The Whiteboard

psr

12:37 AM

@MichaelT But I always spell that "160,160,160".

user55340

3:00 AM

free spam flags: programmers.stackexchange.com/a/230209

Jimmy Hoffa

3:44 AM

Always love when people tag [functional-programming:tag] on questions meaning "The code has to function!"

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest

gnat

12:52 PM

vote split **+1**/-1 - what was the point upvoting this, do I miss something?

0

A: How to write camel case for words like "phonenumber", "motorcycle", "wavelength", etc

For cases where it's really hard for you to tell if a two-word phrase is a compound word, pick a capitalization and stick with it. As with most coding conventions, being consistent within a single project is what's most important.

this does not add anything substantial over earlier answers — gnat 6 hours ago

at Workplace, a blatantly repetitive meh like this would probably be at about -5 already...

474

Q: Encouraging people to explain downvotes

I used to get "upset" (though that is too strong a term) when I got downvoted without comment. If my answer isn't good enough then I'd like to know why. Not only does it improve the answer for the OP but it improves my knowledge too. Where the down-vote has been explained I've found it useful & ...

^^^ there are cases when I wish people would be encouraged to explain upvotes

user55340

3:16 PM

Hmm... I wonder if I could get a tag badge on meta for FAQ.

gnat

3:28 PM

looks like we've been hit by a usual wave of crappy post-Ars questions...

Feb 18 at 15:59, by gnat

Tuesday... the day of mass arrival of lemmings from Ars Technika. On weekend, they were reading the "c00l question". On Monday, they figured there's Q&A site there. On Tuesday-Wednesday, they get an idea... "hey I can ask something c00l and become famous, too". And... here we go!

wish them turn red. Ruby Tuesday...

►

> They would never say where they came from

Ain't gonna miss them

Robert Harvey

3:55 PM

@gnat It's been viewed 2500 times. There's bound to be someone whose mouse hand slips.

Did anyone read those two articles from yesterday? For some reason, the generic repository approach appeals to me, but I can't shake the feeling that there's some "inner platform effect" going on here.

Also, whatever happened to relational table design? Is Code First the new hotness, and is everyone just trusting EF to do the right thing with table design?

user55340

Could we get some rejections on the suggested edits for the tag wiki - they are copies from Wikipedia. programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/54576 programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/54577

user55340

Memoization

In computing, memoization is an optimization technique used primarily to speed up computer programs by having function calls avoid repeating the calculation of results for previously processed inputs. Memoization has also been used in other contexts (and for purposes other than speed gains), such as in simple mutually recursive descent parsing in a general top-down parsing algorithm that accommodates ambiguity and left recursion in polynomial time and space. Although related to caching, memoization refers to a specific case of this optimization, distinguishing it from forms of caching s...

gnat

4:16 PM

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat I know, Ruby Sparks was a weird ass movie.

gnat

@JimmyHoffa weird ass movie is what rolls through site front page now

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat post-ars correlation you're working on?

gnat

@JimmyHoffa not quite working, just trying to memorize that I need to keep an extra supply of down and close votes at Tue-Wednesday at about this time

...I don't see Ars "promotions" as something worth blocking. It's an external source, as opposed to hot list, and unlike hot list damage it brings isn't focused at single question, and it's not like 24x7 pressure from the list - I rather expect community / moderators to be able to handle post-Ars artifacts

user55340

We've also got advanced notice of the question that does get the attention and they're all aged enough that even 15k can protect them.

user55340

4:24 PM

Frequently the questions already have significant material (they wouldn't be chosen if they didn't) that already encompasses enough of the answers that people are less tempted to add their own $0.02.

gnat

@MichaelT yes, the target question protection makes this "game" much safer than hot list with its braindead 7 happy hours. By the way Sam is aware about protection and in few cases I've even seen it seemed to be put per his own flags (I only guess here, I can't see flags)

could you please flag for mod attention to protect questions prior to publishing these at Ars Technika? This would help avoid polluting such questions by low quality answers brought by passers by — gnat Dec 28 '13 at 17:38

user55340

The activity from ars is quite a bit less than what happens when we get hit with Reddit or HackerNews.

gnat

@MichaelT yup, and by the way, I generally expect community / mods to be able to handle hits from these too. Major difference with hot list is, these are "organic" hits, and infrequent ones, as opposed to fake hotness that attacks site 24x7.

oh Ruby Tuesday fun...

