The Whiteboard - 2014-03-12 (page 1 of 2)

Ampt

1:10 AM

wow that is oddly fun

i love the routing

looks gorgeous

Shahar

1:29 AM

hi

anybody here?

Matt D

somewhere

Shahar

yo

I have a website

and I'm making an app for it

should I write an API and use it in the app or not?

(i.e. - does Facebook use the Facebook API for their app or not)

Matt D

why are you making an app for a website that you can easily view on a mobile?

Shahar

Facebook can be easily viewed on a mobile

it's a little more organized I'd say

Matt D

Its a lot of extra work, unless you've got a metric buttload of users its probably not something you want to bother with. or unless there's a specific thing about mobile you can leverage.

Shahar

1:42 AM

So no API?

Matt D

well, what does the API do?

if your API is acting like the data layer, then your app is really just a very fancy web page

Shahar

Yeah, I know... I was just wondering what Facebook did because for Facebook it's really just a fancy web page

user55340

2:01 AM

@AshleyNunn btw, alpha7 version of micro metro appears to have unlimited tunnels but they take a speed hit going through.

user15026

@MichaelT Oooh, I am intrigued

user55340

Dev blog link: devlog.dinopoloclub.com

user15026

follows the tumblr

Matt D

@MichaelT awesomepants :D will play lter

user55340

@MattD Its a very well done game... though watch out, its kind of addicting.

Matt D

2:09 AM

is that yours?

user55340

Nope. One I found from Steam green light and went "hmm" and then started playing.

Shahar

yo Michael T

suppose I have a website

and I'm creating an API for other developers for objective-C

When I create my website's app, should I use my own API

user15026

@MichaelT And then infected the rest of us with its awesome

user55340

@Shahar Dogfooding tends to be a good thing. IIRC, Amazon did a "you will only use the same interfaces we give our customers" internally to make sure they were fast and what was actually needed rather than "here's some stuff that you can use" but going to internal only access calls.

Shahar

dogfooding? Woof?

user55340

2:13 AM

Eating your own dog food

Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, is a slang term used to reference a scenario in which a company (usually, a computer software company) uses its own product to demonstrate the quality and capabilities of the product. Introduction Dogfooding can be a way for a company to demonstrate confidence in its own products. The idea is that if the company expects customers to buy its products, it should also be willing to use those products. Hence dogfooding can act as a kind of testimonial advertising. InfoWorld commented that this needs to be transparent and honest: "watered-down ...

Shahar

Yeah I kind of got the definition of that haha

user55340

dogfooding

Shahar

but I mean

does Facebook let's say use their own API?

I see why it's a good idea (to check for bugs and stuff) but not sure if it's the right approach

user55340

If you are using an awkward API (that you control), you fix it and make it better.

user55340

If you are using an internal API and giving an awkward API to others, you don't know their pain.

user55340

2:15 AM

You don't know their performance issues.

Shahar

unless they report to me...?

user55340

Or they decide to go do something else instead.

Shahar

yeah, probably the latter

lol

user55340

searchengineland.com/…

user55340

> Apple gets it, obviously. They’ve made some fundamentally non-open choices, particularly around their mobile platform. But they understand accessibility and they understand the power of third-party development and they eat their dogfood. And you know what? They make pretty good dogfood. Their APIs are a hell of a lot cleaner than Microsoft’s, and have been since time immemorial.

user55340

2:17 AM

>
The Golden Rule of Platforms, “Eat Your Own Dogfood”, can be rephrased as “Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything.” You can’t just bolt it on later. Certainly not easily at any rate — ask anyone who worked on platformizing MS Office. Or anyone who worked on platformizing Amazon. If you delay it, it’ll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front. You can’t cheat. You can’t have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY reason. You need to solve the hard problems up front.

Shahar

That's actually true

user55340

deviq.com/dogfooding

user55340

>
One benefit of proper dogfooding is, if you intend to expose your internal APIs publicly, they will actually be usable. At Amazon, Jeff Bezos famously issued a mandate around 2002 requiring all teams to expose their data and functionality via service interfaces, and for all teams to communicate with each other through these interfaces. Direct linking, direct access to databases, and other back doors were prohibited. All of these service interfaces also needed to be designed from the ground up to be exposed to the world. The mandate ended with "Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired.…

user55340

Other links to read: apievangelist.com/2012/01/12/… siliconangle.com/furrier/2011/10/12/…

user55340

(parts of that second link are in the search engine land link above)

Shahar

2:20 AM

Yeah I'll probably get started on the API then

Thanks... I'm going to name all my variables dogfooding now lol

alright good night

user55340

NSNumber 🐕food = 4;

user55340

Incidentally, the company I work at... we're building our own internal CRM. Its named after the dog one of the employees owns.

Matt D

crazy

such a waste of engineering effor t;)

user55340

Well, we're building one for customers... and we really don't like where Sugar has gone.

user55340

2:37 AM

user55340

Yea! clean final screen shots!

user15026

Holy crap so many people

user15026

You cant currently erase lines, can you?

