The Whiteboard

TCS/MO are some of the most elite uses of se.

both attract many phds/phd students.

its true they are outliers in various ways in the se network.

user20683

@vzn That's the point. CS and Math exist to service people with less research oriented questions.

re "hard questions", TCS/MO actually occasionally push scientific boundaries.

the hardest questions are "open questions" in science & tcs/MO brush on them regularly.

user20683

@vzn the problem with "open" questions is that they aren't really what Stack Exchange as a whole is about. The idea with the network as a whole is to provide concise, correct, easily googleable answers to questions.

user20683

12:07 AM

Discussion is well and good but it's just not what the network operates as.

user20683

hence our chat or reddit or whatever else exists out there.

right. and therefore tcs.se/MO dont fit & can be awkward at times as mentioned.

user20683

@vzn See the whole Theoretical Physics debacle.

se is quite advanced in many ways and yes it can be successfully used to shed some insight on & even attack open questions.

yeah have heard some about theoretical physics.

it got closed by se mgt due to inactivity?

user20683

@vzn merged with Physics

12:09 AM

that is another issue with se, they really dislike small niche audiences & may even close down sites for that reason.

user20683

there was a severe culture clash

saw shog9 complain about tcs.se being too small once.

If your topic is hard enough it's a whole different situation. TheoreticalStringTheory.SE can allow questions like "What is the weirdest kind of alcohol you've ever drunk while investigating string theory" and if the few hundred people on earth who can actually follow the real questions use the site that's still where they will look for answers.

it has to do with achieving critical mass of eyeballs.

think se should allow smaller sites & experiment there.

if a site brings regular activity, it doesnt matter too much if its niche, seems...

user20683

@vzn Joel Spolsky once enumerated the ideal size of a site being something like the size of academic department in terms of scope

12:11 AM

that is fine & like that (might have seen that blog post once), but they dont follow that as far as users

they want large crowds.

area51 proposal system ensures that.

many area51 proposals die.

user20683

@vzn Area 51...let's not get started on that.

some with significant number of users attached.

would like to see statistics on that too =)

user20683

on how many die?

sure.

user20683

All of the dead proposals are stored as data dumps on that site

12:12 AM

theoretical physics is indeed a very interesting case study.

user20683

you can go looking for them

it would be fun to datamine.

when am independently wealthy with lots of time to kill :p

user20683

@vzn or when you write a good grant to a wealthy benefactor

hah yeah.

user20683

AI for instance will be shut down Monday

12:14 AM

either is about as likely

user20683

due to lack of questions

AI proposal?

user20683

yeah

ouch man.

user20683

there's already Stats which covers most of the topics in applied terms

12:14 AM

didnt a machine learning proposal die recently

@vzn I think World Engineer is hinting. He must be wealthy if he engineered the world.

user20683

same reason

user20683

@psr ROFL

it really is true that some existing groups just dont like certain topics that youd think would be totally dead on in their charter

user20683

I really should have picked a different user name

user20683

12:15 AM

@vzn some sites make it

re world engr, depends what the pay is :p

user20683

An example of a very broad site that's slow traffic wise is History

area51 probably should also have a "merge" function. not sure how that works currently.

user20683

because there's so much history already on Wikipedia

user55340

@AshleyNunn adweek.com/adfreak/…

12:15 AM

if a group is about to die, the whole group has nothing to lose (and a lot to gain) by merging.

just found cogsci. holy cow almost no questions.

292 questions.

yeeks.

user55340

►

seems to have been "active" since summer 2011 (giving that term the benefit of the doubt). ouch.

@MichaelT what does this have to do with programming?

re wikipedia was just addressing a meta question on that.

user20683

@vzn 1643 questions total

se should maybe have some official policy talking about how it interrelates with wikipedia, surprised that doesnt seem to have been written anywhere

user55340

@vzn Very little, but we discuss cats sitting on laptops at times... or beer... or monads (whoever they are) at times.

12:19 AM

@vzn MichaelT did 3-5 for cat programming.

user15026

@MichaelT Hahah that one kitten that comes running is my favourite

cat programming?

user20683

@vzn LOLCODE

user20683

:P

training?

