The Whiteboard

gnat

07:14

@Ampt well first of al I would not want Programmers to have only questions that I like. Locked cages scare me. One can not learn much new by only looking into the mirror and seeing all the same face there every day, day by day. Paradoxically, I just feel safer seeing questions I dislike, staying open (!), upvoted (!!) and even (oh horror!!!) highly upvoted...

Yannis Rizos

10:42

82

Q: Open letter to students with homework problems

It is September once again (today is the 7316th day of September), and once again students are asking their homework problems on Stack Overflow and Programmers.SE. We start seeing questions like: A car dealer has 10 salespersons. Each salesperson keeps track of the number of cars sold each m...

One more upvote for this ^^^ to become our highest upvoted Meta question. Right now it's tied with:

82

Q: What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?

What's the difference between Programmers and Stack Overflow?

discussion faq site-definition

Thomas Owens

11:09

@YannisRizos For great justice!

gnat

11:55

some comments are priceless

OP asked which is standard way? so i replied with my opinion.. — Coder 1 hour ago

gaussblurinc

13:32

Hello! Can I ask here question about pattern Memento?

user41796

@gaussblurinc You can ask. We don't guarantee answers. But we'll try. :-)

gaussblurinc

Ok, does my implementation normal enough? :)
I store memento object in originator class as static variable

user41796

@gaussblurinc That's not a whole lot to go off of .....

user41796

I haven't worked with memento all that much - as others roll in, they may have differing opinions.

user41796

If the static variable can't be touched until the originator is told to return to its previous state, then that would be okay. It avoids some concerns with the caretaker doing something to the memento prior to it being returned to the originator. However, static variables create challenges with threads and you've effectively locked yourself into only one originator being possible

user41796

13:41

so if you need more than one originator, then using a static var within the originator probably isn't a good idea.

user55340

14:04

@gaussblurinc when I see static variables I tend to go 'urk'. It begs the question of why do you think you want it in a static variable?

gnat

0

Q: Is it possible to build a custom email client for Gmail using Java APIs?

Is it possible to build a custom email client for Gmail using Java APIs? Or only Google can do that?

java email

this question managed to attract one link-only and one code-only answer. Deservedly so, I think

user41796

@MichaelT - props on having the highest voted Q on Meta

user55340

@GlenH7 Whee! (Though I'm still holding out for the gold badge...)

gnat

10

Q: Question closed because yes/no answer

I hope this is the right place to ask this question. I opened a question SO and it was almost immediately closed by a moderator with the reason Closed this as the only two possible answers are "yes it is" or "no it isn't". I'm a long time SO user and I didn't remember this rule, so I searc...

discussion moderation close-reasons

user41796

@MichaelT I believe you need another ~16 votes then

gaussblurinc

14:11

@MichaelT Conception. I have singleton which must be restored from previous state.

user41796

@gnat Yet another reason I'm happy with my little corner of SE. I don't really have to worry or deal with those things.

user55340

@gaussblurinc Hmm... stateful singletons are also one of them 'urk' things to me... (lots of things make me go 'urk' when looking at code).

user55340

Not always bad, but I've seen them bad quite often.

user41796

:11362738, @gaussblurinc - I would agree. Stateful and Singleton really don't go together.

user41796

My experience has been that's a singleton that shouldn't be a singleton. There's usually another way to resolve the core problem. That other way may take a bit more effort, but you end up with cleaner / more easily understood code

user55340

14:15

Stateful singletons harken back to the days of my youth with global variables everywhere.

Jimmy Hoffa

Unless you understand concurrency and shared state well enough to know your implementation is safe and being used safely and will only be used safely, my general suggestion: Do not create a singleton. Work it out another way. In time you'll understand concurrency better, and with luck you'll realize that working it out the other way is better regardless.

gaussblurinc

wow, but how can I know, that I have only one object of specific class? maybe counters in other objects?

enderland

so for the record, I really enjoy that this chatroom is a place I can continue to hone my development skills - coming from the "non CompSci" background and skimming/reading/engaging here is absolutely great. So thanks all you guys!

Jimmy Hoffa

@gaussblurinc Why do you want to know this?

user55340

@gaussblurinc What is it about the object that needs to guarantee that its the only one?