Ampt

3:12 AM

I got up to 520

that was my high score

Then the green train pooped out on me

@MichaelT clearly you should do it in ruby

user55340

@AshleyNunn If you backtrack it all the way to the 'start' you erase it.

user15026

@MichaelT oooh yay

user55340

3:32 AM

user55340

I tend to like the overlapping loops.

user15026

@MichaelT I find they work rather well

Ampt

the passengers seem to figure out the best routes pretty damn well

I really enjoy how subtle the zooming out is

Manny

4:17 AM

Hello..

Asking the question programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/232068/… has lead me to this chatroom...

Ampt

@Manny ask away

chat is rather quiet right now, and there's no guarantee you'll get an answer

but no one will stop you from asking

user20683

@Manny Your question as it stands is impossibly broad.

Manny

I see...

Hmm, let me think how I can narrow it down

user20683

Find a problem you've encountered in your framework. Distill that one case into a question.

Manny

I'm particularly interested in making it extensible i.e. the plugin system..

The initial plugin system is already coded, but how do I know if it's correct? I have not much experience in making a system pluggable

user20683

4:24 AM

@Manny Experiment. Make some plugins. See how well they work, then iterate on that.

user20683

Might look at existing Javascript libraries that claim extensibility and see what they did

Ampt

imgur.com/LzN24MA

@MichaelT best yet!

user20683

in any case, it's time I went to bed.

user20683

Might drop into SO's JS chat and see what they say.

Manny

Thanks @Wor

Thanks @WorldEngineer I'll check that

gnat

5:36 AM

we've got a spammer! programmers.stackexchange.com/users/35561/hayim-makabee (remember, no more than 2 down votes on their post, othervise brainless serial reversal script will turn it back)

gnat

8:29 AM

free spam flags, posts from yet another spammer: programmers.stackexchange.com/users/123026/user2646760

user55340

2:02 PM

@Ampt A grand central approach. Make sure you upgrade the station if you go that way.

Ampt

2:33 PM

@MichaelT yeah that's what got me

I overextended the green line too

it served two specialties, and that last circle could have been done by yellow

Got my roommate addicted

his new high score:
http://gyazo.com/206a11700a90e02520558298ee8d90be

He figured out that clicking on the clock lets you pause

and you can rebuild while paused

wtf lol

enderland

you guys are making me feel bad at my score when I messed around some the other day

fortunately it's just a game, right?

Ampt

@enderland a game that you can play again.. and again... and again... and again

enderland

eh, I'm at work

user55340

@Ampt You didn't know that? (Granted, the dev admits it is the hardest pause button to find)

Ampt

No. Got to 620 without it though!

user55340

2:45 PM

> The clock in the top-right is the world’s most obscure pause button.

enderland

@Ampt oh, I didn't realize you could rebuild when paused. that will make the game a lot easier huh

user55340

@enderland Its very useful for largescale restructuring of a line.

user55340

Though people joke about a 'hardcode mode' with no pause button.

Robert Harvey

3:21 PM

C is a perfectly good first language. But you don't wear a helmet when you program with it, and people are so safety conscious these days. — Robert Harvey 41 secs ago

gnat

3:31 PM

> I asked this on the stackoverflow forum, and it got downvoted for now being a concrete programming problem, so I'm trying it here. I apologize if it's irrelevant here also.

lovely

-1

Q: Why is it common to say “link against a library” instead of link with a library?

It seems more natural to say link with a library, rather than link against a library, so I've always wondered. I asked this on the stackoverflow forum, and it got downvoted for now being a concrete programming problem, so I'm trying it here. I apologize if it's irrelevant here also.

linking

let's drop some crap here and there and see how it sticks

oh, and cross-posting is there too

-1

Q: Why is it common to say "link against a library" instead of link with a library?

It seems more natural to say link with a library, rather than link against a library, so I've always wondered.

linker

full house

migrate to Workplace?

enderland

@gnat har har

user55340

Against 4. into contact or collision with; toward; upon: The rain beat against the window. — MichaelT 1 min ago

user55340

Though I'd be tempted to send it to ELU.SE

Robert Harvey

3:57 PM

I think you're laboring under a number of false assumptions. First, I disagree with your assertion that "link against a library" is the most commonly-used term. Second, your relative understanding of these specific English words is not going to affect your ability as a programmer one way or another, so ultimately your question is uninteresting to anyone, here and on Stack Overflow. Sorry to be so blunt about it; but we prefer to focus on less vaporous issues. — Robert Harvey 1 min ago

Just another user who thinks we're a social network.

...

People still call it a FAQ, even though the FAQ disappeared months ago.

user55340

If he is really interested in the English language aspect of it, P.SE isn't the place to ask. It might be an acceptable question if worded correctly on ELU or ELL.

Ampt

@MichaelT I've been playing on hardcore mode this whole itme

Senior engineer just asked me about a sticky under our incidental task with my handwriting

I have no recollection of said sticky

uh oh.. haha

Robert Harvey

Aren't stickys like SE comments? They don't really exist...

