The Whiteboard

Ampt

8:00 PM

@MichaelT yeah but if you're still getting a paycheck and everyone knows that it's a low chance of success...

user55340

How experienced are you in computing in general?

Chad

@GlenH7 did he tell you to just quit?

Ampt

I guess the big thing is getting your boss to understand what's happening

enderland

@Ampt problem with this is when you have no managers who have any idea about what development takes in terms of time

user55340

@Ampt There's a grid in there that relates to that... and yea, that point is brought up in the book.

dylanribb

8:00 PM

@MichaelT: Referring to me or?

user55340

Both.

enderland

and that it is exponentially worse when it's a huge code base you have no familiarity with - simple "fixes' could take days to find

user41796

@Chad Something to that effect, yeah...

Chad

@enderland its worse when you have a manager that thinks they know about development because they once wrote a macro in excel...

dylanribb

I'm fairly experienced. I have like 8+ years doing different IT stuff, mostly in the Apple and Linux realm. Mostly did programming as a hobby until this gig.

enderland

8:01 PM

@Ampt pinterest.com/kellhalpin/…

gnat

@MichaelT I took a look; I would migrate it here and immediately close as a dupe of:

4

Q: Functional testing before code checkin

I am working on a project with legacy code where it does not have much code coverage. One of the idea to improve that is to enforce a rule that each code check-in must have test, not only test but functional test as well, so that we can verify that the existing code did not break. I would like t...

user55340

One important thing that people forget about is the ability for professional growth in a position.

Ampt

@MichaelT and here I am pulling this stuff out of.. well, you get the idea. Looks like I'm not as dumb as I thought

user55340

@gnat I wouldn't say that would be a bad dup... or a bad bring here for that.

Ampt

@enderland You learn the most from failure. So long as you're willing to face and accept that, this could be worth it's weight in gold as an experience.

And if you succeed, you would be in the utmost position of power for that system. You would quite possibly know every detail of it

user41796

8:03 PM

@dylanribb That's a fairly large codebase to inherit with a modest background. You'll have quite a few challenges ahead of you.

gnat

@MichaelT right, I like the question and it indeed feels better fit here than at TWP. BTW a bit less accurate, but also an interesting dupe would be:

9

Q: Functional testing must be done by external party to avoid bias?

Our developers demand that someone external to the development team completes the functional testing. Their argument is that they are biased and cannot test their own code as they are too close to it. Our last round of testing is with the client in the form of UAT. To be clear by 'functional te...

testing

enderland

course depending on quality of code base and experience/ability to learn, that experience could be "never.ever.ever.do.that.again." :)

gnat

31

Q: Should a developer also act as a tester?

We're a scrum team of 3 developers, 1 designer, the scrum master, and the product owner. However, we don't have official tester in our team. A problem that is always with us, is that, testing the application and passing those tests and removing bugs has been defined as one of the criteria to cons...

testing scrum job-definition

dylanribb

@enderland: The code base is pretty all over the place. It's been managed like 3-4 people over the last 8 or 9 years. No frameworks used, no unit or functional tests. It's a lot of spaghetti.

Ampt

451

Q: I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?

I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 years cobbling together a vast code base. (It was written in a virtually obsolete language: G2 --...

project-management agile development-process maintenance life-cycle

user55340

8:05 PM

Closing a good question as a dup of another question isn't a bad thing on migration... and if it turns out to be edited, it could be more easily reopened then.

enderland

@MichaelT actually it seems like a very good thing. "this is so on topic here we can close as a duplicate since it's already been asked"

user55340

@enderland Also dup doesn't reject migration.

user55340

So that if they go "nope, its this problem" we can reopen it easily rather than a primarily opinion which does and we get to play ping pong.

gnat

1

A: Migration stats not consistent between sites

Moderators at source and destination sites need a reliable common ground to discuss migrations. Currently, stats fail to serve this purpose, because inconsistencies in these introduce unnecessary confusion. Based on current system behavior (which in turn seems to follow long established traditio...

