The Whiteboard

Dynamic

12:17 AM

Anybody want an invite to atom.io? I've got 3... and no Mac...

user55340

2:26 AM

@Dynamic I'd be curious about it (and I have a mac)... and I work with another mac guy who is quite curious about it.

user55340

@Dynamic see the second deleted message. (too many email addresses)

Jimmy Hoffa

This does deserve downvotes or even flagging for "not answering the question" but hell, the question's going to be closed anyway. Figured I'd send the lad off with some information that might get him using the Enterprise Machine Accessible Code System

0

A: Exist a NANO replacement suitable for development (no VIM, no EMACS)

Emacs doesn't have a crazy high learning curve if you want it to behave like nano. Just three things is all you need: ctrl+x then ctrl+f let's you find and open/create a file ctrl+x then ctrl+s saves your changes. ctrl+x then ctrl+c will close emacs, it will ask you to save buffers that have e...

Nevermind, I didn't read the whole of his question...

+1 for Emacs. Basically you're asking for complex features to be delivered in a console terminal - by definition the resultant application will require you to memorize some key combinations to execute those features. — Jimmy Hoffa 19 secs ago

Dynamic

@MichaelT Just shoot me an email. It's in my profile.

user55340

3:00 AM

@Dynamic Yep - got it. Thank you.

An Alien

3:52 AM

Hey guys

gnat

6:14 AM

3

Q: Improving the System for Dealing with Poor Answers

So it's no shock that we have a lot of poor answers here. We are having issues with understanding the current flagging, and problems with old questions with lots of bad answers. Kismet brought jmort, Shog9, and myself in to chat at the same time, where we had a discussion on the issue of poor an...

something that we would better have at Programmers, too. Frankly I'm friggin' tired of loosing 5-10 rep points daily for voting down meh crap that is not flaggable because oh friggin surprise Programmers use same way to evaluate answers as SO, as if a piece of code and whiteboard explanation are cut the same

about time to stop the madness when single site forces its norms at the rest of the network, as if it's the same when answer quality can be verified with computer and with human brain only (hint: Whiteboard doesn't have compiler)

gnat

7:40 AM

@RobertHarvey I recall you mentioned how SE team blocked you from proactively protecting hot questions. I think I figured why their reasoning is wrong and your is right:

this reasoning is wrong. Anna ignores that goal of hot questions is to simply "entertain" (according to Shog) / "explicitly expose interesting questions" (as Jeff put it. With goal like this, I can't see any sensible arguments why questions should remain unprotected. Striptease dancers aren't thrown in the crowd, they make their show secured — gnat 1 min ago

gnat

10:14 AM

I also commented at answer from Anna that was referred to justify this garbage:

reasoning based on "missing out on good answers" looks wrong in the face of recently discussed goal of the hot questions: this is explained in more details in another answer that refers your to back it up — gnat 12 mins ago

so that no one can tell they don't know

in The Water Cooler, 10 mins ago, by gnat

"You could be missing out on good answers from people who aren't already established on your site before you even run into any problems." - time to drop this crap now that it is officially admitted that goal of the hot questions is to entertain

gnat

10:50 AM

reading answers of this user makes me better understand feature request I referred above...

5 hours ago, by gnat

3

Q: Improving the System for Dealing with Poor Answers

So it's no shock that we have a lot of poor answers here. We are having issues with understanding the current flagging, and problems with old questions with lots of bad answers. Kismet brought jmort, Shog9, and myself in to chat at the same time, where we had a discussion on the issue of poor an...

discussion feature-request answers flagging

gnat

12:20 PM

@MichaelT as an author of the reference post, what's your take on this:

@gnat: Reading done as suggested. And it seems I'm on the proper site. My question is about "overcome a problem that you have with the workflow". My workflow being 1/ Write the code from a Windows Application, 2/ Push it to the remote repository, 3/ Have a graphical look at the pushed changes from windows. 3/ being my problem. — Mfp 1 min ago

user55340

1:03 PM

@gnat that one is a tool request and a reasonably well written one. Fix it up and flag it for migration to software recommendation.

Mike

1:16 PM

Morning nerds

gnat

1:45 PM

@MichaelT thanks! by the way, your guidance doesn't refer Recs.SE, does it make sense to expand?

enderland

2:15 PM

0

Q: What kind of side projects I should start if I really want to stand out when applying to developer jobs?

I am going to graduate from college with a diploma in May & I will be completing my last internship in April. I plan to start applying to full time jobs in a few weeks and I really want to stand out. Moreover, I know I will not get a job right away but I do want to utilize that time to make mysel...

interviewing software-industry resume career-development

you want this?

enderland

2:36 PM

nevermind, we've got it as a dup on WP

gnat

2:59 PM

-1

A: Able to read Code but struggling majorly to write it

Just thought I'd chime in on this topic because it really hits close to home. You just need to start coding. Don't get me wrong, reading is great but what really gives you that working coding knowledge is actually building something. I learnt more from a single summer placement than I did the pr...

@gnat I'm assuming you meant "Doesn't" and that's your opinion. I went through the exact same situation he's going though and I'm sharing what helped me. If you forgot the intro to his question here it is: "Could you guys give any tips..." — SeanWM 2 mins ago

that's exactly how crappy worded question attracts crappy answers

19

Q: Answers quality in hot questions

For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me. These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked. Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by ...

discussion answer-quality hot-questions

> it takes some time to figure how to clean up ambiguous wording while preserving the essence of original. In regular questions this works like a charm, but when editing a hot one, I often find out that when I'm done with edit, someone already posted an answer that invalidates my edit. And answer that exploits another minor ambiguity. And yet another, and so on, until my brain explodes!

about time to re-direct that lemmings pressure towards SO...

