The Whiteboard - 2014-04-30 (page 1 of 2)

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Jimmy Hoffa

00:39

@MichaelT surely there's online resume forms; fill out-> presto doc file. Countless of them in fact, embedded in all those HR systems no doubt. Surely some online available openly without requiring you buy the huge enterprise HR system just for that little module

Anybody here find careers 2.0 have particularly better listings than dice or monster? At first I thought so, but as time moves I'm less convinced.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa In general, yes. Though its not so much the companies that are there but rather that the companies are doing it rather than head hunters dumping 100s of openings they are hunting for.

user55340

Additionally, the company has to make it self look nice because of the company page. It just can't be "Acme Corp" in all caps at the top. They need to have several paragraphs about the company and pictures and such... and they are competing with companies that do really nice looking web pages.

user55340

They need to invest some time in there, beyond simple hr 'export as text file, upload'

user55340

02:01

@enderland While programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/237459 certainly isn't workplace material as is, is there a way to massage it into something that is? Or a question already there that answers the question for a pseudo-crosssite dup?

user55340

02:37

Fun for the engineers to think about - the longest conveyer belt

user55340

02:52

... and the latest in the series of meta questions:

user55340

0

Q: How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?

One of the not infrequently asked questions that shows up on Programmers.SE is along the lines of: I am trying to explain the differences between a NoSQL database and a relational database to a manager. How do I do this? These questions generally take the form of "How do I explain ${someth...

discussion close-reasons

user55340

04:13

Programming Sucks (from reddit‌)

5

ratchet freak

09:44

@MichaelT now if only the first section wasn't a massive wall of text I might have actually read that

amon

10:10

@ratchetfreak Reading that article is worth it. Not so much for the insights (it's just a rant of frustration), as for the well-written snarks and quips. It's one of the most entertaining and enjoyable pieces I've read in some time.

1 hour later…

Oded

11:17

@RobertHarvey - rep leagues are fixinated. DB stats were out of whack.

2 hours later…

thorsten müller

13:04

stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

ratchet freak

13:18

@thorstenmüller you are a bit too late with that one

user41796

13:36

@ratchetfreak Anything involving drinking is never too late in here. Clearly it needed to be repeated. :-D

user41796

13:50

Note, I'm referring to just the URL alone...

user41796

@amon Yes, the snark alone makes it worth reading

user55340

14:27

Phone interview at 2:30 today.

user41796

Props

user41796

Was it the optional cover letter that anchored the interview?

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Are you interviewing for a new job or interviewing a candidate?

user55340

@ThomasOwens New job. Got laid off back on Friday (small company, projects I was working on were internal and not growing the customer base / revenue).

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Ouch. Good luck.

user55340

14:29

Long term, my Employer^ (using git HEAD notation now) is going to need the expertise I brought - the "prevent fires rather than fight them"... but not when things are tight.

user41796

Gotta get through the short term before you can make it to the long term

user55340

I think I've also realized something about the skills that I have and the company size that uses them. < ~10 developers -- too much of a cowboy coder world that is willing to trade debt for cash now.

user55340

I've enjoyed working more with the "we've got a product, its bringing in good money, its selling itself, we need to make sure we don't have any outages and can respond quickly to new requirements without having to call out the fire department"

user41796

My threshold for a company is it has to be >= 100 employees. I don't know if I have a # of developers threshold.

user55340

Oh, phone interview is with a Mac shop.

user41796

14:34

bonus points

enderland

@GlenH7 there's a lot of things which are just nicer when you have a bigger company, generally

durron597

hi everyone

user55340

At Employer^^^, I started out in a small part of IT... where there were maybe a dozen coders working on things in a few groups. But even with that size, we were disciplined in the "respond to change from internal quickly without making a mess"

user41796

@enderland the career ending internal politics kind of die off with larger companies

user41796

@MichaelT The team I'm on is small at < 10 developers. But we're very disciplined in what we bring in to the main branches of code.

durron597

14:37

I've gotta believe medium sized companies are the best

maybe small to medium sized

big enough that you don't have developers wasting time running email servers

user55340

When I started at Employer^^^ I was the 6##th employee. Add a bit of turnover in there too... don't recall the company size.

user41796

Everyone has their own personal preference. I've worked in a company with > 300k employees and enjoyed my time there.

user55340

IT was established, Engineering was very established.

durron597

but small enough that the bureaucracy nonsense hasn't taken over yet

though, i suspect there are some large companies that don't have the bureaucracy nonsense problem

user41796

All companies have bureaucracy. It just manifests in different ways. Even the < 10 employee company I worked for had it.

user55340

14:39

@durron597 depends on where you are... Employer^^^'s CEO is an outspoken opponent of Sarbane Oxley. Thus, we had to make sure we did everything by the book because an audit would look very closely at IT governance.

