The Whiteboard

A: Where in the world do Stack Overflow users say they are from?

1:41 PM

8

Since this hasn't been remade since 2009, I figured it was about time to update it. I ran this query to gather data on all Stack Overflow users with over 1000 reputation. That got a total of 4,711 unique locations for 48,924 users. Of those 48,924 users, 13,138 did not list a location. Of the r...

thorsten müller

3:16 PM

Is a question "primarily opinion-based" if the user can't possibly know before he gets answers (of which some may be opinonate)?

Example:

-1

Q: Is normal PC suitable for Hadoop and HBase learning?

As i'm interested in writing a web-service using Hadoop and HBase (i found that i'm enjoying BigData related thematics), i want to ask you about one thing. If i will install it on my PC, will this be enough to learn some basics of those technologies? Or it will be limited or even it will not work?

Possible answers would be that it's impossible (ok), possible (ok) or a long discussion that while possible it may or may not be a good idea.

user41796

@thorstenmüller I voted to close with a custom OT reason. It's about hardware specifications more than programming.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 I'd call it "programming tools" and...maybe migrate to SO?

user41796

@ThomasOwens I wouldn't object to that either

user41796

@ThomasOwens - am I off base with EMS and his meta question?

user55340

@GlenH7 oh, he's picking a fight with you now...

Thomas Owens

3:23 PM

I'm letting other mods handle that. My suspend trigger finger is getting itchy.

user41796

this question now has a follow up meta post

user41796

I'm open to feedback on my comment. What I thought he needed was a clear cut observation of what's going on. Seems like he's just itching for a fight.

user55340

If he thinks thats rude... scratch head

user55340

Well, its good that he called it out... you've got +3 on your comment now.

user41796

too bad it can't be pinned

user41796

3:26 PM

@EMS - you misunderstand the difference between offensive and unvarnished honesty. Your question started as a thinly veiled attack on a mod, hidden by sophistry. Your comments are antagonistic and fail to demonstrate an understanding of the points that have been raised by multiple community members. Perhaps you should reflect upon what it is within your actions that have caused you to feel offended. — GlenH7 1 min ago

user41796

I would invite him to chat, but I don't think it will get us anywhere

user55340

3:39 PM

sigh ran out of close votes last night already.

user41796

I like to burn through the close review queue and save the remainder for the morning

user55340

Thing is, I burn the cv queue and then only have a few left on the ones left over from the afternoon.

#stackexchangeproblems

user41796

yeah, I hear you. I'll periodically scroll back through the questions/newest list before my votes reset in order to catch ones that may have slipped through

user41796

in other news, I was able to blow by the 666th flag without any worries. Seems there was a question on main that attracted a lot of meta comments.

3:49 PM

in other news, I'm writing my first unit tests today

at least I think they'd be called unit tests, iterating through a list of test parameters for some methods and validating the return values

user41796

call 'em what you like. Testing and verifying functionality is a good thing.

indeed, I can't really believe I never did something like this before

user55340

For fun - a small project I did on git to demonstrate simple testing of methods connecting to a database with hsqldb github.com/shagie/TestingWithHsqldb

user55340

(I'll need to push the changes I did last night up... but you can get the idea)

user55340

The main bit is that typically, testing things that hit a database is a pain. You mock out the database itself and the database access and just make it return the right stuff... but what if you want to test the actual sql calls? What then?

user55340

4:04 PM

Create a new schema on oracle (mysql, postgres, etc...) for each test? How do you avoid collisions of two tests running at the same time?

user55340

The answer is, you make a new database for each unit test, initialize it with the data you want and run the test. Use a nice light weight in memory db for that that disappears as soon as the connection is closed.

yeah that's actually a problem I'm not sure how to validate some of my database stuff too

user55340

I wrote this as a proof of concept that it can be done for my coworkers after I had missed a pair of () in an sql statement that caused some anomalous behavior for awhile. Simple unit tests wouldn't have caught it because the typical thing is to mock that layer rather than test it.

Q: How to solve binary labeling with graph cut?