12:20 AM

@vzn Worse than cat juggling.

user55340

or programming cat

oh you mean like CAT HERDING

user55340

Here's a cat written in Rail (not rails)

user55340

$ 'main' (--):
 \
 | /---------\
 | |         |
 | \    /-io-/
 \---e-<
        \-#

►

user55340

12:21 AM

esolangs.org/wiki/Rail

thx hadnt heard of that. not quite following :p

reminds me of code golf. hell thats an entire new group isnt it?

not sure how got that 292 figure. clicked on the wrong link somewhere.

but anyway its low.

user55340

@vzn and programming challenges.

user55340

yeah exactly

its good you guys are so on top of the important stuff wink

user55340

1652 questions currently... they had to get a setting changed to not auto-cw things at 30 answers because of how the site runs.

user55340

12:26 AM

We look at it to see "wow, you can do that?" at times.

yeah. cw is a weird mechanism. throws ppl all over the place

saw a user get hung up on tcs.se also.

we ref'd someone over to codegolf recently, dont recall exactly the details

@MichaelT The pressure he must be under to write Rail on Rails.

lol

they can call it Rails^2

user55340

Rail to C compiler... in Haskell github.com/mtolly/rail

also reminds me of obfuscated c contest.

probably code golf tended to originate out of that.

user55340

12:29 AM

I think it started with perl back in the old days.

user55340

c2.com/cgi/wiki?PerlGolf

user55340

Though APL may have been a contender too

c predates perl but yeah perl was like that too

unless maybe it started with perl & then migrated to c? not sure

user55340

catb.org/jargon/html/O/one-liner-wars.html

International Obfuscated C Code Contest

The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (abbreviated IOCCC) is a computer programming contest for the most creatively obfuscated C code. Held annually between 1984 and 1996, and thereafter in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012, and 2013 it is described as "celebrating [C's] syntactical opaqueness". The winning code for the 22nd contest, held in 2013, was released in January 2014. Prior to 2004, entries were submitted by email. In 2004, for the 17th IOCCC, the competition switched to using a web-based submission process. Entries are evaluated anonymously by a panel of jud...

user55340

12:30 AM

IOCCC is old.

started 1984 wow didnt realize

user55340

I remember reading them back in college.

dont recall 1st time saw it but yeah maybe same here =|

user55340

terje2.frox25.no-ip.org/perlgolf_history_070109.pdf

user55340

> The term “Perl Golf” was coined by Greg Bacon2 in 1999/06/21.

user55340

12:31 AM

However, there are older golfs.

user55340

> History of golf is stretching deep into the past. Rick Klement has played golf in Fortran in the 60’s. Donald Knuth has played golf in machine codes1 in the 50’s.

user55340

I'd be tempted to say that perl golf popularized it in recent history.

user55340

Though it could have been independently discovered again and again.

fortran golf? really? huh!

yeah perl did create a resurgence.

alas that may be one of the better uses of perl :p

user55340

Larry Wall was also an active IOCCC back in the '80s.

12:34 AM

holy @#%& that explains a lot wow hadnt heard that.

user55340

ioccc.org/years.html#1987_wall

my favorite LW trivia is that he was a linguistics major

←old perl dev during dotcom days thought at time it would live forever =(

"please god just one more bubble" :p

silicon valley bumper sticker

user55340

I'm a perler, though my skills are a bit rusty from years of Java.

sorry to say threw away perl over 1decade ago for ruby. now theres a language =)

user55340

Heh... no. I've touched ruby and no.

user55340

12:36 AM

Have you seen the video about first class environments and the implications in Ruby?

@MichaelT In the 1950s wasn't all code pretty much code golf?

larry wall "there should be many ways to do the same thing" @#%&

maybe in linguistics lol

user55340

►

MATZ RULEZ :p

user55340

You really need to watch that video and consider the implications of whats said.

user55340

12:38 AM

Or.. here's some ruby for 'ya.

user55340

def mal(&block)
    block.call
    block.binding.eval('a = 43')
end

a = 42
puts a
mal do
  puts 1
end
puts a

dont use the class structure much in it. just use it for hacking :p

user55340

Or this one which is even worse...

user55340

def mal(&block)
    puts ">:)"
    block.call
    t = block.binding.eval('(self.methods - Object.methods).sample')
    block.binding.eval <<-END
        def #{t.to_s}
          raise 'MWHWAHAW!'
        end
    END
end

class Foo
    def bar
        puts "bar"
    end

    def qux
        mal do
            puts "qux"
        end
    end
end

f = Foo.new
f.bar
f.qux

f.bar
f.qux

A: Why does the US government disallow dynamic languages for secure projects?

never used it for prod stuff. only java for that.