0

A: Prevent specific sites from being overrepresented in the hot questions list

It was bad Old system was designed so that it tended to inaccurately favor questions from sites that differ much from Stack Overflow, particularly smaller and ones of conceptual / subjective-ish nature (for example, Programmers and Workplace). Compared to SO, smaller sites have much less power ...

user41796

3:29 PM

@gnat Always a bit worrisome when a new user has already earned the peer pressure badge

user41796

@gnat As an aside, the metaphor you built there (hot questions are similar to strippers) is probably going to be seen as offensive by some. Hyperbole has its value, but when you offend your audience you risk turning them further from your cause instead of persuading them to see the point you're trying to make. It's not "flaggable offensive" but I want to make sure you're deliberate in your word choice as you might be hurting your cause more than helping it.

user41796

@enderland "What project should I learn / do / whatever next?" is one of our custom OT close reasons. So that's a "thanks, but you can keep your garbage." :-)

gnat

@GlenH7 I see. I can't edit comment... and frankly I can't figure a better metaphor

actually whole thing hot list does to smaller sites feels about like a rape to me

user41796

@gnat It's a nuance that can be missed if you don't step back from the conversation and think it through

user41796

I might try using a "celebrity" metaphor

user41796

3:36 PM

Celebrities are generally vapid, purely for entertainment, and otherwise benign.

gnat

@GlenH7 shit! celebrity would work much much better!!!

and guarded by celebrities

user41796

@gnat Yeah, I'm glad you didn't use or even mention rape in your metaphors. That's taking an analogy way too far.

gnat

oh wait but they're not there to entertain, or are they?

user41796

It's one thing to say strippers... Going to sexual assault. Ugh. That's easily misconstrued as merely trolling instead of trying to have a constructive conversation

user41796

@gnat In the US, the vast majority of celebrities are entertainers

user41796

3:38 PM

Musicians, movie stars, etc..

user41796

Celebrities frequently have bodyguards to keep the unwashed masses away

user41796

And to take the fall when illegal drugs or paraphernalia are found in the limo

gnat

►

that's about what I was having in mind

WTH, added that into the mix...

youtube.com/watch?v=0HNqJur7RXY — gnat 1 min ago

user41796

@gnat That analogy is ... tenuous. Coyote Ugly isn't where I would draw from first, but who knows YMMV. Trying to build a comparison between her picking up the mic to control the crowd and protecting a question to prevent damage to the site won't be immediately obvious.

user55340

@gnat I'll see about adding it.

user41796

3:54 PM

Anyone else having issues with DE.SE right now? I can't run the delete query

user55340

@GlenH7 272 rep to go...

user41796

@MichaelT If I weren't selfishly trying to get more delete votes, I would throw a bounty your way

user41796

Does that cache buster question make sense to anyone?

user41796

4:13 PM

@gnat - you scared another one away...

gnat

@GlenH7 how can I scare anyone? it's all our [about] page, I swear

user41796

I was about to leave them a more verbose comment explaining what they needed to put in there, but they self-deleted

user41796

I couldn't understand what the issue was. If his server is providing whatever files, then his server needs to be able to handle the random number (the cache buster) appended to the end of the URL. But he should still have control over what is being served.

user41796

4:27 PM

Debating whether this question is really worthy of deletion. It's a poorly phrased question, but I can understand where an ESL newbie programmer would gain value from the answers.

user41796

Hesitant to edit because I don't think it should be re-opened though

gnat

@GlenH7 to me, deciding on stuff like that is really simple. When I see answers that I strongly prefer to stay on the site, I abstain of VtD

user41796

@gnat My concern is it has 2 votes on it already

user55340

@GlenH7 Ahh, but you could use your delete votes to delete the things I've downvoted...

bonCodigo

hi here's [my qustion, which is on hold for obvious reasons. ](programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/230635/…)

user55340

4:34 PM

0

Q: I need a new programming language to brighten up my head

I started as a Java coder, involved in Matlab for lots of image processing projects. Then moved to VB.Net (for a while) and was forced to do Microsoft Office Technologies - and found it interesting, got addicted to VBA, yes have been doing it until today and perhapse a little longer tomorrow. No...

programming-languages self-improvement career-transition language-choice

user55340

(chat hint - paste a link on a line by itself and it does 'one boxing')

user41796

@MichaelT My clairvoyancy is a little weak today. I'm not doing so well at guessing what you've DV'd. :-)

bonCodigo

As KChaloux suggest, I just throw it up here...

hoping for some new coffee to go :)

user41796

@bonCodigo You should learn Haskell. It will cause your brain to explode

user41796

Or Scala since you already know Java

user55340

4:35 PM

Do you want professional development? or more joy coding?

user55340

Play in your existing environments? or something completely new?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - see what I did there for you (two or three comments up)

user55340

How about "DSL for a framework that you could use professionally"?

bonCodigo

@GlenH7 I heard from a guy who is a Quant. He talks about Haskell like he invented it, but really no hint of why or how I could transit from current to Haskell. I am not up to a Quant yet either.

gnat

@GlenH7 understood. Well, I for one simply leave it alone - if three other guys think it's D-worthy, so be it (except for cases when I see it as candidate for hist lock, then I flag for mod). World isn't perfect

user41796

4:39 PM

@bonCodigo Quants live in their own world, and Haskell could be very powerful for them

user41796

@gnat must. rage. against. machine.

user41796

@bonCodigo - my suggestion was partly in jest. If you're looking for a new-career type language, then Haskell would not make the cut. Just not enough jobs out there for that language. But the concepts involved will alter how you look at your code.

user55340

New career: C# or Javascript (for node work).

user41796

Which gets back to the questions MichaelT is asking. What you really need the new language for dictates which one you should look at

gnat

@GlenH7 oh. Fav/bookmark, follow and undelete is your choice then. I didn't yet come across such a case myself, but if it ever happens, I would do exactly this way

user55340

4:41 PM

I'd be tempted to say "current career improvement" look at Drools and its dsl.