For a destination site visitor, non-dupe closures carry clear signs of rejection: question is locked, answers from source site are removed - in-site closures just don't look like that.

As opposed to this, duplicates look the same for in-site and migrated questions: there's no lock, all answers are preserved. Add that migrated duplicates (just as in-site ones) remain eligible for community reopen and aren't targeted for roomba and this becomes looking as close to "accepted" as it gets.

enderland

@dylanribb so you've been in your current position 6 months right?

dylanribb

8:08 PM

@enderland: Yep, that's correct.

enderland

what conversations along this subject have you had with the CFO? you must be hte only dev person at all?

a lot of the "what to do" depends in my opinion some on how much of a... surprise this will be to your boss

dylanribb

We've had some brief conversations about it, mostly to the effect of "We understand this is a difficult position to be in", etc.

enderland

that's definitely good

dylanribb

I have a review coming up next week so I may bring it up to him.

I just wanted to get some perspective from other programmers before I go into a meeting with a manager who knows close to nothing about programming/development.

user55340

@dylanribb get a copy of Death March and suggest that both of you read it to get an idea of the 'scope of the problem

enderland

8:10 PM

one of the biggest problems with any dev work is that the layer between dev and manager is basically a complete black box, and so it's really hard to get a feel for "what is the status of the code/project" unless the dev is very, VERY deliberate about it

all of us have seen positions like this to some extent, we take over a project and go "holy shit, how is this even possible it works now" when management thought everything was perfect

user55340

dylanribb

Yeah. And of course "refactor so that things don't explode in the future" is pretty low on the priority list.

user55340

I was in an ugly death march.

dylanribb

At least for management, anyway.

@MichaelT: How did you manage that?

user55340

And at the start we thought it was in the suicide range... we realized that we could get something working... but we were never happy about it.

dylanribb

8:12 PM

Did the project ultimately fail or?

enderland

yeah even on a small scale I fight this daily. "oh you demoed something which means ITS DONE"

"woah woah woah, this isn't even robust at all let alone deployable"

user55340

@dylanribb Ultimately, its working... though the team they brought in to do it is devastated (last guy from the original team left a month ago).

dylanribb

Yeah, that doesn't sound fun.

user55340

They pulled the best coders from all the other departments and said "work on this, it has to be out by next year this time."

dylanribb

Ha, I wish I had other coders to pull in. I'm the only one.

(Did I also mention that I'm the IT guy for the whole company in addition to the developer?)

user55340

8:14 PM

Part of the problem there is that they pulled the best coders from all the other teams leaving them without their seinor developers... and then all of us left within the year after the project went live.

enderland

@MichaelT management is so often short sighted on dev projects :\

dylanribb

Yeah, definitely sounds like a nightmare.

user55340

The thing is that Death March does help you consider what it takes to get through the project.

user55340

Things like "send the team off to another building so they don't get distracted" and "give them big bonuses of some type when its done" or the like... (no, we didn't get big bonuses).

enderland

$1?

Vishwas

8:15 PM

can i ask doubts about programming here?

dylanribb

@Vishwas: Like doubts that you want to be a programmer? Or doubts about a specific problem/solution?

user55340

15

Q: Characteristics of a Death March project

In software development, a death march project generally refers to a project that has a fixed release date with fixed functionality and fixed resources - resulting in crazy demands from management that developers work extra long hours and weekends. What do you think a death march project is and ...

project-management death-march

user55340

@RobertHarvey (how is that ^^ not closed?!)

enderland

@MichaelT 2009 for last update, 2008 question

user55340

@enderland I know... still.

Vishwas

8:17 PM

i have written a program in java but it give me the output as i expected ..where should i post the source code so that somebody help me to find out what i have done wrong?? @dylanribb

user55340

(side bit, sometimes "questions" is translated into "doubts" in english when the two words are the same in the original language)

enderland

@MichaelT I see "queries" sometimes too

user55340

@Vishwas First thing to do is create a Minimal, Complete, Tested and Readable example.

user55340

Explain exactly the input you are giving, the output you are expecting, and the output you are getting. Post that on Stack Oveflow.

