The Whiteboard

Jimmy Hoffa

01:48

I wish we got move FP questions here

s/move/more/

jozefg

04:02

@JimmyHoffa Here you are, it's a dialect of Forth/Joy that shall focus on being unix-y. bitbucket.org/jozefg/melody

gnat

08:06

wonder how much of a "posse" (in terms of decreasing queue size) would be if team simply make flags to close expire, just like close votes do. Keeping a wide open door for tens thousands SO users to push the items into CV queue and keep them without limits makes any attempts to decrease queue size like peeing against the wind — gnat 56 secs ago

user55340

15:14

@gnat btw, that cliff questions for the date range... its 'easy' to make a big debt in a month's worth of questions on SO. Quite rewarding too. A day or two and you can knock off the worst of the ones for the month.

Ell

Hi folks :)

user55340

@Ell 'ello.

user55340

Its still a bit early in the morning... so not too much activity here yet.

jozefg

I'm kinda here

user55340

user55340

15:21

(from the room info activity graph - its still on the 'up' - note thats UTC time I think and so shift everything 'left' a little bit)

user55340

Can certainly see that Friday afternoon is the most activity.

GlenPeterson

I completely rewrote this question and think it can be opened now: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/218299/…

Question: Should I have opened my own question instead? I worried I would be stealing bonobo's points. But I made fairly massive edits, so maybe I'm stomping on his originality. Thoughts?

Ell

How are we today?

GlenPeterson

I should have said his or her originality. I'm fine thanks.

user55340

@Ell recovering from starting a cold... still not thinking at 100%.

Ell

15:27

Ahh

Hope you get better

I'm stuck in a design dilemma :S

user55340

@GlenPeterson Nope, massive edit of an existing question (an Attwoodian Transformation or something of that name) is the better approach - it helps educate the OP as to the type of question and has them get notified of the answers to it.

GlenPeterson

I should have said @bonomo instead of bonobo. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Is it re-openable now?

user55340

My own complete rewrite of a question - programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/183982/revisions

user55340

I think so...

GlenPeterson

I see my vote there as one of the people who reopened your question!

user55340

15:30

Got a meeting in... now. I'll look into it more when I get back... @jozefg would be a superb person to ask on the "is it a good question now" given the FP nature of it.

GlenPeterson

@Ell what's your design dilemma?

Ell

@GlenPeterson Are you at all familiar with the swf file format?

GlenPeterson

Flash?

Ell

yeah

GlenPeterson

Compressed?

Ell

15:31

basically, there are about 154 different tag types

I'm writing a swf parser, and don't know how to organise these different tag types

lets call it 150 for sake of simplicity

GlenPeterson

What does a tag look like?

Ell

50 of them have no associated data besides type, so they can be represented by just an enum

whereas the other 100 are arbitrary, so I'd need to write a struct for each

GlenPeterson

What programming language? Do you have function pointers?

Ell

c++

I have a function called parse_tag which takes an iterator pair to parse the input bytes

GlenPeterson

Does C++ have a map or dictionary?

Ell

15:34

my problem is, what should it's return type be? and where should I put the parsing code? (in the classes as a static function? as the constructor?)

@GlenPeterson Yes

My original idea for return type was just a giant variant, but there were too many types

GlenPeterson

Did you look at the Interpreter design pattern?

Ell

No o.O

I don't really know many design patterns

I just know I hate singletons and managers :P

GlenPeterson

My other thought was to use the tags as keys into a map or dictionary. Each Value in the map/dictionary is a function (pointer) that takes the tag as an argument and performs processing appropriate to that tag.

Yeah, the Interpreter design pattern is a somewhat specific, somewhat outdated shell of a design for doing exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Maybe you won't use it exactly, but reading about it should give you some useful ideas.

Ell

My main issue is how to store the tags, but I think I'm going to just have to write a struct for each :/

GlenPeterson

Well, one way or another you are going to have to write code that processes each likely tag that you may encounter. It would be nice to pick a good technique for organizing those procedures from the outset.

Maybe some sets of tags can share the same, or similar code.

Wikipedia has a page of SWF Tools. You could use one, or look at the code for a similar one to get ideas: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWFTools

@Ell - that's a pretty big undertaking. Unless you only need to understand a tiny subset of SWF functionality, or it is your goal for the next 6 months to write an SWF reader I'd try hard to leverage existing tools before writing my own.

@Ell - back to work now. Busy day. Good luck!

Ell

15:47

It just so happens that my goal for the next 6 months is writing a SWF reader :P

@GlenPeterson See you, thanks for the advice :)

GlenPeterson

:)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenPeterson As a rule those tend to be good and beneficial edits but it's always good to post a comment to the OP saying something to the tune of "I made these edits to save the question, though feel free to revert them if you don't like the question in this form, however your original question is not fitting to the site and will be closed if you revert these edits." just so they know they can disagree and roll it back if they want. If they do then you can go ahead and post your own Q if you wish

user55340

@GlenH7 I might have mistweaked the title of the question on the MIT licenses to make it misalign with your answer.