0

Q: Guidance to create a Club Management Syste,

Hello Respected Helpers :) I recently got a project of creating a club management system. The idea is there will a main site with admin panel for site owner .. This site will be offering different footballs clubs to make their site within the main site i.e offering a subdomain. I will be using ...

php web-development applications

user55340

I'm out of close votes - the 10k flags and close vote queue did it for me.

user55340

@gnat did you see @GlenH7's edit to the camelCase? programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/230158/revisions

user55340

4:38 PM

(noting that the review has been closed so if there is another 3 reopen votes, it needs to non-queue reopens)

Ampt

that whole question was just hard to read, both before and after the edit

user41796

@MichaelT We haven't had a close / reopen war in a bit. Thought it would be good fun.

Ampt

No offence @GlenH7

user41796

And it's not that horrific of a question if you pretend the OP is ESL.

Ampt

where space -> replace with Capital

user41796

4:40 PM

@Ampt Honestly didn't put too much effort into it. Once a question has X views or votes, I'm hesitant to materially change it.

user41796

Part of that OP's problem is that he wasn't inserting spaces at appropriate places. Which is why I said "go look it up in a dictionary." And he was wrong about hash table being one word. :-)

user55340

For fun - java Hashtable vs HashMap

user41796

@MichaelT Fwah ha ha ha - guess it depends upon what you want to use as your source then

Ampt

damnit sun.

> This class implements a hash table,

gnat

@MichaelT yeah I am chewing it up... I thought of casting reopen until I've read this comment... and it brought me back on the fence...

Ampt

4:42 PM

> hash table,

user55340

I keep thinking of 'hashtable' as a specific thing while 'hash map' is a 'hash' implementation of a 'map'.

gnat

26

Q: Which is correct: "Filename", "File Name" or "FileName"?

Which is correct: "Filename", "File Name" or "FileName"?

orthography capitalization programming spacing camel-case

@PacMani You might enjoy the discussion here! — Jason C 4 hours ago

Ampt

@MichaelT by their own documentation it's two words.

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Just attribute them properly.

user41796

@Ampt MS documentation is inconsistent with hash table

Robert Harvey

4:44 PM

Eh, it's not even the right tag.

user55340

@RobertHarvey the person has done it before - they often don't see the edits (and marked as not helpful) as being a correction. Its only the rejection that makes them notice.

Robert Harvey

Well, memorization is not memoization anyway. Did anyone else catch that?

Ampt

@RobertHarvey depends on if your secretary is doing it.

buh-dum-tss

user55340

@RobertHarvey Nope...

user55340

Though... even with that, I wanted them to take notice of what they missed in programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/54544 programmers.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/54545

user55340

4:47 PM

And this was an error from...

user55340

1

Q: Memoization Memory

Memoization is definitely a powerful technique. But Dynamic Programming is slightly better IMO, since it does not involve the memory strain (in a recursive program, the parameters occupy memory and this memory increases as we go deeper into the recursion). But speed-wise, both are pretty equal. ...

algorithms dynamic-programming memorization

user55340

which has the wrong tag on it.

user41796

@MichaelT Once it becomes egregious like that, I find a post of theirs and flag it for mod attention. I then point to the reviews and explain what they're doing wrong.

user41796

@RobertHarvey - I read over most of the 1st link, skimmed the 2nd.

user55340

My numbering on it is first, a rejected suggested edit. Second a mod flag.

user41796

4:49 PM

@MichaelT I call that equivalent. :-)

user55340

@GlenH7 Only if you're a mod. ;-)

user41796

I think there's value in using DTOs as was suggested. I didn't really dig into what he was saying with the amount of boilerplate code required to wire things up or his hand-waving about using a framework to sidestep all of that.

user41796

So scalability would potentially be an issue; but I think that's a YMMV case.

Robert Harvey

I killed the memorization tag. Sorry about all the question bumps.

user55340

@RobertHarvey No problem... and that works too.

user41796

4:51 PM

@RobertHarvey I'm sure we'll get a whole bunch of high quality "gimme teh codez" to bury them with

user41796

@MichaelT Maybe they'll grace us with an election after SO's completes. :-)

user55340

Though memoization (or however its spelled) likely isn't a bad tag for the appropriate questions.

user55340

@GlenH7 Maybe. @Ampt for mod!

user41796

@MichaelT True - if we elected our sock puppet then we wouldn't have to campaign against each other.

Ampt

@MichaelT It's like a thousand souls suddenly cried out and were silenced.

user55340

4:53 PM

programmers.stackexchange.com/… - memoization could get its own tag.

Ampt

my first official duty would be to ban both of you

user55340

@GlenH7 Exactly my thoughts.

user41796

and Oded is on the hunt today

Ampt

I would be 30 rep short of being able to vote on the SO elections

user41796

@Ampt You do know you just put your hat in the ring, right?

