The Whiteboard

user55340

00:20

@RobertHarvey From hiring perspective. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844848 ... I'll also have to dig a bit more, but there are a reasonable number of scammy dev boot camps out there.

user55340

00:35

The best of the worst ones... I'm having trouble digging into it beyond references to it because they sued to have it removed. reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/2jt4mg/… --- and then quora.com/Eric-Wise-3/Posts/So-you-want-to-choose-a-bootcamp isn't a bad read either.

Duga

Be very careful using try...catch in JavaScript, as it's not used very often, and support for it is a bit diffrent across different engines. Additionally, it's slow & doesn't work very well with async operations. There's a pretty good discussion over at programmers.se on the topic. — JNYRanger 16 secs ago

user15026

A lot of that reminds me of my experiences with a career college here where I got my PSW certification, but for programming

user55340

And a very recent article on coding boot camps (as in today): bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/…

user55340

> “They do seem to be effective at helping their candidates win entry-level tech jobs,” says Tyler Willis, a spokesman for tech headhunter Hired.

user55340

IMHO, if you know the stuff already, you're better off spending $9k going to the bars where hiring managers drink and get to know them.

user55340

00:41

Probably would be a lot more fun too.

user55340

(I got my referral to work at Netapp (Employer^^^) from the group that I went drinking with on Thursday nights... just happened there were some Netapp people drinking there too on a not irregular basis)

Jimmy Hoffa

00:58

@durron597 what on gods green earth gives you the idea Haskell is popular??

Robert Harvey

Popular being a relative term. More popular than, say, assembly language.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey not even remotely

Robert Harvey

Who programs in assembly language? Certainly not complete programs, maybe very performance-sensitive cdecl functions.

@JimmyHoffa OK, so, barring a bootcamp, how can I demonstrate depth of knowledge in frontend development? Is it time to break out the portfolio big guns?

(the portfolio that doesn't exist yet)

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey systems level programmers; drivers, embedded device (everything in your car), factory automation, every fancy DVD player... far far more people writing all of those things than Haskell in industry.

Robert Harvey

I figured most of those things were written mostly in C, with a smattering of assembly.

Jimmy Hoffa

01:03

@RobertHarvey hell if I know, I don't want to be a front-end guy. How do front-end folk get jobs? I think it's probably experience and samples..

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa Full-Stack.

Marissa Wilson

I have a front end job.

Well, will be starting a front end job soon.

Robert Harvey

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey those don't really exist anymore; Full-Stack has been repurposed to mean what front-end used to mean

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa Say what?

Marissa Wilson

01:04

Portfolio is very helpful. I had projects that spoke of front end work but never showed it, talking about it seemed enough.

Jimmy Hoffa

front-end requires too much specialization to be a full stack guy these days, everyone asking for full stack means they want you to be able to do the whole website, the SEO, and an itsy bit of back-end CRUD that's probably just generated server-side code anyway

Robert Harvey

Hmm... That pretty much leaves out ASP.NET MVC, in which I have most of my experience.

Jimmy Hoffa

people who know angular inside and out and how to make fancy high quality UX implementations do not know how to swing a complex distributed transactional data processing back end

Robert Harvey

I'll have to give that some thought. Most of the jobs I looked at that said "full stack" meant full stack. They included SQL and some server-side technology, in addition to Angular.

Jimmy Hoffa

it's too much for most anyone to know, and the people who claim they do know both are going to be highly tilted towards one or the other (I can do whatever you want in JavaScript, but my UI won't be pretty, though the back-end will fuckin scream)

Robert Harvey

01:07

If what you're saying is true, I ought to be able to demonstrate basic competency in Javascript/HTML5/CSS3/jQuery/Angular, and qualify for one of these Full Stack jobs.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey yeah, that means "You will install SQL server, you will run the scaffolding wizard that generates all the database structures and server side code, then you will spend all your time writing a client side javascript/angular/html/css front end that makes http requests of said generated backend

Robert Harvey

The last folks who wanted SQL Server experience asked me this question:

1

Q: How do you make a column value slide to the right or the left using SQL?

