The Whiteboard

@FrostEngineer Y'know, users (with, say, 500 rep) should be able to open a chat window from a question any time they want (without having to wait for the "move to chat" comment). The OP should be able to follow them in there, regardless of rep.

user20683

6:55 PM

I'd raise the rep reqs for that but yeah

user20683

maybe 2500

user20683

Honestly as far as programming goes (as most teens I've run into want to do games) I'd say just learn Python or Lua, then C++ or Java

Robert Harvey

@gnat: Do you have a list of those "recommended reading" posts?

user20683

or hell just learn JS and HTML5 and call it done

gnat

recommended reading: **[Where to start?](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6367/31260)**

recommended reading: **[Open letter to students with homework problems](http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6166/31260)**

recommended reading: **[Why is asking a question on “best practice” a bad thing?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/142354/165773)**

Robert Harvey

6:59 PM

@FrostEngineer It's amazing how far you can get with those. If you also learn some CSS3 you have very nearly a complete programming system.

user20683

@RobertHarvey with WebGL (I want a new computer just for that, stupid GMA nonsense) you can do some really powerful stuff

user20683

You can also built mobile and Metro apps in JS

Robert Harvey

Good Morning America?

user20683

@RobertHarvey Intel's integrated nonsense

user20683

Graphics something Adapter I think

user20683

7:01 PM

Graphics Media Accelerator

Robert Harvey

How does writing a web server using Node.JS compare with, say using IIS to do the same thing?

Or apache? Is there a lot of non-trivial plumbing?

Can you knock up a reasonable MVC implementation?

user20683

@RobertHarvey My understanding is that it's not terribly hard

user20683

Meteor.JS is the most known MVC serverside JS thing as far as I can tell

Robert Harvey

But if you use a SPA framework in the browser, you don't even need that, I guess.

I wonder about routing.

@FrostEngineer Maybe we can tag those posts @Gnat cited with a recommended-reading tag?

Does meta.programmers have a "featured" tag?

user20683

@RobertHarvey It does

Robert Harvey

7:06 PM

Maybe we can just "feature" those.

user20683

can't feature the last one

user20683

it's on Meta.SO

gnat

@RobertHarvey I am not sure if "best practice" reference is politically kosher to serve as an official stuff. It's Rosinante at his best, if you catch my drift...

34

A: Why is asking a question on "best practice" a bad thing?

While you may be an exemplary, clear-thinking, individual, who uses the term 'best practice' in a constructive manner, you have been preceded by a giant procession of zombies who use it as the antithesis of thought. Instead of understanding the important specifics of their situation and looking f...

> the term 'best practice' has been rendered an extremely strong signal of a empty resonant cavity in the place where a brain should be, and questions that mention the phrase get closed.

Robert Harvey

You have point there.

Hmm, there's 14 featured posts on Meta. They all have bounties.

I guess that bitcoin... er, rep stuff on Meta has some use after all.

gnat

@RobertHarvey at MSO, I often use bounties as bookmarks (more convenient than favorites) - meta.stackoverflow.com/users/165773/…

Robert Harvey

7:10 PM

Self-destructing bookmarks.

gnat

@RobertHarvey no destruction really, they all are listed in "offered" tab

user20683

@StackExchange Quiet you

Robert Harvey

lol

user20683

also I never thought I'd see the day when I was actively trying to learn about Maven

user20683

7:30 PM

@GlenH7 Good Afternoon

user41796

@FrostEngineer Hola!

user41796

was catching up on the afternoon's transcript. Much quicker on the weekend

user20683

aye

user20683

people wonder why so many questions get closed here, it's because the weekends are effectively dead. So, our very slightly higher close rate is exaggerated.

user41796

And now I'm off to take down christmas lights from the house. We have unseasonably warm weather, and I don't want to miss this window.

user41796

7:33 PM

@FrostEngineer I'd almost feel bad about the closed questions if the questions weren't demonstrably poor.

user20683

yeah, we are back where we should be

user20683

50s and there abouts

user41796

And there's just no salvaging many of them. "I'm about to go into CS, what should I study?" It's blatant off-topic and no heroics can save that.

user20683

That needs to become a massive series of blog posts

user20683

but my attention is so divided right now

user41796

7:34 PM

@FrostEngineer You're not alone on that front either.

user41796

<---- whinging. :-)

user15026

There needs to be more hours in the day.

user41796

Indeed! But until that happens, those xmas lights aren't taking themselves down by themselves

user15026

This is true. Someone should work on that technology.

user20683

@GlenH7 You need older children

user20683

7:38 PM

then the lights come down..."by themselves"

user20683

plus it teachers the kids about electrical engineering

user20683

so it's win win

gnat

8:52 PM

-11

Q: Closed questions just becoming more and more?

Questions on Stack Overflow is just getting closed all over and over again. Mostly about duplicates or off-topic. Is there anything Stack Overflow can do about this?

4

A: Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?