Thomas Owens

I never know how to respond to how big my company is. The conglomerate I work for has over 200,000 employees. The division I work for is like 40,000. I'm not sure how many work for my business unit, but there are around 450-500 at this site.

durron597

49

A: Do I really need to stay the full 2 weeks?

I agree with Ollie; however, I'll provide you with a story. I've been at this for quite a bit longer than you. A couple years ago I decided I needed a change of pace after having worked with startups for many years and signed on with a pretty large company in financial services. They had 1,000...

user55340

@GlenH7 I've only been up in the 50k range for largest company (that was Cisco) as a contractor though.

enderland

@GlenH7 yeah among other things. it's easier to "just code" and not deal with politics if you don't care about career progression...

user41796

@ThomasOwens I think it depends upon how integrated the company is

user55340

14:42

The sluggish growth is looking to be not fun in the valley. Cisco laid off 4k in August, Netapp cut 600 just a month ago, after 900 the year before.

user41796

For my 300k+ company, the various divisions tried to work together and there was definitely a measure of collaboration. They did a great job at pushing the "one company" mentality and periodically revamped things to better emphasize that approach.

user55340

Multiple rounds of layoffs in short order == awful morale. The "are you next" type thing.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 A lot of the cool perks and the benefits tend to be managed at the conglomerate level. But most of the decisions that impact engineers are at the business unit or site level.

user41796

But for employer^, they were < 5k employees and broke down into particular fiefdoms. Very little continuity beyond the name on the paycheck between those organizations.

user41796

@MichaelT GE's / Jack Welch's "lay off the bottom x%" is a horrific idea from that point of view. Really causes a lot of residual problems after the first few years of implementation

user55340

14:46

@GlenH7 The dot com bust back in the early '00 layoff... had a good manager. She had survived the layoffs of Apple in the not-Jobs years and saw the signs a bit aways. She secured a head count that she never filled. When they asked her to cut someone from her department, she laid off the unfilled head count.

user55340

Apparently there were some that weren't overly happy with that, but she pointed out that if she was forced to lay off a person, she'd just hire them back into that head count that was already pre approved and hadn't been revoked earlier.

durron597

I hope she also pointed out that by not hiring extra people she didn't need, she already saved the company months (years?) of salary

user41796

The firm I was at was wise to that trick. Open reqs were canceled first. Then they decided how many more to cut.

user55340

@durron597 Fairly sure. We did need that person, and could have used them...

enderland

I hate accounting games like this

user55340

14:50

@GlenH7 This one had gotten CEO approval shortly after the contractors were cut and a number of reqs were closed in non-customer facing areas.

user41796

Very smooth upon her part then

user55340

She was very aware of the politics around her and how to work with the system.

user55340

Oh, btw, did you see the ancient migration from P.SE to Software Recs?

user41796

nope, missed it

user55340

23

Q: Is there a LOGO interpreter that actually has a turtle?

This is not a repeat of the now infamous "How do I move the turtle in LOGO?" Recently, I had the following conversation with my five year old daughter: Daughter: Daddy, do you write programs? Me: Yes! Daughter: Daddy, what's a program? Me: A program is a set of instruction...

learning teaching

user41796

14:53

That's a perfect place for that one

user55340

Yep.

user41796

I nearly mentioned software recs to the log4j "do my research for me" question but decided it wasn't worth it. They were likely just going to dump the same unresearched question over there. No sense creating extra work for SWRecs

enderland

@MichaelT my company has a fair number of contract folks who I think are the "first round" - I don't think a situation when actual salaried full-time employees get laid off would be good news at all...

user41796

@enderland Contractors are almost always the first to go. For them to not go the project has to be super-critical or the contractor has to walk on water.

enderland

yeah. I'd guess for @MichaelT that already happened then?

it's nice as salaried you can somewhat... see that happening ahead of time as a result - a benefit of not being contractor I guess?

user55340

14:56

@GlenH7 Going back to this briefly, picture the politics of the early-mid-90s Apple (Amelio, Sculley) with all the politics in the company there and what you'd need to know to navigate that through multiple layoffs.

user41796

I have found you just end up with a lingering wonderment of if / when the full-time employees are going to be cut.

enderland

@GlenH7 yeah, but that's what I mean - you get some advance warning of that happening (rather than being "first to go"). idk

user41796

@MichaelT it would require far more political savvy than I could hope to muster

user41796

@enderland True, the dread of wondering if you're going to be laid off is not as bad as actually getting laid off.