Jimmy Hoffa

ugh parser written in C++, I'm sorry.

user55340

(I was trying to make the title match the question since the body of the question didn't have anything about enforcement - and yes, it was misguided)

user55340

16:19

Btw, I'm really liking this status bar extension I got for Safari. It even chases url shorteners down to what they link to.

jozefg

Mercurials [hg shelve] command rocks.. I now no longer miss git

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg shelvesets are awesome, one thing TFS has that keeps me from really thinking it's a total piece of shit

in mercurial can shelvesets be pulled by other users to their repo after you shelve it from yours?

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa No :( Sadly they seem to be stuck in some random .hg/shelves folder.

That'd be nice though..

Jimmy Hoffa

They're oft used in TFS for code reviewing and generally sharing super-beta work-in-progress stuff that you don't want in the source control under any circumstances but need to transfer it to another person's machine to get their help

yeah, it is, I shelve on my machine, someone else can pull on theirs, or I can do it to shelve from my desktop and pull on my laptop my work-in-progress etc

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Ah, that'd be nice. I have a lot of commits that are like "partial solution to blah" so I can change machines

I suppose in git you'd just rebase -i them away

Jimmy Hoffa

16:25

I shelve a lot when I get a long-tail of edits that I don't want to lose but arent' ready to check in and I start getting that sinking feeling when I think about the possibility of my local disk dying over the weekend while I'm out of the office

Just nice knowing it's not checked in but if my disk dies I won't lose my work

jozefg

Yeah that makes sense

Jimmy Hoffa

Having done the same thing here's what I've come up with as easy to use in my .NET day job: side effect free functions translate nicely, one of the biggest boons is the habit of making functions return things creating fluent interfaces, these make sense to my oop colleagues just fine, and they behave like expressions. Laziness is still a mess in most OOP because it's something you can't do halfway. Monads confuse, but monad-like interfaces tend to just seem good to OOP folks though they're not sure why/how you designed it as such. Higher order functions are well accepted these days as well. — Jimmy Hoffa 23 mins ago

@jozefg that sound about right to you?

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, I suppose the biggest benefit of FP is just learning to hate statements. They make for more unpleasant interfaces and are untyped, making it harder to get their ordering right.

reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1qiwhl/… Also this makes me happy

Jimmy Hoffa

> One survey found that 54 per cent of teachers felt their students knew more about ICT than they did

jozefg

Yup, but SPJ is actually heavily involved in that IIRC

Jimmy Hoffa

16:31

Alright, it's genuinely sad when a generation of Adults has grown to lack the confidence to think they're not dumber than children.

Always made me angry when I was a lad and teachers would profess how much they hated and didn't understand Math; are they so dumb as to not realize everytime they say this they're sabotaging the confidence of every student within earshot? Dumbasses.

What we need is to pay teachers a real wage so that we can hire some that aren't abhorent dumbshits

</rant>

gnat

@MichaelT yeah, I like that query. Put my dent into it, took just two days, as you wrote

Jimmy Hoffa

> The Raspberry Pi computer: a cheap tool for teaching computer schools to children.

That's one hell of a sentence.

jozefg

Hurray for proof reading

@JimmyHoffa Personally I'd love to learn a computer school.

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm so excited to teach my kid math and computers. If he's not interested I might just have to try the ol' van gogh ear-in-a-box, the way history remembers that, it clearly must be highly succesful

user55340

@JimmyHoffa My brother has been making 'treasure' maps for his daughter (4 years old) to follow.

jozefg

16:40

@JimmyHoffa Or you could try my parents technique: Forbid him from programming. Suddenly programming is the coolest thing since sliced bread :)

Jimmy Hoffa

Though I gotta say demanding everyone learn to program in high school is like demanding everyone learn how to draw. Some of us will simply never be able to draw for a damn, and some will simply never be able to make a code file compile.

user55340

They involve a series of clues that end up with a small stash of candy... often in a box that has a combination (travel style) lock on it. She needs to use the numbers she got in a way to unlock it.

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa The new for Rs, Reading, wRiting, aRithmatic, and programming (The R is silent)

user55340

For example, one time each number came on a colored piece of paper - that then had to be arranged in rainbow order to get the combination.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg No, it's bRogRamming, there's 2 Rs: RRuby.

jozefg

16:43

@JimmyHoffa Someone called me a brogrammer once.. just once..

Urk, I must go take a test, Bye!

user55340

He's also taken her to after the class college labs where he's taking classes. They went to a bio lab where she saw "germs" on the projector. She later drew them (and he gave the drawing to the lab director - "germs as seen by a 4 year old").

user55340

In spring, he's going to grow some pond water so that they can see things like amoebas, euglena and paramecium.

user55340

(the key bit, trying to make sure she is interested and comfortable with STEM at an early age)

user41796

17:24

@MichaelT - "Oh NOES! I've been downvoted!!!" RE: your tweak

user55340

@GlenH7 Yep. I was attempting to make the title a good one and match the text of the question... because, yep, as you noted the question was misguided.

user41796

Trying to decide if I care enough to delete the answer or not

user41796

For the peer pressure badge, does that need to be a question or would an answer work? Because I think I've deleted a -3 answer before.

user55340

There's a different question that would be a good one to ask (and possibly self answer) - who is responsible for enforcement of a license?