Jimmy Hoffa

It surprises me how few engineers in industry really have read any of the highly relevant blog articles about our industry... Just sent the thermocline of truth article to my boss and colleagues yesterday, they're good engineers but have never seen that, or the job apex one from the daily wtf which I sent them a while ago; I guarantee you they've seen none of Yegge, Spolsky, Graham, or any of them

and they're good engineers, it's just something people don't do...

user41796

@gnat I try to remind myself that we need to be welcoming to beginning programmers as well as expert programmers. (Yes, research has to be demonstrated too). But I don't want to nuke a question just because it's a newbie Q.

user55340

Joy coding - whatever. Pick something fun. If it is to play well in your environment already - scala, clojure, groovy.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa How about Brooks? Mythical man month is a classic from that PoV and nowhere near enough folk have read it.

Jimmy Hoffa

Should organize a "Get acquainted with your industry" event - get companies to have every employee spend 2 days reading online articles from industry pundits - and I don't mean reading NHibernate tutorials from ayende or shit like that, but the actual broadly general content out there

bonCodigo

4:42 PM

@MichaelT if I really change career, I will become a chef - which is a risk to afford. But what I want right now is to get really away from VBA side and get going with something fresh. I do have some basic exposure to C#. Given the commitments, I have to stick to programming + business anlaysis career for now.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Books are just too big a chunk for people to have widely read, but there's no reason they can't have widely read about the dead sea effect

user41796

@bonCodigo go with C# then. It's an easy extension from VBA work and should move you into different domains so you'll get some more variety.

Jimmy Hoffa

@bonCodigo Seriously - learn Haskell if you think you need some mental rearranging. Don't take that to mean Haskell is some terribad language that will just mentally challenge you - only the second half of that is true, it's a spectacular great enterprise grade language, and it will mentally challenge the living shit out of you.

To use it for just about anything you will be required to learn several new skills that other languages do not teach.

user41796

Mastering LINQ is a half-step towards learning Haskell / Functional Programming

user55340

@bonCodigo Note that one guy I worked with... grumpiest IT guy. Decided to get out of computers and became a chef. Went back to being IT (much less grumpy). He found that while he liked cooking, he liked it too much to do it professionally (its even more stressful than sysadmin).

user41796

4:45 PM

Use of LINQ within C# can make for some very powerful programming

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Only if you master it. The way most people use it is like sprinkles, if you asked people to write their entire software within the frame of LINQ they'd be gobsmacked at the concept.

user41796

@MichaelT I have several friends who are gourmet chefs. VERY stressful work environments.

Jimmy Hoffa

I would never want to be a chef.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I like to use the drug dealer approach. Hook 'em with a free sample and then let them spiral downwards from there. LINQ is great that way. :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

Those people work way too goddamn hard.

@GlenH7 fair enough...

bonCodigo

4:47 PM

@MichaelT lol: grumpy isn't my state yet... But if you ask me if I really enjoyed coding...hmm... no - not really. I just love designing algos or rather optimizing or get stuck with a problem and solving it - that occupied state of mind.

Jimmy Hoffa

careful or I'll reprise my rant about how C# was created by Haskellers.

user41796

@bonCodigo Look at C# and LINQ then. It will expose you to more abstractions which is what it sounds like you enjoy

user55340

(some CLI languages:

user55340

List of CLI languages

CLI Languages are computer programming languages that are used to produce libraries and programs that conform to the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specifications. With some notable exceptions, most CLI languages compile entirely to the Common Intermediate Language (CIL), an intermediate language that can be executed using an implementation of CLI such as the Common Language Runtime (CLR, a part of the Microsoft .NET Framework), Mono, or Portable.NET. Some of these languages also require the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). As the program is being executed, the CIL code is compiled a...

bonCodigo

@JimmyHoffa "if you asked people to write their entire software within the frame of LINQ they'd be gobsmacked at the concept." is epic!!!

user41796

4:48 PM

When you realize you can express 10, 20 lines of code with just a few lines of LINQ your perspective really changes

Jimmy Hoffa

@bonCodigo Learn Haskell and you too can do things in C# that will give your colleagues the hanging jaw problem.

@GlenH7 The trick about it is that everything in Haskell is like this - so you take something that in two lines expresses 20, and your other tool over here has the same compression and now in 4 lines you've expressed 40, and the compression stays constant throughout every tool at your disposal, so the more you write, the more you save.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa so it's like BOGO on steroids

bonCodigo

Currently it has been extremely boring. Why? Frankly I just don't want to keep on learning different languages. Just want to master one thing, and that's it. Each time I think of investing on C# or another, the head hunters are haunting me with past experience in MS VB, VBA, office package lot... one of friends - quite decent coder suggested me to stop looking at VBA tag here. Just try sliding into C# tag if possible...

