The Whiteboard

user55340

8:00 PM

@JimmyHoffa Yep... I've got the printed version and they're in there too.

user55340

Btw, it would be nice if people would look into meta.P.SE and consider if the latest posts are specifically offensive or rude and need to be flagged as such.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 uhm? Iduno exactly what you refer to here?

As in a device or something on my google voice account?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That was a large one-box. Yes, exactly. A device to connect a regular land-line phone to your google voice voip account

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Oh, no. I'd just use my computers modem or my cell phone's wifi if I wanted that.. I don't bother using VOIP, I set that google voice account up as I was trying to fake up a facebook account for some FB app development we had been trying to start on

user41796

ah, that makes sense.

user41796

8:10 PM

I have a landline (kind of) that I'm trying to get out of paying an exorbitant monthly fee for

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I've no intention of getting a land line.. when the kid has cause for a phone though I'm sure I'll do some voip jiggery-pokery instead

user41796

@JimmyHoffa right where I'm at now. :-) Oldest is starting to use the phone. But I don't want him with a cell of his own. He doesn't need it and it costs more than it's worth.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Any old smart phones around your house?

user41796

yeah? por que?

user41796

connect to wireless and run ... ?

Jimmy Hoffa

8:14 PM

My wife's no-longer-used Motorola Atrix can be turned on without a sim card in and used as an android wifi device, I'd just install skype or whatever on it

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I was just looking at skype's pay as you go service.

user41796

As I don't think our landline sees > 130 minutes of use each month on average

Jimmy Hoffa

you can then put money into a voip account - google voice or whatever else and let him use that and if the money gets burned through you'll know. Just clean the device up so it only has that one app on it and links on the home screen to call you and whoever else they need to be calling.

Google voice should do it for free so you won't need to pay so long as it's domestic.

maple_shaft

8:27 PM

ok

is it a bad sign when your director sends an email to the team, asking how many LOC exist in source control

i shit you not

I just got THAT email

I read some article somewhere where somebody said that when executives start asking this question it is because they think the reason projects are failing is lazy developers

if someone can find it or something similar it would be appreciated

psr

@maple_shaft Quick, edit the formatting on 5,000 lines of code!

user55340

@maple_shaft hey... mod type... could you handle two flags on M.P.SE?

user55340

@maple_shaft Btw, I got that one too back in the Point of Sales days. (1.4M LOC)

user55340

In this case, they were trying to price how much it would cost to have an external company do an audit of the software.

user55340

@maple_shaft thank you very much.

user20683

8:35 PM

@MichaelT wasn't him

user55340

Well, @WorldEngineer thank you then. Just general thanks to mods for their janitorial functions.

psr

@maple_shaft Google foo fail, sorry.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa google voice was my top choice < 10 mins ago. But they are turning off their XMPP service in ~5 months. The way Obihai presented that news implied that all voip adapters will stop working

user55340

So what does "I would like to advise on Stack Exchange" mean?

user55340

user55340

8:40 PM

Oh... I can read... advertise

enderland

I have a real programming question finally. lol

user41796

@enderland better ask on main then. Chat has been strictly off-topic today

enderland

@GlenH7 nah I think p.se is better since it's more of a theory one :P

user41796

but drop a link in here and we'll give you sympathy up votes

user41796

main == p.se.

enderland

8:42 PM

I don't really know how to even phrase it to google, either

let's say you have a UI with idk, say 100 text fields, and you want to enforce an order for people to fill them out - is there a good strategy for doing so?

(I'm not sure how to phrase this sort of questino to even ask/search for it)

user41796

@enderland some languages allow numbering controls

user41796

specifically for purposes of tabbing

user41796

and I think the better languages say "oh, you're on 23; you hit tab; go to 24"

enderland

yeah... so tab order won't work I don't think since I had to implement a checkbox which is actually a label with code assocaited with it (#access sucks)

user41796

You're in MS access?!

enderland

8:46 PM

I'll take that as sympathy

heaven knows I need it

user41796

yeah, that would get sympathy up votes for a question on main... :-)

user41796

@enderland - so you're past the level of help provided in this article? office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/…

enderland

yeah :\

if I end up doing dev work in not-VBA it's going to feel like I'm upgrading from a pidly 2-cylinder van to a ferrari

user41796

I have fortunately not had to do too much in VBA

enderland

it's great for a lot of things honestly, but it kinda got abandoned a long time ago

gnat

9:07 PM

@MichaelT, @GlenH7 I polished that stealth draft a little, would you mind taking a look? I plan to undelete it to open for commenting and for editing by non-10Kers, would appreciate your feedback. Also, feel free to edit it

user55340

Just thinking... Lets say top score is 100, so top/10 would give you 10, and -1 to give you now. So only the scores from 100 to 9 would be used to calculate hotness.