This was an interview question. If I have a table like this: ID FirstName LastName -- --------- -------- 1 Aaron Aames 2 Malcolm Middle 3 Zamon Zorr How can I get output that looks like this? Aaron ...

And it was pretty much a "Full Stack" developer position.

Jimmy Hoffa

that's what I've seen. People want front-ends done at the speed of a marketing/art directors vestigial thoughts, you can't truly spend time doing complex back-end systems and complex front-end systems at that pace. So the back-end is generated CRUD from a wizard, and there's no generating a front-end because it's can be data driven but still has to be hand designed

Robert Harvey

hand designed being the key words. Whatever happened to Visual Designer tools?

Y'know, those drag and drop things that built the code for you?

Jimmy Hoffa

they're shit as always. You can data-drive the generation of dumb back-ends because they're data driven to begin with

Robert Harvey

01:10

Not scaffolding. Things like the Winforms designer. Why didn't anyone ever make that for a web form?

Jimmy Hoffa

Delphi got the closest to truly high quality data driven front-ends from a visual designer; they really did a feckin spectacular job in their tools and framework for desktop applications, but it's all up a creek when you get to the javascript framework du jour

@RobertHarvey they did, asp.net webforms you could do it; it was bloody terrible.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa WebForms is a lie. It’s abstraction wrapped in deception covered in lie sauce presented on a plate full of diversion and sleight of hand. Nothing you do with Webforms has anything to do with the web.

Jimmy Hoffa

I actually wrote a test harness in winforms recently as I've been writing some new services for migration to a new service provider our software relies on, definitely reminded why RAD was a thing, just whipping it up to let me poke and prod data, manually pumping actions through the system I'm writing is might handy and I can do it quickly enough it doesn't get in my way at all

@RobertHarvey haha yes yes... I worked in WebForms for 4 years

Robert Harvey

Winforms was awesome, although it had a few things in it that were completely counter-intuitive. You couldn't figure those things out without poring through MSDN.

Jimmy Hoffa

it's why I strongly believe back-ends should be data services and front-ends should be html/javascript/css with no server side generation of the HTML

Robert Harvey

01:15

Well, that does seem to be the fashion nowadays. What's old is new again.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey yeah, but it's straight forward and simple and you never forget how to use it because it's just utterly obvious

Robert Harvey

We were doing the same shit 20 years ago.

It didn't involve a browser. That was the only difference.

durron597

@JimmyHoffa you

Robert Harvey

So the only thing that's really changed is you don't need an install, and you have an always-on connection.

Or an always transiently-on connection, if you want to be pedantic about it.

durron597

And, just "popular in the FP space", not "popular in the absolute sense"

Jimmy Hoffa

01:17

@RobertHarvey yes, but there's logic and reason for the cyclical nature. We hit a boundary in one direction and then start working around it by going another direction, it's improvement every time. Evolutionary algorithms are all about repeated cycles with large sample pools, technology as with all things that evolve do so through repetition.

Robert Harvey

Except that evolution doesn't throw everything out and start over.

I think there's some mining that could be done in the area of better visual design tools. And they don't have to suck. Hand-coding everything in the browser is not going to last forever; eventually, someone will come up with a good visual design tool for that, complete with Angular data binding.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 it's not, it's well known and well appreciated but in the FP space it's still the minority by a long shot. It's been an originator of so many things that have benefited so many other languages, people who learn it become very vocal about it, though those people are still vastly the minority, even in the FP space.

@RobertHarvey no? :P I think you might want to study some of it's concepts a little more closely before you say that. Past generations all die. Not some die, all die.

(day?? how did I confuse those two words? Pfleh.)

durron597

@JimmyHoffa I guess I spend too much time in this chatroom then ;)

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 yep. You're better off for it too; you'll take notice when people talk about Haskell which very few people even know to do (even if it makes no sense what they're saying about quantified hylomorphic fusion looping)

durron597

@JimmyHoffa now you're just fucking with me.

Robert Harvey

01:24

How'd you guess?