Ampt

4:12 PM

@RobertHarvey they are our tasks for our stories

user55340

@AshleyNunn you should do a rename of all the south park stick of truth titles to a more 'proper' wording. "What are the consequences of passing gas on someone's testicles?"

Ampt

@MichaelT my roommate bought that and loves it so far

apparently he just learned how to fart

user55340

@Ampt have you seen the questions on Gaming.SE for that game?

Robert Harvey

0

Q: Use of Unmodified AGPLv3 lib - am I AGPL too?

So, I've been reading the AGPL and here is my understanding (not being a lawyer and I'm not trying to look at it through the lens of "Since I WANT it to be ''free'', it therefore is.". In my case, I am considering the use of itext, an AGPL library, to crack open PDF files and extract the text - ...

licensing libraries agpl

Ampt

@MichaelT yes, and they are all hilarious

Robert Harvey

4:13 PM

"How do I find a loophole in the AGPL?" ----^^

user55340

@RobertHarvey The way you do it is you make a seperate application that you then invoke. You pass it a pdf, it gives you back a json. This is a public and free (libre) web app. Then you invoke it, get the json and do your non-agpl stuff with that.

Robert Harvey

So you're saying just write a wrapper? Even if that meets the letter of the license, I doubt that it meets its spirit.

user55340

It works for the GPL.

user55340

But that said, I wouldn't touch anything with the AGPL with a 10 foot pole because of the extreme infectioness of that license.

Ampt

ugh. software licensing. Definitely my least favorite part of dreaming of running my own company..

Robert Harvey

4:17 PM

How would that work? That means I could take any GPL library and make it non-GPL just by wrapping it in my own code. I doubt the FSF considers that a valid story.

ratchet freak

>you thought about this AGPL lib while designing that one, now it's AGPL as well

user55340

You make a completely separate executable, invoke it through the command line.

Robert Harvey

@ratchetfreak That's the TAGPL.

@MichaelT FSF calls that "arms-length communication." They don't like it, but they do concede that it is a valid workaround.

user55340

Its not linked at compile time or runtime.

Robert Harvey

Right.

user55340

4:19 PM

Yep. And I'd keep the AGPL as far away from my code as possible.

user55340

And its very likely a valid workaround here too. Otherwise any web service thats out there that is AGPL would mean that the data from it would carry that license too.

Ampt

It's like... a virus...

user55340

So you hit some arbitrary web service out there and its AGPL licensed... you can't impose the license of the arbitrary web service on anything that uses it.

Ampt

Soon AGPL will contaminate everything, and then the day of reckoning will come.

user55340

@Ampt I'm part of the BSD faction.

Ampt

4:21 PM

@MichaelT There are no factions in front of our god, Henry Poole

6

A: AGPL - what you can do and what you can't

The AGPL is based on the GPL, not the LGPL. It does not contain any linking exceptions, and any work using AGPL code (linked or otherwise, modified or not) must also be AGPL licensed and distributed. Using separate processes can circumvent the (A)GPL, but this is murky ground. If your end applic...

user55340

4:49 PM

Oh, came across this link last night and it made me chuckle a bit. venturebeat.com/2013/10/11/…

Ampt

really all you need to see

saw that extra fluff on the end I had to cut

user55340

Thats the look of a crazy person.

user55340

Notice how much code it takes to write hello world.

Ampt

> The solution is Haskell, the purest functional language that has been in development for over 20 years.

I literally laughed at that

> This is possibly one of the silliest articles I've ever read. Did it come through a time warp from Usenet circa 1994?

AndyBursh

Had to double check I was reading something serious them

*then

Ampt

4:56 PM

@AndyBursh you can edit messages by hovering just to the left of them, or hitting the up arrow after sending a message. Edited messages have a little pencil on the left <--

AndyBursh

Ta

user55340

> Anyone who thinks all languages are the same hasn't used PHP. Haskell is probably good, but there are not enough libraries that use it to make it useful in my work.

Ampt

> When working with Haskell, the programmers found that
they spent little time debugging and testing their code.

Probably because they weren't writing any code

ratchet freak

bad sign that

user55340

We just need to wait for php to pick up haskell mode... I mean, its got everything else.

Ampt

4:59 PM

@ratchetfreak We mainly like to poke fun at haskell because one of our residents (@JimmyHoffa) loves it

it's not a terrible language

of course these articles are all advertisements to get you to buy some IDE or another

ratchet freak

kinda figured...

I don't have much experience with haskell to judge either way

Ampt

0

Q: Tag merge / synonym request: [srp] → [single-responsibility]

Please merge tag srp (26 questions) into single-responsibility (27), and make them synonyms. Preference for master tag is because I consider single-responsibility a more descriptive name. Tag srp wiki excerpt is In object-oriented programming, the single responsibility principle (srp) sta...

support tag-synonyms tag-merge

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