user41796

The impression I got from the last go-around on MSO is that they aren't going to tinker with any DB structures to allow changes to the formula

user55340

That looks reasonable. I don't see any problems with it. Reads well, thought out...

gnat

@MichaelT right

user41796

And the quotes you pulled kind of indicate that SE doesn't think it's a big enough problem to tackle. Which I don't know if it's been sufficiently proven (to SE) that the colider questions can be a serious issue

user55340

9:11 PM

@GlenH7 I don't believe they would need to tinker with the db for that. Its 'just' a modification to the calculation.

gnat

@GlenH7 yup, and the idea is exactly to avoid that. Pick 100 as it is done now, then reorder (does it make sense to edit to somehow stress this?)

user55340

It might be useful to stress that this is only a modification to the calc and not any change to the structure.

enderland

0

Q: How to conceptually consider user interface rules?

I have a user interface with numerous controls and data inputs on it. Buttons, text fields, and checkboxes, etc. Imagine the following "rules" exist for a sample UI with 2 of those controls: B2 cannot be used until TF1 and TF2 both have values TF2 cannot be entered until TF1 has a value CB2 can...

writing out the problem makes me even LESS confident in my ideas for how to solve it :P

user55340

I'd be half tempted to set up an example of the hotness calculator from an sqlfiddle with example data. Would take some time to craft.

gnat

@MichaelT exactly. I tried to make it as small code-wise as possible. I'd prefer the pick-and-reorder trick to be done for double-triple of these 100 questions (to get more reliable top 100), but decided to stick on the safer side

user55340

9:13 PM

The bit on that SE doesn't realize how much damage things that have lots of poor answers do to other, smaller sites's communities is troublesome at a different level.

user55340

That said, I also suspect that this will make Math and CodeGolf get lots more hot questions.

user55340

(just given the nature of their site and how they have the 'pile on answers')

user55340

You might want to suggest that the 10 be a scaleable factor based on site for sites that have such pile-ons.

user55340

(so that, for example, Math could be set to 2 or some such smaller factor to make it more selective for questions... if I read that right)

user41796

I'm lost in thoughts of wondering how question + answers + votes shape on other SE sites. And what that shape means in terms of predicting quality for a particular site. CodeGolf would want high numbers of answers - it implies a great question as lots of people participated. High answers on Programmers implies a populist question. And we hate fun, so by definition that's a bad question.

user20683

9:19 PM

@GlenH7 Code Golf is the outlier

enderland

some sites are way more upvote happy though, too

user55340

@WorldEngineer Math.SE tends to have the pileon answers too...

user20683

Math loves them some bikesheds - Robert Harvey

gnat

@MichaelT well posting MSO request doesn't feel urgent, I can wait until it's done. :) Meanwhile, I am going to undelete that M.PSE "buffer answer". Given your feedback, it feels it's good enough for "public draft"

user55340

10

Q: Calculating the number of possible paths through some squares

I'm prepping for the GRE. Would appreciate if someone could explain the right way to solve this problem. It seems simple to me but the site where I found this problem says I'm wrong but doesn't explain their answer. So here is the problem verbatim: Find the number of paths from x to y moving ...

combinatorics permutations combinations

user55340

9:21 PM

There's one that showed up recently... 8 answers.

user41796

answer vote spread is another element worth considering (now I'm down other rabbit holes)

user20683

Math has a character very much like early SO

user55340

197

Q: Pedagogy: How to cure students of the "law of universal linearity"?

One of the commonest mistakes made by students, appearing at every level of maths education up to about early undergraduate, is the so-called “Law of Universal Linearity”: $$ \frac{1}{a+b} \mathrel{\text{“=”}} \frac{1}{a} + \frac{1}{b} $$ $$ 2^{-3} \mathrel{\text{“=”}} -2^3 $$ $$ \sin (5x + 3y...

algebra-precalculus education teaching

user55340

That one also showed up... 32 answers.

user20683

@MichaelT That's actually a really good question

user20683

9:22 PM

having tutored math, I've definitely seen it in action

gnat

@MichaelT yes Math.SE has that pattern. I once even checked votes in couple of their questions, these seemed to typically go to reasonable quality answers

simple math: 23 answers, 16 answers, 15 answers, 17 answers -- hotness score just doesn't discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points — gnat Nov 8 '13 at 9:21

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft My immediate go-to would have been "he's making some pitch to someone of how complex/large the application is", that's the only reason I've ever seen the question asked

user55340

@WorldEngineer Its a good question... should it stick to the top (while it did) with 32 answers contributing to the hotness.