Jimmy Hoffa

It was having read a lot from people I really respect having made comments about it that made me decide it was worth really learning even through I didn't get all the fuss. Perhaps you'll see mentions of it similarly over the next hand full of years from people worth listening to (not me, gods don't listen to me, I'm truly just word-vomitting most the time) and decide it's worth figuring out as well

@durron597 Me? Fuck with someone? Goodness, that you would even think that; I feel so admonished...

durron597

@JimmyHoffa :)

Robert Harvey

Still, I think there's something to my visual tools idea, unless everyone has just thrown up their hands and decided that hand coding everything is the way to go.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 you like Java and such yeah? The root of many of the more advanced capabilities in it was the same guy who was one of the main progenitors of Haskell; he's the one creditted with having married the mathematical concept of the Monad with programming. So you can thank your Java's Mr Wadler for anyone in this industry knowing what a Monad is

Telastyn

"Thank"

Jimmy Hoffa

01:29

> Thanks!

FTFY :)

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa So what the hell happened to Java then?

Committee?

durron597

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey don't ask me why it took them so long to get higher order functions, I genuinely don't know. I'm no Java guy

@durron597 I think a better term for Haskell than "popular" would be "infamous". It fits; it's been the source of many of the minds that have gone on to share with us many of the modern language facilities we've come to rely on.

@durron597 go look at the list of signatories on the Haskell 98 report some time and look up a few of the names to see where their influences spread in the past nearly 2 decades

Infamous definitely fits, never popular

durron597

@JimmyHoffa Gotcha

@JimmyHoffa Probably the abject refusal to break compatibility

Swing is a complete mess yet they refuse to fix it.

user55340

Today I spent implementing css edits and consulting on color pallets.

durron597

01:35

Even though JavaFX existed it was super difficult to get it to run until Java 8

user55340

They offered to install photoshop on my machine... (I'm sure the poor thing wouldn't be able to run photoshop and eclipse at the same time)

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ugh... do you feel dumber yet? Are you ready to go sell cosmetics now that you've mastered your Color Wheels?

user55340

When you go from plsql one day to photoshop the next day... that's full stack.

Telastyn

Speaking of full stack, the job I interviewed for today is using webkits to get a browser working so they can use Angular for their desktop apps.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Somewhere in my boxes I've got a book on color theory... its actually a fascinating area when you get into it beyond the "red plus yellow makes orange"

Telastyn

01:36

(And non-desktop apps presumably)

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT yeah, theory of such is neat, however the UX marketing side of all that stuff is something I've never had the slightest interest in...

user55340

I was mostly working out of paletton.com today

user55340

@JimmyHoffa fortunately it was internal (so no marketing involved)... and it was more "this is what you can chose from so the screen isn't garish"

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT yeah, not garish, that UI I can do. Ask me to create a "Transformative Digital Experience" and I'll put a sticky note on a monitor with the word "Pretty!" written on it.

> Digital transformation is...a journey

user55340

@JimmyHoffa they key point for me was making it so that when I worked on fixing the rest of the application, my eyes didn't bleed with lilac as the background color.

Jimmy Hoffa

01:40

puke

user55340

Started out based on the wisconsin state seal. Which doesn't have bad colors, but is used by another team and we didn't want to look like that team's applications.

user55340

Theirs was blue with yellow highlights for the header, with grey and light blue for much of the rest of the page.

user55340

Not bad... not garish, and when you see it all the time, its not bad at all.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT ooo you guys should just take the Anchor as your logo, if anything fails you can always tell them they were well warned

user55340

01:42

First suggestion was "what about red" which... well... that was a bloody mess in the color palette.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT then you guys decided to just go with the brown and black of the badger to get approval for the team political-defender; a badger in the office?

user55340

Then we went to another internal app color palette with a pale olive green as the major theme, not bad... but again, looked like another team's work.

Jimmy Hoffa

(Is that a badger? Oh who can tell...)

user55340

But again... black white and red... eyes bleeding for a web page design unless you work for the university's athletic department.