Vishwas

@MichaelT thanx

user55340

8:22 PM

@Vishwas getting it down to the simplest bit of code that describes the problem is key.

enderland

I want to write a AHK script to capture how often I use control c/control v

user55340

For example:

user55340

4

Q: Apache POI autoSizeColumn resizes to minimum width

When working with values that are formulas, I am having difficulty getting the columns to autoresize properly. I have "solved" this by making a hidden row that has maximum values as constant strings values, but that is far from elegant and often requires evaluating the formulas in each cell to g...

java excel apache-poi

dylanribb

@MichaelT: That "death march" question almost seems like an essay question from a college CS exam.

user55340

The original code that had that bug was ~500 lines of code. Its not fair to put that into a question and have people hunt for it.

Vishwas

8:24 PM

it seems very great chat room...will use my time here to find answers about my doubts rather than wasting on Facebook

enderland

Facebook? yuck

speaking of facebook...

You might enjoy this question

dylanribb

Why would you ever Facebook friend someone at work?

Especially management?

Ampt

nope nope nope haha

user55340

Thats what Linked In is for.

enderland

speaking of which, former (and now "retired") boss of mine sent me a message basically asking if I had any interest in some of the work I did before...

user55340

8:43 PM

@dylanribb so anyways... has it been helpful here? Other unexplored bits of your job situation that you want to poke at?

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Probably because it was asked in 2008.

user55340

@RobertHarvey Yep... and I'm sure there's lots back in those days that are similarly in the o_O range of current standards. Just one thought I thought would have been found.

Robert Harvey

9:24 PM

[sigh]

0

Q: DbUpdateException in the initializer class

so i'm trying to create a database in mysql via code in c# using visual studio 2013. Whenever i try to do context.SaveChanges() he gives me a DbUpdateException for some reason. I've tried debugging but haven't found anything really (or i'm looking over it - not so experienced here) and this is th...

c# database asp.net mysql

Robert Harvey

9:38 PM

-3

Q: Faster File Sharing

My friends and I are creating a new website that allows free file sharing between two parties within 2000 meters. The concept of Sumodrop is targeted towards students that do not want to download something like dropbox and the age of emails is dying. In order to deal with this problem we have f...

web-services mobile html5 ui file-systems

user55340

We're gonne grab a bite, hopefully you're still here afterwards — Jepix 2 hours ago

Robert Harvey

Yeah, I saw that.

user55340

Its a comment based debug session.

Robert Harvey

More like a comment-based debug training.

Having not worked at all with EF, I'm surprised how well I understand his problems.

Many Stack Overflow questions suffer from this problem of under-specification: you're asking what the problem is, but the debugger and error messages are already telling you where to go, and we're not sitting in front of the debugger like you are.

Matt S.

9:55 PM

Sounds like a college class used to weed out who cares about programming or not.

user55340

@MattS. The weedout class back when I took it was MIPS assembly.

user55340

The problem is its hard to teach debugging. Its something you learn by doing.

Matt S.

@MichaelT I was just going to add that. You couldn't make it into Junior year without passing Assembly in my program.

user55340

Just like it is hard to teach editing.

user55340

354 was second semester first year.

user55340

9:58 PM

302 (intro) / 354 (assembly) + 352 (digital logic) / 367 (data structures) / 5xx and beyond

user55340

One of the things I found recently is that the university I went to now has a freshman group for an additional credit. Intended for people going into that major - a bit of extra work.

user55340

research.cs.wisc.edu/wes-cs

user55340

And then the additional work: research.cs.wisc.edu/wes-cs/exercises.spr11.html

Matt S.

Those are interesting exercises.

We were asked questions and got markers thrown at us if we got them wrong. :P

Very motivating

user55340

This is supposed to encourage people in the degree program.

Matt S.

10:07 PM

nah, put them in their place early.

Get them ready for a life in a cubicle.