Jimmy Hoffa

The biggest problem is making that mental leap to actually accept that there are hundreds of lines of code abstracted away from you, and you just have to be ok with all of that minutia and ceremony being managed by the underlying system

It makes you both learn to infer a ton more information from the code that would be explicit in other languages, which is a unique and odd skill we hardly ever apply to coding, as well as accept a large amount of implicitness that for anyone used to ceremonial languages finds feels wrong. But once you get over the feeling you find out in practice it's actually right (much of the time anyway)

user41796

@bonCodigo There is a large difference between mastering a language and mastering programming. The latter is a far more interesting challenge.

user41796

4:56 PM

@JimmyHoffa It's really just a question of "do you trust the abstraction?"

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Which is why people dive into the math behind it in Haskell, if you're unsure, learning the math will make it clear that the abstractions are trustworthy.

Plus the math gives you the intuition necessary to infer what some particular monoid or monadplus will do by simply knowing the laws of those mathematical structures and the goal of the implementation you're looking at, you can then often times infer from those mathematical laws how the structure will behave without knowing the underlying implementation

At any rate, I don't get to code Haskell. So, boo.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I gave up on Maths when I couldn't wrap my head around the non-linear differential equations that comprise chaos theory.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Luckily category theory bears nearly no resemblance to other maths such as I've seen so far... Because I am shit at all that equation stuff. Category theory is more on the logic side of the maths

user41796

Apropos of nothing - I'm designing a data scheme and need some feedback

Jimmy Hoffa

I still hardly know what a logarithm is, but I can reasonable identify a classification of a magma by looking at the simple laws of the various ones and checking if it has them, and it can be logically decided what good uses you can get out of them

@GlenH7 Guids should not be primary keys, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU DEVS THESE DAYS!?!?

user41796

5:06 PM

I'll have a bunch of Foo()'s. Each Foo() will have a list of Bar()'s plus an "active" Bar() contained in the list of Bar()'s. Broadly speaking, Bar()'s will live in there own table but they belong to a particular Foo(). Should I include the FooID as part of the Bar() class?

user41796

Seems like a smell, and I just realized I'm worrying about both DB tables and data structures at the same time. And that may be the real problem.

user41796

Oh, and Foo() will have a reference to which Bar() is active.

user41796

And ignore the parans off of Foo and Bar. Not needed as they'll be objects / classes and not methods.

bonCodigo

It has been awhile since I had a discussion with some sense - thanks guys. Perhaps it's my current job that's killing me. It only needs answers and no questions are asked or can I get answers. Briefly, no career development - like bulls rotating around oil mills (historical) until they are dead --- time to kick that crap out of me.

user41796

@bonCodigo we've all been there

bonCodigo

5:13 PM

blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/01/… over there it says, what's important for programmers... that's it.

user55340

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I think you have it right. If a Bar lives for a single Foo, Bar should have a FooId, if every Foo has a single active Bar, the Foo should have an ActiveBarId, this is presuming it's a DAG - that is, a Foo may have many Bars, and a Bar is associated with one and only one Foo

enderland

@MichaelT how is that different than any job search?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Yes, that's the situation

user55340

@enderland Some places its "money, free time outside work, flexible schedule"

Jimmy Hoffa

5:16 PM

@enderland Other industries have different cultural underpinnings wherein their employees may be money driven or otherwise, think about factory workers looking for a job

user55340

or "I will get enough hours for health insure coverage... right?"

user41796

Buddy of mine is working 11 hour shifts for most days of the week because that's all that the plant is offering right now.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 the DB should be as you say, the objects should be different. the objects are simply

user41796

Sometimes you have to take what's being offered up because that's all there is.

user55340

My brother is doing the odd yoga teaching class, and working as a nurse assistant... which sometimes has the "7 to 7 shift... oh, next person is late, can you stay until 11?"

user41796

5:18 PM

@JimmyHoffa right - that's where I course corrected to

Jimmy Hoffa

class Foo {
  private int _activeBarId;
  public IEnumerable<Bar> Bars { get; set; }
  public Bar ActiveBar { get { return Bars.First(bar => bar.Id == _activeBarId); } }
}

Hey Colorado makes for #11 in number of developers on SO. Neat, I always wondered where CO stood in the country

wow, 1 in 3 developers changed jobs last year.

that's far more turnover than I would have guessed. That's a fucking massive amount of turnover for a single industry.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa The previous link was for 2012 results. But the 2013 results showed 29% changed gigs.

user41796

Pretty consistent

Jimmy Hoffa

ah here's for 2013

Blog - Stack Exchange: 2013 Stack Overflow User Survey Results

Alison Sperling on February 19, 2014

In 2013, our Stack Overflow community grew from 21.5 million to 26.9 million monthly visitors from 242 countries around the world. We’re doing a lot to keep growing with the community — we now have localized versions of Careers 2.0 for French and German audiences, we’re developing iOS and Android mobile apps for our entire network, and our first ever localized version of Stack Overflow with the Portuguese site currently in beta. As a way for us to make sure we’re doing the most for our users and community on Stack Overflow, we conduct a survey every year to see what you …

user55340

@JimmyHoffa 1 in 3 who answered who also appear to be the ones who can find their answers without asking a new question and have at least 1000 rep on SO... which means that "most people don't change, but those who are competent can be lured away"

Jimmy Hoffa

5:26 PM

@GlenH7 Yeah I wouldn't expect that to swing a ton except in the case of really strange events like the dotCom bubble. But for the steady state to be ~30% is nuts

user41796

Would be more meaningful to compare it to turnover from other industries

user55340

One company I worked for (contracting body shop) back in the early bubble days had 100% turnover a year - they hired about 300 people, and maintained a steady state of 300 employees.

user41796

@MichaelT I would be curious to know how much of that was due to attrition (sick of the job) versus contact-to-hire scenarios

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 more specifically other professional career-oriented industries.