Jimmy Hoffa

14:18

or put another way, why can't you have multiple instances of that class?

gaussblurinc

Because I want access only to one object configuration, current configuration, for example

Jimmy Hoffa

@gaussblurinc What happens if there are multiple instances of that object (assume that all instances are configured with the same settings)

gaussblurinc

@JimmyHoffa nothing bad, I think so. But I need mechanism to connect together all objects and to support actual configuration in each.

Jimmy Hoffa

@gaussblurinc If nothing bad will happen and it will all work fine then make it non-static, and just store your configuration in a file or database or somewhere that the object can load that configuration from so all instances that are created load their configuration from there and get the same configuration

user55340

Configuration tends to be one of those things that singletons do lean 'twards... I assume you've got a stack of them or something along with the associated serializer and deserializer to save to disk?

Jimmy Hoffa

14:25

then you no longer have thread safety issues

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Hmm... a nice in memory database?

user55340

(morning meeting in a few... @gaussblurinc what language is this in (just having thoughts...))

user41796

@enderland - RE: previous conversation about down votes. I'll add additional down votes on any questions I know to be cross-posted. Not quite fair, but I think it's often a blatant disregard of site policy and etiquette.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Shrug, again when somebody knows those techniques already and understands how to work them out it's not an issue, when someone is uncertain how to put such things together I suggest safer approaches

gaussblurinc

@MichaelT objective-c

user55340

14:29

Objective C often has a nice database hidden somewhere...

Jimmy Hoffa

Oh you mean a third party lib

yeah that would be wise

user55340

3

Q: How to decide between SQLite database vs. in-memory usage

I inherited a project from a colleague that left the company. While examining his code, I got confused by something. After he receives quite a big amount of data from the server, he saves this data to a database in the client and then he goes on to work with this data on db. The data is received ...

objective-c ios sqlite memory

user55340

2

Q: Creating an SQLite3 database file through Objective-C

I'm trying to create an SQLite3 database file through Objective-C at run time. I am trying to create a table called "tblStore". I want the field names to be called "strStoreNumber" and "strStoreReg". I'm new to iOS and SQLite, so I'm having a hard time finding the syntax to perform this. In a...

iphone ios sqlite sqlite3

Jimmy Hoffa

I thought you meant writing his own (which I'm comfortable doing stupid simple ones but don't suggest it to most)

user55340

Then each of your config changes are writing a row and selecting the most recent one when you read it.

user55340

14:30

Pop the state, delete the most recent row.

Jimmy Hoffa

@gaussblurinc Perhaps using this library will solve your configuration problems: github.com/lembacon/VSDataStore

or github.com/peakji/PJTernarySearchTree

> PJTernarySearchTree is an Objective-C implementation of Ternary Search Tree for Mac OS X and iOS. It was designed to be a data structure/tool for text autocompletion, however, you may use it as a simple in-memory database because it supports any objects(see the protocol).

gaussblurinc

@JimmyHoffa thank you very much for help!

enderland

@GlenH7 yeah. and if you are an @@#% in how you ask your question 99% of the time you get a DV from me

I used to DV more of the "halp me plz" questions too but I have realized a bit more people just don't know how SE works

user41796

@enderland That would explain some of the random DVs I have seen then. :-)

enderland

Hahah, not as much on programmers

I don't vote here a whole ton

Jimmy Hoffa

14:52

@enderland you're hurting @gnat's feelings

user55340

I've got a 1:2 u:d ratio...

user41796

I'm at roughly 3:1 u:d voting. Clearly I'm nicer than y'all. :-P

enderland

on workplace I'm 2:1 u:d

here I'm like 10:1, but only about 60 votes total

Jimmy Hoffa

i'm generally around 2:1 u:d

gnat

►

@JimmyHoffa yeah I'm crying over him

user55340

14:58

(hmm... wondering how the gist one boxing looks...)

user55340

gist: hsqldb basics, 2013-07-27 22:41:43Z

user55340

Thats fairly reasonable.

enderland

@gnat :\ I've offended the SE god!

gnat

@enderland and Roy Orbison is crying over this :)

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat Roy Orbison was such a weird looking dude...

enderland

15:06

I hate it when I google something, find a SE thread, and realize I've already upvoted the question but there's not the answer I'm looking for... :(

2

gnat

@JimmyHoffa yeah I'd downvote him for that. Took me quite a while to stop paying attention; now I barely ever notice

enderland

@gnat just be happy! :)

Jimmy Hoffa

Can't say I listen to a lot of Roy Orbison. From that era, my most frequent listening would be

►

gnat

@enderland then you should ninja-edit and revert your vote from up to down

enderland

@gnat does that still work? It's got hte "status-completed" tag

gnat

15:16

@JimmyHoffa yeah he's one of my favorites, more than Orbison

►

@enderland yeah status completed is right; it's not totally invisible anymore, just to prevent trick I spoke about

Ampt

-1

Q: How common is string manipulation, really?