I would like to address one point I noticed in quite a few prior answers here: conceptual question on software development, why wouldn't I ask it on Stack Overflow... 1 On StackOverflow, many questions that are not in the prohibited categories... 2 there is considerable overlap between...

user55340

9:22 PM

@WorldEngineer Blog challenge... February?

user20683

@MichaelT debating the idea

user55340

@GlenH7 I just leave mine up... hanging at least... all year. Only powered from Halloween (I wear a santa hat) to when I can see the grass.

user41796

10:11 PM

@MichaelT Once I get the patio built out with some sort of overhead structure, I'll do that back there. It's a much more pleasant way of lighting up an area. Fortunately, taking the lights down goes a lot faster than putting them up. I can pop the hooks out with a pole whereas I have to place the hooks by hand.

ChrisF

11:31 PM

@MichaelT The answer to your question is "yes".

user55340

@ChrisF I suspected so. Yea for cross site mods!

ChrisF

@MichaelT You can guarantee that if a migration fails then the user is question blocked or suspended on the target site. I usually don't bother checking first these days.

user55340

@ChrisF well, had one easier that was because visual-basic is blacklisted on SO... so that question needed a slightly different push.

ChrisF

@MichaelT Ah. I forgot about the lack of tags thing. That doesn't affect moderators - we can migrate regardless of the tags

user20683

@ChrisF I adjusted the tag and forced it

user55340

11:35 PM

Yep, thus the additional push needed. when I cast the 5th migrate vote, I often check to make sure that everything is right on the target site. That visual basic one 'closed' too fast, didn't feel like the migration had been done.

ChrisF

Now I think of it the "failed" message should be different though.

user55340

It would be useful to know why it failed for the 5th voter (no common tags (XYZ blacklisted), question banned, failed quality filter, etc...)

ChrisF

I think it should. I see a "user is question blocked" message if that's the case.

user55340

Just curious, is this one question banned to? or did @FrostEngineer use magical mod close to stop it in its tracks?

user55340

0

Q: Recursive maze generation

So I wanted to create a maze generation algorithm for fun, but I hit a bit of a bump. The algorithm I wrote puts in spaces that are unreachable and that have no exit. What could the problem be? package mazecreation; import java.util.*; public class MazeCreation { static char[][] maze; ...

java recursion

ChrisF

11:40 PM

Not question banned.

Matt D

morning

ChrisF

Apparently I was wrong about the "migration failed" message. It's moderator only.

user20683

@MichaelT That one got closed on SO I think

user55340

Other ideas on failed migration - an auto flag of some sort? Let mods (or mods + 10ks) know about it so that it can be tweaked into the proper format (and then flagged for mod migration)... or explained why it wasn't migrated.

user55340

@WorldEngineer that would explain it too.

ChrisF

11:46 PM

@MichaelT Suggest it on meta. The flag would only need to be raised for the missing tags case. In the other cases we can't migrate anyway - nor would we want to.

user55340

(argh... 14 min from more close votes)

ChrisF

Suggest that it's a flag visible to regular users - so they can make the necessary edits (retagging etc.).

user55340

@ChrisF The thing is the other ones should have an explanation to the OP as to why it is off topic on this site and that trying to get around a question ban won't help anyone...

user55340

Questions that are of the nature "whats wrong with my code" or "why isn't this working" are most often appropriate for Stack Overflow rather than P.SE (this site is more about the design phase of development than implementation or debugging). If you are question banned on SO, please don't use P.SE as an overflow for the questions - our scope is different and repeatedly doing so will likely find you question banned here too. Please read What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”? — MichaelT 11 mins ago

ChrisF

@MichaelT They won't care

user55340

11:49 PM

(just a glance at it, I'm gonna bet that that particular user is very close to a question ban here too now...)

user55340

@WorldEngineer Hmm... its in the rejected migrations. with a 'post deleted' - chasing it to its SO question stackoverflow.com/questions/21077080/recursive-maze-generation one can see "This question was voluntarily removed by its author." so... well... we tried to get it to the right place.

user20683

@MichaelT what do I need to know about Java EE beyond the whole it's a collection of interfaces and involves Beans?

user55340

@WorldEngineer it runs in the app server rather than stand alone... thats fairly obvious, but the implications of it get much more interesting.

user55340

Things like thread safety can both be ignored and are very important (just stay away from static data - you're never sure who is going to be touching it)

user55340

Clustering gets in there too, so serialization of data - if you want your data to be able to moved to another application server in the cluster, it needs to be serilizable.

user55340

11:57 PM

There are things that are inherently not serilizable. File handles are the most notorious of them. So you've got an open file in the session... and your session gets bumped to another server in the cluster... well, that file didn't go with it. It may not even be on the other server.

user20683

@MichaelT fun

user55340

Network connections are also problematic in that respect.

user20683

I can see why people are switching to Scala and Clojure.

user55340

So if you've got a socket connection open somewhere and then get pushed to another app server in the cluster... you don't have that socket connection open anymore.

user55340

That doesn't really solve the problem... its more along the "those can't have that problem."

Chris Okyen

11:59 PM

@RobertHarvey Would you mean I should still do a loop like i showed some code before?

user55340

So instead of doing socket connections... either listening or sending... move to a messaging structure.

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