The Whiteboard

3:11 PM

Every time I see, JAVA, LISP, or HASKELL capitalized as such, I can feel a small part of my soul withering up.

3

user55340

3:30 PM

Trying to for a regular-expressions (master) -- regex (synonym) tag thingy - programmers.stackexchange.com/tags/regular-expressions/synonyms

gnat

in The Water Cooler, 7 hours ago, by jmac

13

Q: Improving Tag Synonyms

Executive Summary Jon Ericson asked, Does the tag synonym suggestion system work? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Tag Synonyms were introduced in August 2010: It’s been clear for a very long time now that we needed some kind of tag synonym system, one that the community itself could main...

user55340

5:22 PM

Whee. The guy who was most opposed to writing unit tests at the database query level checked in a breaking change for adding columns to the database (created ambiguous column names in queries - though that was impart the failure to use fully qualified column names (use A.foo rather than just foo).

user55340

6:33 PM

I wish I knew Scala... need to play with that language next.

enderland

6:59 PM

is there any good way to switch between enum values and a string representation, generally? or is it worth just writing my own enum-like class?

Brant

I live mostly in C#, but I find that as soon as I start treating enums as anything other than a labeled int, it's time to take a good look at what I really want to do.

user55340

@enderland What language?

enderland

@MichaelT VBA

@Brant I think you might be right. part of the problem is I definitley might be using them in a slightly unorthodox way, which... might be the problem

user55340

@enderland Hmm... don't know the idiomatic way to approach it in VBA.

user55340

32

A: Hidden features of VBA

This trick only works in Access VBA, Excel and others won't allow it. But you can make a Standard Module hidden from the object browser by prefixing the Module name with an underscore. The module will then only be visible if you change the object browser to show hidden objects. This trick works...

enderland

7:13 PM

I think it's just a pain. I probably shoudl have thought this through prior to trying to use enums to make my code easier to read ha. woops

what I ought to do is make a class and then add enum.toString() and string.toEnum() methods of some sort but this gets into what @Brant is saying - it's quickly not becoming an enum

user55340

My perl background leads me to a 'enums are a hard coded, type safe, dictionary lookup' - it gives a bit more than just a labeled int.

user55340

I like some aspects of it in Java that can be seen at docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/enum.html - where the enum has associated values and an associated method.

enderland

yeah that's something very similar to what I'm looking for, c'est la vie

user55340

At one point I did a enum with a object associated to it that had a certain interface. Then the method invoked a method in the object that was associated with that enum. Can't remember all the particulars of it though.

Brant

Java enums are pretty nice.

(based on a cursory glance at the linked page, anyway. I've never really used them.)

user55340

7:22 PM

@Brant ever look at the EnumSet and EnumMap collections?

user55340

docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/EnumSet.html

user55340

An EnumSet is a type safe bitfield behind the scenes. And an EnumMap is a type safe array.

Brant

Neat.

user55340

Think of a PizzaToppings enum - Pepperoni, Sausage, Cheese, etc...

user55340

A pizza could then be implemented as an EnumSet of PizzaToppings.

user55340

7:24 PM

Then one would also have a EnumMap<PizzaTopping, Integer> for the price.

enderland

this is just rubbing in the fact I can't do what I want to do ;)

Brant

Yeah, enums in c# are pretty minimal in comparison.

user55340

(Eums are very underutlzlied in Java - people would use them more if they realized those two collections existed)

user55340

With an enum, there's rarely ever a need for exposed constants. Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH is just wrong in current java idioms (the bit to realize there is the 'since 1.1' and Java Enums were in 1.5.

enderland

7:44 PM

-2

Q: How to deal with a ten days debugging session?

Ten days ago, I've fixed a bug on a large application and the hotfix have created a deasappearing of some data from the user point of view. Data are not deleted, but have been set to hidden status. It could be possible to get the data back, but the thing seems to be hard: I've already spend 10 ...

data bug time

this sounds like they have no version control

user41796

7:56 PM

@MichaelT apropos of nothing, I had forgotten about my robotix set. That thing was awesome though

user41796

I'll have to see if it's still at my folks' place

user55340

@GlenH7 It was! Those were fun days...

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa if you have a sec, have a look at that Haskell answer I just posted?

user41796

That link brought back so many awesome memories

user41796

Random Q: I need to learn javascript. Best resources instead of w3schools? (yes, that's a joke about w3...)

user55340

8:02 PM

What flavor of Javascript? Node? Client?

user41796

Primarily on client side; angularJS will be one of the supporting frameworks. Also have bootstrap. And I expect Breeze will be tucked in the middle of all that too

user41796

Code Academy looks promising

user55340

You're looking to be dealing with more of the frameworks than the code language there (though nowadays, it feels like JS is all frameworks... people even mistake the frameworks for the language (jQuery, I'm looking at you)).