I've noticed a lot of programming introductions (almost any language) usually include a heavy barrage of string manipulation quite early, such as: - Count the number of "xx" in the given string. We'll say that overlapping is allowed, so "xxx" contains 2 "xx". - Reverse the given string and remove...

programming-languages strings

any other input out there since we're just going at it hahaha

user41796

@Ampt I have already placed my votes on that question. :-)

Ampt

are the close votes rolling in on that one?

user55340

Only one so far... I used all of mine last night.

Ampt

I'll just delete mine anyway and move on. I must have had a mistake in there somewhere

user55340

15:28

Oh come on, you'll never get to 3k rep if you do that.

user55340

At least wait till get its a few upvotes to get the badge.

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/help/badges/19/disciplined

user41796

@Ampt Your answer was fine; I would say to undelete it

user41796

It's a carp question, but that doesn't mean your answer isn't valid.

user55340

If nothing else, comments on it will help you learn more.

enderland

15:31

@Ampt if this person ever works with real data this is important, if you work in a theoretical world of perfect data then, well...

user41796

I love technical webinars that are thinly veiled advertisements for software applications

user41796

@enderland pfoooey. Data never has any problems. Especially not with strings that have free form input.

enderland

@GlenH7 oh goodie! when can I come to this wonderful world where all my hopes and dreams come true!

user41796

You're already there! You just need to look at the data in a different way. It's not bad. You just don't understand it. You shouldn't manipulate it to meet your preconceived notions; you should adjust to the data instead

enderland

the best part is when you write heuristic checks to "fix" peoples' mistakes

some APIs are also terribad and send back large strings which are basically config files mashed into single strings

gnat

15:36

Ticker symbol

A stock symbol or ticker symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers or a combination of both. "Ticker symbol" refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker tape of a ticker tape machine. Interpreting the symbol Stock symbols are unique identifiers assigned to each security traded on a particular market. For Example, AAPL is for Apple Inc.; OODH is for ORION DHC, Inc., and HD is for Home Depot, Inc. A stock symbol can consist of letters, numbers or a ...

manipulation shmanipulation

user55340

16:21

0

A: Can the number of custom close reasons on Programmers be expanded?

The concern of 'overuse' is 'overblown' - the concern should be about the misapplication of existing reasons when something else would better address it. In trying for the best experience possible for someone who is going to have a closed question, there should be some consideration paid to a we...

gnat

16:32

it's quite a funny belief that stuffing internal (programmers / SO/ whatever.SE) links somehow salvages link-only garbage. Not to mention that target posts are sometimes deleted, leading to plain link rot, posters don't even realize how bad it may look for the readers who click the links and can't figure how these are relevant — gnat 8 secs ago

Jimmy Hoffa

With very low rep, multiple negatively voted or vote-closed questions will result in you being banned from asking questions. Do us all a favor and delete this yourself (there's a link just below the tags) or else it will be closed (project suggestion requests are explicitly off-topic) and you'll risk a question ban. Delete this question, and go here to get started on cryptography: matasano.com/articles/crypto-challenges — Jimmy Hoffa 8 secs ago

Don't pile on close votes until he's had time to digest that and a chance to self-delete

enderland

Also read this — enderland 15 secs ago

Thomas Owens

16:49

@JimmyHoffa Deletions, including self-deletions, can also trigger question bans.

There's a lot that goes into some magical equation.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens Only if it's deleting a negatively voted question though, right?

I was hoping he would delete before the score went below 0

which I think he did

There's got to be a loop hole where someone can realize their question is not good and un-do before harming themselves. If we don't give users such a loop hole, that makes the auto-ban algorithm seem un-fair

Am I wrong in thinking there is such loophole?

user55340

I recall one guy asking about questions he deleted quickly on MSO...

user55340

Ahh, this mess...

user55340

-10

Q: I've been temporarily suspended. Am I actually a bad user? Should I leave the site?