Comparing it to car-salesmen wouldn't be a good comparison

user41796

meh. Perhaps you think too highly of our industry. :-P

user55340

5:28 PM

@GlenH7 about 50% was contract to hire, and 50% was "I've got a better offer" (not that I was sick of it).

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Oh that's a very good point. contracting is an enormous portion of our industry

user55340

This was when a test for coders was "do you fog up a mirror and can you write a little bit of ${lang}" (probably perl).

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 No, I just mean comparing it to jobs people get because they need quick money is not really going to be a correct comparison, nobody just goes and gets a software job real quick for a pinch of cash to make their bills for a month or two before moving on to their real job

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Lots of places like contractors as they're easier to let go of during downturns

user55340

@GlenH7 and easier to hire when your CIO won't add new head count... or can't find any and are willing to pay absurd amounts.

user55340

5:31 PM

Oh, btw, the close queue stuff changed - the number shown is the "number of easy pickigns" now.

user41796

@MichaelT query kept bombing out on my when I was running it this AM

user41796

Both of your "List of top _ count questions ..." show as last edited on Oct 18. So my sleuthing must stink.

user55340

33

A: Fuzzy the number of questions in the close review queue, a dopamine for the shutterers

This is now implemented (build rev 2014.2.27.1403 on sites) as lined out in Shog's answer. We now have a per-site configurable close vote threshold for questions to be enqueued in the close vote review queue. Review tasks with less close votes and no do not close review results will be gradually ...

user55340

(woo woo, a +15 accepted)

user55340

257 rep needed.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:40 PM

Using Scala for high performance numerical analysis is easy - you just write Haskell and call it Scala. Good luck! — Jimmy Hoffa 7 secs ago

@Rob

gnat

our friend is now fighting "bullies" at SO :)

-8

Q: Why is my question on hold as unclear?

I'm curious about what is unclear about my question (10K+)

discussion on-hold

user41796

cv-plz

user41796

0

Q: How should one approach writing high-performance numeric data analysis in Scala over the next year?

Background. Because the Scala library is mostly generic and therefore must use JVM objects, versus value types like "int", virtually all of the Scala library requires Scala/Java value types (byte, char, short, int, long, float, double) to be boxed. For data analysis, this results in quite mi...

scala

user55340

@GlenH7 I was out of close votes last night.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey I voted to migrate this to SO; the core of his question is: "Will Scala vX.X ship with feature Y" - that's a perfectly valid question for SO in the guise of "Does technoloy X have feature Y"

0

Q: How should one approach writing high-performance numeric data analysis in Scala over the next year?

Background. Because the Scala library is mostly generic and therefore must use JVM objects, versus value types like "int", virtually all of the Scala library requires Scala/Java value types (byte, char, short, int, long, float, double) to be boxed. For data analysis, this results in quite mi...

scala

Robert Harvey

5:43 PM

@JimmyHoffa You can't be serious.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey Sort of... I tend to trust moderation to overrule me on things like this so I just throw my vote in the bucket.

Robert Harvey

SO will slap that question down like an annoying gnat... er, fly.

user41796

@RobertHarvey Well, Jimmy is a lot closer to understanding Scala than the rest of us...

Robert Harvey

You don't have to understand scala at all to answer (or close) that question.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey How's this work for you: Is C# 5.0 slated to ship with LISP like macro support? <-- is that an acceptable SO question?

user41796

5:44 PM

@RobertHarvey Especially with the original version. Blech.

user55340

You know what we need that would be more fun to watch than a reopen/close battle? A mod migrate battle... where a mod on a site is determined to migrate something to the other site and so keeps reopening and migrating the rejected migration.

Robert Harvey

It's the new pattern on SE... lay some interesting background, then ask a perfectly mundane, completely uninteresting question.

@JimmyHoffa You can't be serious.

user41796

@MichaelT I vote for ChrisF to battle between SO and Progs

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey The background in his question is shit admittedly, but I thought asking about the technical feature lists of a specific technology is on topic for SO, no?

(I would edit to remove the background garbage)

Robert Harvey

"Is C# 5.0 slated to ship with LISP like macro support?" is a crystal-ball question.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:45 PM

@RobertHarvey No, it's asking what has been announced

will it ship with that is a crystal ball question

Robert Harvey

We don't take them.

Jimmy Hoffa

Ok

You would know better than I, either way I don't suspect enough people will vote to migrate anyway

user55340

@GlenH7 Robert for P.SE mod so he could do that battle with ChrisF?

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey let's be honest here. P.SE has very high quality standards for our content; SO is just our toilet bowl.

3

@MichaelT just noticed that atom.io thing - if you give it a go let me know what you think. I'm very curious.

user41796

So do we see any sort of indicator when Robert chat bans Jimmy? Or does Jimmy just drop out of the room?

Jimmy Hoffa

5:50 PM

Damn I wish I could work somewhere that uses FPComplete to work in full time Haskell. That would be so goddamn cool.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I'm looking at it... also sent invites to two coworkers (one of whom is an editor geek (and vi fan)).

user41796

@MichaelT - ditto on the atom.io thing. I don't have enough outside projects going at the moment to justify asking for an invite.

user55340

The editor geek was "hmm... another editor" for a bit and then later in the day he was "ok, there are two things I like about it..."

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT it says it's extensible and I'm an Emacs guy so, I'm ready to write an OS in that thing right now..

gnat

Blog - Stack Exchange: Gorilla vs. Shark

Jeff Atwood on August 15, 2011

Who would win in a fight between a Gorilla and a Shark?