SQL feels like an easy place to get really cryptic results

user55340

I added an 'or date is null' to a set of and conditions when it should have been 'and (date > now - 60 or date is null)' -- by just adding the or date is null, all the other and conditions were ignored if the date was null.

user55340

4:20 PM

My eyes glossed over when looking at

user55340

0

I have 32 segments of the overlapped regions of two images. I have to assign each of the segment to either one of the images based on lowest cost. So, it is a binary labeling problem, and above are the energy minimization function. L is the vector of length of 32(equal to the number of segment...

algorithms graph labels

user55340

4:39 PM

@Ampt a 'classical' GIS problem...

user55340

Wedge (border)

The Wedge (or Delaware Wedge) is a small tract of land along the borders of Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Ownership of the land was disputed until 1921; it is now recognized as part of Delaware. The tract was created primarily by the shortcomings of contemporary surveying techniques. It is bounded on the north by an eastern extension of the east-west portion of the Mason–Dixon Line, on the west by the north-south portion of the Mason–Dixon line, and on the southeast by the New Castle, Delaware Twelve-Mile Circle. The crossroads community of Mechanicsville, Delaware, lies within the...

user41796

random question - are mongodb queries case sensitive on field names?!?

user55340

51

Q: MongoDB: Is it possible to make a case-insensitive query?

Example: > db.stuff.save({"foo":"bar"}); > db.stuff.find({"foo":"bar"}).count(); 1 > db.stuff.find({"foo":"BAR"}).count(); 0

mongodb case-insensitive

user55340

I'd guess, yes, they are case sensitive.

user41796

db['my.collection'].find({},{myName:1}).sort({myName: 1})
has different results from:
db['my.collection'].find({},{myName:1}).sort({myname: 1})

user41796

4:42 PM

nice one, btw

user41796

only difference is nyName vs nyname which is the field name

user41796

ran a few more queries. And yes, it's case sensitive with field names. That will take some getting used to since I'm used to SQL not caring.

Q: Is SQL syntax case sensitive?

5:04 PM

you could still just not care and not worry about what happens?

user55340

5:14 PM

@enderland (I think this is in ref to the comment before) - most SQL is case insensitive. There are a few points where this some case sensitivity of field names. We try to be consistent in the naming, but sometimes we're sloppy... and it doesn't matter because its case insensitive. Coming across a case sensitive database can be surprising.

user55340

61

Is SQL case sensitive. I've used MySQL and SQL Server which both seem to be case in-sensitive. Is this always the case? Does the standard define case-sensitivity?

sql case-sensitive

@MichaelT I imagine so

(it was)

user55340

Its also why mongo did it case sensitive - it makes for a smaller and faster footprint for that lookup.

arg I hate regex lol

user55340

In SQL one can't do select T.* from table T where T.col/[0-9]+/ = true --- note the regex on the column name.

5:20 PM

I was referring to something different but that would be freaking cool

user55340

Thats something you can do in mongo as such.

user55340

Now, you might be able to write a plsql (oracle) thing that has some sql meta-programming in it to be able to query all the fields of a table.... but thats ugly too.

user55340

The reason SQL isn't case sensitive is more one of 'its quite a bit like an old programming language' - its compiled as such. The lexer for sql doesn't care about case, its just easier that way.

user55340

@enderland what do you hate about regex?

user55340

(the under grad cs theory class was one of my favorites... regexes don't bug me at all, I quite enjoy them)

user55340

5:26 PM

Wait, forgot to escape a space. Wheeeeee[taptaptap]eeeeee.

I should say I don't use them enough to really get them, so every time I do I have to relearn something

I'm trying to do:

names = RxMatches(myPaste, "(?=\<)(.*?)(?=\>)")

but I really want to do:

names = RxMatches(myPaste, "(?<=\<)(.*?)(?=\>)")     (note the ?<= instead of ?=)

but the stupid scripting language doesn't support this operator in RegEx

user55340

Ahh... regex dialect variations... yea, those suck.

2

so I get something that looks like "<ReturnedVal" instead of "ReturnedVal"

I should just dedicate a day to learning more about RegEx because they become so useful once you have a basic understanding...

6:02 PM

woo online harassment training... I've not done enough of these yet, nope. Surely not.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I had "PCI" training that reminded people not to share passwords and don't forward emails even if you'll get a taco dog (I kid you not about the taco dog - that was in there).

@MichaelT don't forward emails?

@MichaelT This training just told me not to use "elevator eyes" (??)

random Q for you guys - what do you use to keep track of the "what to do" on a daily or even weekly basis? do you have a system of some srot you use?

user55340

Daily, google document shared with rest of company. Personal wish list TODO is on index cards stuck on a cork board in my cube.