Jimmy Hoffa

But then I've never worked anywhere LOC was used as a productivity metric, so the idea of someone asking about it to know anything about productivity would have been ridiculous

gnat

@GlenH7 I specifically abstained of discussing tight spreads in that draft...

> Worth noting that suggested approach doesn't address cases when there are multiple highly upvoted answers (such as some Apple.SE examples in sticky list). Whether "sticky popularity" of these is a problem that needs addressing and if yes, how to address it is out of scope of this request.

okay, undeleted:

0

A: Trial run of modified "hotness formula" for Programmers questions

Using once deleted and abandoned answer as a temporary buffer to draft new feature request (for MSO) to address points in decline justification of prior request. draft title Reorder questions picked for hot list based on adjusted hotness score (discard some answers by voting evidence) dra...

feel free to edit / comment etc

preferably from the most negative perspective

user55340

9:25 PM

@WorldEngineer I hate to ask this... but could you go poke at M.P.SE again.

gnat

to prepare for the usual pressure from "instinctive downvoters" at MSO

user41796

@gnat yeah, I'm working various intellectual musings to identify other ways of cracking that nut. I think hidden weighting of votes is still worth considering too

user55340

@AshleyNunn btw, I bet if you get more edits on SO than Peter, you'd be a shoe in for a tech editor position anywhere

user41796

@gnat Just be sure many of the regulars are here in chat before you post to MSO. You'll get enough up votes to ride it for a bit.

user15026

@MichaelT Yeah, but it would mean editing SO ;)

enderland

9:26 PM

@AshleyNunn plenty of opportunity there!

user55340

@AshleyNunn stackoverflow.com/users/63550/…

user41796

@AshleyNunn easy rep...

user15026

@MichaelT That is a very big number. O.o

user15026

@GlenH7 For a while, anyhow. :)

user55340

Was commenting about his activity here earlier in chat... I'm glad he's doing it, it makes it a better place.

gnat

9:27 PM

@GlenH7 absolutely. Whatever the fate of your twitter-tweaker request will be, idea of filtered voting data feed alone made it worth asking and discussing

2

A: Allow high-rep users to recommend posts for and against tweeting

An alternative approach...1 Short version just change the tweeting algorithm to only incorporate votes from high rep users Long version The proposed approach has at least a few problems with it: Not everyone who can use it will use it because it requires additional steps outside of nor...

user41796

@gnat agreed; that was a very pleasant but unexpected outcome.

gnat

@GlenH7 that's for sure. Don't want to climb up from -10 once again :)

user55340

@AshleyNunn You could be all "yea, I've got 1000 rep on SO... its all from editing. Thats when you get repcapped. I've done 200k edits since then..."

user41796

I'll admit I was a bit nervous about stealing Servy's idea. I figured I would pick up down votes for the plagiarism aspect alone. But I think the full attribution spared me from any of that.

user15026

@MichaelT It does sound cool on paper.... :)

gnat

9:30 PM

@ColeJohnson for an example of what I would do to that post take a look at changes made in revision 6. By the way, the user who did that revision is one of my favorite editors at Programmers; whenever I happen to go over their suggestions in edits review queue, it always strikes me as really well done — gnat Aug 27 '13 at 21:47

Peter is my favorite editor, too :)

user55340

@GlenH7 got a note from a former co-worker that Google is buying Nest... (time to search news...)

user55340

investor.google.com/releases/2014/0113.html

user55340

> MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – JANUARY 13, 2014 — Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has entered into an agreement to buy Nest Labs, Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash.

Jimmy Hoffa

Thank you very much with the answer, I've moved from that project, but I will keep this Question in my favourites. Sorry that I didn't accept your answer as it is very thorough. But, whats up with novell being bad? :( — SAFAD 29 mins ago

user41796

@MichaelT wow. holy crud!

Jimmy Hoffa

9:37 PM

Always cool when ages later you get recognition for an answer you toiled over even if it quickly disappeared into obscurity

user15026

@MichaelT That's a lot of money O.o

user55340

@AshleyNunn When you consider their market, yes... but not really.

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn I would have guessed more...

half-baked social media apps with no revenue get billion dollar valuations these days

user15026

It doesn't help that I really can't fathom scale with that - I can't even value my own worth, let alone a company! :)

enderland

@AshleyNunn min.comt can help with the former. not so much the later ;)

user55340

9:39 PM

They are building smoke detectors and thermostats... something that is in every single house in the US

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn To be fair the scales of these things is just stupid when you try to measure it in terms of what humans actually ever see or touch...