user41796

yeah, I forgot to mention jquery will be on the horizon as well

user41796

it's an interesting framework we're switching to. Uses Scala on the back end for the services through the Play framework and zookeeper

jozefg

8:14 PM

@GlenH7 Do you get to do any playing with Scala?

user41796

@jozefg It appears to be in my future, yes. Not sure what I think about that though

jozefg

@GlenH7 I think you'll like it, it's done of nice job of being Java++

user41796

@jozefg Part of my worry is that I thought it runs on top of the JVM. Given the wide range of security issues within Java, I'm worried it's a dying platform

user41796

or in Scala's case, it's DOA despite the technical advantages of the language

user55340

Which 'security issues'?

user55340

8:18 PM

There's the "sandbox on browser" security issues which exist... but server side Java is a different world completely.

jozefg

Agreed, while applets are dead or dying, I haven't seen much phasing out of the JVM, Java Lang maybe

user41796

@MichaelT No, the JVM is riddled with issues too AFAIK. Let me pull up some examples to verify my assumption though

user55340

The key difference is that with client side applications its possible to break out of the sandbox they are contained in and mess up the system. But with server side things, you are only running your trusted code.

jozefg

I just changed map to parMap rdeepseq and got a 50% speedup! Ah the joys of multicore

user55340

Running Java on a server is no better or worse than running C, or C++, or C#, or Perl, or Python, or Ruby (actually, ruby is a bit bad... don't do that one - its not so much ruby, but rather the philosophy of the libraries which do too much... ruby itself is just 'meh').

user41796

8:25 PM

@MichaelT Security.SE backs your answer, ergo I'm wrong. :-) security.stackexchange.com/a/40238 and security.stackexchange.com/a/32854

user55340

btw - fun search: chat.stackexchange.com/search?q=ruby&user=55340&room=21

user41796

I jest, but I think that if Ruby had been rolled out as part of today's preview of the new framework that I might be brushing up my resume.... :-)

jozefg

@MichaelT It may interest you to know that I did get annoyed at ruby, I'm halfway through implementing a language to compile to Python so I can just script in that

user55340

There we go - williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/42912076785/… and williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/43394068341/…

jozefg

This is absolutely not overkill

user41796

8:29 PM

@jozefg threading and parallel processing rule. Until you get race conditions. But you do mostly FP, so that's harder to have happen.

jozefg

@GlenH7 Yeah, I've got a few SAT-3 heuristics and they work beautifully for parallelization

user55340

@GlenH7 So, back to that - I don't think that Java is dying. Its the next cobol. And the JVM is a very strong source of new language development in today's world. If nothing else, knowing and understanding the JRE will aide in properly using it in clojure, scala, jython, etc...

user55340

(the "yea, we have to do it that way because its part of the core JRE that the language inherited" will save some frustration at trying to understand why something was done some way)

user55340

Just like understanding why perl or python did some function some way... oh, because thats the implementation of some C library call.

user41796

@MichaelT That's a good point. I had been worried about the long term marketability of that work, but the core it addresses won't go away for a while.

user55340

8:35 PM

Java is the new Cobol. There is LOTS of it out there in the world... for good or bad, it won't go away for quite some time.

jozefg

Which is kinda unfortunate, the JVM is not the nicest place to host a wide variety of languages on

user55340

@jozefg I bet you're just parroting (pun intended) that... ;-)

user41796

@MichaelT Could make a good end-career option then. Cobol contractors can pull down north of $250 / hr direct.

jozefg

@MichaelT Bah duh duh ching. But having written compilers to both, I vastly prefer CIL + .NET over JVM :) Despite the annoyances that come with Mono

user55340

Whats your preference - JVM (+JRE), Parrot, LLVM, or CIL?

user41796

8:38 PM

@jozefg .NET benefited from all the early churn of Java versions 1 - 4

jozefg

@MichaelT LLVM, CIL, JVM, Parrot

LLVM or MIPS are my two favorite compilation targets because they're actually pretty semantically agnostic. CIL is ok.. it's not great for FP and sucks for lazy, but works. And JVM is just annoying to compile anything not OO + Static types

user41796

@jozefg That presumes you would even want something besides OO or static.

jozefg

Psht good point. JAVA forever (capitalization intended)

But the current hack to avoid blowing the stack (trampolines) is comically slow.

user55340

@jozefg I assume you've payed with SPIM then?

jozefg

@MichaelT Yep, I have half a Haskell clone

user55340

8:44 PM

I'd go LLVM, JVM, Parrot, CIL. Though as I mentioned, if I need/want the JRE, well... that really pushes the JVM up to the top of the list.

user55340

And having access to all of the collections, swing and the like can give a big boost to making it a viable language without as much work building the frameworks for someone to take notice of it.

user55340

@jozefg I took CS 537 (Operating Systems) from Professor Larus back in the day. pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html

user55340

CS 354 (Machine language) was completely taught on SPIM... and 536 (Compilers) targeted MIPS assembly for that reason too.