6:09 PM

When I worked for philips we had to do training on how to deal with vendors nationally and internationally regarding the foreign crime prevention act which taught us how not to bribe foreign governmental officials, as well as all kinds of trainings on topics about bribery, medicaire fraud, training regarding those doctors kick-back scheme laws that were enacted around a decade ago etc

I've done enough online "trainings" "learnings" and whatever else to last me a life time from working there

@MichaelT I try to keep everything in a custom spreadsheet

but I wonder if dev requires a different system... probably not

@JimmyHoffa my favorite is when trainings are poorly named. "Corruption training" etc

user55340

No elevator eyes, they're just creepy.

@MichaelT This picture is unacceptable

user55340

Better?

heh

much

user55340

6:12 PM

Could find a bedbug picture for you...

I wonder why pictures sometimes don't appear for me

Q: Question about use of software in an IOS app

@MichaelT Eesh I hope to never see one of those again..

user55340

6:53 PM

-2

So I have this pretty cool idea for an IOS app, but I'm not really sure how the legalities of it would work. The meat of the app would be some sort of facial recognition software, the app would be manipulating the data that is retrieved using the software. Is this sort of thing even allowed, or...

licensing ios legal

user55340

Yes, there are companies that sell licenses to their libraries. Check with the license for what you are allowed to do with it. No, I don't know of any for facial recognition. No, asking for people to give you recommendations for libraries to do something is off topic. — MichaelT 3 mins ago

user55340

I didn't ask for libraries... I didn't even know if this existed. I was merely asking if it was something that people did. Holy hell you people need to lighten up. — Tip_Top 56 secs ago

user55340

And... I'm done explaining downvotes for another month.

user41796

7:15 PM

@MichaelT I can sympathize with that sentiment.

user55340

Pimped my letter in an MSO comment to

user55340

15

Q: StackOverflow is not your Programming 101 Teacher

I would like to help my fellow professionals and amateurs more on StackOverflow, but it's become impossible to find questions worth spending time on beneath the inundation of "teach me to program" questions, like this one: How do I print a given letter in a triangle shape using for loops?. "Teac...

discussion scope

Stack Overflow - Homework

84

Proposed Q&A site for homework help. Not to be confused with the closed Homework Help proposal, this covers the same topic matter as Stack Overflow but with restrictions on how specific answers are.

Currently in definition.

7:32 PM

@YannisRizos What a horrible idea this is. You're already not hiring 2/3rd of people under 24 over there, it'll be closer to 3/3rds if they're all getting their answers from SE and not learning anything in college

@JimmyHoffa You are assuming students over here actually learn something in college...

A: Why not just use the other StackExchange websites and tag your homework question as 'homework'

@YannisRizos It's pretty obvious they do, they learn things like cuervo, hornitos, and patron if you're any example

user55340

20

Please don't do that, it's a terrible idea. The [homework] tag is a Meta tag, and has proven to be more trouble than it's worth. It's been deprecated on both Stack Overflow and Programmers, and the process to clean it up on Stack Overflow is ongoing. The proposal was actually created in respons...

user55340

And whee! Pimping the Open letter! (I do notice the 'share' version of the link rather than the titlebar version ;-)

@JimmyHoffa Heh, well I guess that's something... Don't get me wrong, we have some of the top schools in Europe in several fields, it's IT & CS were our schools suck (hard).

...also I might be a bit (just a tiny bit) bitter from spending about two weeks interviewing fresh graduates...

user55340

7:45 PM

Random observation - git gives a lot of rep from random upvotes.

@MichaelT You earned yourself a rude/offensive flag there...

user55340

Pardon my canadian but.... 'eh?

user55340

I hope it wasn't from the guy who resorted to swearing at me in the next comment.

Don't know, we don't get to see who casts comment flags.

user55340

if you had a suspicion you could figure it out by marking it helpful and then verifying if the helpful comment count goes up.

7:50 PM

I'm too lazy to do all that. Dismissed.

user55340

But ghads, you're asking a question about legalities of a hypothetical licenses and in my initial reading asking for a company that licenses their software... its off topic two ways there. shrug

@YannisRizos This is valuable information! VALUABLE.

Ooops...