I need to find the article now that shows how humans are really only able to estimate with any accuracy up to 100 things

user55340

And when you go to smoke detectors and multi-tennant buildings (aparments, hotels...) thats even more.

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Oooh, that sounds interesting. :)

Jimmy Hoffa

anything with a scale greater than 100 our minds really can't imagine

enderland

@JimmyHoffa I've seen 150 articles like that before

user15026

9:40 PM

@MichaelT Hm, I never thought about it like that, but yeah, it is a pretty huge market. Then again, I only really think of my smoke alarm when it goes off because I made toast (it is in a really terrible spot in my apartment, so it goes off a lot)

gnat

announced the draft at Water Cooler, hope TWP guys will contribute, as they did to prior request

in The Water Cooler, 2 mins ago, by gnat

guys interested in "hotness formula", I would much appreciate your help and feedback in drafting an updated request that has been posted at P.SE meta...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I recall a SF book that had an alien that had cardnality (the ability to count things by sight) at about 37 or so... (humans are around 7 before we have to start counting))... but they couldn't go beyond that.

user55340

@AshleyNunn See, their smoke detector you just need to wave your hand in front of it and it stops annoying you.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT that's pretty creative

@MichaelT Also you can just wave your kid in front of it and it'll let you have ~3 uninterrupted minutes at home depots return desk I learned yesterday

user15026

@MichaelT .....okay, that sounds awesome.

user55340

9:42 PM

So You put out 20 things, and they instantlly say 20. You put out 40 and mabe 5% will say 40, the others will all say "too many"

user55340

Here's the book...

user55340

Calculating God

Calculating God is a 2000 science fiction novel by Robert J. Sawyer. It takes place in the present day and describes the arrival on Earth of sentient aliens. The bulk of the novel covers the many discussions and arguments on this topic, as well as about the nature of belief, religion, and science. Calculating God received nominations for both the Hugo and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards in 2001. Plot summary Thomas Jericho, a paleontologist working at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, makes the first human-to-alien contact when a spider-like alien arrives on Earth to investigate Eart...

user55340

The alien species: aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Wreed

user55340

>
Furthermore, Wreeds have an amazing ability to instantly perceive quantity. A Human (or Forhilnor) will instantly know when given one, two or three stones without needing to consciously count them; the same way, the average Wreed can instantly recognize quantities up to 46. Curiously, however, the Wreed is simply incapable of the faculty of consciously counting: when facing quantities higher than 46, they simply have no means to tell the numbers apart, and in fact they don't even have words for the numbers beyond 46.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Robert Sawyer's books are ones that do some exploration at the edge of science and religion. Sometimes it feels a bit forced, but they are fairly good SF books.

Jimmy Hoffa

9:54 PM

I'm still dying to figure out how to google up the article..

all things relating to "humans" and "estimating" just give various estimates of human things

user55340

Subitizing

Subitizing, coined in 1949 by E.L. Kaufman et al. refers to the rapid, accurate, and confident judgments of number performed for small numbers of items. The term is derived from the Latin adjective ' (meaning "sudden") and captures a feeling of immediately knowing how many items lie within the visual scene, when the number of items present falls within the subitizing range. Number judgments for larger set-sizes were referred to either as counting or estimating, depending on the number of elements present within the display, and the time given to observers in which to respond (i.e., estima...

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey hey you should write an answer that says how this guy really needs to use a DI framework and espouses at length the great benefits of using DI frameworks and how they make everything better and should always be used.

(mostly because if you wrote that answer to this Q it would be doubly hilarious considering your previous statements on DI)

4

Q: how complex a constructor should be

I am having a discussion with my co-worker on how much work a constructor can do. I have a class, B that internally requires another object A. Object A is one of a few members that class B needs to do its job. All of its public methods depends on the internal object A. Information about object A ...

c# constructors

It is the correct answer though...

(but isn't DI always the correct answer, @RobertHarvey ?)

user55340

"How do I add DI to my hello world program?"

2

user55340

I think you could if you start using DI to say which output stream it goes to... not that it would be a good thing.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Not the same thing, though may be referentially related, the article was talking about mental scaling and how well people can mentally relate quantities - it was basically saying that when you have more than 100 things break them down so you're dealing with tens or thousands or something because otherwise the human mind just can't come up with a representation and can no longer really recognize accurately the difference between two things that are actually differentiated by factors

(unless my memory is failing me...)

user55340

10:04 PM

Oh, I was thinking you were talking about the "recognize some number instantly"

user55340

which was another numeric topic we had.

user1547410

Hey guys, anyone got any constructive feedback or advice on this thread?