user55340

It tends to be more of a 'when' than 'if' (cynic speaking). Cutting contractors is a short term solution. If the problems are deeper than can be solved in a single quarter by the company (economy, people high up) it will take a layoff or two to stop the bleeding until things can be corrected.

user55340

14:58

Note: first round layoffs are the best ones to be in.

user41796

^^^ almost always, yes

user55340

At Employer^^^, I was laid off in the first round in 2009. I had double pay from announcement until last day (to pick my brain), and I had a severance package of ~4 months.

enderland

I'm assuming you were fulltime though, not contract?

user55340

People that survived that one were dreading the next round. The politics was near toxic in that managers were consolidating their fiefdoms and protecting them from the next round.

user55340

I've always been full-time.

user55340

15:01

Sometimes hourly rather than salaried, but always full time.

user55340

One guy I used to work with left because of that atmosphere being awful and noting that I had the best deal compared to him having to leave because of the environment.

user55340

The next round of layoffs were not anywhere near as generous. No 2x pay to pick the brain, and no long severance packages.

user41796

How much time did they give you to pick your brain?

user55340

In other news, my cat is very happy that there are no noises that scare me away in the morning (his view of my alarms) and that I'm at the computer so he can get cat candy and sit on my lap when he feels like it.

2

user55340

@GlenH7 Feb-June. It was a very nice period in terms of income.

user41796

15:04

5 months?! Holy wow! That's crazy generous

enderland

heh. my company did an early retirement option a few years ago which... too many people took (it was really generous in terms of early pension/etc) - those people made out like bandits, especially since a lot of them with critical information came immediately back to work as contract employees, so they basically just ended up getting extra pay for nearly the same job but with less responsibility

@GlenH7 no kidding, especially since it basically meant you get a year pay for 4 months work (including severance and double pay ha)

durron597

@MichaelT Did you have to come in every day to get that double pay or were you able to take time to go to interviews?

user55340

@GlenH7 Yep. Though they needed it... my manager back then asked me to wait until the last minute to hand in the decision of if I was going to stay on for the 2x pay or go that day. The director was stressing over what would happen if I left that day instead and he wanted to make her stress as much as possible over that.

user55340

@durron597 Why interview? When I left, I'd have 30 more days on the payroll (California WARN period), and then 4 months of severance?

durron597

just to have something ready to go for after the 4 months of vacation was over :)

user55340

15:07

I took my great unemployed road trip that involved 3 oil changes (one at the start, one in Portland, one in Salt lake City) and new car (in Glenwood Springs).

enderland

@MichaelT that's like winning a layoff lottery... "why sure, I would love to get laid off if you want to pay me 2x for half a year and then give me another half a year salary"

durron597

oh, i guess you could do the whole thing during those 5 months

user55340

@enderland As I said, first round is the best.

user55340

The other bit, having seen the dot com bust layoffs, I knew that there would be very few positions available in the area - so I moved back to Wisconsin as part of that.

durron597

0

Q: Extract Method recommendations tool

Is there a tool that searches code and makes recommendations for extracting method candidates with duplicated code? Here's a really contrived example: import java.util.List; public class ExtractMethod { public boolean mode; public String getFirst(List<String> one, List<String> two) { i...

java code-beautification

Jimmy Hoffa

15:14

@MichaelT I would have agreed but I've seen and been contacted by recruiter listings on Careers 2.0, also you say the companies are looking - but I'm not convinced. I think they post there, but 90% of them just post the link to go through their company HR application site - and company HR rarely does any recruiting anymore. It seems recruiters are the only way to get an interview by the vast majority of companies these days, at least that's my experience, but my experiences are always odd

enderland

@JimmyHoffa networking individually is best, but otherwise yeah, because recruiters have a lot more incentive to connect people than random HR folks

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I think monads have twisted your perception of corporate reality. ;-)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I think corporate reality has twisted all of our perceptions in terrible and ungainly ways...

user55340

@enderland There was something I recall about Google's new choice for interviewing (rather than trick questions)...

user41796

@MichaelT but think of all the interviewing books they have made worthless by doing that...

user55340

15:21

@GlenH7 I can only dream.

user55340

But there are still all those other companies that are trying to copy them.

enderland

arg dont get me started about interviewing practices

user55340

I think that it boils down to "good coders know other good coders" and internal referrals / social networks are the preferred approach.

enderland

@MichaelT heh, I'm writing up my bio briefly for internal referrals literally right now... (hopefully I'm a "good coder" :P)

user41796

@enderland Didn't you recently switch to a new role there anyway?