@MichaelT He self deleted it, and I don't think he'll be coming back any time soon, so... forget about it.

user55340

@YannisRizos I did.... its more a 'wow, people take the slightest things to be offensive comments today'

@MichaelT 99% of our Meta flags are of the "You have a different opinion? HOW RUDE!" variety...

user55340

8:03 PM

@JimmyHoffa my father does quite enjoy the 'Grampa's Best' wine from the local winery - autumnharvestwinery.com/our-wines/purchase/…

user55340

last year he was a bit disappointed, the wine wasn't that great (it was superb the year before and was apparently quite good again this year).

@YannisRizos This could be interesting if you somehow integrated it into a curriculum from some school - ie "homework" is actually where classes are supposed to post questions and answer and help each other?

@MichaelT Temperature's dropping here; I need to get my butt in gear on buying myself some landscaping blocks to create the fire pit in my back yard. First winter at my own house; gotta have a fire pit! Otherwise you just look silly at your 80's-skiwear-party

user55340

@enderland I've seen attempts at school wikis... meh.

@MichaelT I'm trying to help "homework" not be synomonous with "nightmare" give me a break :P

8:09 PM

@enderland I thought it was synonymous with "Shit I should have done"

psr

@gnat I actually largely agree with EMS about his original post but he is a terrible advocate for his position.

@enderland Not a bad idea, not sure if it could work with brick & mortar schools, but perhaps it would be an excellent companion to coursera, etc.

@YannisRizos especially coursera, since their discussion boards are terribad

user55340

The bit that I recall from my days as a student (and the occasional tutor later) the key is that one is intended to follow a path of how to get to the answer. In part because the next assignment may back up a little bit and take a different fork in the problem solving path.

user55340

It was necessary to understand the curriculum and where the students and teachers were on the path in order to not mess up the next assignment.

user55340

8:12 PM

One example, one of my classes for calc was non-standard (and I mean that mathematically)

user55340

Non-standard calculus

In mathematics, non-standard calculus is the modern application of infinitesimals, in the sense of non-standard analysis, to differential and integral calculus. It provides a rigorous justification for some arguments in calculus that were previously considered merely heuristic. Calculations with infinitesimals were widely used before Karl Weierstrass sought to replace them with the (ε, δ)-definition of limit starting in the 1870s. (See history of calculus.) For almost one hundred years thereafter, mathematicians like Richard Courant viewed infinitesimals as being naive and vague or mea...

user55340

The help I got from someone who wasn't familiar with that model of calculus was worse than useless, it actually set me back an assignment in how I thought of things.

"oh you mean f'(x^n) = nx^(n-1)?" WHY ARE WE DOING THIS THE HARD WAY

user55340

I mean "we deal with infinities rather than limits"

user55340

Its not "Limit as X approaches 0 of x / delta x" its instead "ε" which is 1/infinity, and yea, you can deal with that.

user55340

8:17 PM

You've got hyper real numbers instead of real numbers (these include infinitesimals and infinities while real number line doesn't)

user55340

Hyperreal number

The system of hyperreal numbers is a way of treating the infinite and infinitesimal quantities. The hyperreals, or nonstandard reals, *R, are an extension of the real numbers R that contains numbers greater than anything of the form :1 + 1 + \cdots + 1. \, Such a number is infinite, and its reciprocal is infinitesimal. The term "hyper-real" was introduced by Edwin Hewitt in 1948. The hyperreal numbers satisfy the transfer principle, a rigorous version of Leibniz's heuristic Law of Continuity. The transfer principle states that true first order statements about R are also valid in *...

user55340

The thing is... going back to CS... we don't know the class and what they're really trying to teach in this assignment. Are they trying to get the student to understand for (x = 0; x < array.size; x++) ... will talking about for(x : array) completely mess up what is trying to be taught?

@MichaelT yeah I would agree

as someone who is mostly self taught, I definitely have "skipped" some of the more basic stuff

which then means my knowledge is scattered

user55340

This is where the real danger of us helping students comes from - we may show them the easy way and they'll never learn the hard way for when they do need it.

yeah :( honestly kinda like the regex thing earlier

user55340

8:21 PM

And then when they come for an interview, you'll see them writing int array[3] = {0, 1, 2}; for(int x : array) { ... } because they don't understand the three part for loop.

@MichaelT I feel dumb not understanding what you mean by for(int x : array)

user55340

@enderland what languages do you know?