whered you get those? maybe put em on a blog & explain wtf....

user55340

12:39 AM

The thought of using Ruby for production work (my former job was working on point of sales) absolutely terrifies me.

user55340

105

There are a number of 'neat' things that can be done in dynamic languages that can be tucked away in parts of the code that aren't immediately obvious to another programmer or auditor as to the functionality of a given piece of code. Consider this sequence in irb (interactive ruby shell): irb(m...

ruby is very good for prototyping, its a beautiful thing

amon

@vzn if you'd watch the above video, it'll all get explained

maybe am a huge fan because like prototyping so much =D

never used it on a job ... iirc

ok may take a look

user55340

Here's what it boils down to - if you use a closure in ruby, that code that you pass the closure to can do anything to the environment the closure was from. Modify the methods, change the bindings on any variable...

12:41 AM

man could kill all day on this chat room, shoulda looked for it a long time ago, so many chat rooms around my neighborhood are pretty dead...

its like a party in here

closures are being added to java soon right?

closures are very tricky no matter how you slice it

user55340

Java 8.

user55340

The thing is its more than the closure, its the environment and what is passed with the closure.

user55340

Objective C does it right.

user20683

@vzn This exceptionally busy for a Friday.

user55340

Ruby does it very wrong.

12:41 AM

scope and closures is very tricky... heck there are phds still sorting it out...

amon

@vzn Java already has closures, lambdas will be coming

some of the langugae type systems are now known to have undecidable problems associated with them....

that was a bit of a surprise when it popped up on tcs.se....

user55340

If you want to get into type systems... @amon an jozef (I think I spelled that right, though he hasn't been in here for awhile) are the two to talk to.

ruby is a gem =)

user55340

open classes + first class environments = nightmares for writing anything moderately secure.

12:43 AM

a. seems to understand that :)

user20683

@MichaelT Jon Purdy if you can find him

user55340

@WorldEngineer But he's rarely in the room.

user20683

yep but he's only Programmers regular I know of who writes Haskell for a living.

user55340

@WorldEngineer Today has been a very odd Friday for people showing up in chat.

Haskell, an academic wet dream

monads, gonads, whatever

← not ashamed to admit still havent figured out what a monad is

user55340

12:46 AM

Get @JimmyHoffa to describe it to you... (note the room tags)

lol

maybe add that as a tag

user20683

@vzn too long

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A35276+monad

A: How to create better OO code in a relational database driven application where the database is poorly designed

but my-code-is-compiling is not? :p

its good you guys have some quality control around here wink

user55340

I'd go with...

user55340

12:47 AM

25

Object orientation is valuable specifically because these types of scenarios arise, and it gives you tools to reasonably design abstractions that allow you to encapsulate complexity. The real question here is, where do you encapsulate that complexity? So let me step back a moment and speak to w...

user55340

And then follow him down the rabbit hole part.

user20683

@vzn I am by and large the quality control

user20683

at least in the chat

ah well that explains everything right :p

yeeks

inmates running the asylum and all that

user20683

@vzn too crazy for an inmate, try again.

12:48 AM

you guys are making me dizzy

lol

user20683

@vzn Good, you're learning something then.

rabbit hole? you have to take the red pill for that =D

@MichaelT It's breathtaking. Like high level "have at it" assembly. Being a maintenance programmer on a bad Ruby project would be similar - the metaprogramming is kind of like a Goto in that anything anywhere can touch anything anywhere. "Is this refactoring safe" is always answered "nope".

+1 jimmyhoffa

user55340

@psr I admit to having to open class the Nil object in one ruby project to fix a bug.

12:50 AM

refactoring? who has schedule/budget for that anyway hah

just saw a presentation by booch a few mos ago partly on that

user55340

I defined a method for is_false to return true in the Nil object... it felt dirty.

it was... idealistic to say the least...

Hi, are there any moderators available ? I need some serious help it's urgent.

user55340

@user Which site? (there are a few here, at least one active now and one who could be pinged)

guess know where to hang out now when it gets too dull elsewhere...

coulda been halfway commuting home by now sheesh

really am the crazy one chatting here on a fri eve

12:52 AM

stackoverflow

user55340

I don't see any SO mods, though one of the local mods could try pinging them...

user55340

(the two SO mods who are active on P.SE don't seem to be about in here at the moment... one of them would be late late night... the other, well, its friday night and I haven't seen him today here).