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/224068/ideal-programming-language-for-these-specific-tasks

user41796

Knows question is off-topic, asks anyway. Nice going. Python is as good a language as any to start out with. I would avoid PHP. See also Where to Start? — Robert Harvey 3 hours ago

user41796

That's a starter - don't ask questions you know to be off-topic on the main site. You're much better off asking them here in chat and / or asking how it could be made constructive enough to be asked on main.

user20683

@user1547410 if you are building for browsers, Javascript is usually the way to go. If you are building for a given application, use the languages specified in their API docs.

user55340

10:08 PM

>
So to my project. I want to develop a toolbar that can interact with an application. Lets take Skype as an example, i want to develop a toolbar that can pin onto the skype titlebar so if i move Skype to a new window it always remains visible. The toolbar will have a couple of icons, each will do something simple like copy the text and send the text in lets say Json format to a url which will process it or take a screenshot, it wont need to actually interact with Skype as such but instead will interact with the clipboard to get information from the app manually.

user41796

@user1547410 - I'll second World's thoughts. For what you're doing, you want JavaScript. Everything else will be an exercise in frustration. For example, don't try to write a desktop or browser PHP app. It can be done, but why?

user55340

With that description you will be traveling deep into the APIs of whatever platform you're describing.

user1547410

just to point out as i said in the comments in that post, i didnt realize it was off topic, i did say i assume you get these kinds of questions all the time but point taken and i honestly didnt realize it would be closed.

To clarify im not trying to hook into another application, im trying to developer my own application that pins to a window title somehow and that interacts with the clipboard. That windows application will then pass the pasted text via json or similar to a web app to process it.

user20683

@user1547410 You learned and didn't go on a rampage. This gives you points in my book :)

user1547410

I know php so i can handle the web side of things, what i dont know if is C or python or another language would be more suitable for the desktop application or is it simply any of them. The opinion on python in that thread was mixed

Jimmy Hoffa

10:12 PM

@MichaelT nah, the specifics of this was about comparisons and relativity not visual-spatial

user20683

@user1547410 Python has kind of an odd rep as a web language for a great many reasons.

user55340

If you are talking about a desktop app that interacts with the clipboard... you're likely going down the C path.

user55340

That said, you're still talking about something that is non-trivial for someone diving into it for the first time. You will learn quite a bit form the endeavor... successful or not.

user1547410

ok thanks Michael. Is pinning the app to another app difficult to do, i thought it might be as simple as recognizing the window title and telling it to place itself x,y co-ordinates from the relative position of the target app but i honestly dont know much about this thing at all. Would C also be suitable for something like that or can someone suggest good search terms for what the terminology for this type of thing is and ill do some research, i just dont know what to call it to search for it

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 As soon as you start talking about a non-web GUI app the first question that becomes super important is what platforms are you supporting here, windows? mac? *nix?

user55340

10:16 PM

You're working with the windowing system of the target OS. This isn't a small thing - there's more to it than just placing it at x,y.

user20683

Apparently Skype closed its third party app support last month

user1547410

windows

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 only windows?

user55340

And... well... that.

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 What you're doing will desire your attention to how windows creates UI controls and things, there are some interesting tools that you may inspect to understand some of this stuff because you're talking about requesting/iterating information stored in the desktop heap

user1547410

10:18 PM

yeah i seen that about Skype, big uproar and they back tracked somewhat but still their current API is pretty basic

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa264396(v=vs.60).aspx

> Spy++ (SPYXX.EXE) is a Win32-based utility that gives you a graphical view of the system’s processes, threads, windows, and window messages.

(emphasis mine)

user55340

I'd first start out trying to write a simple calculator application for Windows. 10 digit buttons, 4 function buttons and equals. Don't even worry if you don't get the calculator part right... just work on the buttons working.

