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Matt D
Matt D
12:19 AM
rofl
 
 
1 hour later…
user41796
1:23 AM
@RobertHarvey You say that as if it's a bad thing….
 
user55340
 
user55340
> The nun asked: “How will I know when I have learned enough to use threads wisely?”

Banzen replied: “When you no longer wish to use them.”
 
user41796
I <3 threads
 
user41796
@MichaelT - not sure what to suggest to thunderforge as he's not listening to what you and gnat are saying. He's locked on the idea of "someone could answer this with expertise" and doesn't see the poll nature of the question.
 
user41796
perhaps the problem is that he's asking a 3 part question regarding technical debt, documentation, and whether he should get over it or not.
 
user55340
1:34 AM
Always act within local scope. Trying to determine if something is a global will lead you to misery. Just work at making what you work with the best you can given the constraints you have.
 
user55340
Then you can look to see that those constraints are universal themselves and realize that unless you go to some magical place that is free of said constraints (ha!), most code will look quite similar.
 
user41796
I should heed that advice more often.
 
user55340
The only time you find 'idealized' code is when you are paying someone by the hour to write it, or when you find a place where the engineers have gone to gold-plating documentation for the sake of gold plating alone.
 
user55340
Agile means that you're building and billing as fast as you can. Waterfall means you're working in corporate IT and everything falls apart once you leave the design phase but are on some sort of timeline that doesn't let you go back and fix the design or document what you are writing.
 
user41796
yeah, can't argue with those two cases for idealized code.
 
user55340
1:38 AM
Managers pay lip service to code reviews as a way to try to say that their team / department is pro ducting quality code and all those other teams that don't code review are to blame for the outages.
 
user55340
People think that startups are nice, until they go and work in such an environment and find that they've got even more absurd constraints than other, more mature, coding environments. Sure, they start out with something simple, but once sales starts describing what your product can do it never remains simple at all.
 
user41796
(signed) sales driving development is always a dangerous place to be. The contract almost never provides enough time or money to build what was promised.
 
user55340
Your best chance for good code is actually IT development. Its odd, but thats where you have the most opportunity for downtime between projects to refactor.
 
DragonLord
DragonLord
There's a good reason the logo for Programmers shows three monitors. I'm a student using three monitors at home (and two on campus, thanks to this) for my computer science coursework and I probably wouldn't be able to finish my assignments on time without the extra monitors. That's how important they are to me. — DragonLord 7 mins ago
How much do multiple monitors matter to you?
 
user55340
Your customer is an internal one and if you have a politically capable enough manager you can push back any deadline. It requires political expenditure, but it can be done (compared to trying to have the engineering team say "we need to fix this, no new features for customers for the next 3 months" or consulting saying "we need to bill you for 40 hours to make it pretty")
 
user41796
1:44 AM
@MichaelT I'm half tempted to steal some of this and put it as an answer to the meta question.
 
user55340
@GlenH7 Go right ahead. I'm just waxing on my many lives in software development.
 
user41796
Actually, I think I'll drop a transcript link into chat in my answer. That will be easier.
 
user55340
At SGI, I was in tech support... I don't recall seeing much actual code there (tech support). Cisco was a mess with its code. I remember glancing at it... tight deadline, engineering (I was in QA) as opposed to internal IT.
 
user41796
@DragonLord They're good to have. Not worth quitting a job over though.
 
user55340
The startup was a complete mess because it had to keep refocusing every time it turned around to what sales was trying to sell next to make a paycheck not bounce (they did bounce - the paychecks). Netapp was were I was actually able to go and do things from time to time....
 
DragonLord
DragonLord
1:47 AM
@GlenH7: There's less than two weeks left in the semester. Having the extra desktop space to work with is a godsend.
 
user55340
Granted out of 10+ years of coding there in internal IT I think I might have had maybe a month of refactoring the code. I do know that code I wrote years before kept getting tacked on with new hacks to it. Some really ugly things - they worked, why fix them?
 
user55340
There was only a few really well designed projects, but then that is because it was start from scratch with a manager who could say "we're doing it the right way as long as it takes" - and we did.
 
user55340
@DragonLord That 'semester' thing. Been awhile. I've had 2 monitors on home machines for a very long time. Work machines were dual monitor for the past 3 years.
 
user55340
Previous employer... a complete fluster cluck of code. Much of that waxing was about them. Absurd deadlines, no time at all, code reviews to push blame to other departments. In the name of "quality" we were supposed to get 25% method coverage for unit tests once... so we were instructed to write unit tests for all the trivial methods and leave the big ones alone as it would take too long.
 