Ampt

4:55 PM

@GlenH7 no, that was just the wind.

user41796

2 mins ago, by Ampt

my first official duty would be to ban both of you

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 Who are you responding to?

All this tag wiki noise...

user41796

You, and your earlier question about the articles you linked

user55340

@GlenH7 look at the recently deleted... ChrisF on the prowl.

user41796

I didn't delve into his second as much as I was out of time for the day.

user41796

4:58 PM

@MichaelT trying to hit his monthly quota so Yannis can't shame him?

user55340

@GlenH7 Could hit the Data.SE delete vote query and up your own count...

user41796

I'll hit /tools later in the day. Quite a bit going on at work and a fair amount of crud at home.

user55340

data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/141131/…

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 I first started seeing signs of this with micro-ORM's like Massive and Dapper, which favor simple queries constructed with functions, and techniques like dynamic invocation and generics, over creating a bunch of proxy classes for table entities like Linq to SQL used to do.

Massive is only about 400 lines of code. Dapper is used by SE.

user41796

@RobertHarvey I can see the appeal. I haven't played with ORMs much personally, but the folk I have talked with have lamented how heavy they can become.

user55340

5:01 PM

@RobertHarvey oh, did you hear of my latest "hmm... I should try writing that"... a sort program in Fractran!

user41796

The team I'm on has looked at EF a bit, and it's only in the last release or two that it seems stable enough for production / enterprise use

gnat

@MichaelT magic!!!

Ampt

@GlenH7 we've been using EF on the plows for ages. it only crashes once or twice a day

and only physically crashes the trucks once a week

user55340

@gnat Quite a few of them have been deleted... and the query isn't quite right...

user55340

But it finds things that are older than 30 days that just need one more vote (so you don't have to scower the site yourself)

gnat

5:06 PM

@MichaelT yes, that's about what I wanted for quite a while

user41796

@Ampt I'm sitting at "neutral but hopeful" for future releases. That team appears to have made some really good improvements, and I can see the use cases with smaller, green-field type projects. Not quite there for a drop-in assist to an existing enterprise app.

user55340

@gnat Should be trivial to convert that to a 'find all delete votes pending'

user41796

@MichaelT do we have quite a few hanging out past 30 days?

user55340

@GlenH7 Yep.

user41796

K. I'll run my deletes through the DE query today instead of /tools.

Kapol

5:10 PM

bey there

I'm looking for some at least semi-experienced programmer to give me some feedback about what I should do regarding my future work, because I have a hell of a problem :)

Ampt

@Kapol shoot, none of them here.

user55340

We've got noobs and gurus. Take your pick.

user55340

Sometimes we've got noob gurus. And guru noobs too.

user41796

Can I be a n00b today? Then I can stop creating the architecture for our next app....

Kapol

it'll take a while to write it all down, so please be patient

it won't be an essay, though.

user41796

5:13 PM

@Kapol - thanks for NOT asking on main. :-)

Ampt

@Kapol there's a max message length, and it'snot that large FYI

Kapol

OK, i'll break it up

Ampt

might have to preemptively break it into smaller parts.

Robert Harvey

Protip: If you use fixed font, you can pretty much make it as long as you want.

Kapol

I'm a VBA programmer with 1 year of experience. A few month back I started to learn C# on my own and I love it. The thing is that I know only some "standard" concepts, I've yet to learn ASP or JavaScript or WPF (coming soon, though)

user41796

5:15 PM

@RobertHarvey So that's why you have ridiculous amounts of rep on the sites....

Kapol

Recently I've been looking for a job in .NET (since the beginning of this month)

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 Only works in chat.

Kapol

I've had 2 interviews, but both went badly

I just don't have enough knowledge at the moment

the thing is I went to an interview in December regarding VBA/Progress 4GL

and it looks like they want me

Robert Harvey

Take it.

Kapol

the thing is I'm not sure I want to go there - the money will be better, but I'd have to postpone NET

Robert Harvey

5:17 PM

Learn .net on your own time.

Kapol

I'm pretty sure they'll let me install C# Express there (in my current job it's impossible)

so I can try to do some real stuff there

user55340

@RobertHarvey If you stick a "shift return" at the front, you can also make it as long as you want.

Robert Harvey

@Kapol So what's not to like?

user41796

With the extra money, perhaps you can afford a machine for yourself to install C# express.

Kapol

lol

Ampt

5:18 PM

@MichaelT you guys are a bunch of dirty cheaters

user55340

@Ampt I like saying big things sometimes... but it gets crunched up with a 'more' link.