@MichaelT pretty familiar with C++ and very familiar with VBA

but no formal comp sci background

I''m assuming it's basically the same as an iterator through an array

user55340

Originally, java had the same for loop that C and C++ did - the three part form.

user55340

With Java 1.5 a 'for each' loop was added.

user55340

8:31 PM

docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/foreach.html

ah yeah

that's what I was assuming, "for each x in array" type syntax then

user55340

This takes something that has an iterator (an array, some sort of collection, or anything that is iterable) and then iterates over it.

that's actually syntactically really nice

user55340

it is. Its the prefered style for many in scripting languages. It has some reason to use it, it also comes with some penalties.

user55340

in perl one can write for $idx (@list)

user55340

8:33 PM

The thing that can be a problem in Java, is that a modification to the list will throw a concurrent modification exception.

it's way more clear than this sort of syntax - stackoverflow.com/a/8871490/1048539

user55340

But the for ( expr; expr; expr) form doesn't.

well maybe not more clear, but looks a lot slicker

user55340

Or sometimes, you've got two lists you're walking over with aligned indexes...

user55340

Lots of times you have to use the three part for

user55340

8:35 PM

The danger would be for a student to learn the iterator form and not the three part form... and then make iterators for everything even if just counting from 1 to 10 (it would make the FP people happy...)

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

this discussion is making me realize how completely silly it was that the iterator stuff in C++ was confusing to me initially, considering it's nearly the same as a for each loop exept actually using the pointers. fail

I need to get into a real software dev role again. I blame you guys

gnat

@psr well I think you have a point. Original post looked like over 95% OK to me, save for that "gimme resources" sentence (as if someone sufficiently qualified to provide an authoritative answer to it, would be incapable of referring worthy resources along the way, give me a break). That was why I opted to edit it, instead of casting CV as I do with lower quality questions

user55340

9:27 PM

Can you write the code please ? — Amr 48 secs ago

user55340

Its good that @JimmyHoffa took the 'bang head here' thing away... my monitor would have a dent in it.

gnat

43

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. I suggest discarding answers when there is a strong evidence that these do not provide good data points fo...

feature-request voting stackexchange-button hot-questions answer-quality

again looking for volunteers to put "draw attention" bounty on a request about fake hotness score. I plan to do it myself on Monday, but won't mind if someone else does, to indicate a broader community effort...

For those interested, here's an explanation why I consider this important. And, if you plan a bounty please don't forget to pick the value from dropdown - I'd recommend minimal value

user55340

9:44 PM

@gnat hmm... a SpaceExploration mod this time.

user55340

Oh, this is a fun exchange...

user55340

Programmers is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. — hjpotter92 3 hours ago

user55340

@hjpotter92 Heh, I'm pretty sure Robert knows that... — Yannis 3 hours ago

user55340

@Yannis Yeah! But if the question for professional (expert) developers; shouldn't it be off-topic for Stack Overflow? I understand the point(s) Robert is mentioning in this post and it is perfectly fine by me that the question remain on Stack Overflow. But I'd still have to agree with OP here. The 3rd question, in my opinion, is still primarily opinion-based. — hjpotter92 2 hours ago

user55340

@hjpotter92: Are you implying that Stack Overflow is just for amateurs? Hmm, that would explain a few things. — Robert Harvey 2 hours ago

2

user55340

9:52 PM

(in response to a MSO answer that Robert did)

Q: Drunk on Stack Overflow Badge?

11:13 PM

-9

After asking this question: Don't include weekends for the fanatic badge consecutive days calculation The answer given, has given me another brilliant idea!!! A Drunk on Stack Exchange badge People would be allowed to flag your question (or answer) as 'You are drunk' (this could include, slu...

feature-request badges badge-request

Heh, guess who inspired that...

user41796

@psr it's kind of sad that the whole purpose behind his question got lost by his (politically correct) ranting

user41796

11:29 PM

@YannisRizos - anything I want to be aware of regarding the cleanup of the two questions in meta from EMS? I don't think I crossed a line, but if I did then I'll ratchet things back.

psr

@MichaelT he's trying to restore your faith in the idea that September really isn't eternal, by showing that the Septembers of the eternal September are even worse than the other months of the eternal September

user41796

11:44 PM

@gnat looks like TidalWave got your question covered.