I have recently asked a question by accident when I was drafting it. I decided not to post, but it was left open in another tab and somehow (I don't even know) it got posted. When I noticed it, a few minutes after, when I opened the tab (mind the question wasn't even downvoted yet) I apologized a...

support account-suspension programmers-se

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Honestly, no clue. Not even the moderators know how the formula works.

user55340

16:54

(and that was a mod ban, not a question ban)

Thomas Owens

They won't tell us. It's a closely guarded secret. Perhaps involving magic unicorns. Or alicorns.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa post like 20 questions and delete them all immediately on some other SE site and find out! :)

user55340

IIRC, there's something about 'within 30 days of being asked' or the like.

gnat

funny bit of ancient history...

3

A: The fourth place: Polling, Recommendations and subjective-ish stuff

I'd rather see people support the "Not Programming Related" Area 51 site proposal http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related ... instead.

it is worth noting that details for further "development" of a site created per mentioned proposal can be found here: Adding discipline to programmers.stackexchange.com — gnat 1 hour ago

user55340

... "viewed 999 times"

Jimmy Hoffa

16:58

Can someone get me a screen cap imgur of the comment I posted on the (now deleted) question? I'm going to ask on MSO about a fairness loophole

user55340

... "viewed 1000 times" WHEE!!!

user55340

I'm popular on M.P.SE!

user55340

@JimmyHoffa which? where? what? huh?

gnat

@JimmyHoffa there you go (above)

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat Thanks!

user55340

17:03

I dabble in classical crypto (stuff up to WWII - Enigma is about my limit) where one can get their head around the system. Stuff after that becomes much more math proofs and such that aren't as fun.

gnat

@MichaelT 1000 times, quite solid. For Prog.meta actually spectacular. @Yannis would it make sense to reddit an open letter to students?

Sep 18 at 6:27, by gnat

...Last time I spoke to our local reddit expert :) though, my impression was that meta posts have low chances at reddit. Anyway, let's re-check this, why not... @Yannis what do you think would be chances of this post at Reddit?

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Not sure that's a good thing...

user55340

@YannisRizos It means I need to set my next target for +1500 views. I should tweet it or something...

Jimmy Hoffa

0

Q: Is there an un-do loophole in the question ban algorithm?

When I see questions that are obviously going to be closed due to explicit off-topicness that are honest mistakes on the part of the no-rep new user, I try to inform them about the question ban, and suggest they self-delete before their question is closed/negatively voted. i.e. I was just now ...

support new-users post-ban

Yannis Rizos

@gnat I don't think anyone outside ProgSE cares about our Meta. If we could generalize @MichaelT's question a bit and post it on the blog, that would be worth sharing...

user55340

17:10

@YannisRizos Its a thought... the 'what have you tried' idea could use a homework version

enderland

@YannisRizos it's reddit, most of hte stuff there posted is stuff no one else really cares about

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Perhaps it would be good for the site though; a broader swath of what is partially our audience anyway (reddit) would become acquainted with P.SE meta where normally they may have no attention to it

Many of the folks on reddit who would see it are likely plenty familiar with SO and MSO, but a letter like that would give them a better idea of how we approach things on P.SE, and perhaps some folks would read it and think "Oh, I thought P.SE was a toilet bowl for chit chat garbage questions, perhaps I was wrong"

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, but we can't really post it on /r/programming, where most of our hits come from, as it's not really about programming.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos True..

gnat

@YannisRizos that would be super. Assuming blog entry would have a reference to original post (and assuming the blog article would be good), that would likely make sort of an effect to promote post itself

Ampt

17:14

@MichaelT That's not a goal of mine haha

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT 16 upvotes away from the first ever gold meta great question badge.

Because Meta badges is why we are all here for.

2

user55340

@YannisRizos You know it.

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa So, you've just asked for details on an algorithm you know is intentionally kept secret... ;P

...and getting upvotes for it...

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos They're free to stay mum, though I didn't ask for an algorithm spec or anything, they're willing to share some things about the algo: Like deletions and negatively voted questions and closed questions play into it. Perhaps they'll share just a touch more...maybe..

user55340

Or that "there is no difference between a rep 0 question self deleted and a rep -5 question self deleted"

Jimmy Hoffa

17:23

@MichaelT Right, I have to think they don't treat those two things the same in the algo, but what the hell do I know. SE wants your content, maybe it's a "Naughty boy, don't remove your content, that's ours!" black mark? O_o

Please stop shouting. — Rosinante 21 secs ago

Huh?