OK, maybe you’re thinking that’s a ridiculous question. Perhaps it is. But various forms of this question get asked all the time. Consider this now-ancient Stack Overflow question titled Python v. Perl:

Okay, so I’m finally making the jump into scripting languages and I have decided to focus on either Python or Perl. The problem is: I don’t know which to cut my teeth on.

Most of my programming experience is in C, Java, and C++. There’s no specific task I would be learning Python/Perl for, other that possibly applying it to my dev work to make life easier in general. …

user55340

5:51 PM

Its sublimeish in some of its design choices.

user55340

(part of the thing there is that I'm a BBEdit / IDE guy.. and I've been BBEdit since its 1.0 days)

user41796

@gnat But who is the gorilla and who is the shark? I could see compelling arguments either way between ChrisF & RobertHarvey

Robert Harvey

Stack Overflow's scope is actually very simple. If you are having problems with code you have written, Stack Overflow is the place to get help. If it's anything other than that, it's probably off-topic.

gnat

@GlenH7 the question you just asked is a meta for Gorilla vs Shark

user55340

So I've got my own editor preferences - barebones.com/products/bbedit

user55340

5:53 PM

It was an editor I used in college - and consider what it means for there to be a company that makes a text editor, only for mac, that has been around since '92.

Jimmy Hoffa

There used to be a lot more colorful random IDEs around than these days. I remember using RHIDE ages ago for C coding, was a fun little NCurses based doodad that behaves like a supped up version of the old dos edit

RHIDE + GPM = good to go

Maybe I should can these silly thoughts of Clojure and jump on the Node.JS train. I do quite like Node.JS, I indeed believe it makes a better general approach to SOA back-end systems than the crap that lives throughout industry... CPS or not... and Node.JS actually has a healthy shot at surviving the industry language-thresher

user55340

Node is likely to live long in the industry. Its already quite established.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Aye. It's a great approach to the SOA back-end pains of ceremony and bulk that Java and C# devs deal with day in day out

user55340

Half of our product is JS+Node, the other is Java + Tomcat.

Jimmy Hoffa

makes doing things that take to use Yegge's analogy, full of city-block sized tractors and dump trucks of frameworks in C#/Java and makes it easy to do in an extremely light-weight simple purpose-built way

Robert Harvey

6:06 PM

What's the downside? For example, does node.js have routing, or do you have to bolt that on somehow? Is it more or less feature-complete? That ASP.NET bulk has to mean something.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey that ASP.NET bulk is how a general programming language is trussed up to a given purpose

ASP.NET gives you the hosting environment (Node.JS is a hosting environment), then you have to tack on WCF to get much configurability in your communication (Node.JS comes with simple lightweight communication libs)

Robert Harvey

Erm, no. Web API.

Jimmy Hoffa

It's partially culture as well. Big bulky libraries give you the ability to do countless things in countless ways. You may find yourself in a situation where you need to use one in some odd way and it allows you to pull switches and set the dials so that's possible.

Node.JS has a more "here's a library that does this thing, not anything" mentality

@RobertHarvey yes well, that's newer but all the same, create an MVC project and look at the number of references that get tacked onto the project.

and each one of those libraries has a ton to it

Robert Harvey

How much bulk are we talking about here? The entire .NET Framework is 50 megabytes. Chump change.

Jimmy Hoffa

If you want to follow convention it's easy to do much of that stuff in MVC and such sure, but the convention relies on huge numbers of abstractions below you to make it all run; using Node.JS you just have a few abstractions - much less things to keep in your head at once

@RobertHarvey I'm not talking about byte size, I'm talking API size

user55340

6:12 PM

Java Spring does everything

Jimmy Hoffa

When you want to do something simple and look at the provided library for that thing and find 200 objects with 20+ methods each...

@MichaelT yes, that's the prototypical example, .NET isn't as bad, but it's not great either

Robert Harvey

ASP.NET MVC never struck me as all that complicated. It's relatively straightforward to stand up a basic application.

So we're back to library/server bulk again.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey Try doing it with notepad - what gets stood up that you're talking about is a ton of scaffolding automatically for you

user55340

Spring does DI, AOP, MVC, Rest, JDBC, JPA, JMS (and "much more")

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa That does seem like a bit of a straw man to me, since I wouldn't actually use notepad to write any application, even a node one.

user55340

6:14 PM

Just look at the number of classes - docs.spring.io/spring/docs/4.0.3.BUILD-SNAPSHOT/javadoc-api

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey I'm not suggesting you do it - it's just think of it from that perspective and you can recognize the distinction in how much bulk there is for MVC vs Node.JS approach to standing up a simple purpose built service

@RobertHarvey I've nothing against MVC and I use it happily for services and such. There's still a ton of cruft you must navigate in customizing it, numerous libraries and frameworks underpinning each and every little piece of the puzzle.

Robert Harvey

Well, clearly I wouldn't stand up an IIS Server to do a home automation thing. The real question is can you go the other way... Will node.js stand up to the pounding of, say, Amazon?

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey Like I said, I'm talking Node.JS for back-end services. Absolutely for what you say.

Robert Harvey

Load balancing, server failover, etc. etc.?

cv-pls

-1

Q: RESTful API development : is it web developer's work or software developer's work?

First of all, I am sorry that the issue I'm going to say is not about a technical thing. I'm just confused. I am trying applying to several companies as a software engineer. The latest work that I developed is to develop RESTful APIs which is written in Python django. Here's the problem that ...

web-development python api rest software-developer

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey Absolutely. Node.JS' is purpose built for that stuff.