DragonLord
DragonLord
@MichaelT I don't think many of my CompSci classmates know just how much of a difference multiple monitors can make. Everybody's grades would go up if we all had at least two monitors to work with :)
 
user55340
1:52 AM
Current employer, I'm in consulting / engineering. Documentation is nice, but billable hours are better... and that sales driven development thing too.
 
DragonLord
DragonLord
I'm not a professional programmer, but I know firsthand the productivity advantage multiple monitors make.
 
user41796
@MichaelT - added my answer to my meta question. Dunno if it will help or not.
 
user41796
@DragonLord There are some studies that back up those claims. However, the studies I have found were funded by monitor manufacturers. So the results are a bit dubious. Even then, anecdotal evidence backs the claim as well.
 
user55340
So - is it better anywhere else? Nope. But you can work to make incremental improvements were you work. We're putting in a CI server. The node side of the house is trying to get the javascript unit tests to always run on those builds and store the data. The Java side of the house is looking to get the builds pushed to sonar.
 
user55340
There's only one study you need to cite - theonion.com/articles/…
 
psr
psr
1:58 AM
@MichaelT Currently one pin, five stars, 0 feature requests on MSO. This should be fixed.
 
DragonLord
DragonLord
@GlenH7 About a year ago, I was racing to finish my term project for a software engineering class, and I didn't have any extra monitors to work with. I decided to use my parents' HDTV as a makeshift extra monitor while they were in bed. It was a bit awkward to be working with a 55-inch display behind a 15.6-inch laptop screen, but it paid off. I worked through 5 AM on the last two days of the semester, and I barely managed to finish all of my assignments on time.
 
user55340
@psr I just got 2k rep on MSO... I'm wondering would that would do to my rep there if I was to propose it.
 
psr
psr
@MichaelT I assume you would overflow the buffer.
 
DragonLord
DragonLord
There was no way I could have completed the project without the extra display.
 
user55340
I can't get more rep than Skeet though... the universe wouldn't allow it.
 
psr
psr
2:01 AM
@MichaelT I would be way ahead of Skeet if it weren't for the stupid universe.
 
user41796
@DragonLord I have worked professionally with multiple monitors for at least 5 or 6 years now, maybe longer. The best setup was when I had 3x24s but it was fun when I had 2x30s.
 
user55340
Ok... so we've got Yannis, animuson... who else has a good hat?
 
user41796
@psr Some things in life are there just to remind us that we're not the best / fastest / whatever. :-)
 
user41796
@MichaelT S.Lott has a small sailing type hat on in his profile.
 
user55340
Ohh... here's another good one...
 
user55340
2:06 AM
 
user41796
Tim Post is sporting a santa hat at the moment.
 
user55340
That's an artificial hat for the season... I'm after more long term hat wearing.
 
user41796
@RobertHarvey - regarding your stalker. My money is on S.Lott. I think he's bitter that you overtook him this year as the top rep user on the site.
 
user41796
@MichaelT Does 9000 count?
 
user41796
 
user55340
2:08 AM
Does Shog have his old avatar on any sites?
 
user41796
 
user55340
 
user55340
There we go... hat.
 
user41796
beat me to it; was just about to post his
 
user41796
Not a hat, but funny:
 
user41796
2:10 AM
 
user55340
(and I'm trying to go for people who have some MSO notability too...)
 
user41796
 
user55340
Don't want random P.SE people going "who? what? MSO?!"
 
user41796
@MichaelT yeah, better ignore that Atwood reference then. No one knows who he is.
 
user55340
I've got Shog in there twice...
 
user55340
2:11 AM
And Yannis is first.
 
user55340
 
user55340
Grr...
 
user41796
I'm giving up on the hat game. Need to go bake some banana bread instead of staring at a screen.
 
user55340
2:28 AM
0
Q: Our favorite mod hats

MichaelTSeveral of our favorite MSO trolls mods wear hats or other things on their heads in their user images. In particular: (yes, Shog is in there twice) As you can see, hats and other head covering things (what is that by the way?! Is that Ylvis?) are a very important part of the identity for...

discussion winterbash
 
user55340
I'm hoping for some up votes on that to counter the impending down votes.
 
user20683
@MichaelT granted
 
user20683
I have coffee
 
user55340
@WorldEngineer heh. Thank you.
 