Jimmy Hoffa

01:45

@MichaelT yeah, still not sure if it's a skunk on steroids, a creature possibly called a wereverine that I'm not sure actually exists, or I've just always misunderstood what a platypus is. All that picture tells me is you've apparently been trying to out-weird australia with your native species

user55340

So, after the green theme, it was a light blue and hints of purple to lilac... which... well, that was painful.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT did anybody vote for white on white so that nobody could tell if the system was working or not?

user55340

Then it went to a variation based on bright #00F blue. paletton.com/#uid=53+0u0k++++wT++JR+++dJ5X6v6 (still some purple in there).

user55340

Manager saw that one and he has a different lighting situation and monitor than we do so things became very vivid color in his cube... and he was "shocked" with the colors (they weren't my choice!) and gave a different color pallet to work from which was again blues, but more muted that went to the teal and aqua range.

Jimmy Hoffa

I would think to match the state colors your best bet is a couple shades of blue from light to dark and a black in the mix

user55340

01:48

Yep, but that looked too much like the SORT page.

Jimmy Hoffa

but then I don't know anything about digital transformation, if someone tells me my mobile device is going to send me on a journey that's going to ground me I'm probably just going to tell them I don't care what color the journey is I still don't feel like dropping hits today

user55340

(doc.wi.gov/home - remember where I work)

user55340

Actually, home page works better... editing so people don't go to "what is that" link...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT seriously try watching some of that video, at least the first 20 or so seconds that I linked. That is the nonsense people are trying to spew as "software development" these days, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I got 10 seconds before the dumb was hitting me too hard.

Jimmy Hoffa

01:50

@MichaelT exactly! gods, a recruiter pointed me at that place the other day, I'm not sure I'll even call that recruiter back to tell them how broken they must be

user55340

So anyways... got a color scheme down for internal tool that isn't bad.

durron597

02:01

@MichaelT wait, you don't work for wisconsin, you work for illinois, right?

user55340

@durron597 Wisconsin.

user55340

Illinois would be a long commute.

user55340

in Madison.

durron597

@MichaelT Ohhh ok

user55340

MichaelT, Madison, Wisconsin

38.9k 14 94 139

java algorithms licensing programming-languages object-oriented design c#

user55340

02:04

See? Madison.

durron597

@MichaelT Yeah, but, you know, @GlenH7 profile page says he's 95. So.

user114359

02:15

A little help, please? Close votes reset just over two hours ago, I know somebody has them!

user114359

0

Q: Who owns an abandoned project?

So an (ex) friend of mine and I started working on a programming project together. He was doing some code and other things, I was mostly doing code. We were in it 50-50 both working on it every other day. The development was supposed to take about 2 years, but after only a year my friend decided ...

source-code intellectual-property law

user55340

@Snowman I cast my last close vote on that one.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Snowman if you don't own an abandoned project yet, you haven't been doing this for very long... heh

user55340

Gah... forgot to toss a close vote on this before running out:

user55340

14

Q: How to stay in the zone after finishing a task?

I've noticed that while I'm programming, I divide my work into tasks and until a task is complete I cannot stop, even if it takes hours. However, once that task is complete, I find it very hard to move onto the next task. I feel the urge to spend some time having a break, surfing the web, etc, a...

productivity self-improvement zone

durron597

02:21

@MichaelT Done. 8 left and we've only been reset for 2.5 hours

@MichaelT Someone must've linked to 2+2=5 again somewhere

user55340

codegolf.stackexchange.com/posts/28786/timeline - yep.

user55340

wait, nope... new answer

user114359

...and I'm spent. Two close votes, maxed out my reviews, and used up all my delete votes.

user15026

02:48

So, @WorldEngineer just showed me someone building a sudoku solver in APL. My reaction is thus:

user15026

"It feels like scary math and weird programming had a really alarming baby."

user15026

My brain hurts.

user55340

APL can do that.

user114359

This is my profession and APL makes my brain hurt.

user55340

APL takes a special type of madness to want to program it.

user55340

02:56

Speaking of madness... remember creepy AI guy from the other day? Look up the movie trailers for Ex Machina.