Robert Harvey

@Kapol People make all kinds of money working on obsolete stuff. In fact, that's the bulk of the work that is available. People who can do that work are in good demand; PHP noobz who can hack a website together are a dime a dozen.

user55340

@Kapol do you have a job currently?

Kapol

I have a job

it's basically Excel VBA

some Access and Outlook

and nothing else in sight

user55340

And you'd be moving to general VBA rather than app specific ones (in the new job you're thinking of)?

Kapol

5:21 PM

I'm not sure. As far as I know it's mostly Excel/Outlook

no MS SQL, just this Progress 4GL

Robert Harvey

So you're moving for the money, then?

Kapol

I applied for the money back then, but I don't think that's the way I want to go

I'd like to improve

so, it comes to this:

either go there for a year and try NET again

or stick to what I have now and apply for NET jobs

user55340

Which job will move you closer to being a generalist in VBA rather than a 'excel vba' person?

user55340

(the reason I ask is that generalist VBA -> generalist C# doesn't seem to be as big of a jump as excel VBA -> generalist C#)

Kapol

good question

I would say that the new job

user55340

5:24 PM

The VBA guys who work deep within macros in specific microsoft applications tend to get pigeon holded there.

Kapol

I get what you're saying

user55340

The skills of excel vba don't transfer as well to C# as the "writing a new application in VBA"

Kapol

what do you mean by writing applications in VBA?

Robert Harvey

VBA is a programming language. Applications in VBA are written like applications in any other programming language. The only difference is that there's a whole lot of already-available infrastructure (Word, Excel, Access) surrounding VBA.

user55340

(btw, I'd also ping @enderland on this - knowing a bit more VBA things)

Robert Harvey

5:26 PM

The job you have is essentially the job I used to have (VBA developer). All of that Business Domain knowledge served me well when I eventually moved into a .NET position. They wanted my expertise in business systems, and didn't particularly care that I didn't know C# yet.

enderland

oh hi

user55340

And lo, he does appear.

user41796

@MichaelT that was like magic

enderland

I write way more VBA than I want to think about

user55340

(btw, @enderland poke the designers at TW to change the profile display from all caps to small caps)

user55340

5:27 PM

If you C&P your name from the profile there you get ENDERLAND.

user41796

That's a really good point about business domain expertise. That knowledge can overcome a lot of misgivings about whether or not you know a particular language

enderland

@Kapol the biggest "problem" many VBA programmers have is that they never really have to write any application. Most VBA apps are glorified scripts in excel/access

Kapol

as I said, I'm not sure what exactly I'll be doing there - it's a company who makes packagings and they have a very small IT department (3 people total) and they do automation in VBA (which, I believe, is Excel/Outlook) and reporting throug Progress 4GL

@enderland Exactly

enderland

I'm a bit unique, I messed with VBA then did a masters where I did C++ application develpment

Kapol

and that's what I'd like to get away from

enderland

5:28 PM

you can REALLY use that knowledge when doing VBA

user55340

I'll also point out that @enderland is a workplace.SE denizen and has particular insights into answering the interview / new job type questions.

enderland

and VBA is object oriented the way other "real" languages are

just that 90% of the use cases it's easier to not do that

user41796

@enderland but we all know that VBA isn't a real language. :-)

enderland

@GlenH7 it probably is one of the most underutilized languages that's for sure...

because it really has a lot more functionality than most people use it for

user55340

@GlenH7 Hey... who's the one that answered a BrainF*ck question here recently?

enderland

5:30 PM

3 mins ago, by Robert Harvey

The job you have is essentially the job I used to have (VBA developer). All of that Business Domain knowledge served me well when I eventually moved into a .NET position. They wanted my expertise in business systems, and didn't particularly care that I didn't know C# yet.

this could not be more true in many companies

when you get involved even in "hacking" VBA apps you have to learn so much depth into the business process to make it wokr

aliteralmind

I just made an edit to my question, and got some new up-votes. Now I understand why constantly-edited questions are made into wikis. I didn't know that editing a question "bumps" it.

enderland

you can't program "this is about how it mostly kinda sorta works"

you have to understand it - fully

I figure I've got about the deepest understanding in my entire corp of my current project processes because I'm automating huge portions of it

user55340

@aliteralmind Yep - every time you get new visibility to it, people will see it... and people who have seen it before check it again to see what the revision was.

user41796

@enderland That's a great way to become irreplaceable. Which is good and bad.

aliteralmind

Damn. Wish I knew that before. :)

user55340

5:32 PM

The "avoid a CW" or the "get more rep"?

gnat

@aliteralmind meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/bump/info

Kapol

the question that pops up right now is:
what are my chances of getting a NET job with 2 years of MS Office VBA experience? Plus some C#, JavaSript, ASP etc. that I learn at home (given that there'll be no opportunity to use this at work)

gnat

avoid a CW only works when post is great enough to flag for mod / raise meta request to clean it up...