user20683
it is 9:30
 
user20683
2:29 AM
this is probably not the best idea.
 
user55340
I'm just disappointed... I seem to recall Thomas having a hat once.
 
user20683
@MichaelT I think he may have. Not sure.
 
user20683
I have three hats
 
user55340
I've got... many.
 
user55340
Three barmah hats and countless baseball style. Just got a Stanley one this weekend (can with 4x pairs of nice socks... I was buying the socks)
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
2:32 AM
@Carter81: Ah, yes, because obviously that's the only thing we care about; our fragile egos. Voted to close as "not viable." — Robert Harvey 5 hours ago
Not a hat, but I decorated my Chinese symbol for the holidays.
 
user55340
@psr So it shows up in your notifications too - meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/209682/our-favorite-mod-hats
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
I don't wear hats.
 
user55340
@RobertHarvey Would you wear a Yannis hat if one existed?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
I live for the Yannis hat.
 
user55340
2:44 AM
.... there are a surprising number of my little pony based avatars on MSO.
 
user20683
@MichaelT There are a tremendous number of bronies on the site. I believe the majority hail from Gaming. I'm not sure.
 
user55340
@WorldEngineer I stumbled into a bad place last night on tumbler... they kind of scare me.
 
user20683
@MichaelT Still better than mechies.
 
user55340
@WorldEngineer ... don't wanna know.
 
user20683
@MichaelT Yeah...it's better that way.
 
user55340
2:49 AM
That said, don't search for "Transformers: Kiss Players" unless you are willing to go there (I read Shortpacked webcomic... it was linked form there... and that's my excuse)
 
user20683
@MichaelT Entirely unrelated question. Is Web Programming supposed to be so scattered and disjointed?
 
user55340
@WorldEngineer How do you mean?
 
user20683
@MichaelT Seems like all the tutorials are all over the place. Lots of fragmentation.
 
user20683
I've got a decent handle on HTML and basic CSS and basic JS but little beyond that and it seems to be a tangled jungle.
 
user55340
Its an area that a lot of new people enter into... so lots of tutorials. New frameworks and other flavors of the day are constantly showing up... so you've got half finished ones there too.
 
user55340
2:54 AM
The people who have been in the area for awhile tend to settle down, learn a framework and go from there.
 
user20683
my feeling is go finish that Django thing I was groking through and then do something with it. Node looks interesting as well.
 
user20683
Flask might be a better starting point
 
user55340
@Ampt I hear your handiwork outside! (rumble rumble rumble)... we're supposed to get 8" of snow over the course of the next few days here.
 
user20683
I think the gap for me is "webpage set -> webpage ecosystem"
 
user55340
Another part to consider is getting the various ecosystems to work together... which is also quite disjoint.
 
user20683
2:58 AM
@MichaelT yeah
 
user55340
We've got two javascript (node / angular) guys, 2 java (tomcat + stripes), a python (integration) and mobil devices guy. We're all working together on the same thing with at least 4 different ecosystems that need to play nice.
 
user55340
(Mod hats: +9 / -0)
 
user55340
3:12 AM
I'm gonna play some xcom. I'm still quite amused at the direction that hats question has taken. Who knows, maybe we will get a Yannis hat.
 
user20683
@MichaelT enjoy, slag a sectoid for me.
 
user55340
I saved just before Gangplank mission.
 
user20683
@MichaelT Don't have the new one :)
 
user55340
This is the 'old' DLC (slingshot).
 
user55340
Though I do have the new DLC. Both of my heavies (bullet swarm - shooting as a first action doesn't end the turn) have genmod eyes - the second shot after a miss gets +10 aim.
 
user20683
3:16 AM
@MichaelT huh, I'll have to check it out after this job hunt thing is done with.
 
user55340
4:21 AM
@WorldEngineer Heh. I don't think it was meant to be done with that many heavies. Turned out my best available team was 3x heavies (all with 2x rockets) - two of which were gene mod. One assault, one sniper and one support (wish I had more - got nervous at the end with the damage)
 
user55340
But it was "find thing, rocket, find thing, rocket find thing (hmm, 4x aliens next to it, bonus!) rocket, find thing, rocket, etc... Rockets make everything better.
 
gnat
gnat
8:36 AM
4
A: Is it possible on MSO to question something that people hold dear without getting "disagreement downvoted"?

gnatBelow recipe will likely be heavily downvoted by the same group it is intended to work against, but somehow, I don't give a shit. A solid way to ensure unbiased evaluation of your question is to build a support group prior to posting it. If you convince handful of users that your ideas are wort...