user55340

Answer would work.

user41796

17:28

@MichaelT Which is what I read the previous title to mean for that question.

user55340

Yep... and there's a much better way to phrase that question and expand on it (things like assigning copyrights so that someone can go after license infringements - or that MIT and Berkley have nothing to do with enforcement of their licenses... nor does Microsoft have anything to do with enforcement of the MPL)

user41796

Wanna down vote that answer? Then I'll be at -3 and can find out if it Peer Pressure would trigger or not?

user55340

There's a down vote for your badge...

user55340

Welcome to The Whiteboard - where we ask for down votes on our own answers... For Science!

user41796

Woo hoo!

user41796

17:30

I wonder if I need to wait a bit for whatever to actually register it or something before I delete

user41796

Where's an all-knowing evil mod when you need one?

user55340

I'm getting delicious MSO rep with my answer... whoot!

user55340

2

A: URL Shorteners cleanup

Just poking at some of the results that came up for the search to t.co - Is it possible to shorten url from Twitter API? - a quoted block of text from the twitter support site that has http://t.co that got linkified - no additional part beyond the host name. In Ruby, How do I get the destinatio...

user41796

This MSO post confirms that answers are included as part of the peer pressure badge

user41796

And now I wait....

user41796

17:39

W00t! Yay for me. I earned a peer pressure badge!

user41796

And I got my rep back

user55340

18:00

@GlenH7 Gotta go for the disciplined badge... I've got one of those (gave an answer that looked right to clojure, got up votes, someone else posted the right answer (and fussed that I had a higher score than he did (new person)), I explained a bit about votes and pointed out that he was right and I had deleted my answer (then a very happy new user... and that I had gotten a badge too!).

user41796

@MichaelT I've got it. Picked mine up a few months prior to you. :-)

user41796

Earlier in the year, I had gotten on a badges kick, so I tried to roll through and pick up as many as I could.

user55340

6/41/83 vs my 5/38/73

user55340

CEO doing a walkthrough for some visitors.

user41796

@YannisRizos - site birthday idea. How about a contest to roll through and answer old, unanswered questions? I'm thinking a 4 week event where we have 3 - 5 questions featured. We could curate a list through a meta question or something. Bonus round would be if we could get SE to offer up bounties on those questions for us.

user41796

18:09

@MichaelT time for an impromptu demo of Prog.SE?

user55340

@GlenH7 No need... she didn't walk down the programmer isle, doing more the outer ring.

user41796

always best to avoid the programmers. The risk of uncertainty justifies that decision.

user41796

"that's where all the geniuses are. we don't like to disturb them."

user55340

@GlenH7 that's almost word for word.

user41796

@MichaelT While I prefer to be a geek, I did very well as a consultant. Understanding how the business thinks and operates is key.

user55340

18:14

I think it was the CEO's daughter and her roommate... so not client walk through (though we've had those).

user55340

Didn't overhear too much of the intros... have headphones in.

user41796

headphones === goodness

user41796

heh, unintentional with the imagery there, but I like it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg agh [] for funcs and () for lists? No no no.. that's totally backwards :P

user41796

Does anyone know the story with this question?

user41796

18:23

14

Q: Define "production-ready"

I have been curious about this for a while. What exactly is meant by "production-ready" or its variants? Most recently I was looking for information about sqlite and found this thread, where many people suggest sqlite isn't ready for production. I know the difference between development/testing ...

production

user41796

Community killed all the answers.

user41796

Here's another:

user41796

14

Q: How do I kick-start my migration from Java to Scala?

In Scala, what are the essential areas that beginners (in my case, I migrating from Java) has to learn to master the language? Regardless of the method of learning (e.g., books, reading blogs, project euler) what order should one learn the essential aspects of Scala?

java scala

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - any chance at salvaging this one? Or is it just a mud-slinging waiting to happen? programmers.stackexchange.com/q/184958/53019

user55340

@GlenH7 failed migrations. They were migrated from SO to here. 30 days passed, deleted on SO. Time passes, we close it. The normal failed migration deleted here and sent back to SO, but since its gone on SO, the question remains not-deleted here.

user55340

18:34

Or something like that.

user55340

Its also locked, so we can't dv or reopen it. Its a "flag mod, ask them to undelete answers and unlock, or delete the question too" -- I've flagged both ways.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 The core is: "In what order should I learn concepts in language X" -- I don't see that question ever working really... Do you? If so do the edit but it's just hard to authoritatively say "You should learn Y by first learning A, then B, then C"

user41796

That seems.... dumb. I'm not saying they are great questions, but they must give a really odd impression to someone new and <10k looking at them

user55340

Here was an example that I flagged for delete today - programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/62519/…

user55340

On the other hand, this one was flagged for undeletes.

user55340

18:35

99

Q: Why hasn't a faster, "better" language than C come out?