user15026

@MichaelT The guy who gave me the heebiejeebies because it felt like he was trying to make a robot wife?

user55340

@AshleyNunn yep.

user15026

scared to look now

user55340

Ex Machina - Official Trailer (2015) [HD]

►

user15026

oh boy.

user55340

03:01

@AshleyNunn there are other trailers that I can't link here.

user114359

@MichaelT are they on YouTube?

user55340

@Snowman yes.

user114359

I am not sure what to think about that movie, but I am curious to see the trailers eventually.

user20683

@Snowman it's on netflix

user15026

Well, that makes it easier, and I can pause it if it makes me wibble.

user55340

03:05

@Snowman Link to trailer that I shouldn't inline here and various commentary about the movie: reddit.com/comments/33daz3/…

user114359

From what I am reading it is a little creepy in a good way, if that's possible. It is not robo-porn, it is more what Kubrik's/Spielberg's AI movie should have been.

user114359

In other words, "this robot is showing why humans suck and is not ashamed or embarassed about it"

user55340

I like the idea of a reverse Bletchel test of "the movie is about two guys talking about the female lead"

user20683

@MichaelT Lehcteb Test

user55340

@WorldEngineer That looks surpassingly like "lecher" at first glance.

durron597

03:53

Oh wow.

12

A: Question doesn't appear in reopen queue

It appears this has been broken for over two years now... Background: reopen review triggers There are three ways a question can end up in Reopen Review: A reopen vote is cast when there are no other active reopen votes on the question. Note that this allows for a single question to be enqueu...

No wonder the reopen queue is always at zero

user55340

04:06

@RobertHarvey insights.dice.com/2015/05/06/…

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Thanks.

It still amuses me when people who are 28 worry that they are over the hill. insights.dice.com/2015/05/06/…

@durron597 Ohh... Scandal.

Well, it's a good article, but the comments below it are really discouraging.

Did you know that Aspect-Oriented Programming is patented?

google.com/patents/US6467086

Jimmy Hoffa

04:29

@RobertHarvey I wonder if I can just patent myself... judging by the shit that gets through I don't see why not. I'll sue anyone else with kidneys; they'll be an intrinsic part of my patent and I will demand return of all products in violation of my IP rights

Robert Harvey

The pharmaceutical companies are trying to patent human genes as their true function is discovered. I don't think they're going to get much traction, though... most judges have had enough high-school biology to know that genes are a part of nature, and are inherently non-patentable. That hasn't prevented a handful of genes getting patented first, though.

Nick Alexeev

05:07

@WorldEngineer Many thanks for not migrating this to EE.SE.

Robert Harvey

05:23

@MichaelT I think I could do the immersive work myself if I could get some guidance on what, specifically, I needed to teach myself. I'm concerned about scope; I can't really give myself an entire CS degree, and I don't think I need to.

Duga

08:01

And wouldn't this question be better in programmers.stackexchange.com? — xanatos 32 secs ago

user55340

13:10

@psr your skeptics question is reopened and hot.

user114359

kickstarter.com/projects/627324241/programming-languages-abc

Telastyn

As fast as possible, between meetings?

2

durron597

13:39

8

Q: Blacklist 'problem' and related tags across all communities

This issue has come up again and again with different results depending on which moderators/users saw the question first. Most recently, Please blacklist the [problem] tag ... again Remove "problem" tag Tag ban request: [problem] and [problems] Let's take the definition of problem from dictio...

discussion burninate-request blacklist-request

cv-plz programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/39650/…

user114359

@durron597 I already voted on that question

durron597

@Snowman I figured. @Telastyn?

André

And it's gone!

durron597

Wow. I didn't expect Baleeted for a question with that many votes. @ThomasOwens?

user114359

"deleted by Thomas Owens♦ 7 secs ago"

durron597

13:43

<-- is a good guesser :)

Wow, this question is, like, exactly what we've been talking about in here for the last 24 hours

11

Q: Is it reasonable to expect knowing the whole stack bottom up?