durron597

15:24

anyone have advice for me? my boss works on algorithms and mocks them up in a test environment. a major portion of my job is taking his mocked out algorithms and converting them into production code

user55340

(One bit - I still have a 'references upon request' in mine from when the references section was used as the 'cold call job offers' in cut throat silly valley days)

durron597

the problem is, he has no development training that he didn't learn from me or from googling

enderland

@GlenH7 no, but by end of summer I will be

user41796

As a starter, you should try reading the about pages of sites where you're seeking advice. — GlenH7 12 secs ago

durron597

I'm currently looking at a 250 line method

user41796

15:25

@MichaelT nuke it. Wasted space IMO.

durron597

there's also no unit tests

the last time I converted his code to production it took me a week, but it was simpler, and he has no interest in allowing me to help him improve his existing code

i swear it's like he read clean code and decided to do the opposite of everything in that book

user41796

@durron597 There's no fixing that. Time to start looking. Sorry.

user41796

@enderland Sounds like a good goal. Trying to stay within the company I presume?

user55340

@durron597 keep track of how long his code is to how long it takes you to write. Graph it. Show it to your boss to say "look, the more complex you write it, it goes up with the square of the number of lines you give me"

enderland

@GlenH7 yeah, my current job is basically a temporary assignment - I want to get more into "legit technical teams" (tm) longer term

user55340

15:27

Point out that the return on investment for him to write better code means that you won't take weeks or months to convert it.

durron597

i told him that already

enderland

it's fun being the sole developer person but it's a lot of responsibility and bus factor = 1 isn't really fun

durron597

i put my copy of clean code in his hands

he said "i'm not reading this"

"it's a good idea though!"

(he said that)

this 250 line method has 20 arguments, by the way.

enderland

how many boolean flags?

user41796

@durron597 Re-read what @MichaelT wrote. You have to summarize everything for your boss to show why there is a problem. Your boss doesn't have time to read a book based upon your recommendation. He's too busy writing 250+ line methods with cyclomatic complexity that is off the scale.

user55340

15:29

What language?

durron597

@enderland zero

oh he agrees with me that there is a problem

he says "we can do that later, right now just get it working"

enderland

@durron597 awww here I was hoping that it was a huge switchboard type thing with tons of convoluted if statements

user41796

Then he needs numbers to quantify the problem and understand why "right now" isn't going to happen.

durron597

who says there aren't tons of convoluted if statements? instead of passing in booleans, he passes in the data and then computes the "flag"s inside the method

user55340

Historical information is the best tool for making estimates. You need to show him the estimate for the 250 line code based off of his 100 line and 50 line and 150 line problems he gave you.

user55340

15:31

Set up static analysis on his (and your) code and start working from that.

enderland

@durron597 :D even more awesome!

user41796

Bits are expensive. That's why bit flags were invented.

user55340

If you can get Sonar and the technical debt plugin, all the better (it gives you a $ amount of how much it takes to fix the problems)

durron597

oh it's more than 250 lines. that's just the outer method, there's also at least one 90 line method and a number of other methods above 25 lines

Jimmy Hoffa

Apr 25 at 15:07, by Jimmy Hoffa

@ratchetfreak ooo NCube seeds, how cute!

user41796

15:33

@durron597 and you had led us to believe he didn't bother creating sub-methods....

user55340

(btw, static analysis is good... one of my former coworkers detested it... wouldn't touch it. Spent half a day trying to find out why clang would flag one thing with non-strict warnings and not the same thing with strict warnings...

user55340

Boiled down to a few lines:

durron597

this class is currently about 980 lines, and that's after I removed all the unused fields, commented code, unused import statements

user55340

int foo;
foo = foo * 5; // flagged in non-strict warnings, but not strict.
return 0;

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 2439 lines; ftfy\

user41796

15:34

@MichaelT Java?

user55340

I tossed that in my Xcode instance, and then did a static analysis on the code, and it said kicked out a nice warning about it explaining foo is being assigned to, but never used.

user55340

@GlenH7 Objective C.

Jimmy Hoffa

Jan 2 at 20:07, by Ampt

@JimmyHoffa Always 2439 lines? You should write a white paper about that.. that's a serious correlation

user41796

It would actually work in C# since C# initializes variables for you.

