etc

user55340

That is, there's a new method... how do you call that new method in iOS?

@MichaelT Ah, good point; dunno. You could probably do it naturally but that piece of code wouldn't transcompile until they update

user55340

8:44 PM

@JimmyHoffa The problem with a single code base for multiple platforms with such an abstraction layer is you are always coding for the lowest common denominator of all that platforms.

You mean Pascal? :P

user55340

And you won't ever be able to release something new on release day for the os.

user55340

When the iPad came out, this wouldn't have been able to do ipad apps for months - until a new compiler release. When apple switched its map api from google to local, it wouldn't have been able to compile for the new one for awhile afterwards.

@MichaelT True, still it's pretty cool. You've lived enterprise, there are still tons of people out there living on .NET 2.0 right now because the corporation won't allow upgrade

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I'm not saying it isn't cool - single code base is the dream of every developer... but it is also filled with its own challenges.

8:47 PM

Being out of date is a matter of fact, this just adds more lag time, but realistically I doubt it adds as much lag time as the typical job enforces anyway

user55340

(And I"m talking about iOS with 95% on the latest OS... think of the joys of trying to keep the moving target of every android version)

user55340

In the mobile world, having a lower feature set that doesn't make use of the new... camera API or whatever may make you at a disadvantage to competitor apps.

@MichaelT ignore the single-code base effect for a moment, it's still a high quality IDE + single language that you could do iOS/Dalvik/Desktop development with. You could skip the lag time and code directly to the available APIs rather than waiting for them to come out with a new abstraction update

You won't get the single-codebase effect that way, but you will still be getting more than a large portion of languages get you: Into iOS and android and desktop with a single language

and perhaps later on you can replace those direct calls with calls to the abstractions when they come out with the updates to their api

(but you still have to write pascal....)

psr

@Ampt People using the chrome extension believe that holy crap affects "my butt" computing.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa it might be wortwhile for a corporate app. However, if you are trying to target consumer apps, I'm not sure if trying to keep it in a single code base in house for the sake of doing that would be worthwhile in the long term.

8:58 PM

@MichaelT To be fair corporate platforms don't really change so it's less valuable there

This still looks like the most comprehensive approach to true cross-platformyness I've seen for GUI apps

Though I suppose the web kind of makes all of those arguments moot. We should just do everything in HTML5 and call it a day.

(when HTML5 actually materializes)

user20683

rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/20/…

user20683

My brain may have just died.

user55340

@Weston.h I was immunized against that... I read conservapedia for the lols.

user20683

@MichaelT Yeah...

@Weston.h You aren't dead! hooray!

I was afraid that there would be no one to help me debug my python

9:10 PM

@Ampt @Weston.h doesn't debug python, he heals it.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa wouldn't go that far but yeah, I'm generally pretty good at figuring out why it's coughing up mice all over the place.

@Weston.h I know this one, it must be a bad GPM driver

C'mon... @MichaelT are you the only one here who rememers GPM? It was an acceptable(bad) pun. Pfleh.

user55340

9:26 PM

@JimmyHoffa I had to look that one up to refresh my memory... gah.

10:34 PM

@MichaelT C'mon, that's some quality nostalgia right there. I recall using a web browser that ran out of emacs I believe that registered with gpm and actually rendered images all grayscale and dithered to crap right on my 80x25 and let me click links with gpm and all