I am an Sr. developer/architect/Product Manager for embedded systems. The systems that I have had experience with have typically been small to medium size codebases - typically close to 25-30K LOC in C, using 8-16 and 32 bit low end microcontrollers. The systems have been entirely bootstrapped by...

project-management learning-curve design

user114359

@durron597 and I am tempted to use my final CV for the day on it.

durron597

Well this question is even worse

user114359

@durron597 that second question also already has a CV, I cast the second vote.

durron597

@ThomasOwens Should we get a historical lock on this one?

@Snowman Yeah, it's mine.

Thomas Owens

@durron597 With that view count, absolutely.

user114359

13:55

Why would anyone vote to reopen this question?

user114359

46

Q: How should I determine my rates for writing custom software?

For a custom software that will likely take a year or more to develop, how would I go about determining what to charge as a consultant? I'm having a hard time coming up with a number, and searches online are providing vastly different numbers (between $55/hr and $300/hr). I don't want to shoot t...

freelancing

durron597

@Snowman I bet a high rep user wants to know the answer to it

user114359

Good thing it has an accepted answer, with 48 votes no less

durron597

@Snowman I didn't say I agree with the reopen vote, I was just guessing their motive.

So learning-curve is now down to 3 open questions with zero close votes on them. I am not sure if any of them should be closed, I think it's likely they could be edited into something less bad.

One Two Three

Wow. Pundit Meta.so badge. Only 334 of those

user114359

@durron597 I would close all three. They are all old with many answers. Editing them to be on-topic would invalidate the existing answers, creating a different problem.

user55340

14:07

xna has some fun in it.

durron597

I'm not sure Two is off topic as it stands, i.e. it only needs a tag edit.

Three isn't so much career advice but it's probably primarily opinion based?

user114359

@durron597 "is there any way to describe, perhaps even quantify, the height of a learning curve?" is the question. Despite the word "quantify" that is still subjective, and bordering "education advice." The accepted answer begins with "My gut says that this is actually a question for an educator, and people who specialize in the acquisition of skills (professional trainers, etc.). There are "Education" and "Education Technology" forums out there"

user114359

"my gut" i.e. opinion. Then talks about educators.

user114359

@durron597 three is clearly opinion based: it is a poll.

durron597

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is a question for educators, not programmers. — durron597 16 secs ago

That just leaves the "whole stack bottom up" question, which is really a rant more than anything else.

11

Q: Is it reasonable to expect knowing the whole stack bottom up?

I am an Sr. developer/architect/Product Manager for embedded systems. The systems that I have had experience with have typically been small to medium size codebases - typically close to 25-30K LOC in C, using 8-16 and 32 bit low end microcontrollers. The systems have been entirely bootstrapped by...

project-management learning-curve design

@Snowman My gut is that it's primarily opinion based, but the accepted answer is really quite good and doesn't even read as opinion based to me.

Well, except for the "I think that..." and "My suggestion would be..."

user114359

14:20

@durron597 I think Q3 is still opinion-based and would need a lot of editing for brevity. The accepted answer is okay, but also needs editing. The whole thing is too wordy and difficult to follow.

enderland

ugh. I hate trying to diagnose internet issues from an apartment

user114359

I guess what I am thinking of is if I were going to re-ask this question, how would I ask it? It would be shorter, a lot more specific, and invite answers that are also concise and specific. The problem with these open-ended questions is they get to be too broad as well.

durron597

@Snowman I VTCed Q3 already. I haven't done anything with Q1 yet.

user114359

This question needs votes for pretty much every reason we have:

user114359

0

Q: Xamarin + ASP WebAPI + ASP MVC - which architecture is best?

I'm not found answer for my question - and opened this topic. So I want develop project. Database: Or Couchbase or SQL Server (right now it is not important, but I think it will be Couchbase) Website: Asp .NET MVC + Angular etc. - Simple Website Web Api: ASP .NET WebAPI Mobile Application (T...

c# mobile-app asp.net-mvc-web-api

user114359

14:24

@enderland your issues or someone else's?

enderland

@Snowman mine

durron597

@ThomasOwens Could you delete-vote this? programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70329/…

Thomas Owens

Done.