Jimmy Hoffa

the NCube is always 2439 lines.

user41796

15:35

@MichaelT Yeah, that ain't gonna fly....

user55340

The non-strict clang warning was "you are using an unassigned value". The strict one realized that foo was never read and didn't even bother with flagging it as a warning since it was going to get optimized out.

user55340

The thing is - use static analysis tools. Always.

user55340

(I was going to write a self answered SO question about the two settings on clang but then realized that you just click 'analyze' and it would point out the answer better than I could write in SO... its just he didn't like static analysis.)

user55340

Btw, I really like the queue smashing that's been going on with that change.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - go use up a close vote. programmers.stackexchange.com/q/237499/53019

user41796

15:45

@MichaelT Definitely a people problem and not a technical problem.

enderland

@GlenH7 most problems are

user55340

@GlenH7 as I kind of mentioned, I was very much about preventing fires rather than fighting them. It takes me an extra 30 minutes to go through and be pedantic about semi-colons in javascript so that I can get that inspections square green so that when I do make a mistake, it doesn't get lost in 100 orange lines on the side?

user41796

@MichaelT That point came up a few times in different ways at the conference I was at. Granted, Crockford was one of the ones making that point, but several other folk writing enterprise grade software (read: maintainable) repeated the point too.

gnat

@MonicaCellio author deleted their post and asked to delete this post here in this comment "I would greatly appreciate if you removed that meta post from Workplace..." - if needed, this can be checked with 10K users or diamonds at MSE. Given this, please consider removal (I can not do this myself, as it has an upvoted answer) — gnat 45 mins ago

user41796

You could tell the presenters that worried about writing maintainable code vs. those who were going after Squirrel!

gnat

15:49

^^^ flagged for mod to delete, sorry for the mess

user41796

@gnat who quit?

user41796

Pretty sure some of us saw that one coming. :-)

enderland

man I picked a bad time to go for a short walk aroudn the office

user41796

@enderland why? are your ears burning?

gnat

2

A: When/how should I flag content as 'very low quality' or 'not an answer'?

When should I flag? Flags are a way to let the moderators know about issues with content on the site that can't be handled by the community, or are so harmful to the community that they need to be dealt with promptly. If you aren't sure whether or not to flag, consider asking in chat, or asking ...

"If the content can be saved with an edit or a comment, then it isn't very low quality." => not the most efficient approach for Workplace. Especially taking into account that SO is recently moving in a different direction

enderland

15:55

@GlenH7 no, I just see some interesting deleted messages that happened during that time (I go for a short walk around my office pretty regularly)

user41796

@gnat I briefly skimmed it, but that looks to be the "old" VLQ advice.

gnat

@GlenH7 yup. But the fact that it's "old" is unfortunately not widely known yet

user41796

@enderland I suspect this would be an awesome time to tease you about not pulling down a diamond.... But that would be exceptionally cruel, even for me.

user41796

@gnat SE is a large ship; takes a while to change courses

user55340

@gnat I see you've already picked up the explain something to someone meta post.

gnat

15:59

@GlenH7 can't wait until it happens. Meanwhile, declines keep burning through my VLQ flagging history (at Programmers and TWP, at SO it goes through 99,99% OK). Not that this will stop me from flagging though :)

@MichaelT not only that, I also integrated it into our general down/close vote guidance:

4

A: Why was my question closed or down voted?

Too Broad The question you have asked either: has too many possible answers would require answers that are too long for the Q&A format Polling Some questions are just polls for a design, or pattern, or name of a thing. If the accepted answer is based on "which answer I like best," rather t...

user55340

Yep... there was a question last night that made me go 'ug, this needs to be written'

enderland

@GlenH7 nah, it wouldn't bother me at this point :)

user55340

... and there goes my last close vote.

user41796

@enderland Did you catch my other reply?

enderland

no

trying to figure out why random files on a network drive... disappeared

:\

heh. yeah. lol

but... I'm very ok with my decision :)

especially since I want to bike to work, which is going to take a lot more time

user41796

16:04

Reading over your rant, I can see why. Chasing down random behavior becomes more fun.

user41796

Pretty sure it doesn't count as a ragequit since the person didn't delete any of their posts on the way out. And I wouldn't be so certain that the user will return. Progs has seen several high-rep users leave over the NPR => Progs matter and have never returned. Others got tired of the janitorial aspects and likewise have never returned. — GlenH7 23 secs ago

user41796

For those active in TWP, I'll fish for upvotes on that comment.

enderland

@GlenH7 I guess I don't see it as a rant

user41796

I hate seeing people misuse the term ragequit.

user41796

@enderland Honestly, it's not. But I couldn't think of soliloquy at the time.

user55340

16:10

Popcorn time:

user55340

0

A: How do I explain ${something} to ${someone}?