Ampt

wow...

just found ANOTHER compiler bug

at least that's the only thing left it could be

enderland

o rly. famous... last words

Ampt

@enderland just found that a function call to a delay function took 2.75 seconds... for a 10ms delay

in my main loop that same delay took exactly 9.9ms

but when I call it from another file, it takes 2.75 seconds

and yes, I'm sure I didn't accidentally overload it somehow

it was the only delay function provided by either myself or the compiler

why it takes 2.75 seconds is beyond me

user55340

@MattS. Thats in there too - talking with people who are professionals.

enderland

@Ampt did you.... intentionally overload it? :)

user55340

10:11 PM

> be invited to learn more about CS careers via visits to local companies and/or special dinners with speakers,

Ampt

I replace the function call with the contents of the delay loop and BAM correct delay

enderland

@MichaelT it would be great to have such well constructed "do this" work assignments as school gives

Might get boring fast but hey

user55340

(and back to my own debugging)

Ampt

@enderland ugh. I find my professional work to be much more interesting than the "do this" work that school assigns

enderland

oh it's way more interesting, but it'd be nice to have more scoped/defined things to work on sometimes

Ampt

10:13 PM

at my job my code has requirements and reasoning behind them. I'm Free to fill in the gaps

enderland

ah, see I write all my requirements/reasoning too

Ampt

at school it's "Fill in this round hole with a round peg"

why? Because it teaches you technology X, which is great

but its just... empty

enderland

I know what you mean, lol. I'm just lamenting the days of more simple life somewhat...

Ampt

@enderland And I'm telling you to quit your whining.

:)

I can pass you some of my school work next week if you want ;)

enderland

hah. I just spent like 30 min debugging something which is the result of a webpage being displayed differently on two different people's accounts - in spite of literally everyone telling me that "there are no user configurations which change things" -- calling BS on this

user55340

10:16 PM

@enderland watch out - its a trick. He'll ask you about annotations and you'll build a web server.

enderland

@MichaelT no, this guy is the self descirbed "not tech guy"

the one who wants me to do that is in a similar group in a different location, actually, though...

user55340

@enderland I was referring to ampt offering to give you some of his work.

enderland

oh. hah. well there are plenty of folks I work with who would love me to work for them directly and 100% of the time

Ampt

@MichaelT don't give away my tricks ;)

if it makes you feel any better, the stuff that you helped me with didn't impact my grade at all. All the reqs were stuff like "Serve up 404 pages when they request an invalid URL" and "Make sure every page has a favicon"

but I did learn a lot about real, indepth java stuff which will help in 3 months

user55340

Either way... I don't mind helping people if it means they learn.

2

Ampt

10:27 PM

Well I didn't want you to think that I was trying to trick you into doing my homework either :)

user55340

If it makes you feel better, that was my first real delve into annotations from scratch... which I've since used in production code.

enderland

it's amazing how much "oh wouldn't this be fun to learn" stuff in coding comes back later

"oh this was what I did when I helped @Ampt" or whatever

except I rarely help you guys :P

Ampt

Shhh, if you keep it up, jimmy's gonna start blabbing on about haskell again

user55340

@enderland He means to say "Shh... if you keep it up, I'll be cursed with having to write VB code"

enderland

the only thing I dislike about it honestly is the editor. if I could have auto complete plus a "alt tab" system which made sense... meh

Ampt

10:37 PM

is that Visual Studio?

enderland

lol no

VBA is the bastard child of VB. and the VBA IDE, well... leaves a ton to be desired.

Shog9

It was probably really nice in... 1992

Like, "if I've never used Borland's IDEs, this is nice" nice

ok, it probably always sucked

enderland

it's not the worst IDE out there at all (except the Mac version might be, it's like the old version of Gimp which has a zillion windows)

user55340

You're just jealous I was a CodeWarrior.

Shog9

VBA: "it's not the worst thing ever!"