With all the new "modern" languages out today, how is it that C is still heralded as the fastest and "closest to the machine"? I don't really believe in there ever being only one correct way to do things, and C has been around for a really long time (since the 60's!). Have we really not come up w...

c

user55340

(glance at the revision history of an answer and you can see that happening - programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/68490/revisions )

user41796

@MichaelT ok. I'll flag the ones I ran across. Dumb that we have to have the mods intervene, but whatevers

user55340

Its in part the multiple use of the lock and that we don't have many 20k answer undeleters around.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa it was out of my knowledge-sphere, so I wasn't really certain. I recalled the Phillips talk where he whinged a lot about Scala and his mentioning something along those lines.

user41796

@MichaelT I keep trying... :-)

user55340

18:38

Lets see... I had that search the other day that found 'em all... or most of 'em.

user41796

is:question answers:0 closed:yes migrated:no duplicate:no

user55340

yesterday, by MichaelT

@ChrisF the way I found it was I was poking at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=is%3Aquestion+answers%3A0+closed%3‌Ayes+duplicate%3Ano+migrated%3Ano - closed questions with no answers (that aren't dups and haven't been migrated). They are of... questionable value as they aren't serving as sign posts for dups, and aren't serving as answers for people to find... And some of them are failed migrations that should either be "yea, it was a different time then" or "nope, this needs to go"

user41796

is what I'm using today. That's either the same or close to what you used

user55340

Then there are the non-migrations that just had up votes prior to closing that need some delete votes on them.

user41796

@MichaelT oh, I was ignoring those. I didn't realize they were "stuck" and needed delete votes.

user55340

18:40

@GlenH7 Can you make fireworks happen on this one? or is that your vote at #2?

user55340

7

Q: Determining ethics of substance use to enhance programming

I recently came across a documentary by a major US television network on off-label use of Provigil, generic name of Modafinil. Two of the persons interviewed were in IT. One was an executive for a security outfit, the other appeared to be a programmer. The documentary touched upon some intere...

productivity ethics

user41796

@MichaelT The latter guess is correct.

user55340

Well, we'll have to wait for @gnat or a mod then...

user41796

At one point, I thought that the question had a chance of being made constructive. But I don't feel that way anymore.

user55340

This one has some fun names on the close votes...

user55340

18:44

8

Q: Why (or why not) are existential types considered bad practice in functional programming?

I've sometimes heard that using existential data types is sort of a bad practice in functional programming and that there are ways how to avoid it. I'd like to know, if it is really true, what are the reasons for (not) using existentials, and perhaps how to convert common code patterns that use t...

functional-programming haskell

user55340

If you want to know why the author of a particular blog post expressed an opinion then the person you should probably ask is the author. — Eric Lippert Feb 25 at 16:17

user41796

And I'm first!

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Got my reopen vote. The second part is actually a good question, the "Why do people believe" is obviously no good, I'm going to go clip that out but "How do you consistently refactor code to remove reliance on existential types?" is a perfectly good question (that he will never get an answer to)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Might need some rewriting of the question to get it a bit more focused, though if you and/or @jozefg have an idea for an answer for it...

user41796

I dislike closed questions with a decent amount of up-votes and no answers. I think it sends a bad signal from the site.

user41796

18:48

@JimmyHoffa ha! there's 2 delete votes standing in your way... :-) Seriously though, if you edit it to focus on that aspect then I'd be happy to vote to re-open

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT None whatsoever. Existential types are a concept I vaguely grasp

user41796

@JimmyHoffa May also be easier to just ask a new question so it avoids the baggage that one has.

user41796

dang. out of delete votes. I seriously need more rep.

Jimmy Hoffa

8

Q: Why (or why not) are existential types considered bad practice in functional programming?

What are some techniques I might use to consistently refactor code removing the reliance on existential types? Typically these are used to disqualify undesired constructions of your type as well as to allow consumption with a minimal of knowledge about the given type (or so is my understanding). ...

functional-programming haskell

user41796

and now I have one less reopen vote

Jimmy Hoffa

18:55

Baggage? Score of 8. Hit the front page from updates with a score of 8 and complex technical question, it should get respect, the baggage will be easily ignored. In fact, @WorldEngineer @YannisRizos either of you think that revision I made warrants the old comments be clipped to avoid confusing people?

I think I'll flag them as obsolete, you mods can decide if they're valuable back-story to keep or not.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I'm flagging a few as well. Not all of them need to go, but a few are downright confusing after the edit.

user41796

Heh. I flagged an Eric comment.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I'm still proud I flagged an answer from Joel about VBA and got it mod-deleted.

user41796

Take that you crazy language designer! Take that you crazy site founder!

user41796

I'll go back to my corner and code now.

user55340

19:00

So, what does it get next... 1 delete vote? or 1 reopen vote?

user55340

user41796

> Not sure if a mod can clear delete votes. Both MichaelT and I put our delete votes on here prior to Jimmy's edit. And for the record, he had previously said the question wasn't salvageable. So it's really all his fault this has a crazy vote count.

user41796

I try to make the mods laugh when they read my flagging commentary.

user55340

@GlenH7 They can delete and undelete. That will clear the votes.

user55340

Though, reopening it (with the 5th vote) will put the dv into stasis until its closed again.

user55340

19:03

Remind me to toss a bounty on this in a bit for it to get some more attention later...