 
 
2 hours later…
gnat
gnat
10:48 AM
it finally happened...
-4
Q: Close Votes are reached 100k in SO

BGSClose Votes have reached 100k in SO. So many votes are "waiting for review" for so many users. When will it be reduced? 10,102 users found with 3000 + score. Each user has 40 reviews per day. But day by day the queue increases. What's the plan in SO?

discussion
 
gnat
gnat
10:58 AM
 
gnat
gnat
11:40 AM
free spam flags...
-2
A: Leading an offshore team

bcssarlparisif you give many $ for fogbugz it is so bad now a day many open source Scrum Project Management tool available in the market like www.quickscrum.com and many more so you may use this tool for your project management and decries your investment.

 
 
4 hours later…
user55340
3:29 PM
@ThomasOwens didn't you once have an icon with a hat in it?
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@MichaelT I don't think so, no. Except during winter bash.
 
user55340
Maybe it was just claiming that you could do a good fedora back once...
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Yeah. I couldn't find a pic and I don't have a decent fedora right now.
I do need to go hat shopping. I need new hats.
 
user55340
@ThomasOwens barmahhatsusa.com
 
user55340
 
user55340
3:32 PM
You know you want to...
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I want one of these too:
 
user55340
3:48 PM
@ThomasOwens only 230 rep away from 10k on MSO? Then you can see all the fun!
 
user55340
5:02 PM
@gnat that package private thing in Java... someone hunted up the oak specification for access.
 
user55340
1
A: Why did Java make package access default?

assyliasThe likeliest reason is: it has to do with history. Java's ancestor, Oak, only had three access levels: private, protected, public. Except that private in Oak was the equivalent of package private in Java. You can read section 4.10 of Oak's Language Specification (emphasis mine): By default...

 
user55340
Apparently private didn't exist before and what was "private" was what is now considered default package protection.
 
user55340
> By default all variables and methods in a class (including constructors) are private. Private variables and methods can be accessed only by methods declared in the class, and not by its subclasses or any other classes (except for classes in the same package).
 
user55340
So that was the default in oak, but they realized they needed a more strict private later, so added the private modifier, but didn't change what default was.
 
user55340
5:17 PM
@ThomasOwens ... btw, I just checked where that image was loaded from. I can't say there is anything wrong with that. More that I'm sure that it would cause some corporate firewalls to raise an eyebrow at the url when it shows up in the access logs.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@MichaelT I just pulled a random pic from Google...I...oh.
 
user55340
@ThomasOwens I'm certain that you did. I'm still snickering about it though.
 
user55340
5:45 PM
(there's a C# monad question sitting unanswered... where is @JimmyHoffa ?)
 
user55340
@Undo you're looking a bit blue.
 
Undo
Undo
@MichaelT It is the holidays :)
 
user55340
Clearly it is not a hat. I am a kitty. :P — animuson 15 hours ago
 
user55340
@animuson I'm still picturing you going around asking "what does the fox say?" (yes, its a link to that youtube video for those not familiar with the context) — MichaelT 2 hours ago
 
user55340
 
user55340
5:56 PM
I'm still seeing what does the fox say.
 
psr
psr
6:12 PM
19
A: Hidden features of Haskell

Norman RamseyGeneralized algebraic data types. Here's an example interpreter where the type system lets you cover all the cases: {-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-} module Exp where data Exp a where Num :: (Num a) => a -> Exp a Bool :: Bool -> Exp Bool Plus :: (Num a) => Exp a -> Exp a -> Exp a If :: Exp Bool -

A similar thing recently took me 3 days in MUMPS. The Haskell code looks a lot like my comment at the top to explain the damn thing. Sigh.
 
user55340
The next great task - implement haskell in MUMPS (and get @JimmyHoffa to become a MUMPS programmer)
 
user55340
And @psr I hope you liked that MSO post.
 
psr
psr
@MichaelT That would just be cruel to all parties involved. Especially the MUMPS programmers asked to maintain the haskell code.
 
user55340
@psr But think of it... you could throughly confuse them at SO with a MUMPS and haskell tag... and you'd get all the haskell programmers as possible MUMPS programmers. You could call it HUMPS.
 
psr
psr
@MichaelT Every now and then someone tags a Intersystems-Cache question with something like C# and sit-com like hilarity ensues. Often the question is closed by 5 really confused C# programmers.
 
user55340
6:17 PM
@psr C#HUMPS?
 