Jimmy Hoffa

oh as @MichaelT says, if you don't already know how to create and work on windows UI applications, start by creating a simple one

user55340

Trying to get into windowing, and inter process communication, third party APIs, and such all at once... especially in a new language. That's going to be way too much. You don't even know which way to start out with (thus the "where to start").

user1547410

Is there a more simpler method then, since my app will be communicating with the desktop it doesnt really need to interact with Skype or whatever 3rd party app, i just thought it would be nice to be pinned to the skype app. Is there an easier way like always placing the app in the top right or bottom right corner for example, would that be far less involved

user55340

10:20 PM

Start out by writing an application that does the simplest thing. Buttons on a screen.

user1547410

Good advice on the simple app to get started, agree thats a good approach

Jimmy Hoffa

You're generally going to want to be using .NET if you're familiar with it, otherwise Delphi and SmallTalk are great options, but for the OS facilities to touch the desktop heap info you're going to want something MS likely because that's where you get the best interop facilities with windows. VB can do these things fairly well too, VB6 and VC++'s MFC had stuff had a lot of focus on these bits

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa I am writing a small program to keep a list of the songs that I have on my ipod. I'm thinking about writing it as a 3-tier MVC Ruby on Rails web application with TDD, DDD and IOC, using a factory pattern to create the classes and a singleton to store my application settings. Do you think I'm taking the right approach?

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey No, I'd use a monad.

user55340

Don't worry about where its positioned. Don't worry if its modal or not. Don't worry if its floating or not. Or if it can minimize or not... just write the simple app.

Jimmy Hoffa

10:22 PM

@user1547410 do you know C#? What language did you intend on creating this application with?

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa: That was part of the text in an actual Stack Overflow question that I asked in '09. It was titled "Are new programmers getting wrapped around the axle with patterns and practices?" It stayed on the site for two years, before Jeff Atwood finally deleted it.

Jimmy Hoffa

If not, then may I strongly suggest you start your desktop application development out right with a great easy to use fun interactive GUI development language: pharo-project.org/home

user1547410

yeah good point, that can come in phase two, i guess it will take some time to get the actual app working anyway and by that stage ill have a better understanding of how everything works, what i wanted to avoid was creating it in C and then finding out when its created a different language would have been better for positioning but ill take your approach develop a simple app, then take a shot at my app and then work on the positioning last.

Im thinking C and then for the positioning i might need to expand into using C and .net, sounds like a reasonable plan?#

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 Doing GUI in C will be about as fun as can-openering your hand. (and considerably more difficult)

go to the URL I pasted, install pharo, and start stumping UIs together with a high quality language built specifically for it that comes with an interactive UI for developing it

Matt D

depends

Jimmy Hoffa

10:26 PM

@MattD for windows anyway

user55340

Pure C for windows is... yea... if you're going down the C route, don't start off with GUI. Start off with a simple command line app. You'll need to learn some pointer arithmetic and memory management.

Matt D

oh god yes. win32 was at least usable, but mfc is like having your balls shaved by a orbital sander

2

user41796

@RobertHarvey Too bad he still has his diamond. Makes it harder to exact revenge...

user1547410

I just know PHP right now, if i try and learn a language i get bored, if i have a challenging project that i have an incentive to build i find that i learn much quicker which is why im taking this approach

when i learn all the syntax and theory it usually floats over my head a bit but when i use the same thing in a practical application then it makes much more sense and i pick it up easily, i do realize i still need to do a certain level of learning the basics, thanks for all the help here guys, very much appreciated and a very helpful bunch

Matt D

who starred that :P

user41796

10:27 PM

@MattD I would have pinned except for my preference to not pin things with even marginally objectionable language.

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 All the more reason to use pharo which I linked you. It is genuinely a great language and will teach you to think about OO correctly, plus it's got an easier entry because it's all interactive as you're developing the UI you are running it

Matt D

UI is tricky, by nature of the fact that it has to deal with so many random edge cases

user55340

@user1547410 you are describing something that is a very large undertaking.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MattD 'tricky' -> I generally use the word 'tedious', which is why I'm glad to stick with back end work..

Matt D

you could call it tedious

in some cases there's a lot of copy pasta

Jimmy Hoffa

10:29 PM

It's not usually altogether hard, the real challenge with UI is getting the tedium done without letting it devolve into spaghetti

Matt D

at least with games theres a known data set in most cases.

user20683

UI is fairly fun in my experience.

Matt D

@JimmyHoffa amen

user55340

You're mixing in several new technologies to your experience at once.

Jimmy Hoffa

@FrostEngineer I'm going to give you a form with 100 fields that need to be filled out, each one needs a particular validator attached to it and the layout has to be precise and match with these other pages. You're right, fun ;P good on ya for finding UI fun, I'm glad some people do

Matt D

10:30 PM

@JimmyHoffa when i work in gamedev, im usually the UI lead

@JimmyHoffa thankfully we dont often have 100 field forms like you do in web

user55340

This ranges from the very basic (how do you do memory management with malloc in raw C) to the api (how do you work with windows correctly) to the complex (how do you do windowing with C in modern windows)

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 really, go install pharo from pharo-project.org/home and just create a super simple little UI app like a calculator in it. The language will do everything you want and you won't have to learn other languages to mix with it

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa: The answer to the question that I Accepted:

>I sense something of an age/generation divide on this.