This is one of those cases where people phrase a question in a way that disguises their true intent. They are not asking for a tutorial on persuasive speaking. They are seeking a deeper understanding of the subject. Take How to explain why not to use exceptions for example. His real problem i...

Robert Harvey

That question is being chased as a duplicate of a couple of others, but I don't think either one of them is a target for duplicate question.

user55340

@RobertHarvey Its a dup, or its unclear. The dup is possibly more helpful to the OP.

Robert Harvey

I voted to close as Primarily Opinion Based (it being mostly a request to help win an argument).

user55340

Fair 'nuff.

user55340

16:14

Though I'd really like to see Karl try to do the edit on the question to make it into what he thinks the proper question should be.

Robert Harvey

You can't do that. He already knows that.

user55340

@RobertHarvey Yes, except that my question is not 'what should I do', it is 'how do I explain this is wrong'. My colleague would reply to you, "We could do that, but why bother? This does the same, and looks nicer" — Benubird 7 mins ago

user55340

And Karl's argument doesn't go anywhere that that comment refuting his position.

Robert Harvey

This is, and was (mostly) the problem with the NPR participants, the ones that want looser standards. You can't polish a turd.

And the wrong person is asking the question. If his coworker had asked the question, we might have some basis for an answer.

gnat

4

Q: Aggressive Edits

Update 3 weeks following this discussion, the question has been closed, is sitting at -2 score, and has two answers with a combined +1 score. This is not to say "I told you so", but rather to say that if the community disagrees with an aggressive edit, I would strongly invite thos...

discussion editing aggressive-edits

^^^ at TWP this seems to work... about 50% of cases :)

user55340

16:26

I'll point out that thats done by someone who understands the current scope and direction of TWP.

durron597

so I asked my boss to write a document in english to explain how the algo works without including any code at all; it was actually quite helpful. while he was doing that, i was refactoring his code just doing things that i knew would reduce code duplication

he wrote the document and came over to ask me if i had questions, and he saw me modifying his code; he asked me not to check it in. i said "of course i wouldn't without telling you first, but maybe you want me to do it?"

he smiled and said "don't worry about it, we'll worry about cleaning up my code later."

user41796

@durron597 Looks like you're at "Learn to ignore it or find a new job."

durron597

16:44

Right now I'm at "keep a journal of these stories". I already told his boss about it once. Why are there two layers of "boss" at a company of 5 people?

user41796

@durron597 Unless you own the company, everyone always has a boss.

durron597

sure, but TWO layers of boss?

user55340

When doing a trailer for a game, make sure you update the screens to the current build...

user41796

@durron597 - as an aside, double check yourself to be sure that your boss isn't just politely putting up with your changes while he's looking to find your replacement.

user55340

user image

user41796

16:46

He may not want the code rewritten because it forces him to rethink about what he's already done. And I'm willing to bet he doesn't want to have to think any harder than necessary.

durron597

ha. I know he's not. a few months ago I told him I was upset about a number of things and was thinking about looking for a new job, i think he almost crapped his pants

user41796

And if he isn't seeing the advantages of refactoring the code then he may very well be annoyed at you for doing so. He could see it as simply wasting time when you need to get something shipped.

durron597

and a lot of things changed, this is just one of the things that hasn't.

enderland

@GlenH7 sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee

2

durron597

> And I'm willing to bet he doesn't want to have to think any harder than necessary.

Bingo

user41796

16:47

@durron597 it's an issue for him if he doesn't have a replacement already in place

user41796

If he already has a replacement, then your job isn't as secure as you may think

durron597

I'm not even worried, I get emails from recruiters fairly often

But I appreciate your concern.

user41796

@durron597 yw. I have seen that story play out the wrong way.

durron597

Also, he's my boss, but he doesn't have the authority to fire me. He would have to make a case to his boss, which he wouldn't be able to do.

user41796

And we recently had a developer who insisted on "refactoring" everything he worked on. He also managed to break quite a few things in the process. His plaintive whinging of "But this is a best practice!" fell on deaf ears.

durron597

16:52

GlenH7 what do you think of the boy scout rule? (Uncle Bob Martin)

user41796

@durron597 You'd be surprised. "Hey, boss, it's him or me. Pick please." Done.

user41796

@durron597 link?

enderland

does outlook have a default "high priority" setting somewhere? I don't undersand how someone ALWAYS have a high priority

user41796

@enderland will read when I have a chance today

durron597

programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/…

enderland

16:52

@GlenH7 it's long, but rather amusing

somewhat crude but also amusing.

user41796

@enderland newer versions should have a way to at least color code based upon sender and other variables. Not sure about switching things to high priority though

gnat

3

A: More Effective Closing / Down Voting of Junk Questions to help with the Signal : Noise Ratio?