BTW, it looks like the first tag batch for STCI is coming nicely.

durron597

@ThomasOwens This too please programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38473/…

user114359

@enderland I hate dealing with hardware and network problems. I am a software guy.

durron597

14:27

@ThomasOwens I'm not sure if we should attempt to save this

enderland

@Snowman there are few things which bother me more than internet providers sucking

user55340

1

Q: Technology for atoms animation

I would like to make an animation of Molecular diffusion. I have some CSV or binary file with data to create 3D scene with atoms. It has to be fast animation with diffrent camera views and transparency vary depends on atom's energy. Since I code in C# on a regular basis I am going to pick up XNA...

c# technology xna 3d animation

user55340

That is an old technology request.

durron597

@ThomasOwens Yeah, but the last three tags are pretty massive. So it looks like we've made more progress than we have ;)

user55340

For that matter, technology is a bit of a mess too.

durron597

14:29

@ThomasOwens Thanks for killing those, we've killed the unlearning tag now too

Thomas Owens

w00t w00t.

durron597

@ThomasOwens What do you want to do with the tags in the zero open questions category? For example, self-teaching has 33 questions. The others have around 12 each.

@ThomasOwens Also learning is down to less than 200 open questions. From 350. w00t indeed (cc: @gnat)

user114359

Thomas Owens

I think I'll go through those and delete / lock. If I'm going to lock, I'll retag.

durron597

@Snowman Okay but make sure you keep your distance, wouldn't want you going all wicked witch of the west on us.

@ThomasOwens great

Thomas Owens

14:36

They are still identified in the answer as 0 open questions, yes?

user114359

@durron597 I didn't say I was going to do. I am probably the last person you should trust with a flamethrower. I am so clumsy I trip over my own feet.

Thomas Owens

If any of those pop up, I'll switch to those since it's easier for me as a mod to handle things. I don't think you guys should waste your flags/delete votes on those.

If there's anything questionable, I'll bring it up here.

durron597

user114359

@durron597 hah, I love it. There is that problem, too.

durron597

@ThomasOwens Yeah

Thomas Owens

14:38

@durron597 Perfect.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Given this meta question, it may not hurt to give the CM's a heads up that you're actively working on those things with community support. No need for them to assume you've started learning Haskell and are taking out half of the site.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 They should be aware. There's a big featured post about it on Meta.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Fair enough, just trying to make sure we don't have our own version of this inadvertently.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 I don't think we will. I can poke them to make sure, but the difference is we have a recent meta post.

user41796

True

user55340

14:42

And an active chat room where cms occasionally visit.

user41796

Oh, and commentary in our public, SE-hosted chat room

enderland

does SF have an offsite chatroom?

durron597

@enderland Yea, IRC. I don't know where exactly but I saw them talking about it during the fiasco.

user55340

Private slack chat room iirc.

user55340

slack.com

user55340

14:43

Employer^ used slack too.

user114359

@MichaelT "and then there's gnat" the Programmers.SE gardener, pulling weeds all the time...

user114359

I would point out that its not 'five users suddenly' - it was 'one user cast a close vote on it, three more [found it in /review], and well, then there's gnat'. This wasn't a coordinated closing. Just another question in /review that someone found. One should look at 'is this question too broad' when deciding to reopen a question that was closed by the community as too broad. We really try to provide good guidance on our close reasons that are available to all. While you (as a community manager) may have a different view into this ... — MichaelT Apr 13 at 18:23

Robert Harvey

This could be a real problem if your last names is Bates. — Robert Harvey 1 min ago

2

Couldn't resist.

André

haha

durron597

@André Haha

Anyone else have thoughts on the whole stack bottom up question?

André

14:53

So even Academia.SE can be fun

durron597

@André If you're not having fun on your stack, you're doing it wrong.

Mythology is a lot of fun but we really need to open the site up. Need more traffic

Robert Harvey

[waits for the first Pastafarian questions on Mythology]

André

@durron597, I'd flag as opinion based, but the accepted answer looks pretty good

Maybe re tag it and aggressive reedit into something about integration of 3rd parties API of unknown quality.

user114359

André

I think that this is what OP is worried about.