@RobertHarvey Are you familiar with Node.JS' runtime approach?

Robert Harvey

6:19 PM

I don't know all that much about Node, tbh. I thought it was basically an event-servicing loop, on which you could write event handlers that all execute asynchronously.

Jimmy Hoffa

Node.JS is architected from the ground up to do: high-concurrency high-transaction stuff, it falls down when you ask it to do data crunching etc. It will is a JavaScript interpreter, and it will still be far slower at actually crunching data than C# or Java etc, but when you have very high volume of requests that aren't computationally intense such as with back-end CRUD services etc - that's exactly where it shines

@RobertHarvey That's a pretty accurate description. It's a simple approach, and it lends itself well to high-concurrency because of how it loops through the asynchronous operations, letting some go silent or back to the OS until they complete their operation, but like I said - it's weakness is computationally intense stuff. Anything like that should be done in a different language, but the vast majority of back-end services out there are just CRUD and routing services etc. It can do all of that

Robert Harvey

0

Q: Make a Cryrptocurrency

I recently became familiar with Bitcoin and understood how it works. I started to see that there are many different types such as dogecoin and litecoin. I wanted to know if I could make one like it. I am not really good at programming and was wondering if anyone could help me or tell me who to go...

code

>_<

Jimmy Hoffa

0

Q: Is there a design pattern for updating lists?

I want to modify one list (actually info stored in a database). A person doesn't have access to update every part of the list, but can update and delete parts they do have access to and add whatever they want to the list. Here's my pseudocode: ModifiedList OriginalList OriginalListWithUserRi...

security list

^-- a list monad. Ok I deserve scorn but seriously... it's a listT

a listT Maybe

Robert Harvey

Isn't that just a map/reduce?

Jimmy Hoffa

or ListT Either

@RobertHarvey nah, you can define reduce in terms of map, and map is the functor implementation requisite for the monad, but the monad itself requires laws and an operation beyond what a functor provides

that is, you can't have a monad without a functor (map) but you can have a functor without a monad.

Robert Harvey

6:28 PM

No, but I mean isn't his problem a simple one in FP, like maybe a filter?

user55340

Searching for the comprehensive guide to creating Crypto Currency on Bitcoin.SE — MichaelT 10 secs ago

user55340

I'm not sure if pointing someone that clueless to there is a good thing or not.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey There's a lot of trivial ways to do what he's talking about, but the monad API is really the right one for his particular purpose (remember monads allow you to decorate the space between operations, and in his case the decoration would be authorization checks)

Robert Harvey

I don't remember anything of the sort. :)

Jimmy Hoffa

an applicative could also do the job

user41796

6:30 PM

@JimmyHoffa Oh, so a monad is just a design pattern.

Robert Harvey

But surely there's an FP function that accepts a list and a conditional lambda expression, and returns a new list with only the elements meeting that condition.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey monads are often dubbed "programmable semicolons" because they basically let you decide what happens between operations. For instance in LINQ (the list monad) SelectMany executes some flattening between the functions you apply in it

@RobertHarvey yeah, filter. but that's not what he's asking for

he wants to update the list members

gnat

free NAA flags: programmers.stackexchange.com/a/230655/31260

Jimmy Hoffa

specifically he wants to let people try to update the list members, and have authorization checks happen when they try which decide whether they can update the members

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa That's a Map, right?

Jimmy Hoffa

6:31 PM

@RobertHarvey filter can be defined in terms of map yes

user41796

@gnat The w3schools reference almost pushes it into VLQ territory :-D

gnat

@GlenH7 I was on the fence between these two flags. Gorilla vs Shark strikes again

Jimmy Hoffa

someList.Select(item => filterFunc(item) ? new[] {item} : new[0]).SelectMany(item => item); <-- what a retarded implementation of reduce...

@jozefg what's a good standard catamorphism in terms of a functor? You can define a catamorphism in terms of a functor, right?

user55340

@gnat FWIW, that low quality review audit you mentioned awhile back appears to have changed some behavior.

Robert Harvey

I really need to learn me an FP.

gnat

6:38 PM

@MichaelT how exactly? I have difficulty figuring changes in audits because I click link to open stuff in a separate window anyway (as a result I simply see what to press to pass, this turns brain off)

23

A: Bring a "human factor" into review audit composition/selection

While there is no "officially implemented" solution for this, one can use whatever means are at their disposal now in order to bring the "human factor" to audits selection. When you spot a slippery audit, go straight to the "item" it uses and do the action opposite to audit direction. If you f...

user55340

@GlenH7 it got auto-flagged for that apparently - its in the queue: programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/54868

user55340

@gnat The individual who was very much a 'looks good' or 'edit' which booted from the queue has done a few recent reviews that are 'recommend for deletion' now.

Jimmy Hoffa

foldl f (x:[]) seed = f x seed
foldl f (x:xs) seed = foldl f xs (f x seed)

That's what I got... but that's crap... how do I derive a functor from that..