jozefg

Huh, that's kinda cool!

user55340

(I had 354 with... Goodman I think. 536 was with Fischer)

user55340

8:52 PM

Its one of those "is it a good thing that the prof wrote the book?" times - we had to get two books for 536. The dragon book (I think it was the red one) and his book for the class.

user55340

Btw, when you get a prof who has his own book for the class it means one of two things... either he's really good (knows the material - not necessarily a good teacher) and this is a canonical book that people are reading... or he's a bit off the mainstream and there aren't any books that reflect his views (or both).

user55340

The calc professor that I had was a bit of both - math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html

user55340

So, @jozefg so, when you check on a professor, check the book list. If you see the book match the name of the professor, look into it more deeply so you don't get one that's going to teach you some weird ideas... unless you want that.

user55340

@GlenH7 btw, did you read my fun of yesterday morning?

user55340

yesterday, by MichaelT

Advice for single people - keep a screwdriver in the bathroom. So, took a shower this morning, the door swelled up just a bit and the handle came off when I tried to turn it enough to get the door open (bathroom on second floor, can't go out the window). So, I had a screwdriver in there from when I had to remove the drain cover on the bathtub to clean it... took the handle out with the screw driver and opened the door.

user41796

9:00 PM

@MichaelT That is absolutely hilarious. I have had similar hijinx when working on the house and the family has been away

user55340

That screwdriver is never leaving the bathroom again... oh, the door opens out from the bathroom (its small enough as it is, an inward door would take too much room. So couldn't do the 'remove the pins' on the hinges.

user41796

A lot of the time you need a screwdriver to pop the pins on the hinge anyway

user55340

My parents house have pocket doors on the bathrooms. If you've got the wall space to spare (takes a bit thicker of a wall), this saves quite a bit of space for the swing on the door.

user41796

Given that it opened out, you could have kicked it open....

user55340

Yep... though no shoes in there. It would have been "not fun"

user55340

9:05 PM

(the hinges are old, probably 1940 originals... you can remove them with your hand and without additional tools - big knobs on top and bottom that hold the pin)

user41796

I'm used to the fancy-dancy modern ones that weren't really meant to come out

user55340

@jozefg Btw, at least you don't feel that way about C and C++.

user55340

9:35 PM

Whee! "You've earned the "Synonymizer" badge for the tag synonym regex. See your profile."

user55340

Delicious badges.

user55340

So... this has been closed reasonably promptly (no confusing answers to contend with trying to keep)...

user55340

-1

Q: Common SDK for Smart TVs

I'm really ignorant about Smart TV application programming. Wikipedia says there are public SDKs for specific devices. Is there any platform-independent or cross-platform methods to develope a smart TV application? If not, then what are the platforms being used? Is it like Android - iOS -Window...

sdk

user55340

Any ideas on how to fix?

user41796

9:51 PM

@MichaelT I think the basis behind the question is too shaky to salvage it.

user55340

@GlenH7 I'm leaning that way... though that doesn't exclude the "ask the question that the OP didn't ask" and do a complete rewrite of it.

user41796

Part of the issue is it doesn't demonstrate any research, so we have a resource request mixed with "I'm a complete noob tell me where to look"

user55340

The edit didn't fix any of the problems I brought up. Just wondering if there was something like programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/183982/revisions that could be done with the question.

user41796

And I just googled "samsung tv sdk" which came back with links to tutorials and a samsung site dedicated to developers. Ditto with panasonic, LG, sony, ...

user41796

@MichaelT That's a good attwood transformation on that java question. Not sure how I would do an attwood on the tv question. "How should I evaluate vendor sdk's for TVs?" .... just doesn't fit as nicely

user55340

9:57 PM

(as an aside, note the bit about Java security... ;-)

user41796

(in)security

user20683

security is fine as long as you're not doing Applets

user55340

@WorldEngineer or Java webstart... but few see that.

user20683

fair enough, Java has a great many legacy secrets and obscure projects

user55340

Java Webstart isn't that obscure. The register system I worked on was a webstart. Its a way of 'deploying' a stand alone program to a number of machines at once.

user55340

10:01 PM

If you were going to do a "write a Java SE program that is a word processor, and has auto updating from the server for new functionality", Java WS would be the technology I'd start looking at.

user41796

I did not know that favorite but deleted questions will still show up in your favorites list.

user55340

@GlenH7 Yep! I use that sometimes.

user55340

Btw, if you poke at my or @gnat 's favorite lists, you'll often find things to send dv's (or not - depending on how you are feeling that day).

user41796

@MichaelT I'm still catching up from the dev conference I was at least week. Haven't made the time to roll through the "needs moah delete votes" query

user55340

The 'most dv in the last 14 days' is a useful one to look at too - programmers.stackexchange.com/…

user55340

10:09 PM

Btw, been noticing Bart van... as a new 10k dv caster... now, we just need to get the 20k voters to get speedy dv and answer deletes without mod intervention.

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