Any other mods that could be on somewhere else?

user55340

@WorldEngineer are you pingable to the SO mods by chance?

user55340

@user you might also be able to find a community manager (SE employe who has all site mod powers) in the Meta Tavern.

user55340

12:56 AM

(if world can't ping fast enough)

aight thank you so much

I just need a question deleted or edited because the person who answered my question posted my whole script in his answer and this makes my script detectable in plagiarism sites. My prof said to upload our script to SafeAssign which is a plagiarism checker and I don't want it to show a false positive because of my script being here. I want my script on his answer either be edited and posted on pastebin or removed completely.

user55340

@user try chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/89/tavern-on-the-meta

user20683

@MichaelT I can ping them as a whole yes but as far as doing that we try not to

user20683

@user flag it

I already did. But it didn't change yet. I need it gone ASAP

user55340

12:57 AM

Heh, question #1 in the mod election survey.

user55340

Flag it.

Q: (PowerShell) How to calculate total number of purchases in a document?

-1

I am working on a script that will ask the user to enter the information of a book and then stores that information in a text document. The user has to put in the name, description, ID of the book, and its price, which is held in the variable $PurchasePriceRounded. At the end of the script, the u...

powershell

here is the question, can one of you help me out?

user55340

295

A: 2014 SO Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

An asker repeatedly flags their own question and says that they need to delete it or they'll be fired, because they mistakenly posted proprietary code. There are several good answers on that question. What do you do?

user55340

@user No more so than you can - all we here can do is flag it... and you can flag it too.

user55340

@user Try deleting it again.

12:58 AM

Can you approve my edit at least? Because I tried to change his answer so that the script doesn't show

user55340

There is something that I can do - and thats down vote an answer. If there are any positive rep answers, you can't delete.

user55340

But now... its a 0 rep answer.

Oh sure

user20683

Notification achieved

Can you PLEASE do that? It would save me a lot of trouble

user20683

1:00 AM

I can't, not high rep enough

user55340

I can't delete your question... but you may be able to now.

user20683

I barely use SO, mostly due to code licensing issues

"Sorry, this question has answers and cannot be deleted; flag it for moderator attention instead"

user55340

user55340

Well then flag it.

1:01 AM

Already did

Can you guys edit his answer out?

l8r dudez thx for entertainment will return sometime

user55340

Nope. Can't edit his answer out.

user55340

We have very little power on SO... you've got about the same set of privs as we do.

Oh I see

Any other chat rooms I can go to where people have power on SO?

user55340

MichaelT, Eau Claire, WI

820 1 10 24

java perl regex mysql string ipad json

user55340

1:02 AM

See, only 820 rep. I can't even see the up/down vote on it currently.

Any way I can contact the person directly?

user15026

@user I've pinged people, so they will deal with it as they see fit

user15026

@user Nope.

Thanks Ashley.

user55340

World has even fewer privs there than I do.

user55340

1:03 AM

World Engineer, Atlanta, GA

319 5 18

java python random rate simplecv static-methods variables

user15026

Keep in mind they might choose to do nothing.

user15026

(I am not an SO mod, or even barely a user, so I have no idea what they've got for rules about this stuff.)

user55340

And Ashely...

user55340

Ashley Nunn, Waterloo, Canada

102 2

python python-3.x

user55340

So yea... we're not SO people.

user15026

1:04 AM

Hahaha one more than the assoc bonus!

user55340

You had a +2, -1.

user15026

(also I can't believe you spelled my name wrong)

user15026

@MichaelT Yeah, on my single terrible question

user55340

@AshleyNunn I spell many things wrong.

can you guys refer me to a room with SO people?

user15026

1:05 AM

@user Check that site's chats?

user55340

user15026

But I mean don't expect them to jump to help, you've really done all you can

The site's chat glitches on me and says I need 20 reputation to chat but I have 21

user55340

Though I'd still say tavern, chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/89/tavern-on-the-meta but thats also its own fun.

user55340

@user I blame caching.

1:06 AM

Right, I should clear my cache first

Alright guys, I'm gonna go to the other rooms. Thanks for the help

user55340

Poking the tavern at the moment, I see animus on active, and tim, and nick.

user55340

Of those, animuson is a mod and the other two are SE employees.

user55340

(note: people with blue in chat are mods)

Oh okay

Q: Would this be a correct way to use the Repository pattern in ASP .NET MVC application implementing Entity Framework?