4

user55340

10:40 PM

CodeWarrior

CodeWarrior is an integrated development environment (IDE) for the creation of software that runs on a number of embedded systems. Prior to the acquisition of the product by Freescale Semiconductor, versions existed for Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, Wii, Palm OS, Symbian OS, and even for BeOS. Currently, C, C++, and assembly language are the focus of the tools, though before Metrowerks was acquired by Freescale, versions of CodeWarrior included Pascal, Object Pascal, Objective-C, and Java compilers as well. History CodeWar...

user55340

(and a picture of an old shirt...)

user55340

(I used to have that T-shirt... well, not that one, but one of the same design)

user55340

Gah... too much nostalgia. Back to debugging.

Robert Harvey

I've never seen one, but Bob Martin once remarked that he saw a T-shirt with the caption "Non-Coding Architect," and a picture of a Pegasus.

The point being, if you can't code, you're going to be about as effective as this mythical creature at being an Architect.

user55340

10:46 PM

I wonder if he has any of the comments on c2.com/cgi/wiki?ArchitectsDontCode

user55340

(he has edited that wiki before - c2.com/cgi/wiki?RobertCecilMartin )

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT How can you tell, if his name is not on the edited page?

user55340

In theory, one isn't supposed to edit/create a "HomePage" for a non-participatnt or something. Maybe.

user55340

> A WikiHomePage is a page a person sets up to describe themself and perhaps store links of personal interest, semi-private discussions (WikiMailBoxes), etc.

Robert Harvey

Bob Martin also said that every architect should spend a few days per month coding in the system they designed, so that they can see the pain they are creating for everyone else.

Let's say I wanted to build something, say a code generator, from scratch. From a learning perspective, is it better to try and stumble in the dark first before seeing how other people have done it (and have the benefit of hindsight), or study other people's designs first, and have the benefit of foresight?

user55340

10:58 PM

@RobertHarvey Yes.

Robert Harvey

[sigh]

user55340

Yea, I know... both ways have their + / -.

user55340

I'd go for looking at the high level designs... but not the implementation details.

Robert Harvey

I've actually floated a couple of questions about code generation specifically. Surprisingly, most people seem to favor mashing strings together if you've never done it before, and view things like Expression Trees and CodeDom as YAGNI.

user20683

@RobertHarvey Depends on how complex things are

user55340

11:00 PM

YAGNI only works if you understand where you are going.

user20683

given my proclivities, I'd favor some actual syntax trees

user55340

It puts blinders and a horizon in front of you that you can't (shouldn't) see past.

user20683

I mean Arbor Day is coming up...Think of the poor little Lambda Owls...

Robert Harvey

What I (eventually) have in mind is something that generates a series of MVP CRUD forms from an XSD.

It's simpler than it sounds. Some things (XSD2CODE) already work.

And there's a property grid in Winforms that is already capable of mapping pre-generated classes.

But there's some things I don't like about the way XSD2CODE works.

So, like all good reinvent-the-wheel programmers, I'm thinking about rolling my own.

...

Scaffolding Scaffolding Scaffolding Scaffolding (recited in best Steve Ballmer imitation)

OregonTrail

I think tools to automate writing CRUD code or at least generate some scaffolding are a great idea

It's amazing that even with an ORM and Framework how many people are writing practically the same code all around the world at any given time

Robert Harvey

11:08 PM

CRUD forms are wonderful things to write by hand... the first time.

After that, the lustre wears off.

OregonTrail

Sometimes you need some custom logic mixed in, sometimes some business rules or security checks

but there seems to be a much better way

Robert Harvey

XSD has a lot of that already.

So it would be essentially XSD that generates forms that edit the corresponding XML file.

This is the XSD that I want to hand it:

spiraltechinc.com/Tmats

@OregonTrail In C#, you can generate scaffolding using partial classes, and then write matching partial classes by hand to implement custom validation or business logic. Your generated classes are preserved; no need to modify them.

dylanribb

Did somebody mention Haskell?

Robert Harvey

@dylanribb Only every five minutes in here.

dylanribb

You say that with what sounds like disdain.

(reads like?)

Robert Harvey

11:13 PM

Not at all. Only pointing out that you just fulfilled the five minute metric.

dylanribb

Oh, sweet.