The feature that looks under-utilized is flagging very low quality questions. This is truly fantastic and very powerful functionality if one understands how to use it correctly. I think many hesitate to use VLQ flags because as opposed to purely individual voting down and close, one needs to un...

...but, @IanRingrose it is worth noting that at first, this may feel like riding a wild horse compared to conventional flagging. Before, there were 17 diamonds, elected and trained, handling your flags following reasonably well documented rules. Now, you throw it to a crowd of 30,000 regular 2K users, and any of them can dispute your flag any time... and there's simply no way to challenge this on meta, because they just don't bother reading meta. Sounds scary? :) — gnat 5 hours ago

user55340

Akin to "Hubris" of the three virtues of a programmer.

user41796

@durron597 Only if you can validate that what you changed didn't break anything

user55340

> Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience.

user55340

16:55

Or Attwood's Coding For Violent Psychopaths

user55340

> Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.

user41796

@gnat It's all make believe anyway. :-)

user41796

@MichaelT He is his typical hyperbolic in that one, but it's a good point.

Robert Harvey

17:28

Ack. Does anyone have any close votes left for that "Help me win my argument" question?

It just got an answer.

user41796

@RobertHarvey Already put a CV on the exception one.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT The three virtues of a programmer: Applicatives, Monoids, and Monads

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I know that's what people say - we'll just have to agree to disagree.

enderland

@MichaelT I work very hard to be lazy, thank you very much

Jimmy Hoffa

17:36

Well almost, All 3 of my virtues exhibit lots of laziness, and hubris as well, it's pretty necessary to use any of those. Impatience well, you aren't going to get anywhere with monads if you lack the patience to grok them

Robert Harvey

Isn't Applicatives, Monoids and Monads roughly equivalent to Laziness, Impatience and Hubris anyway?

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey impatience won't get you far with them, but yeah

at least not at first

Jimmy Hoffa

17:58

@MattFenwick it's true that homoiconicity can be done with complex syntax, but that would be exceedingly difficult. It's fair to assume that if you're dealing with a homoiconic syntax, it is going to be simple, if for no other reason than the consistency demanded of it that will make it ineffibly easier to follow than a non-homoiconic syntax. Though your second point is a good one, LISP is easy to parse because it's simple syntax, not because of homoiconicity (even if the homoiconicity is the cause for that simplicity) — Jimmy Hoffa 11 secs ago

Matt Fenwick is very smart, and very smartass... Makes it a pain in the ass to try and get a point across around him. Oh well, all for the better of the content.

Robert Harvey

It's splitting hairs, but I do appreciate the distinction. The article he linked is good too.

I learn something new every day I participate here.

That Programming Sucks post that Michael linked is all kinds of awesome.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey ?

do share

user41796

14 hours ago, by MichaelT

Programming Sucks (from reddit‌)

user41796

The one enderland dropped a little while ago is pretty hilarious too. Kind of drawn out, but still funny.

user41796

sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee

user41796

18:08

As he warned, it has some crudeness to it as well. Still pretty funny

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa It's in the sidebar.

So no, I'm not required to be able to lift objects weighing up to fifty pounds. I traded that for the opportunity to trim Satan's pubic hair while he dines out of my open skull so a few bits of the internet will continue to work for a few more days.

ROFL

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I haven't decided whether that's fiction or not as I look at it. I'm inclined to think it's not...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I hit a willing suspension of disbelief and left it at that

Robert Harvey

@GlenH7 That one started out good, but became increasingly surreal.

It's probably true. You can't make that shit up.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Is the page supposed to be largely blank?

Oh n/m, refreshed and got text...

user41796

18:20

@RobertHarvey It's got a certain truthiness to it, that's for sure

Robert Harvey

Embellished for dramatic purposes.

user41796

And it could possibly be true ... Large organizations are odd that way...

Jimmy Hoffa

>
> Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses. There's a team at a Google office that hasn't slept in three days. Somewhere there's a database programmer surrounded by empty Mountain Dew bottles whose husband thinks she's dead. And if these people stop, the world…

That is just awesome writing

user55340

Recently, I read a SF short story about a bio attack and the only people to survive were the sysadmins (in the air filtered platforms).

Jimmy Hoffa

very fun read especially as I'm in the dead middle of firefighter-week-part-2?3? our biggest day of the year (like 50 - 100 times the traffic of a normal busy day) is this saturday

user41796

18:31

@JimmyHoffa Trying to say that a little too much of that Programming Sucks is ringing true for you at the moment?

enderland

I'm just jealous that person only needed 600 snowflakes a week

Jimmy Hoffa

....snowflake monad.... ok, yeah, maybe I am going mad...

enderland

@JimmyHoffa momad?

