The Whiteboard

Programmers

00:14

0

Every question is about advice: it'd be akin to tagging every question with help or this-is-a-question-i-assure-you. I would speculate the vast majority of questions tagged advice are there because of misuse of the tag box (e.g. typing "career advice" instead of "career-advice"). So can we kill ...

user20683

01:21

@AnnaLear Happy Birthday!

user20683

@MarkTrapp Why is meta suddenly coughing up old posts?

user2334

@WorldEngineer There are questions I've been following-up on which have bumped a couple to the front-page, but the ones corresponding to the questions you see in this room are all new

user20683

01:39

@MarkTrapp Here is some fire, use it to make algorithmic jihad on the tags

Anna Lear

04:35

@WorldEngineer Thanks. :)

user20683

07:20

@MarkTrapp would a question about where to better learn generics in Java than the Oracle tutorial be on topic?

user20683

or do I need to go to SO?

user2334

@WorldEngineer The subject's on-topic, but "Where can I find a resource about X?" are generally weak questions. You can just ask directly what about generics is tripping you up

user2334

10

A: Questions that don't fit on Stack Overflow or Programmers

The problem with these types of questions, and why you'll be hard pressed to find a place on the network for them, is that they go against the point of Stack Exchange's brand of Q&A. What separates Stack Exchange from, say, ChaCha or Answers.com is that you'll get answers to specific questio...

user20683

I'm familiar with some Haskell, I think that's bleeding over and mixing me up. Which makes me think I just need to do some practice code first before I really ask questions

user2334

That's what I would do: doing a little bit of homework in the topic is great for honing in on a great question

user20683

07:30

@MarkTrapp I'm mostly trying to make sure that I cover as much Java as I can before school starts next week. I'm solid on the fundamentals but the software engineering class I'm taking is taught in it and I refuse to do poor work. Anything that can help with that I'll use. Though, I'll probably drop generics for a while and go do UI and other such things since it's more likely that my project teammates aren't going to understand generics

user20683

or anything remotely useful about functional programming

user20683

@MarkTrapp I'm also willing to draw up some good or probably very awful (easier) question examples for the FAQ, if that makes things easier on you guys

user2334

@WorldEngineer Ideally, somewhere in the 14,000 questions we have on the site, there are good questions we can use. If there aren't any, the FAQ is probably the least of our problems :P

user20683

@MarkTrapp If no good questions, does that make us the Windows ME of the Stack Exchange?

user2334

I think we're already there in many people's eyes. Personally, I don't think there's a fundamental disconnect in what Programmers is about, but there are a lot of broken windows so it takes a good deal of vigilance from everyone to keep things from getting out of hand

user20683

07:43

@MarkTrapp I think a lot of people misunderstand the living daylights out of the Stack Exchange. Also you or Anna mentioned something about the site operating under a different model in the beginning. What precisely what that model vs the current model? I'm fairly certain the current model is Software Engineering and Programming Best Practices but I could be wrong

user2334

Shog9 (Mr. CRT on Programmers) has a pretty good origin story, and I went into some detail as well, but the basic gist is that for a long time, there were a class of questions that were vaguely related to programming that were extremely popular on SO

user2334

They really didn't have anything to do with programming, and people got annoyed by their continued existence there. Things like "What's your favorite programming joke?" "What's your favorite programmer cartoon?" "I hate my job, what should I do?" etc.

user2334

So when SE 2.0 launched and people could propose their own sites, "Not Programming Related" (the term used to classify these types of questions) was created, allegedly in jest

user2334

But it got a huge amount of traction, and was launched Sept 1 last year. The first month there was a huge amount of traffic, but the question quality was abysmal. Rather than have a site that sucked using the SE name, and rather than closing a really popular site, the SE team figured out a set of guidelines (the 6 subjective ones that are the heart of Programmers.SE now) to make the site work

user2334

Unfortunately, there's still a huge amount of interest in having an "off-topic" version of SO where you could ask any question you wanted with very lax moderation, and it's the source of most of the tension today. Programmers.SE is a textbook lesson in why SE sites need a lot of early guidance: even a few weeks of anything-goes leads to months of problems

user2334

07:56

The amount of questions asked in the 3 weeks before the site purpose shift (I call it the Antedisciplining period) was enormous: more than some SE sites generate in 3-4 months. So they keep showing up in question lists and make it seem like those are the types of questions we still want

user20683

@MarkTrapp Yeah, mix in lousy English and some abysmal communication skills and things get...odd

user20683

Couldn't the SE backend just delete all questions before x date, just pretend the site launched later? :P

user20683

Do you think that a Lists.SE would work?

user2334

@WorldEngineer That's sort of what we're trying to do with the cleanup, but the amount of questions that need to be dealt with in some manner is enormous: we have 3,000 closed questions, and there's no consensus about deleting popular questions

user20683

a place where people ask questions that result in lists

user20683

08:02

Popular questions will get asked again

user20683

it is the inherent nature of popularity

user20683

someone else had the same idea

user20683

one is not unique

user2334

@WorldEngineer Nah. SE works for a very specific type of question. Anything else just winds up being a really poor fit.

user2334

Yeah, the idea of questions being reasked is what we use to delete questions that have gotten absolutely no love (low views, low score, no answers). If it's really an important question, someone will ask it again.