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa The bold at the end of your question. Ignore.

@JimmyHoffa My guess is that self-deletes count as normal deletes. People have abused the delete button to clear downvotes (the delete & repost dance), the easiest way to counter-act that would be to just count self-deletes as normal ones.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Oh. I was just trying to highlight the crux of the question.. Should I undo that?

Yannis Rizos

Gnat already took care of it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos a self-delete counts at all when there's no down votes?

that's basically what I'm asking, I agree that dance should cause penalization, but if there's no downvotes, they're not obviously not doing that..

@YannisRizos what do you think; should I not be suggesting such anyway (regardless of whether it works or not) ?

I do it because it seems a win-win: Removing bad content from questions page helps the site, and it helps the poster

Yannis Rizos

From the extremely little I know by observing q-banned accounts, I don't think zero scored questions count at all. Or, if they do, they aren't really something to worry about.

That said, a quick self delete is a good thing, if the question stays around closed it will most certainly gather a few downvotes. And downvoted questions certainly count.

Jimmy Hoffa

17:33

@YannisRizos So it plausibly helps the poster, but do you think it's good for the site as well? Fellow on my question there seems to be claiming otherwise, I don't necessarily agree with him, but you're a mod here so I'd rather here your advice on whether I should continue the practice or not.

@Servy I understand that and, as I already mentioned I understand how this might work at SO, where there's plenty of down- and close-voters and where questions roll off the front page quickly. But, as I explained, at smaller sites things just don't work that way. What you get there is a polluted front page and questions stuck at 2-3-4 close-votes... long enough to additionally get crappy answers which only add bad taste to site image — gnat 51 secs ago

This very much sums up why I do it...

It's selfish, but I also hope the poster walks away thinking "Well I made a mistake but someone helped me not fall into a trap; this site is friendly and helpful and I'll contribute quality content later" as opposed to what a -4 and closure causes of "Well I made a mistake, and got slapped, this is hard and unfriendly..."

Plus it saves people close votes to spend on unattentive posters!

Yannis Rizos

Yeah, servy answered with SO in mind...

user55340

@YannisRizos One problem MSO has is they retain a very SO mindset for all the suggestions that help the non-trillogy sites.

Yannis Rizos

That's also a problem with SE (the company). Which is understandable, SO is the money maker.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Nonsense, I'll go click an ad on P.SE right now... show them!

@gnat normally I inform why the question won't work as well as linking to the FAQ and suggesting they might do better asking in chat, I wanted to include that matasano advice on that comment and ran out of space for that. I will keep that in mind in the future to always link the FAQ and/or meta when I post such suggestions

Yannis Rizos

17:50

gnat

@JimmyHoffa well as I mentioned this is iterative approach, one needs several tries to sufficiently polish it. That meta reference is missing in first draft of discussed response is not a big deal. Its absence in final draft would be worrying, but meta discussions are exactly to prevent this from happening :)

@Servy well in that sense, quoted advice is somewhat incomplete (this is first experiment, naturally to miss something isn't it). If it had a reference to meta (Programmers meta, not MSO - please note I am speaking about smaller sites here) - how would that qualify as "keep making the same mistakes"? — gnat 6 mins ago

Jimmy Hoffa

Aye.

@gnat Maybe the messaging should be changed to Servy's liking: "Clean this toiletbowl off my SE or u get q-banned foo!" How's that?

@YannisRizos I think I underestimated the secretiveness of the algorithm. I'm not going to get an answer heh

gnat

reading this, I really wish it to happen, the sooner the better...