Twenty years ago you knew someone was a bad programmer because they came to work and wrote 25 C programs that either sucked or didn't work at all. Today those same kind of people write 5 programs in 5 different languages and they still don't work.

It's not hard to tell who is jumping around technologies because they are curious and who is just desperately trying to find one they can succeed at.

The only real difference I see is that today there is an amazing amount of buzzword BS to throw about in an effort to explain why their work…

Matt D

haha @ the last line

so true

user41796

@RobertHarvey time for a delete / undelete war? :-)

Matt D

10:32 PM

tbh, i only jump around technologies when I have to. I havent sat down and learnt something new in a while. well, in terms of languages anyway

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey I'm ok with a bad programmer for a boss, what I can't stand is having a bean counter for a boss, that's sooo ugh...

Robert Harvey

Can't figure out how to quote that thing correctly.

Matt D

only thing thats interesting me in terms of new language learning is learning something functional. which i hope to do this year

id rather actually get better at the languages i apparently know

I still use less than 10% of c# and c++

Jimmy Hoffa

@MattD an undervalued goal that really does help more often than people admit

Matt D

the thing I find is that I spend all my time doing, and not much time learning.. thats the folly of professional programming

Also, i've been spending a lot of time learning music/guitar :)

Robert Harvey

10:35 PM

C# has enough functional goodness in it that I could spend the next year learning all of its nooks and crannies, and probably be better off than if I spent that year learning Haskell or Scheme.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey blasphemer.

Robert Harvey

Since C# is the one I actually use.

user1547410

yeah im probably trying to take on too much but i think it will keep me very motivated and worst case ill learn a bunch of things but wont complete my app, if i was building something for the sake of building something then i would probably get bored after a short time although i know ill need to do this first time with a test calculator or app to do something simple so i can get the basics.

Ive never got bored with PHP because i kept building things i was really motivated to see finished as its something i would use or try and make money from. I really enjoy that method of learning as it …

user41796

C# has some amazing additions with the 4.0 and 4.5 versions of the language

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey if you learned haskell you'd understand the C# FP goods and they would lose all of their appearance of magic

Robert Harvey

10:36 PM

They don't look magical to me... Just a bit verbose.

The Haskell and Scheme stuff, on the other hand, looks like little black boxes inside little white boxes.

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 Pharo will interop with that stuff, admittedly as I said earlier though C# would probably interop best of anything with all that, but that doesn't mean Pharo wouldn't do it, just that the API may be less pleasing than the .NET one or a little more work to make it function right.

user55340

(Well, I'm glad that @RobertHarvey and ChrisF migrated that Spark one... I would have given it a "not up to SO's standard" but I was out of close votes)

user1547410

Also if i do choose to learn C i presume its c# i should be learning, i could be wrong but isnt it c# and net that are used a lot or is it any C language with .net?

user41796

@user1547410 C, C++, and C# are all separate languages.

Matt D

well, c# has a similar paradigm to c++, and shares a lot of syntax with c/c++/etc

user55340

10:38 PM

@user1547410 The only things that is similar between C and C# are the first character of the name and the use of curly braces.

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 C and C# are very different things. Similar appearance and lineage, but everything else about them is totally different

user41796

@MichaelT semi-colons. Don't forget our beloved semi-colons.

Jimmy Hoffa

pets a semi-colon

user20683

@JimmyHoffa O_o

user20683

you okay in there?

user15026

10:39 PM

@JimmyHoffa Well, if you start thinking of them as beloved pets, does that mean my site needs to change its scope? :P

user41796

@JimmyHoffa FP took up all the air in there?

user55340

He's only semi-petting a colon.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT This is unacceptable behaviour.

user15026

@MichaelT facedesk

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn I presume that's one step up from facepalm? Presumably the next step is deskface wherein you smack your face with the desk rather than the other way around...

user55340

10:41 PM

I've heard headdesk rather than facedesk.

user1547410

Yeah realize that there seperate languages but earlier someone mentioned that for windows stuff i probably should look at .net, just wondering which C language goes best with .net, do they all work with it or is it just C#?