Robert Harvey

mad mo.

user55340

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow.

user55340

18:41

(Its tangental to that "Most people don't even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn't make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants." bit from Programming Sucks.)

enderland

> “Greedo will rise again,” Felix said. “I’ve got a 486 downstairs with over five years of uptime. It’s going to break my heart to reboot it.”
“What the everlasting shit do you use a 486 for?”
“Nothing. But who shuts down a machine with five years uptime? That’s like euthanizing your grandmother.”

Johan Larsson

19:01

hi

Is using IoC container to resolve things in tests dumb?

I'm thinking about starting to use it to resolve graphs of real classes for happy path tests

thinking as in not sure, want opinions

user55340

@RobertHarvey @GlenH7 @gnat (and hopefully @JimmyHoffa too) - the biggest issue with the review count showing up and prodding 10ks to do reviews is that a lot of the old 10k users from NPR days have dusted off their reviewing chops and done a boatload of 'leave open' reviews, that may boot some of those questions form the queue. Please poke at programmers.stackexchange.com/review/close/history and cast appropriate close votes.

user41796

@JohanLarsson I thought IoC fixed all of the world's ills? :-)

user41796

@MichaelT I'll keep an eye on that one. I have been watching the VLQ history as well

Johan Larsson

@GlenH7 it is convenient, maybe too convenient

user41796

@JohanLarsson If it helps you resolve whatever issue is at hand, then go for it. If it gets in the way and you have to think to hard about it, then the technique is failing you

Johan Larsson

19:10

My main issue is that it can hurt readability by moving setup into ~magic~

user41796

That said, I don't do a whole lot of IoC as my team isn't geared around that mentality

Johan Larsson

What can potentially be nice is short setup to get an entire graph

I have not used it for long

mostly been playing around with it until now

I feel testing vs a graph of real objects would be nice if the issue with creating it iseliminated

sure it will be annoying when the ~wrong~ test catches a bug somewhere else but still a caught bug

Robert Harvey

19:36

In my opinion, the only real benefit of IoC containers is to centralize your dependency declarations. In other words, all of your dependencies are in a configuration file in one place. If you don't need that, constructor injection suffices.

Johan Larsson

what do you mean with dependency declarations?

Robert Harvey

That's just a fifty cent word I made up for what happens when you provide your dependencies by either declaring them in a constructor method, or putting them in an IoC configuration file.

Johan Larsson

I use it for constructor injection, it has the nice property to update ~magically~ when ctor arguments are changed. The tests with manual injections does not update magically though.

That is the issue I think about solving by resolving stuff in tests

Make tests as move-things-around friendly as the rest of the code

Robert Harvey

I can't imagine any practical way that an IoC container makes things easier for you during unit testing.

Johan Larsson

the inertia that tests mean when moving things around is a pretty big pain point ime

Robert Harvey

19:49

Do you write large, enterprise applications?

Johan Larsson

We are probably > 1k classes now

maybe that is medium sized stuff idk

nothing huge for sure

Robert Harvey

In general, my feeling is that, if it's necessary to use an IoC container, then you have too many dependencies anyway. IoC containers manage a problem rather than solving it, in other words.

Johan Larsson

yeah there is def truth in that

the container makes is so convenient to inject stuff that it probably gets done too much

user55340

Phone interview done...

Johan Larsson

Ironically the container will be convenient when cleaning up the design also

@MichaelT how did it go?

user41796

19:58

@MichaelT How'd it go?

user55340

Think it went well.

user41796

bueno

enderland

you should just have left that, "phone interview" and then disappeared for a few hours so everyone is left wondering

user41796

So they said they were going to skip the rest of the formalities and send an offer over by EoD?

user55340

Need to write a 'jinxer' for chat so that if two people say something with an edit distance less than 10% of the total length of text, it automatically says "jinx"

enderland

19:59

was it just one of the "are you really the person your resume says you are?" thing?

user41796

@enderland Nah, he had already told us he had one today

user55340

@enderland Yep.

Jimmy Hoffa

@JohanLarsson I always find functioning code suspect. It's best to put some nice blunt bugs in there, you know things like for loops that start at index 1 so they always miss the first element in the array, just so you know the code is trustworthy.

enderland

@GlenH7 oh I know, but saying "I finished the interview" and not coming back for a while would have been pretty dang amusing ;)_

user55340

The "questions for us" was an awkward one... because I know the company already fairly well...

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