9

Q: remove CW status for this answer? (OO-principles for Javascript by Daniel)

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/180588/31260 Above answer has been made CW per automatic rule (quote source): The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner. Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair. In case of doubt, check the answer c...

support status-completed community-wiki specific-answer

Kapol

unfortunately this Progress stuff is apparently not SQL :/

gnat

7

Q: remove CW status for this answer? (hashing algorithms testing by Ian Boyd)

What hashing algorithm is good for uniqueness and speed? Particular answer to above question has been made CW per automatic rule (quote source): The post has been edited ten (10) times by the original owner. Automatically applying generic rule in this particular case looks unfair. In case ...

support status-completed community-wiki specific-answer

user41796

5:34 PM

@Kapol Impossible to say. It all depends upon your local job market and how well you present yourself within an interview.

Kapol

I figured it won;t be that simple:

:)

user41796

@Kapol Early in your career, you likely want to stick with the more marketable languages and technologies. That increases your ability to match what another employer is looking for.

gnat

wonder if hesitant nazis would be an accurate description of the way how our mods use their (binding) votes...

...btw, since you mentioned discussion with Yannis, it's worth warning that he will unlikely cast reopen vote, at least not when question has only 1-2 such votes. He's a moderator and at Programmers they try to abstain of voting close / reopen, except for fairly clear cut cases (and your doesn't look like that yet, sorry). Their votes are binding and they try not to abuse that power — gnat 2 hours ago

user41796

@Kapol But don't discount developing domain expertise as well. For example, if you live in London and you're working in finance, then you may want to say in that role as it helps you develop expertise that the area is known for. So again, you're making yourself more marketable to more employers.

Jimmy Hoffa

Ok - displeased with clojure on this: Their core library is severely lacking, with extremely important and necessary functionality living in community libraries which are well broken up so that you have to dig around and grab a bunch of them just to get normally required FP libs (need to go grab and install the lib yourself to get pattern matching for instance - that should be part of the languages core library with the platform install), same for monads, generics, and a bunch more

user41796

5:37 PM

But if you're working in languages that no one else is using in a domain that no one else does, then you have little to lose from jumping ship

Jimmy Hoffa

Looks like they outright rejected ADTs from the community library too where it exists in older versions they got rid of it...grumble...

user55340

@Kapol You know... my former employer was a Progress shop... not that I'd recommend going there.

user41796

@Kapol - be careful of jumping ship too often though. As it gives the impression to future employers that you won't stick around

Kapol

where I am now, I will not learn much anymore

user55340

The challenge of switching jobs too often - it takes between 6 months to a year to get up to speed on everything.

Kapol

5:39 PM

to where I can go, I will learn new stuff, but most likely nothing connected with NET or Java

user55340

If you switch jobs after a year, they've invested that time training you and didn't get a full ROI... and the next company will see that too and wonder if you are going to leave after a year there too.

Kapol

ok

let me say this

user55340

You might also want to look at contracting shops instead, where the "switching jobs frequently" is the reason of the place.

Kapol

I will work REALLY hard to get to know more NET, because I'd like to move out of VBA

user41796

My particular workplace is very cautious about suspected job-hoppers and ladder-climbers. I know we've declined candidates in the past because they didn't seem like they would stick around and the rest of their presentation didn't make up for that risk.

Kapol

5:41 PM

so should I stik woth my current job and learn NET on the side?

and keep looking for a job all this time?

user41796

@Kapol only you can really answer that.

user41796

I wouldn't take the new job if you think you'll only stay there for a few months.

Kapol

to be frank, if I worked there, then it would be for the money... If my expectations about things done there are correct, then I would look for a NET job sooner then later

user55340

(back when I started out, I worked at 3 companies for about 3 months each... but then too, I was a contractor... tech support, dev work, and testing) The ramp up time for each one was < 1 week.

user41796

If the job market in your area is doing okay, then continuing to search may be the right decision for you. Making more money is a good thing, but if you expect you'll be unhappy there then it doesn't make sense to switch. It's unfair to the new company and also means you have to go through the stress of learning a new job.

user55340

5:46 PM

For tech support you set up your machine, were shown how to get access to old calls for searching, and then shadowed someone on the phones for a day... and by the 3rd day you were on the phones yourself.

user41796

You might want to target larger companies that will hire you for your VBA skills but have the opportunity to move into other roles

Kapol

glen, that's exactly what I was thinking about

if VBA, then in a department where they also do C# and stuff

Robert Harvey

@gnat: I think you scared that guy away.