OregonTrail

@RobertHarvey I haven't worked with XSD before, but that sounds like a good solution

as long as extending the classes is relatively DRY when you override things

Robert Harvey

Winforms themselves are partial classes. You extend them by writing a corresponding partial class containing event handlers and such.

OregonTrail

@dylanribb I was actually thinking that a "better way" might be a declarative or structural language for this type of business logic. The same result you sometimes get when writing functional code.

XSD of course being that language in this case

dylanribb

What are you writing? (Sorry to jump into the middle of the conversation)

Robert Harvey

11:17 PM

They do have business logic frameworks. Mostly, these are sort of configurable state machines.

@dylanribb It's just in the thinking stage, but it's a code generator that accepts an XSD as input, and outputs Winforms code for a series of editor forms.

The output of the Winforms editor application would be an XML file that is compliant with the original XSD.

OregonTrail

what are the shortcomings of xsd2code?

dylanribb

Interesting. I know very little about the Microsoft side of things, unfortunately, but I've written small apps to generate XML templates for various purposes in Ruby and Python.

Mostly I just fumbled around in the dark until I got something to work (regarding your original question).

Are most of the people around here in the Microsoft ecosystem?

OregonTrail

I'm not

Currently writing an architecture simulator targeted at a Unix-like environment

dylanribb

Oh, cool.

psr

Usually my code generation steps (if I'm trying to save time and not doing something like giving users a DSL) are: 1. Write one of each by hand, and discover that what I actually need is totally different than what I thought. 2. Convert the hand written code into some kind of Stream.Write(originalCode). 3. Change stuff I hard-coded into variables. 4. Refactor if needed. 5. Purge everything I know about it from my memory so that when I debug it later I'm not "cheating".

dylanribb

11:27 PM

What kind of stuff are you working with?

psr

This can go pretty quickly

Notably step 5

OregonTrail

It's using the valgrind framework

so mostly straight C

with some Python post-processing

dylanribb

Cool.

OregonTrail

I've probably used some features that are GNU/Linux specific

haven't tried compiling on a BSD or cygwin yet

user20683

11:29 PM

Wolfram Alpha has started to get crazy

OregonTrail

they have all the Pokemon as well

"Pikachu function" etc

user20683

yeah

user20683

also Worf

user20683

and Scoobi Doo and all kinds of strangeness

OregonTrail

all generated polar functions from some vector graphics

nothing elegant

but still funny

user55340

11:32 PM

Its especially fun when the what if xkcd blog notes not getting banned from wolfram alpha.

user55340

( what-if.xkcd.com/85 )

user55340

mouseover the wolfram alpha image.

user55340

(compare: what-if.xkcd.com/62 )

user55340

OregonTrail

Ok, everyone is going to facepalm when I say this

user55340

11:35 PM

I wonder if they have considered how much of a force xkcd is on the internet and how much free() advertising they're getting (notting that computing things isn't *free, but pretty cheap)

OregonTrail

But I asked this questions this morning

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231367/…

And I'd really like to find the answer

I'm looking at some gcc generated asm today

and I would love to know more about this

user55340

@OregonTrail data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/172826

user55340

That's the best way to dig through SO comments.

user55340

(an earlier version based on the "You shouldn't concern yourself" text): data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/revision/172826/220662

OregonTrail

Wow, this great

I knew they released the tables as TSV

but haven't seen this

should help considerably

user55340

11:38 PM

(btw, I did link that query in the comment programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/231367/… )

dylanribb

I'm getting a 404 for that question.

OregonTrail

yeah, I saw that

but didn't click the link

forgot to

user55340

@dylanribb We tried to clean it up quickly... its... there's some culture clash going on in various parts of P.SE.

OregonTrail

thought it was a link to the db dump that they release

thanks again ;)

dylanribb

Okay, gotcha.

I'm still sort of new around here, so I apologize in advance for my stupid questions.

user55340

11:39 PM

@OregonTrail You're most welcome. We've got a few around here who do data.SE pokes if you need (or discover) other interesting things.

