The Whiteboard

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Jimmy Hoffa

00:05

@AshleyNunn I know you're poor, but if you're going to keep the heat off, make sure to keep some faucets trickling

Had to turn mine on last night; like ~11 power went out because the snow storm, got pretty damn cold in the house by 4am when the power came back on

@WorldEngineer I bet 90% of these are making fun of JavaScripts type system, which I've said on multiple occasions is terrible

Making fun of certain function signatures and JavaScripts type system doesn't take away from the inherent good qualities in the language; the few built-in functions can have better apis laid over them so you don't have to deal with their idiosyncratic signatures, and it's dynamic so the type system can be avoided wholesale.

user15026

00:30

@jimmyhoffa heat is included in my rent, but they heat cooler than I am used to, so I get cold. Luckily my pipes haven't frozen at all yet, unlike my sisters pipes which are seemingly frozen all the time at her apartment.

blade19899

01:14

Does anyone know a good markdown editor for a homemade website. Am currently using this: Single-page Markdown Web Editor (spmdwe)

user55340

@gnat hmm... I'm surprised your collider sense hasn't tingled.

user55340

A: What changed in the Hot Questions sidebar algorithm?

The usual algorithm calculates a score, ranks the questions and then just pulls off the top few results. We're testing an alternative method that calculates a score, ranks the questions and then pulls a somewhat larger number off the top, shuffles them, and stuff the top of the deck into the si...

user55340

(Just noting I am seeing different questions in different order on every page load)

user20683

01:57

I am not

gnat

07:55

@MichaelT I noticed it several hours ago. Pondering on it, studying new reality. So far so good, it looks like the most prominent source of positive feedback loop has gone.

need a bit more time to better understand things,

maybe this approach turns out worth applying wider, in the "big list" itself - stackexchange.com/questions?tab=hot and in per-site hot tabs - stackoverflow.com/?tab=hot

> Since this is a test, not everyone will see this. Those who do will observe both a larger variety of questions, a less predictable order for those that do show up repeatedly and a greater chance of seeing different questions on different page-loads.

A/B testing? (I don't see it, currently) — Doorknob of Snow 7 hours ago

Yeah. If the list doesn't change every time you refresh the page, you're on the B team. Or maybe it's the A-Team. I forget whether or not Hannibal played cards. — Shog9 7 hours ago

8 hours later…

MetaFight

15:46

getting your answer accepted with 0 votes feels wrong

It screams of "nobody has validated this answer other than the person asking for advice (ie, the person likely not to have the skillset to validate the answer)"

2 hours later…

Benjamin Gruenbaum

17:32

Anyone here good with developer methodologies?

Stack Exchange

17:51

Ars Technica » Stack Exchange: Why isolate “lower” application layers from “higher” layers?

posted on February 01, 2014 by Stack Exchange

It seems like a good practice, but let's articulate why.

2 hours later…

TRiG

19:44

@MetaFight That rather depends on the question, doesn't it? But I suppose that, on this site, it's likely to be true. On SO, a simple coding question will have an answer the asker can validate. Less so here.

2 hours later…

user15026

21:21

@michaelt thought about what I like, came up with the following list - search, info retrieval, data structures/mining, general programming

user55340

21:33

@BenjaminGruenbaum There are a number of people in chat who are very much into the engineering aspect of software engineering (and methodologies are often things that they touch on). What aspect of them are you interested in?

user55340

@AshleyNunn Search is huge again. Most of us don't try to do it from scratch and instead use other products to do it for us. lucene.apache.org/solr is one of the names I often hear when doing search.

user55340

Info retrieval often falls in the realm known as 'CRUD'. Its not bad, just a lot of people consider it uninteresting. Create Read Update Delete. Its the bread and butter of any internal development within a company.

user15026

Yeah, I figured my list was still big, but it's a start :)

user55340

Data structures are a key building block for anything that goes beyond the basic. Knowing which data structure to chose and how to work with it is very useful. Do you want a Linked List? or an Array? A Hash or a Tree?

user55340

Data mining spans from the basic "write a report" to the extreme end of "here is a ton of data, find out stuff that is useful" The later is often associated with Big Data. (Classic story of Target's data mining: forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/… )

user55340

21:42

General programming... well... Just go for some joy coding. Write something fun. A program that picks names for cats based on known attributes?

user15026

@michaelt haha that would be fun!

user15026

Your explanations help a lot. I like digging through data and poking in it and pulling bits out and organizing it.

user55340

Build a list of adjectives and nouns. Assign a score for the relationship between 'noun' and 'attribute.

user55340

tortoise shell, female, dark (orange and black), timid --> ??? Each of those attributes pushes the suggestion of names in a different direction.

user55340

Benjamin Gruenbaum

22:11

@MichaelT wow, I don't remember anymore.

user55340

@BenjaminGruenbaum Most of the people who regularly chat in the room are professional types who use this in a spare monitor and chat... well, while our code compiles.

user55340

Jan 24 at 17:01, by Thomas Owens

Woo! SWEBOK v3.0 has been released.

user55340

That would be a good spot to start (and Thomas is a good one to ping... again... weekends are a bit slow here. Weekdays from 9-5 is when we're all on and about)

user15026

@michaelt yeah, it would take a bit for me to learn what I needed to make that, but it would be fun to try to figure out!

user55340

22:48

@Ampt Heh... this one is amusing (chase the link)

user55340

Atlanta, we are ready for the snow. For useful numbers and information, make sure you read our press release: http://ow.ly/t20mC

Tweeted by KasimReed on January 28, 2014 at 3:20 PM

user55340

> The City has a total of 30 spreaders and 40 snow plows ready for mobilization. With 700 tons of sand/gravel mix on hand, we will use spreaders to treat priority bridges and address any emergencies that may arise.

user20683

22:59

@MichaelT I sold him a nook at one point.

user55340

@WorldEngineer The key to 'material' (the sand gravel) is that you put it down before you have trouble ideally. Especially since I don't think you can spread and plow (@Ampt correct me if I'm wrong there) at the same time.

user20683

yeah...

user20683

The reason that Georgians tend toward the "small government" is that what little government they have is...hugely disfunctional. Global Variables and Procedures only I'm afraid.

user55340

23:31

cnn.com/interactive/2014/02/us/georgia-snow-timeline is a good read...

user55340

and the twitter links are... amusing to a northerner.

user55340