226

Q: The future of meta.stackoverflow and meta.stackexchange

Historically this site, meta.stackoverflow, has been the place to ask questions about not just Stack Overflow, but the functioning of the entire Stack Exchange (2.0) network, including Area 51 and stackexchange.com and careers. (Yes, there was a meta.stackexchange, but that dealt with the old le...

discussion meta

they're just a world apart. I understand they at SO can't afford same approach as we at Programmers, but... WTF

@Servy you had me up there in "Asking good questions is hard (I would add, at Programmers maybe even more so than at SO), and understanding..." but from there on, I somehow broke. I mean, what would be more productive understanding wise - having a meta discussion, with full blown answers, edits, voting etc or, getting advice through the chain of unstructured comments (like right here, as an example) at a question getting to closure and more and more downvotes? (oh and please don't tell me askers don't feel this as pain - they do, unless they're thick skin MSO regulars) — gnat 4 mins ago

user55340

For what its worth, if I recall correctly - the minimum number of questions to trigger a question ban is 3. This was from the guy who asked "How do I get a job at ___" for 3 big companies (quickly dv'ed and closed) and then complained he couldn't ask another question.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT This is what originally prompted me to start doing that

realizing how accidentally people can get into that pickle

user55340

18:05

Please remember that a question ban can take effect for a new account in as few as 3 questions. For someone who doesn't realize what SE is about initially, that can be a very abrupt happening that is very difficult to recover from (especially with very wrong/off topic questions being asked). — MichaelT 1 min ago

user55340

(hmm... it caches...)

user55340

I blame caching!

gnat

caching, a proven way to optimize user complaints. - It doesn't work!!! - Probably caching, wait for 5 minutes. - It doesn't work!! - Probably caching, wait for 5 minutes. - It doesn't work! - Probably caching, wait for 5 minutes. - It doesn't work. - Probably caching, wait for 5 minutes. - It doesn't matter. — gnat Jul 17 at 10:37

user55340

Please remember that a question ban can take effect for a new account in as few as 3 questions. For someone who doesn't realize what that SE site (I've seen this happen from SO 1k+ users showing up on P.SE thinking it was all about discussion) is about initially, that can be a very abrupt happening that is very difficult to recover from (especially with very wrong/off topic questions being asked). — MichaelT 5 mins ago

user55340

So the same upload caches, but a different one isn't. I still blame caching.

gnat

18:11

@MichaelT wait for 5 minutes

gnat

18:27

Completely different. Forget everything you knew outside of syntax. — MichaelT 18 mins ago

@MichaelT let me guess... out of votes of both kinds?

user55340

@Robert I tried to blame caching for why the trash did not appear to be out on the curb yet. My wife didn't buy it, and she knows what caching is. — Andrew Barber Sep 18 at 3:58

2

user55340

@gnat Yep.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa not to mention how different SE is than most forums

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa do you have any good articles on IoC containers? I feel like I'm using them wrong

enderland

0

Q: Making a business case for a future proof Silverlight application

I have recently started working for a pretty big bank writing internal apps. I am being subcontracted out by the company I work for (who I have also recently started working for). This bank has recently upgraded to Windows XP, they previously used Windows 2000. I have been tasked with re-writin...

silverlight

I wonder if that company realizes official XP support ends soon (!)

Ampt

18:34

it feels like this one container gets passed around to all my classes, and everytime someone has to pass a message to anyone else, I add a new member to this container

so now it just is like a big bin of stuff that other modules need

@enderland I'm on XP :P

(for work)

enderland

@Ampt microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx

:)

Ampt

@enderland all my personal computing devices run windows 8. my VMs are all 7

enderland

@Ampt i'm on win7 for work and have a mac at home

though I'm running 10.6 on that... !

Ampt

and I'm sure work will figure it out haha. IT here isn't terrible... they just can't seem to justify giving the engineers nicer computers

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt That's common of DI Containers, the cleaner approach is that you request an object from the container, and it gives you a constructed one where it used constructor injection to load that one with the requisite dependencies; that would be a more IoC approach vs. just DI container

enderland

18:36

@Ampt I finally had an excuse to get a better machine and I jumped so bad lol

Jimmy Hoffa

there's no huge harm in the DI Container approach, it's been well used for a long time, but it can come to smell a little funky. Also it may be that you have a poor dependency graph if you have tons of stuff in the container and everything needs everything from it

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa so you're saying that the DI container just holds a bunch of possibly unrelated data and then makes objects with that data as needed

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt err, almost...

One moment...

gnat

@MichaelT "4,888 votes" cast all time... there's a long way to go, 30-40 votes day-by-day, every day... :)

just for the record, my voting stats at Programmers tell me that as of now, I downvoted 10353 (that's a bit more than ten thousands) deleted posts. This "job" is no fun and personally, I feel grateful to those who self-delete DV-worthy posts, thus saving me from it. Heck I even self-delete own crappy posts when I find these, to save others from trouble — gnat 13 mins ago

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa it's just making all of my code look like Java and that's gotta be some sort of funky smell in python

user55340

18:41

@Ampt Everything smells funky in python unless its pythonic.