user55340

6

A: Searching integer sequences

Hmm, I can think of two possible algorithms: A linear scan through the A sequence, or building a dictionary with constant-time lookup of the indices. If you are testing many potential subsequences B against a single larger sequence A, I'd suggest you use the variant with the dictionary. Linear ...

user41796

@MichaelT We should get @gnat to vote to delete. Then we could all vote to undelete.

user55340

Btw, am I crazy for putting my calculator on the computer in RPN mode?

user41796

@MichaelT Someone was trying to avoid studying.

user41796

@MichaelT It doesn't for me, but for some it makes more sense.

user55340

19:06

@GlenH7 The bit there is that study (he was writing perl code so I knew he was familiar with it) was an old optimization to add hints for regexes. The optimizations now are fast enough they always do them.

user55340

>
Takes extra time to study SCALAR ($_ if unspecified) in anticipation of doing many pattern matches on the string before it is next modified. This may or may not save time, depending on the nature and number of patterns you are searching and the distribution of character frequencies in the string to be searched; you probably want to compare run times with and without it to see which is faster. Those loops that scan for many short constant strings (including the constant parts of more complex patterns) will benefit most. (The way study works is this: a linked list of every character in the …

user55340

Which seemed applicable to the problem being described.

Jimmy Hoffa

19:18

@jozefg I'm having fun rewriting bits of your code, just for kicks. After wrestling with crappy .NET bugs the past couple days it's nice to fiddle in play code like this

@jozefg why Parsec and not Attoparsec?

user55340

Did a quick demo of an app that I wrote for fun awhile back (see github.com/shagie/MacSums for the source - yes, its objective C for a Mac program). Might be getting into iOS programming at some point in the next year here.

gnat

19:56

@GlenH7 there you go, I cast VtD, so that votes are cleared then cast undelete and reopen: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184958/…

your turn to vote undelete :)

user41796

@gnat Woo hoo! One less undelete vote for the day. @MichaelT it's your turn now.

user55340

user41796

@MichaelT That's a funny edit history

user41796

And all of my flags on that question went to helpful. Unfortunately, the comments are still there. At least the system lets me reflag the comments.

user55340

@GlenH7 I think that it only takes 3 + (vote count) flags on a comment to have the system auto delete it.

user41796

20:05

@MichaelT That sounds right for rude / offensive ones. Not sure about the others. Then again, I think I have seen some obsolete comments disappear after flagging.

user41796

oddly enough, my flag on the question itself reactivated.

user55340

> Comments that are flagged by multiple users are deleted automatically. The number of flags needed is based on the comment's score. It currently takes "3 + (Score / 3)" flags to delete a comment.

user55340

From:

user55340

67

Q: How do comments work?

Across the Stack Exchange network you may leave comments on a question or answer. How do comments work? Who can post comments? Who can edit comments? How can I format and link in comments? Who can delete comments? When should comments be deleted? What are automatic comments? How can I link to c...

support faq comments comment-replies

user41796

Dang, was going to ding you for not citing a reference.

gnat

20:09

@GlenH7 simple story actually - official feature for "rejected migrations". Closing the migrated question (other than dupe / further migration) locks it and kills all the answers that came from "outside" - lock and deletions are performed by Community user...

41

A: Allow diamond moderators to reverse question migrations?

status-completed... sort of. It's now possible to reject a migration, but rather than making this some special mod-only thing or yet another privilege/task you have to familiarize yourself with, it's instead a function of closing/deleting. If a migrated question is closed on the destination (mi...

user41796

@gnat This makes the sequence of events more clear. Still goofy, but I understand why it needs to be goofy.

user55340

The awkward part is the remaining undeleted, but locked (and because locked, can't be roomba'ed or dv'ed) without answers on the site.

gnat

20:31

@MichaelT when I feel strong that lock is harmful (for whatever reason, most often that it blocks deletion) and that I can make a compelling explanation for why it's so in 500 chars, I flag it for moderator and they take care of it

user41796

@gnat I think it would be easier if we started a petition and demanded a recall of the diamond from Community. I mean, that mod is just way out of control. Creates quite the mess for others to clean up.

user55340

@GlenH7 Uh... I really like Community's roomba deletes.

user41796

@MichaelT We can't just overlook the damage that diamond has done just because it does some nice things once a week. I think status has gotten to Community's head. Just because it has a diamond and is user #1 on every single SE site is no excuse for creating a mess.

2

user41796

Truth be told, I like Community. But I need to build up a ground swell of support against that mod since my mod campaign will be built around being a better mod than Community. It's really not personal, it's just my ulterior motives at work.

gnat

@GlenH7 for anything that goes against moderators, count me in

Jimmy Hoffa

20:46

@GlenH7 Campaigning on being a better mod than a poorly written bit of script? Really reaching for the stars aren't we? :P

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I have some concerns about the viability of the campaign, yes. That's why I figure I have to start way ahead of the election to build up that sense of Community being the common enemy. From there, I figure it's a simple substitution in people's minds. "Well that user already has a diamond, and he's a jerk. And this user has promised to be better than that jerk. So he gets my vote!"

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 oo do you feel that? I think it's working, I already think Community might be a socialist... wow this political messaging thing is strong stuff..