MichaelT agree with your pts about ruby but maybe "coding conventions" can solve some of the issues you cite.

not that anyone follows those :p

user55340

1:08 AM

@vzn conventions work... but aren't enforced by the language. You have to be disciplined not to work around them.

user55340

(FWIW, just saw the user join the tavern)

user55340

Sounds like the cat searched for 'n'. Try doing :let @/ = "" to clear the search. — Steven Burnap 24 secs ago

user55340

@AshleyNunn note where that comment came from.

user15026

@MichaelT Which?

user55340

Sounds like the cat searched for 'n'. Try doing :let @/ = "" to clear the search. — Steven Burnap 1 min ago

user55340

1:15 AM

Back to cats and programming!

user55340

And the close reason was:

user55340

This question would be better on Unix & Linux. Or maybe Pets. :-) — Blrfl 2 hours ago

user15026

@MichaelT Still nope :P

Brant

1:37 AM

Is this a better fit for Programmers.SE?

0

This ASP .NET MVC application implements Entity Framework. I've declared the repositories in the DbContext like this: public class CompanyDbContext : DbContext { // constructor goes here public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; set; } public DbSet<Order> Orders { get; se...

asp.net-mvc entity-framework repository-pattern

user55340

1:54 AM

@Brant Dunno... might need to get an ASP.net'er to comment on that - I can't read if there's enough info in it or not.

user55340

Random bit: Reason to know K&R C - vim is still written in that so old systems can compile it. Look at github.com/b4winckler/macvim/blob/master/src/eval.c and be scared.

user55340

/*
 * Return the name of the executed function.
 */
    char_u *
func_name(cookie)
    void *cookie;
{
    return ((funccall_T *)cookie)->func->uf_name;
}

user55340

@Brant For what its worth... it was reposted.

user55340

0

Q: Would this be a correct way to use the Repository pattern in ASP .NET MVC application implementing Entity Framework?

This ASP .NET MVC application implements Entity Framework. I've declared the repositories in the DbContext like this: public class CompanyDbContext : DbContext { // constructor goes here public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; set; } public DbSet<Order> Orders { get; se...

asp.net-mvc entity-framework repository unit-of-work

user55340

3:41 AM

@Christoph you might be able to work something off of the most dangerous tags query data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/134977/… - that one works for tags akin to data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/78395/…

MetaFight

4:32 AM

hrm, I may have picked the wrong time of day to ask my question. I think I may have missed both the US and UK work crowds.

Q: this question going to be posted 100000000000 time blocking people from asking are not good practice

6:48 AM

-6

i think i don't need to write much information i think but blocking people form asking are not good practice there is down voting and i got -2 then -4 then -3 then -11 and i will not change the question more then 11 time and not get any thing and about deleting post it should be alert to warning ...

feature-request

I am scared :)

10:19 AM

good food for thought there in comments...

This has almost nothing to do with you deleting questions. You probably shouldn't have deleted this one - the system penalizes you heavily for quickly deleting a question after someone took the time to answer - but for the most part your block is due to down-votes triggered by hard-to-read questions, lousy titles, etc. — Shog9 3 hours ago

"system penalizes you heavily for quickly deleting a question after someone took the time to answer"

Dew

lets scribble this whiteboard!

that is, fastest gun answerers quickly dropping their lousy stuff into troublesome questions, essentially increase risk of the asker to hit question ban instead of helping them

A: Question closed, how to fix it?

1:09 PM

0

There's no way to fix the question. Programmers site is FUBAR. It's about closing useful questions, not about answering them. If half questions get closed, the site is doomed. Just look at the front page. No one understands what this site is about. Those few who managed to farm enough reputation...

Undo

2:41 PM

@MichaelT same in SE chat too.

Ampt

7:02 PM

@MichaelT psh, haters gonna hate.

@Undo... you're... soo... BLUE!

user55340

7:44 PM

@Ampt He's gotten a modship over at Software Recommendations (poor soul).

Stack Exchange

8:49 PM

Ars Technica » Stack Exchange: Should we list bugs in the header of a source file?

posted on February 22, 2014 by Stack Exchange

Some programmers think it's clutter, but others want the information.

MetaFight

god no

NOOOOOooooo

2

"Some programmers are sane, but others don't like the convenience of modern tools and tried and tested development practices. Who is right?"

amon

@StackExchange ars' coverage on SE is a sure way to find questions that should have been closed ;-)

user20683

@amon Entirely SamTheBrand's fault