Ampt

@MichaelT I've actually got some code in here that I think is fairly close to ideal

some of this other stuff with the IoC... not so much

user55340

Did you import this ?

Ampt

I also tried from __future__ import braces

user55340

(have you ever done import this in python?)

Ampt

(yes, the from future import braces is another joke written in the code)

user55340

18:44

>>> from __future__ import braces
  File "<stdin>", line 1
SyntaxError: not a chance

Ampt

hehe

got to love compiler humor

user55340

There used to be a whole bunch in make

Ampt

I already thought make was one big joke

user55340

> On the DEC PDP-10, typing the command "make love" would result in the response "not war?" This action was copied on some older versions of UNIX. Some recent operating systems have brought the easter egg back, such as FreeBSD 7.0; as of /src/usr.bin/make/job.c version 1.126.2.1 if you type "make love," the answer you will get is "Not war."

Ampt

thats pretty clever

@JimmyHoffa I'm just looking for an example or article on how these are supposed to smell, so that I know I'm not totally out in the middle of the woods

user55340

18:48

@Ampt If you are still in the woods, it smells like pine.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt pastebin.com/wanvCt7A

That's not real code, but look at how it uses the container

gnat

oh my. What a series. Gotta stick at front page for quite a while. Self-deletions? I guess am all for it!!!
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195954/looking-for-session-event-analytics-analysis-tool
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212434/transitioning-from-web-to-mobile-development
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212405/net-developing-frameworks-on-no-windows-os
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/212437/vs-plugin-that-calculates-tight-tfs-mapping-for-build-definition

Jimmy Hoffa

only one class needs to know about the container, the container constructs dependencies (or holds references to them) as necessary, but when you want a dependency you don't need to know the container, you just reference the dependency in your constructor and the container will have constructed you with it

Ampt

@MichaelT well that's funny because this code smells like crap

Jimmy Hoffa

that's known as "constructor injection" there's also "property injection" where you have properties and the container will automatically fill in properties which require types the container has a reference for

constructor injection is generally preferred though

Ampt

18:51

I just have a class with a bunch of variables that gets passed around. You need the date of manufacture? get it from the class

need to store the serial number, throw it in

luckily I don't need to have 23417234 getters/setters because that's not pythonic

but it's still just a bunch of seemingly unrelated pieces of data

and knowing who needs what is kind of getting out of hand "Who sets the date of manufacture again?"

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt That's not a di container, that's an in-memory data store

it's common for an in-memory data store to just have a bunch of random data in it

there's no need for it all to make sense together, you can create hierarchies in it if you want

but no real reason

enderland

@Ampt you mean there's an official name for doing this? :o

Jimmy Hoffa

nothing really wrong with it, though if you're relying on it as a contextual data store which is sequence sensitive then it's the operating context for some sequential state machine you've written

Ampt

@enderland that was my first thought too

Jimmy Hoffa

if that's what you're running into then yes, it does get painful and that is not ideal

Ampt

18:54

its not so much procedural per se

it's more "Is this set, so that I can use it?"

Jimmy Hoffa

I didn't say procedural, I said sequential

Ampt

sorry

Jimmy Hoffa

is it a sequential state machine? It does x, then y, then z, and each one changes state to fulfill dependencies of the following step?

Ampt

I... guess yes?

enderland

is there a good way to deal with that problem @JimmyHoffa? (ie sequential "setting")

Ampt

18:56

Yes

SN has to come before we can use that data to write the file

or print the label

so it is a sequential state machine

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland yeah, it's a state machine. I don't know the classifications well enough to call it deterministic or non-deterministic, it's some sort of finite automoton

user55340

@JimmyHoffa deterministic can only have one state at a time. non-deterministic can have multiple.

user55340

(there's more to it than that, but thats the key concept)

Ampt

Are you saying that I'm on my way to creating skynet?

maybe it'll start with my university...

user55340

Just make sure you don't have it maximize instead of minimize.

Ampt

18:59

you must mean INTEGER.MAX_VALUE

user55340

'YOUR CLOTHES. GIVE THEM TO ME.' 'Shit, uh ... you are now breathing manually!' 'I AM ALWAYS BREATHING MANUALLY.'

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