I'd end up with a list and just take the last? pfleh.

gnat

6:55 PM

@MichaelT OIC! that's really good news

enderland

7:32 PM

0

Q: Provide technical pushback without being defiant

My project manager directed me to do something that I know (and later found out he already knew) was not supported by our underlying architecture. His thinking was an edge case would fail for people running with the current underlying architecture but by the time the product was released the fram...

teamwork collaboration design-decisions

I edited this so it can be migrated to Workplace

(its in your edit queue somewhere)

user41796

@enderland Did you flag it to go to TW yet?

user55340

One approval done.

user41796

both approvals done.

user41796

of course, there was a bit of a lag between actually approving and declaring it approved

enderland

I'm checking in chat but I'm pretty sure this is a good q to migrate

I think we have a dup of htis already though

user41796

7:43 PM

@enderland It's not really on-topic for Progs, so I flagged it for TW migration.

user55340

@enderland @RobertHarvey could use some workplace rep...

user41796

@MichaelT - Just for grins: programmers.stackexchange.com/a/230655/53019

user41796

Nice to see some other names on that delete

user55340

@GlenH7 237 rep to go now...

user41796

What did we find? 6 UV in short order didn't hit anything, right?

user41796

7:50 PM

Let's bump that up by a factor of 5 and see what happens. (I jest)

user55340

Heh... though I do have a bunch of new answers recently that could get a random upvote...

user41796

I don't think I have 30 votes left today anyway, but I haven't been paying that close of attention

user41796

I guess you really only need 24....

enderland

@MichaelT his answer misses the #1 point imo :P

user55340

@enderland well, at least Jimmy doesn't have to worry about having close vote privs on workplace anymore...

user41796

7:54 PM

I forgot to upvote before the migrate, so I missed the chance to double vote for RH

user55340

BLAM deleted without even a close. Go World!

gnat

@WorldEngineer I would appreciate if you decline (gee can't believe i typed that) my recent spam flag, on one of the answers in a question you just protected

user41796

@WorldEngineer BAM!

user55340

@WorldEngineer way to show @Oded how to do it. ;-)

user41796

@MichaelT Those are the good mod battles to watch.

gnat

7:57 PM

Gorilla vs Shark!

yet again

user41796

bye bye last close vote

user55340

(need to get Oded to one up world by deleting the database...)

user41796

apparently, corrupted shards happen every now and then

user55340

@gnat at some point, I'll add quick link C&P at the top of each answer so you can grab that rather than the share link.

user55340

(... apparently Toronto can't deal with the snow either - knlive.ctvnews.ca/… )

user55340

8:03 PM

user55340

user41796

@MichaelT Amazing that no one was seriously injured or killed

user55340

o_O

user41796

@MichaelT This was the one that left me wondering how there weren't serious injuries.

user55340

8:06 PM

@GlenH7 Given that last car, yep.

user55340

(trying to get the picture of the thing that caused this... its not small)

user55340

whiteout conditions from that. Those little things that look like specs there.. those are houses.

user41796

reminds me of some of the dust storms that would roll into phoenix.

user55340

8:10 PM

►

user55340

So its not a "bad driver" issue its a "WTF just happened to the visibility?!" when a wall of snow just hits.

user41796

@amon - ha! I won FGITW on the threads question.

amon

@GlenH7 whatever. as long as I get all the votes, we have a deal ;-)

user41796

@amon Is this where we say I'll up vote yours if you up vote mine?

amon

@GlenH7 nah, I give my votes freely and fairly, no strings attached. (or are there?)

user15026

8:21 PM

@MichaelT Holy crap.

user41796

@amon Strings are always attached since SE can see who did what and when. But I don't think that's the strings you meant

user15026

I knew we got interesting snow while I was sleeping this morning/early afternoon, but daaaamn

user15026

Close to. An hour or so away.

user15026

Enough that we get the same weather :P

user41796

Heck, that could be driving from one side to the other of that city. :-)

user15026

8:24 PM

Haha, yeah, it really could be.

user15026

Friends were posting pics to Facebook, I decided my best choice today was to stay inside and apply to jobs from the safety of my warm apartment.

user55340

@AshleyNunn That was last friday for me... though my cat was confused about why the morning noises didn't make me go away.

user15026

Norbert is used to me being home, seeing as I've been unemployed for so long :P

user15026

He gets more confused when I leave for hours, like when I went to the staffing agencies

user41796

@amon - not bad for an additional 30 points of precious repz

user55340

8:37 PM

Ohh!

user55340

0

Q: Community Promotion Ads - 2014

You guys have gotten your own design! And with that, you now have the opportunity to setup Community Promotion Ads! We're still pretty fresh into 2014 so not much lost ground here. What are Community Promotion Ads? Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on...

discussion community-ads

user41796

@MichaelT Now we know TW is all grown up.

user55340

I'm wondering if it would be a Good Thing to make a workplace ad for P.SE?

user55340

We've got robotics and crypto in there...

user20683

8:50 PM

@MichaelT Yes and no. Yes in that it would attract a good deal of traffic. No in that many of our career oriented questions tend toward crap.

user55340

@WorldEngineer Ohh! A software recommendation's promo!

user20683

@MichaelT -.-

user55340

@WorldEngineer Or do you mean >.<?

user20683

both

user41796

@WorldEngineer So the reddit ad is probably a bad idea then?

user55340

8:52 PM

A reddit announcement of TheWorkplace's graduation?

user41796

Or a "Q banned on SO? Here's how to fix it!" ad linking to the MSO post on what to do when Q banned?

user55340

@enderland was complaining he didn't have enough things to delete the other day...

user41796

@MichaelT - I just hope World chat bans you first so I can see what happens. But he'll probably ban me first.

user55340

Hey, I gave Maple some upvotes over at TW to nudge him closer to 10k... I'm doing my part.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT No, he meant <|> because they're clearly mempty and he wants to ensure they aren't invertible to us.

user55340

8:55 PM

maple_shaft, Pittsburgh, PA

9.8k 2 17 63

professionalism management software-industry work-environment interviewing employer-relations communication

user20683

Be careful...that's edging into voting ring territory

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