@GlenH7 Post-hoc Ergo Canem-hoc logic? Will your campaign stoop to no low?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I thought about targeting some of the other mods. But I figure they get enough grief as it is from new users when their carp questions get insta-closed. And I figured they would be better able to fight back. So yes, I guess there are limits to the depths I'm willing to sink to.

user55340

@GlenH7 You know you want to make @YannisRizos cry...

user41796

@MichaelT Anyone who can cause the collapse of the Greek economy is way beyond the reach of my pedantic invective.

Jimmy Hoffa

20:57

@MichaelT Based on what I've seen of his character, I don't think that's possible. Like Tyson, he might think about crying for a moment, but then he'd just bite your ear off instead.

user55340

Hmm... Yannis with a Mike Tyson style tattoo...

enderland

why not both

user55340

This calls for photoshop!

user55340

(Its either that, or a hangover style tattoo... "The Hangover 4 - Who was it that I was texting on Facebook last night? Why did he have to ask that question today?!")

user41796

@MichaelT He'd just nuke the question and move on though. I heard he has stealth diamond powers on every SE site. Negotiated in as part of his contract.

user55340

21:04

I'm almost tempted to do a "YannisRizos Facts" on M.P.SE in the style of the Jon Skeet facts on MSO.

3

user41796

@Sparticus - what's the countdown until you're free and finals are over?

user41796

@MichaelT You'd get my upvote

Sparticus

@GlenH7 Too damn long

had my second interview with my second company today

so I've got that going for me

user41796

@Sparticus 2nd interviews are always a good sign. I disliked that Accenture drug it out to 4 interviews. The 4th wasn't a real interview though. It's where they brought you in and gave you the offer.

enderland

@GlenH7 "can you read? here's a practical test"

Jimmy Hoffa

21:07

@Sparticus How'd it go?

user41796

@enderland I got to know a few of the interviewers and found out that some folk had actually blown the 4th round. Not quite sure how they did that, but they did. All you had to do was be polite to a bunch of partners and associate partners.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Isn't accenture an evil consulting firm where idiots come from to ruin company's projects for money?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa yep.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa define "evil"

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Treats employees shitty, lives off their ability to sell themselves not their ability to produce quality

user41796

21:10

I think you could make that claim about almost any medium to large consultancy.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Note the mouseovers in the links web.archive.org/web/20050211004745/http://despair.com/…

user55340

Accenture is the 'O'

user41796

Yeah, but they were also pretty up-front about their culture. Large consultancies are grinders, there's little doubt about that.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Yes. :) Though not all of them just trash company's money, some of them genuinely have decent folks who do good work. Also not all of them treat their employees like shit.

enderland

you'd think they could have figured the "are you an @#%#@" part earlier than round 4...

Jimmy Hoffa

21:12

the certain majority, but not all

Sparticus

@GlenH7 Funny, I just interviewed with a subsidiary of Accenture last week

user55340

@enderland Possibly, though not all... its one thing to talk with your lead and manager... but if you go up a few rungs on the latter, you may need a different attitude to talk with them.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Sparticus Don't hurt yourself...

Sparticus

@JimmyHoffa Good up until they got the SQL/HTML questions

@JimmyHoffa how so??

user55340

@Sparticus "Can I have a few seconds to call a greek friend of mine? I hear he ruined an economy too..."

Jimmy Hoffa

21:13

@Sparticus Yeah, but if it's entry level nobody else did well on the SQL stuff either, you whippersnappers are all terrible at SQL

user41796

@Sparticus The offer they gave me was reasonably competitive once you factored the almost-mandatory overtime in place. Not necessarily a bad option for 3 - 5 years until they promote you to Manager. At that point you're salaried & not hourly so it's time to bail because the hours don't drop off at all.

user55340

(though that's more Anderson and their auditing of big companies... weren't they tied up with Enron or something like that?)

Sparticus

@JimmyHoffa As a whippersnapper who hates SQL, can confirm

enderland

@JimmyHoffa heh I am working on SQL right now

Sparticus

my roommate is an SQL Guru... I am not

user55340

21:14

I've got a huge SQL thing on the very near horizon.

Sparticus

i knocked all the programming stuff out of the park though

they tried to fizz buzz me and I was like aw hell no, give me something tough

Jimmy Hoffa

@Sparticus What language?

enderland

they actually did fizzbuzz? nice :P

user55340

@enderland If it works as a 90% filter, it still works as a 90% filter.

Jimmy Hoffa

I don't think I've ever been given fizzbuzz. I've been given fibonacci, factorial, and implement a linked-list though

They're not terribly far off

user41796

21:17

@MichaelT that's why they effectively no longer exist

user55340

At Taos, it was "do you have a heartbeat, do you fog up a glass put in front of your face"... well, almost. Startup was "we're trying to hire anyone..." and I didn't know better. Tek was "you did the position we're hiring before? Ok. - the interview at SGI for that one was rather amusing too... lasted 5 minutes."

user41796

@Sparticus protip - once you land the offer from them, you can use that as leverage to prod other firms into being more ready to give you an offer. One of the big worries about college hires is whether or not the person has any skills. An offer from another organization is seen as a voucher that you apparently have skills.

user55340

Netapp was "team fit" and "fix this regex". Previous employer was "can you do flowcharts and a 1960's SAT?"