OregonTrail

yeah it's deleted so only I can see it? sorry

user55340

@dylanribb No problem. Its deep within meta.P.SE where thats hidden.

user55340

@OregonTrail owner and people with 10k + rep.

OregonTrail

interesting

user55340

@dylanribb We 'regularlly' get "why is everything on the front page downvoted and/or closed" questions on the meta site.

dylanribb

11:40 PM

Yeah, I imagine.

user55340

One approach to solving that is to try to clean things up that are heavilly downvoted and are unlikely to get an answer or reopened.

dylanribb

See, it's sort of interesting for me because I like to see things that have been downvoted into oblivion.

That way I can A) Not repeat the mistake that person made, and B) Understand the types of questions not appropriate for the site.

user55340

An incentive to get to 10k...

dylanribb

True =)

user55340

Lets see what fun I can find for you...

user55340

11:42 PM

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/136210/…

user55340

dylanribb

Is that rep across SE or Rep on P.SE?

user55340

@dylanribb Each site is its own.

dylanribb

Gotcha.

user55340

Knowing a bit about computer architecture doesn't mean I know how to repair bikes.

dylanribb

11:42 PM

Then I've got a long way to go on P.SE

user55340

dylanribb

You must not live in Portland, then.

user55340

Heh... nope. Northern Wisconsin.

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46835/…

user55340

(look at the title of the link)

user55340

11:45 PM

dylanribb

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if that one had a bunch of votes but was closed as off-topic.

And I'm wrong.

user55340

The short version of the history of P.SE:
* NPR (Not Programming Related) - all the stuff SO didn't want "what should I name my cat as a programmer?" "what is your favorite comic as a programmer?"
* Subjective answer guideance
* Massive closings
* Some people leaving dramatically
* Slow increase in community moderation
* Slow increase in views
* Today

Robert Harvey

@dylanribb Even the most ardent of inclusionists thought that one was off-topic.

user55340

There are still some of the "everything should be fair game to answer" floating around...

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Don't forget the part where Yannis basically proved that the site never experienced substantial growth until the Great Cleansing occurred.

user55340

11:49 PM

And we're also apparently picking up more from google traffic, which is getting a bit of the "what job should I take?" type questions.

user55340

48

A: How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?

tl;dr We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out. C'est la vie. 3 years ago, a Stack Exchange site called Not Programming Related came out of Area51, the Stack Exchange staging zone. NPR was supposed to be a site where questions t...

user55340

dylanribb

So you mean a lot of traffic flowing in where people had searched on Google "which job to take"or similar terms?

user55340

3

A: Provide 10k users more close votes

I'm not totally opposed to looking into upping the limits here, but I want to run some data first. However, there's two things at play here that we need to deal with separately, while at the same time not forgetting that they're symptoms of a whole. Let's go by each problem, on its own. Q-bloc...

user55340

> Traffic is growing here. I was just looking at stats to determine if the rise is coming from folks with more engineering related searches, or the old 'best book to learn books' kind of thing. It's a bit of a split, but looks like it's landing firmly in topics we actually want, which is good. That means the right kinds of users are finding the site.

It also means that we're getting more clueless folks tripping over us in search results. While this has been becoming increasingly evident to folks that use and review the site daily, it's .. now .. being evidenced a bit more by stats and data…

user55340

11:54 PM

(to toot my own horn) I've been slowly writing meta articles on trying to help people see the current guidance and direction of the site... if you read them, you'll likely avoid the big problems of the site.

dylanribb

@MichaelT: I never got a chance to reply to your earlier question. Yes, it has been helpful here.

user55340

12

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 (MSO) Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in? Are you still confused about what Programmers is for?...

discussion featured close-reasons faq-proposed down-votes

user55340

(especially the links from the 'other' section)

dylanribb

I also listen to the SE podcast occasionally.

Interesting to hear what's going on from that perspective.

user55340

One of the things that I've been pleased to see is more activity in chat - more new faces.

user55340

11:58 PM

Its a good thing - very useful resource... a lot of our 'not quite main site questions' need the dense back and forth that chat can provide.

dylanribb