Kapol

so I get get into some projects

can get*

user41796

Or just a larger company in general. 3 person shops don't tend to have a variety of tools that they are using. They are fairly well focused. Larger shops have different projects going on.

Kapol

5:50 PM

ok guys

that you for your input

I'll have to make up my mind now

user41796

@Kapol you're welcome and good luck

Kapol

but right now I'm inclined to stay where I'm at now

thanks, bye

user41796

@Ampt - guess who has to futz with labels and label printers in the near future ....

gnat

@RobertHarvey how can I scare anyone?

user41796

@gnat You scared off the most recent question on main. OP deleted the question 1 min prior to the ticker picking it up in here.

enderland

5:58 PM

@GlenH7 even just learning how to learn business processes is an incredibly valuable ability

user41796

@enderland But why should I care how the company makes its money? They should be happy just to have me. :-D

enderland

@GlenH7 my company exists to give me a job actually

2

Ampt

@GlenH7 MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA

user41796

For fans of Peter Mortensen edits: WHAT?!

user41796

@Ampt yeah, I thought you'd get a chuckle out of that

user55340

6:04 PM

Just as an aside, could we get another upvote on programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/228468/… (its not a bad duplicate title) to do a 20 rep bump for chat ease?

user41796

@MichaelT someone beat me to it

user41796

@Ampt - I have no idea how we're going to integrate with the printer at this point. Our app will be browser based / HTML5. The printer has already been purchased (a few years ago) and is unlikely to be replaced.

user55340

There we go... 24 rep. @YannisRizos you could toss a comment into that deleted question pointing to chat as a resource for trying to narrow down any perceived too broadness?

user41796

@MichaelT probably needs a link for the deleted question

user55340

He's a mod... he can find his recent comments too...

enderland

6:08 PM

I loathe sharepoint. seriously

user55340

Though for the rest of the 10ks - programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230321/…

user41796

@Ampt - I may be wrong, it may be easy after all. The label maker we're using has windows printer drivers.

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT I've already left a comment there, let me know if you want me to add something.

gnat

Ruby Tuesday...

user55340

@YannisRizos "If you need any help or thoughts on ways to make this a better question, please consider [chat] as a resource."

gnat

6:10 PM

@YannisRizos I want, I want! if author can edit their post while it's deleted, add a suggestion to do so. If not, then your comment looks okay as is

user55340

@gnat Yep, author can edit self-deleted posts while deleted. (note the bookends on revision 2 - codegolf.stackexchange.com/posts/21202/revisions )

user41796

@gnat I think that's the question where you scared the OP away. I want to say you had a comment in there asking for more research. But I suspect Yannis nuked it

gnat

@MichaelT all right, then this seems to be the safest course of action (avoids close, down votes, as well as fastest gun answers that could block edits)

psr

@RobertHarvey Yes. I thought it seemed fine, I can see where it reminds you of inner platform effect stuff but I don't think it's there yet. Honestly, I was mostly annoyed at the self-congratulatory tone. He figured out that he could use a common interface instead of a superclass, and doing so would allow him to use decorators. Great, but that would often have been a way to go even before generics, despite the annoying type casts. And he took his time stumbling onto it.

Sure, well done, but his end result kind of seems like what you would do by default.

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT @gnat Done.

user55340

6:15 PM

@YannisRizos Thank you.

user41796

@YannisRizos I would up vote your comment, but the system won't let me. :-)

gnat

@GlenH7 easy peasy. All you need is to go for and win mod election, raise a feature request to allow mods upvote comments (and answers!) in deleted questions, and get it to status-completed. 6-8 weeks and you're done

user55340

@YannisRizos while you're here, any suggestions / ideas for that "why was my question closed / downvoted" meta?

user41796

@gnat But that meddling @MichaelT might get in the way of all of those plans. What should I do then?

Jimmy Hoffa

0

Q: Where did defadt go in new clojure contrib?

So digging around trying to figure out how to do ADTs in Clojure I run into the old clojure-contrib which is well and good except that it's been replaced. Ok no big deal, just go look through the replaced clojure-contrib's catalog of broken apart libraries, but for the life of me I cannot find wh...

clojure algebraic-data-types clojure-contrib

Free worthless SO points for anyone who can figure it out.

user55340

6:21 PM

@GlenH7 At some point, I need to run some monte-carlos on the election to get an idea how that would play out.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Half tempted to put a comment in of "You should ask this on Programmers instead."