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT It used to be so much easier, it seems there's a hell of a lot more MBA/HR cruft between applicant and job than 10 years ago

Though maybe that's just an affect of my seniority now vs. then

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Current one was team fit and some high level architecture questions.

user41796

21:20

@JimmyHoffa blame agile. Even though you get rid of BAs, you don't get rid of the need to understand the business. That and it's easy to blame agile for everything.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa They're more interested in what you've done and accomplished than trying to prod various skill levels out of you. They figure if you don't know, you can learn because you've done it before.

user55340

That SGI (Tek) was amusing. I went in, he looked up and went "oh! It says Tek rather than Taos here" and I went "yep, its been over 6 months since that contract... so I'm free" and then we chatted for a bit, and then walked out of the room and asked me to show up the next day (and canceled the rest of the interviews for other people).

enderland

I still can't get over you guys complaining about the average quality of people who go into programming positions

user41796

@enderland calling us elitist? ;-)

enderland

No, I'm just holding out as much hope as I can that there are considerable numbers of "newer" people out there who are competent and qualified for development

user55340

21:25

@enderland I've seen rather... poor... new hires. They didn't fit in at all, it was obvious they didn't like coding, etc...

enderland

(I'm also wondering if I should change 'back' into software dev as an official career after these discussions lol)

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland It's all variable. If you couldn't fizzbuzz you would be unlikely to get more than 2 minutes into the phone screen at my current place, at my last place and before that as well if you were friendly and could blabber on and smile like an AppleBee's hostess you'd get the job

user55340

The period after the dot com boom was the worst - there were so many people thinking they'd get a job programming, make $100k for a few years, get a few million in stock options and then be out in 5 years... they weren't after programming, they were after a paycheck.

user55340

And hoping to win the stock market lottery... which had just broken.

Jimmy Hoffa

Recruiting quality is so largely controlled by HR/upper management at many places where they have absolutely no way of distinguishing a secretary from a programmer

enderland

21:27

@JimmyHoffa yeah this isn't any better in engineering btw, this pisses me off to no end actually so dont get me started

user41796

@JimmyHoffa company reputation also has a significant impact on the candidates that are interested in applying. The firm I work for specializes in engineering, not software. So we see a dramatically reduced number of applications.

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland On the bright side, those are the same idiots who make all the money in the country. :D Get it? Get it? It's a joke, because, well ok so it's kind of a sad joke but it's funny, you know, like when a clown cries, yeah funny

enderland

if I was a hiring manager of any significant group size I'd probably wage war against HR :|

user55340

There's a steady stream of people after the latest big job swing... doctors, lawyers, programmers... not sure what it is now. They're after the paycheck and the lifestyle that comes with it, but don't always have the skills or enjoying practicing those skills.

enderland

arg. I love it, I'm currently so frustrated with this open office environment though

Jimmy Hoffa

21:28

@enderland You'd end up spraypainting cockroaches in the basement and then fired

user41796

@enderland What I found to work was to train my HR coordinators. She was genuinely willing to understand what we needed as it made her a better recruiter. Not everyone is as interested in understanding / learning though.

enderland

where it's impossible to work without distractions

user41796

@MichaelT contract welders can easily pull 100k+ in a year. But you have to be willing to keep moving to the major construction projects.

user55340

You've got the "doctors go golf on Wednesday" and completely forget those are the ones that are in the process of retiring and slimming down their patient list... while you're more likely to be working all hours in a clinic somewhere or find yourself in a rural town as a GP (if you actually did that way rather than trying to be a specialist).

user55340

@GlenH7 But they don't have a lifestyle that people have idealized.

Jimmy Hoffa

21:30

@MichaelT Yeah, doctors work wayyy too much, and lawyers are vastly over available right now so they're more likely to end up working security or secretary or secretariat (horse racing lawyer!), but the poor kids who are making the choice of what they're going to do don't know any better

user55340

You've got the "layers go out drinking every night" lifestyle... or the absurd "code a few hours and party all the time" programmer... they just don't exist except in some isolated cases from an idealized time.

enderland

you guys make me depressed :) (in a not so serious way)

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland You're already in the industry and have a job you like, what's to be depressed about, be happy you're not in one of the really depressing situations in this industry, of which there are many

user41796

@enderland it all depends upon what you want to do. I pulled a lateral move so I could go back into development. I'm much happier now than I was before. I was an awesome systems integrator, but I love to code. And now I get to code for an engineering firm which is icing on the cake.

enderland

I just wish I had a comp sci undergrad degree, I have such a gap in the "basic theory" and most of my grad work was with a library

user55340

21:32

Here's something to think about... again the 'younger kids don't have the dedication' - slashdot.org/story/13/11/12/202210/…

enderland

> I'm part of one of these younger generations, and I'm honestly not interested in getting involved because I've seen how much of a raging asshole Linuz can be. He's a great maintainer, but he could be honest and give constructive criticism in less condescending ways. I'm not as experienced as he is, but that doesn't give him the right to be a complete dick in public theater.