My guess was .net is like a framework that extends other languages but that was just the impression i got, no idea if thats true. Really appreciate the help guys, what ill do next is research about Pharo and C# and .net and try and figure out which might be best for me

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 They aren't "C languages", C is a language, C# is a language, C++ is a language, they are all different languages with different purposes, different functionality etc

user55340

Google search says... headdesk: 651k results. facedesk: 264k results.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT deskface: 36k results. but the winner? headface: 4.9m results.

Matt D

if you want to use .net, use c#

user55340

10:43 PM

Facedesk is like FaceBook... except a larger surface?

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Something like that, yes :)

user41796

@user1547410 short version - use C# to write in the .Net framework.

user1547410

ok, thanks Matt, thats basically the question i had, thanks for all the help guys, ill do some research now that you have helped me narrow down suitable choices, been a huge help, thanks

Jimmy Hoffa

@user1547410 .NET is a runtime and a language and a framework and a type system and a bunch of confusing things all rolled into one. I suggest Pharo if you're learning, but C# (which runs in the .NET runtime) if you're trying to be really productive, though you will have a much harder time getting going with that and Pharo can do all the stuff .NET can do just as well

for instance, Pharo is a runtime and framework of libraries where you write the language SmallTalk to create the applications, .NET is a runtime and framework of libraries where you write in the language of C# (or F# or various other language choices) to create the applications.

Pharo is an interactive runtime which makes it ideal for learning and development when you are less experienced

It's also though a very high quality runtime which is totally competent for creating real applications, it is not some fake-language made just for learning like Scratch or BASIC or other such

besides all of that, programming in a SmallTalk environment is genuinely just fun which should help with your motivation to learn and such.

Matt D

heh :)

adds smalltalk to the list of random things to do this year

Jimmy Hoffa

10:50 PM

@RobertHarvey was it you who said you had spent time coding SmallTalk ages back?

user55340

@MattD I'd say put Objective C on it. Some useful similar concepts, easier environment, marketable.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MattD it's a truly different experience to have your GUI application both running and being developed at the same time as you walk around it's actively running object graph and change live instances of objects to add/remove/alter their functionality and then the whole application is saved as an image of that object graph after you're done

Matt D

i've looked at objective C

its hideous

well, just very very verbose.

user55340

And... you think that small talk is better?

user20683

@MattD It's not so bad.

Matt D

10:52 PM

i havent looked at it yet

if i have to use objective C i cheat and use objective-C++

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT easier environment? pffft, I suspect I'd like the language, but does Objective-C have you editing your application while it runs in an IDE built around it?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa not really

user55340

@JimmyHoffa the thing is the application and the IDE are separate. This is a good thing.

Jimmy Hoffa

It's pretty hard to compare the development environment of anything to that of a SmallTalk

user20683

| rectangles aPoint collisions |
rectangles := OrderedCollection
with: (Rectangle left: 0 right: 10 top: 100 bottom: 200)
with: (Rectangle left: 10 right: 10 top: 110 bottom: 210).
aPoint := Point x: 20 y: 20.
collisions := rectangles select: [:aRect | aRect containsPoint: aPoint]

user55340

10:54 PM

In SmallTalk, its possible to have running code that you cannot get the sources to.

user20683

example of Smalltalk

user20683

@MichaelT WAT

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT yes yes, I know

the old image-based programming danger

user55340

@WorldEngineer You can patch the code, serlize it to disk, deseralize it, and have something that never existed as actual source files.

Jimmy Hoffa

but whatever, that's why you save the damn sources as non-image based formats

it's not like it's an unsolvable problem, it's one of those quirks of SmallTalk that you could do that and other languages really couldn't, doesn't mean you can't protect yourself from it by saving more reasonably.

people like to mention it as "oo scary!" just because other languages can't have that

psr

10:57 PM

Anyway, code hipsters are so over source files.

user55340

@WorldEngineer That's not much less verbose than objective C.

user20683

@MichaelT entirely my point

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT SmallTalk and Objective-C are very similar

user55340

objective C borrows much of its syntax from SmallTalk.

user20683

along with its object model and typing

user55340

10:58 PM

And the dynamically typed message passing system...

Jimmy Hoffa

ok now that we all admit to knowing that... let's all admit as well that Objective-C didn't get the really cool IDE ;P

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I kind of like XCode...

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Xcode's not bad

Jimmy Hoffa

I've heard this as well, but still... not the same.

Editing your application while it's running by just walking it's object-graph to find the object you want to change, and seeing your changes just apply automatically... that shits cool.

user55340

No... the SmallTalk IDE is something all togther... smalltalk.

Jimmy Hoffa

10:59 PM

SmallTalk basically invented the first and only GUI REPL

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