user2334

08:04

The popular questions.. eh. Some people act like you're cutting off a limb :P

user2334

Even Stack Overflow has had a hard time deleting old, extremely popular questions that were supposed to go away when Programmers.SE launched

user20683

@MarkTrapp Maybe I'm an emotionally crippled cyborg but I don't really care about things like deletion of my work for the greater good. I do appreciate you clarifying how my question needed to be answered, I had hoped that listing Art of Computer Programming as being not what I'm looking for would be clear enough...apparently not. I don't need an algorithm guide, I'm looking for a reference, which the top answer so seems a winner for but I'll give it a couple of days to see what else pops up

user20683

Assuming it doesn't get closed for some reason :P

user2334

@WorldEngineer No problem, I gotta admit, I didn't realize it was your question until you just told me :P I mentally block out the question asker boxes on questions for some reason

user20683

@MarkTrapp I'm literally just looking for a book (preferably) or a site that lists algorithms

user20683

08:13

my program already assigns the classic Intro to Algorithms book by Cormen

user2334

Fair enough: I'm hoping we can tease out a bit more from the list for future visitors

user2334

That's what they assigned us when I was in college

user20683

It remains the standard though you're not really much older than me

user20683

I just happened to have happened on CS in a round about way

user2334

Yeah, it was only 7 or 8 years ago :P

user20683

08:15

I'm on my second bachelors since my first was neither a real passion or a job winner

user2334

What was your first?

user20683

Religious Studies, a kind of interdisciplinary history/philosophy/anthropology/psychology degree

user2334

Ah, nice: I majored in philosophy

user20683

I'd wanted to do video games as a teen but I hated math in high school

user20683

and unlike most teens, my dad worked for SGI so I knew what went into games

user20683

08:19

namely absurd quantities of linear algebra

user20683

having the same math teacher for three years running didn't help

user20683

she was ok but her style didn't mesh well with mine

user20683

so I decided that being a librarian or archivist would be neat but I'd had enough of post modernism and decided I wanted to actually "do" stuff

user20683

along the way decided that video games while an interesting goal, were likely not realistic as a goal per say and figured on being more of a generalist than that

user20683

but yeah, you can mention Kant or Hegel and I will understand it

user2334

08:22

Heh, you should participate in Philosophy.SE!

user20683

I'm not Analytic enough to be able to handle that

user20683

most of my reading was Confucius and a cacophony of other things

user20683

and I'm passionate about CS

user20683

Rels is interesting

user20683

Phil is interesting

user20683

08:25

CS is like looking into the Abyss and having it radiate from me in terrible glory

user2334

hah

user20683

plus there's the high you get when you finally get the damned picture to scroll

user20683

for me it was 30 hours of banging into iOS

user20683

though it scrolls beautifully

user20683

that wasn't the point of the app

user20683

08:27

ideally double tapping on points would activate alerts boxes to give info

user20683

but iOS has to play annoying

user20683

as my report mentioned "Should have used Java/Android"

user20683

08:49

@MarkTrapp I will say this, Humanities taught me to do research and how to do it well. For that alone, I am glad I got that degree.

kevin cline

18:41

Recently it seems there has been a spate of questions from relatively clueless new graduates, essentially saying: "I have a new degree in CS. In the interview it seems I am expected to understand data structures and other stuff Is that stuff really important? I thought I just needed to know Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. What should I do now?"

hi Anna, editor extraordinaire

Anna Lear

@kevincline Ahoy.

kevin cline

it seems were are getting the same question about interview failure at least once a week now

Anna Lear

@kevincline If they are really similar or basically the same, vote to close them as duplicates. Or flag them for us. :)

kevin cline

Sometimes I just don't have the ambition to search for the duplicates. Perhaps I'm just not searching efficiently.

But I didn't even think about flagging them. That I can certainly do.

Anna Lear

19:03

Yeah, we can do some searching. Another thing to keep in mind is that only questions specific to software development are on-topic. If it's an interview question that could be answered just as easily without any programmer insight, then it's safe to vote to close it as off-topic.

user2334

19:37

@kevincline We technically have a baseline expected expertise for the site, but every once in a while it's good to have a canonical "this is how you solve newbie problem X" because they get asked in droves anyway.

kevin cline

It's questions like "Why are data structures so important in interviews?", "What makes the difference between "Hire" and an honest "almost" for final on-site interviews?" and "How important is it for a programmer to know how to optimize code, solve complex puzzles, answer technical questions quickly?" Seems that we have a bunch like this from people who have failed interviews looking for a quick fix.

Programmers

19:53

0

Q: Decimal point flag weight

If you look at my programmers profile BlackJack, you can see: flag weight 518.3176 I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen..

support status-bydesign flagging

user2334

@kevincline Yeah, I'm really not a fan of those questions. We've also been getting questions like, "I was asked X interview question. What's the answer?" Must be hiring season somewhere

kevin cline

20:15

I answered the "What makes the difference between a 'hire' and an 'almost'" question honestly, but it wasn't what the OP wanted to hear. I'm closing the next one as a duplicate. The real answer to "Why wasn't I hired" is usually "go back and redo all your assignments, but this time do them yourself"

Programmers

20:51

0

Q: Redefine what constitutes an off-topic question

I propose that we redefine what constitutes an off-topic question. Currently, we define a question that does not 100% apply only to software developers as a profession as off-topic. Lately I have seen questions that are of relevance to the community regarding career and job decisions closed as ...

discussion feature-request

Stack Exchange

21:24

Stack Overflow Blog: The Future of Community Wiki

Posted by Grace Note on August 19th, 2011

When you mark a post community wiki on a Stack Exchange site, that means …

this post can be edited by anyone with 100 reputation

this post does not generate any reputation for anyone when upvoted or downvoted

The main advantage of community wiki — more editing — was nerfed when we introduced suggested edits. With suggested edits, anyone, even an anonymous user, can edit anything — so long as another experienced user reviews and approves their edit.

This leaves many wondering — what’s the point of Community Wiki? …

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