user55340

(RTFA from the /. link: opensource.com/education/13/11/linux-kernel-community-growth )

user41796

@enderland I feel the same way - both of my degrees are in engineering. But you have to commit to continual learning anyway. Ends up not being that big of a deal.

enderland

@GlenH7 heheh you sound like me in a few years. I have undergrad engineering degree

but mechanical engineering has shitty jobs (pay well, but boring as @#$#)

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT To be fair, that it's all in C is half the problem. I wonder if the aging of the work force and the fact that nobody anywhere under 30 wants to write C these days will result in us getting some higher level abstraction for driver and systems coding in the next 10 - 15 years...

user41796

21:34

@enderland I think it's the inevitable routine nature of it that eats at you

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Compared to... what? What OS isn't written in C?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I know, thus the second part of my thought there... It's currently the only option, or the best one anyway

enderland

@GlenH7 most mechanical engineers end up in boring jobs because most of them are basically maintenance of existing systems. No one gets to really design big new things the way people normally go into it (plus I hate CAD and HVAC with a passion)

user41796

@enderland You need to consider a switch then, yes. :-) new design == risk. Which is anathema for an engineering organization. Successful engineering projects manage risk out of existence.

enderland

I'm doing hacklike software dev in an engineering org now though. I actually like being able to prototype projects for people who have no idea what they are doing (plus none of our IT people or "BA"s care enough to even write reqs well... lol)

user41796

21:37

@enderland I have had to correct some of my internal users before and point out "no, it doesn't work that way...."

user55340

Every single project that the company I work at now is risk - "if we do this, can we get into a new market? Dunno... lets try it out..." Fortunately, we've got a few products that we are able to run with and pay all the bills.

user41796

But I have had difficult users at every role I have been in, so this is no different

enderland

you mean you can't take a vague process and magically make software to do it? aww. here i was so confused @GlenH7 :)

why u no do magik!

user41796

@enderland clearly you don't know the right magick wordz

enderland

my coworker calls everything I do "magic" which is kinda fun :)

user41796

21:39

high-voltage (500kV) substation design is magic. Coding is easy in comparison.

enderland

I walked him through a callstack the other day just to show a high level what happens perspective - only 6 layers too and it was "woaaaah"

user41796

so that was "hello world" in a .NET framework?

enderland

lol

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Magic words: "please", "thankyou", "of course your butt doesn't look fat in those pants", "tar -xzvf", "+++atth0", "agile", "Program.FailFast()"

enderland

@JimmyHoffa calling shens on you knowing the tar commands

xkcd.com/1168

Jimmy Hoffa

21:43

@enderland we old school slackware users remember our package management being called "tarballs", if you didn't memorize one tar command you apparently only used the stock software

user41796

rpm ftw!

enderland

@JimmyHoffa this is true. I love being HERE of all places because you all implicitly challenge me to learn continuously, even though I'll never hit the levels of technical detail some of you have

user41796

@enderland A lot of it comes from having run into problems and trying to fix them. Normally, I would have avoided learning about C# garbage collection. Then I ran out of memory with a 64 bit app and had to figure out what the heck was going on.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Then you learned what happens when you pin things or use GDI on a web server

user41796

I'm just mad because I had (not) really bought into the lie of "garbage collection will do everything for you"

user41796

21:48

It works great, until it doesn't. And then it all falls apart. Hard.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Yeah, it's one of those "It will do everything for you! Unless you staple it's arm to a chair and tie that chair to a freight train, then chain that freight train to a mountain. Then you're screwed, so be careful not to do that."

It's one of those things it's important to understand some facts about but you won't know it until the freight train pulls the mountain over and the GC get's clobbered by a heap.

user55340

The thing is, you don't need the '-' in 'zxvf', tar exists prior to the options with hyphen as a convention.

user55340

The real test is if you know uuencode and uudecode.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT The real test is if you can read man pages with nothing but echo and less

Because we all end up trying at some point when we totally fucked a system up.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa multi gig Lists will do that I guess....

enderland

21:53

I love greping man pages

linux is awesome

user55340

I wrote recipes into a man page section.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 haha I know exactly what happened. You thunked an expression, welcome to what happens when you let Haskell developers bring their tech to your language: You get to learn what a thunk is.

user55340

Btw, cookingforengineers.com - good site.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I consistently mean to go back to that site everytime I see it..

user55340

Things like cookingforengineers.com/recipe/34/Garlic-Roasted-Potatoes

Jimmy Hoffa

21:56

I should write up some drink recipes there. I'm a good cook but my cooking technique is far too test-driven to create proper engineering manuals for them

I have most of my drink recipes quite well measured out though

user41796

@JimmyHoffa nah, easier than that. thousands of really large objects stashed in a list made it go boom. Of course, the large objects were just large arrays of slightly smaller objects.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa assertTrue(Steak, "tasty");

user20683

assertFalse(Steak, "on fire");

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Long lived list?

user55340

I'd flip those assert order... I'd like to make sure its not on fire before I check on the tasty aspect of it.

user20683

21:59

@MichaelT Flambe

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer Flamface

user55340

@WorldEngineer Thats well and fine... but putting things on fire in my mouth isn't something I tend to enjoy doing.

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