psr
psr
@MichaelT A reasonable name for programmers in the yet-to-be-written C#/haskell/MUMPS.
 
user55340
I was trying to think of a way to mix the names of php and mumps. And my brain stopped working at the horror of what I was trying to think of.
 
psr
psr
It might be worth creating the language as haskell for the .NET runtime - just so that when Jimmy Hoffa finally has his dream language chunks of MUMPS have been inexplicably thrown into it.
 
user55340
If you mixed LISP and MUMPS you'd get LUMPS... which is what those silly ((()()(()))) look like if you stare at them too much.
 
psr
psr
@MichaelT Oh, php and mumps have already been mixed. The resulting language is called mumps (rimshot).
 
user55340
6:42 PM
NPR at Quora for fun - quora.com/Internships/…
 
user55340
> In my first high school coding job — I guess that made me a tech intern — I burned down the entire office due to a cabling mistake. It was a total loss, displaced 100+ people, and destroyed lots of files, records, artwork, and a lot of the CEO's memorabilia. He never blamed me, but I think he knew it was my fault.
 
Ampt
Ampt
8:00 PM
@MichaelT Hopefully they're keeping the roads clean and clear! Safety is our #1 priority (after CUSTOMER CUSTOMER CUSTOMER)
 
user55340
@Ampt Its snowing again here... not surprising.
 
Mike
Mike
was snowing here, now rain
 
user55340
 
user20683
For today's mind bending piece of Python:

def reverse(string):
return string[::-1]
 
user55340
@WorldEngineer btw, item in the low quality review for you to poke at in your super duper mod powers.
 
user20683
8:08 PM
@MichaelT I saw, was just getting around to it
 
user55340
Btw, fun bit on snow... apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041130.html
 
user55340
 
user20683
@MichaelT Care to take a vacation down south? It's only raining here.
 
user55340
@WorldEngineer Only if you can persuade @Ampt to clear my driveway and sidewalk while I do so.
 
user55340
That said, I do like snow.
 
user55340
8:23 PM
Hmm... photos from a ski trip in Yosemite a number of years ago...
 
user55340
 
user55340
 
user55340
 
user55340
Street signs give you the proper impression of depth of snow... and a bit of "what do you mean warning downhill curves ahead?!" while on cross country skis.
 
user55340
Ohh! Comment answer on my filtering the queue in MSO!
 
user55340
8:26 PM
0
A: Easy close review queue filtering interface

Shog9I like this idea, but I hate the notion of a click-through page, and I really hate those big honkin' pie charts. David Fullerton proposed a fairly simple UI change that could make filters a good deal more obvious without unduly disrupting the UI: Keeping those counts up-to-date is expensive,...

 
user55340
@gnat ^--- read the above. You might like it.
 
user55340
 
Joe
Joe
Hello
 
user55340
'lo
 
Ampt
Ampt
8:50 PM
@WorldEngineer sorcery it is
ok, so question for you guys. I'm writing a bare bones web server in java (For my web apps course) and we have to be able to properly return different file types while providing the correct meta data
so far its just html, text, and some simple images
but as that grows so will the logic I'm putting in now. Does it make sense to encapsulate the behavior of putting together the meta data into an object like a WebImage class that has a getMetaData method?
then returning what the requested will be the same no matter what kind of file they want
or am I over-complicating this
 
user55340
9:37 PM
8
Q: Convert Fractran into Brainfuck

PhiNotPiBackground Fractran is an esoteric Turing-complete programming language invented by John Conway. A Fractran program consists of an ordered list of fractions. The program starts by taking a single integer as input. Each iteration of the program, it searches the list for the first fraction such th...

code-golf
 
user55340
9:49 PM
Ok, done answering that question about my favorite esolang...
 
user55340
@Ampt will you ever touch on CGIs? Mostly curious... and they're so much fun.
 
Ampt
Ampt
@MichaelT probably in my graphics class
unless you mean simple stuff like progress bars
thats usually just javascript libraries for us
 
user55340
CGI is "stick a bunch of stuff in environment variables, fork and exec another program, take its output and spit it back out as if it was a file"
 
user55340
10:16 PM
@Ampt I'd make an interface or abstract class (as appropriate) "WebFile". This would have two functions: getData and getHeader that return the appropriate data structures for the web server. Note that that might not be the best approach if you do have CGIs and the like which return their own headers instead of having the web server generate it for them...
 
user55340
or things like the .asis handler in apache. httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_asis.html
 

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