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Really? It's not conceptual at all..

user41796

@JimmyHoffa No, just for trolling purposes

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Learning Clojure?

Jimmy Hoffa

Oh, well I'm the troll around here so in that case...

This should probably be posted to Programmers.SE — Jimmy Hoffa 8 secs ago

user41796

6:23 PM

@MichaelT Honestly, I suspect you would win. You have more meta activity and are generally more clear in your writing that I am.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Don't confuse them that much.

gnat

@GlenH7 overthrow ChrisF to make a place for two of you?

user55340

@GlenH7 I'm also much more of the 'close & delete' end of the spectrum than you are.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Something like that. I've played with it in the past, but now I'm trying to see about doing real programming in it just to see how it plays out. Going to try creating an actual web app or something

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Fun, suggestion, Hoogle type app for clojure? Based on your question it could come in handy

user41796

6:24 PM

@MichaelT True, I think you prefer to put items out there for the community to consider for deletion whereas I'm all too happy to roll through and scorch the earth

user55340

Even if I had more first votes, I suspect you'd have more first + first (eliminated) & second votes.

user41796

But I don't think that sort of nuance would come out during a campaign

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg Untyped lambda calculus remember, it would be like hoogle which could only search on kinds, not that helpful heh

user41796

@MichaelT If the campaign came down to who voted first then you know that the community will do well either way.

gnat

@GlenH7 that probably makes you a better candidate...

49 mins ago, by gnat

wonder if hesitant nazis would be an accurate description of the way how our mods use their (binding) votes...

Yannis Rizos

6:26 PM

@MichaelT I think I'll throw a [featured] tag on it, to get more people to read it... and then suspend you for being the ringleader of a Meta voting ring (the damn vote fraud script hasn't screwed this one yet - but it will).

user55340

@YannisRizos I put that warning in there to not be too generous with votes.

Jimmy Hoffa

The only thing you can derive from a clojure method to my eyes is: The namespace it lives in, the name of it, the arity, and the doc string. I suppose a doc string searcher would be the main ideal. I somewhat suspect such a searcher exists already though

user55340

Also I think we found that +7 serial upvotes didn't trigger the script on the main site.

user41796

@MichaelT I think the serial up vote algorithm is just a myth. It's perpetuated to scare folk. :-)

user55340

I need to do a "who has favorited my questions" against Meta.P.SE to see where all those stars on the open letter are.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:29 PM

@jozefg if I don't get a good answer to my question there, that's a bit of a red flag on the clojure community in my book that perhaps they're just writing Java with parens and don't bother with ADTs, or that they're just not a highly active community. Haskell tag in SO responds damn well all the time, and they're a much smaller user base than clojure (I suspect...)

Stack Exchange

8

Q: Why was my question closed or down voted?

Help! My question was closed (or down voted)? Downvoted Duplicate Off topic What language to take up next Recommend a tool, library, or other Career or education advice Unclear Too broad Primarily opinion-based Other certification, homework, interview, current events, cross-posting etc... T...

discussion featured close-reasons faq-proposed

user41796

^^^^ Looky. featured

user55340

Yea, they never stick around long enough for me to have a chance at a tag badge for it though.

user41796

@MichaelT - I blame the evil mods

user55340

I'd need 20 concurrently featured answers... though having 9 in that question...

user55340

6:32 PM

(the original form (you can see in the Downvote revision history) was one giant answer... but that made it hard to link to specific ones which was a goal for the design of the resource)

jozefg

@JimmyHoffa Possible, I suspect that the clojure community is in two camps. "Java with lambda + macros" and "Common lisp/Scheme with Java access"

Lisps have never really been gung-ho on ADTs

user55340

@YannisRizos the odd bit with that question... it was inspired by a comment from the bully hunter that he didn't want to spend a week searching for all the related threads about why something is closed.

Jimmy Hoffa

@jozefg I know that, but the clisp camp would at least be well aware of them and use them occasionally

If that portion of the clojure community is the miniscule part and everybody else is just writing untyped Java with lambdas (and probably a few macros, mostly though I wager those folks just grab macros from libraries written by the CLISP folks), then that bodes less well for the community than I would expect

jozefg

Yeah.. I'd expect that more in Scala than clojure htough

user55340

@JimmyHoffa The test of that would be java 8.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:36 PM

@jozefg aye, that's my inclination as well which is why I'm going the Clojure route not Scala.

user55340

@aliteralmind btw, neat link for you - programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/228939/timeline

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Ah, that's his one positive contribution to the site then. (btw, I don't think he'll be coming back anytime soon)

Jimmy Hoffa

It is curious how language-unawares most industry devs are. Majority of languages are just vague words they may have heard with absolutely no real knowledge of the purpose or usage or reason... Blub reigns supreme to the exclusion of anything else widely.

user55340

@YannisRizos At least until after the next mod election when he expects something to change (shrug)

user55340

(and yea, there may be other communications I'm not privy to on that account)

jozefg

6:40 PM

@JimmyHoffa yeah :( I'm particularly sad when it's PHP as their blub.. trying to argue with PHP fanatics makes me sad on the inside

user55340

(hmm... tempted to try digging up that post that someone called @YannisRizos a php troll or something)

user41796

@MichaelT ninja, not troll

user55340

> How can I block an user? Because what is the point of asking questions here if that PHPninja (ppffftt lmao) keeps closing my questions? He should be carefull with the jedi. If I am not respected here I will be looking for another place to be respected! Yannis has learned how to echo the string 'Hello World.' and thinks he is already a guru!

gnat

2 days ago, by gnat

"you mean people should take one week off and read all the posts, blogs, faqs, articles before asking their question?" is there a way to answer yes to this... politely?

2 days ago, by gnat

@MichaelT mind writing a meta post addressing above? ^^^

user41796

I wonder if we should have a fall through default case of "We just don't like you" as the justification for the close.

user55340

6:49 PM

@GlenH7 That was Jimmy's suggestion back in the what should our close reasons be.

user41796

We could put "We appreciate you have a problem. Please appreciate that we don't care." a notch higher than the "We don't like you." reason. I'm OK with that.

user41796

Probably friendlier to say that we don't care before we say we don't like someone.

Jimmy Hoffa

1

A: How can I write a good custom close message?

Troll question This is meant to address questions such as "What kind of transistor should I program in?" or "It's almost 2014. Why are we still using computers?" Such questions rapidly irritate the site as time passes. This question appears to be looking for information, but that informatio...

> This question appears to be looking for information, but that information is not looking for this question. In the future try searching your C: drive, or check the stacks at your local library.

user55340

Make sure to put in your mod election campaign to have "100% more snark in our close reasons"

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Speaking of which, I'm quite happy to see how far along CMOS has progressed

Jimmy Hoffa

6:53 PM

@MichaelT I should self nominate and run on a platform of "Will execute high quality compression algorithm against this site for maximal engineering value-per-bit and higher content efficiency"

user41796

It would be kind of funny to have all 3 room owners run for mod

user55340

@gnat something changed...

user55340

85

Q: Don't let questions stick to the top of the hot questions list forever

I've noticed that some very highly upvoted questions stay in the list of hot questions (also displayed in the Stack Exchange menu on the top left) for a very long time, often for several days. One example would be this question on Programmers which is still in the hot questions list (though prett...

feature-request status-completed stackexchange-button hot-questions

Jimmy Hoffa

I wouldn't run for mod

user55340

(the status completed added by meta.stackoverflow.com/users/202998/jeremy-t who is an SE employee)

gnat

6:54 PM

@JimmyHoffa why?

user55340

1

A: Ease up on the Hot Network Question Randomness

This is a recent change which resulted in a 30% increase in engagement. All of this engagement came from repeated clicks. We are not likely to go back to the static list, but we do have improved algorithm changes coming in the next couple of months.

user41796

@gnat He would VTC everything not related to Haskell

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat I'm a jerk who lacks the subjectivity or kid gloves (I'm all nerve endings, and I ensure everyone else feels it).

gnat

@JimmyHoffa almost ideal candidate. Mix in an addiction for tequila and you're done!

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I would have a serious problem not just trawling through early years and deleting nearly everything.

user55340

6:56 PM

^^ This is what haskell does to a person.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Just blame tequila whenever you do so

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT IT'S NOT MY FAULT THOSE QUESTIONS VIOLATE OUR TYPE SYSTEM

user55340

Actually, given that Jimmy is already a haskeller, maybe the rage would be better precipitated by forcing him to learn some php?

4

Ampt

@GlenH7 cheater.

you should be forced to use a proprietary programming language developed specifically for that model of printer, and that language has to be designed by an electrical engineer who has no idea what a programming language is beyond assembly

user41796

@Ampt It's the only reason I'll allow the request as a future feature.

user41796

6:59 PM

@Ampt I've written in RPG-IV. Isn't that close enough?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Sad to say but I had meddled in PHP many years ago. many.

@GlenH7 It's a 4GL language, that's all the credentials a language needs to prove it's high science.

user41796

It's True Confessions day on The Whiteboard

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