Still, I'm no mod or anything, just my two cents

user114359

15:02

@durron597 I still think the question and answer are less than ideal. The topic is okay, but the question is too broad and needs more focus. But at the same time I am not sure I would advocate deleting it (maybe just closing and locking it).

enderland

at least the support folks are responding quickly

Robert Harvey

16:33

What is TopCoder all about?

rolfl

Like TopGun except everyone is a maverick

Robert Harvey

Amazon contacted me to do a code screen, and this is one of the sites they suggested I use to bone up.

It looks like a crowdsourcing site.

whatsisname

lol

topcoder seemed like a huge scam to me

André

I tried to write my name on TopCoder registration, they said it wasn't valid

Who doesn't allow Unicode in their form these days?

André != Andre

Robert Harvey

Yahoo mail is down again. I think I'm going to have to fire them.

André

16:39

it looks like kaggle

Robert Harvey

Is this what getting a job is now? Winning coding competitions between bourbon shots?

2

André

Looks fancy

whatsisname

@RobertHarvey: no

Robert Harvey

OK.

user55340

@Snowman the gnat comment is that his style of reviewing is rather unique. On SO Shog even commented he is one of the users who uses skip most often.

Robert Harvey

16:41

Just checking.

Why would Amazon send me to Top Coder? There's a bunch of Node.JS challenges there, which won't complete for a month.

whatsisname

don't waste your time with topcoder, it's a scam

Robert Harvey

Alright.

user55340

Opinionated but moderately interesting: blog.svpino.com/2015/05/07/…

Marissa Wilson

Huh, number 5 I hadn't seen before.

André

me neither, cool

Marissa Wilson

16:50

When hiring, how much do you consider the solutions time and space complexity? I've seen some places place a lot of emphasis, and some places not care in the slightest.

user55340

@MarissaWilson it also has a nice solution to it... Though I'm not one to go to recursion as a tool often and this am completely weak at discovering solutions using it.

user55340

No importance at all unless the problem domain of the job needs that as part of its focus.

user55340

Amazon data? Yep space and time complexity would be important because instead of 1kb data in a dump that can run for a few seconds you have 100m and want to serve it back in a second.

Robert Harvey

@MarissaWilson Puzzle test, bleh.

Unless it's a Computer Scientist job...

rolfl

Whn you guys have solved them, head on over to code review, and we'll critique :-)

Interview practice, of course.

enderland

16:56

@rolfl those problems intrigue me

Marissa Wilson

@RobertHarvey Are they normally classified differently? When I interviewed for Amazon it was for a position like "Software Engineer of algorithms", made me think the line is blurred a bit.

rolfl

@RobertHarvey - based on my code review experience, topcoder is not too bad.... the folks who post questions related to that are in the ballpark.

Robert Harvey

Is number 5 a graph problem? These things ought to resolve to standard problems in Computer Science.

rolfl

The only really problematic online competition site I know of is "Code hunt".

user55340

Amazon has big data problems that are unique to it (and Google)

Marissa Wilson

16:57

@MichaelT Thats true, same with finance companies

rolfl

See this for my review of Code Hunt: meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/1998/…

user55340

@RobertHarvey they have a solution to it on another blog post. Not done with a graph.

rolfl

If you do go to code hunt, note it has sound on their site.

user55340

blog.svpino.com/2015/05/08/…

psr

@JimmyHoffa What link? I can't seem to find it.

Robert Harvey

17:05

> If you bother to read this blog at all (or any other blog about software development), you are probably good enough to solve these and 5 more problems within the hour. The people that think are above all these "nonsense" are usually the ones that can't code crap.

Jimmy Hoffa

15 hours ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

> Digital transformation is...a journey

Robert Harvey

Sure, but how many companies actually have the need for an algorithm that can find all combinations of addition and subtraction of digits that equal 100?

André

I'd say NaN

whatsisname

@RobertHarvey: it's not that most companies need that algorithm, but a lot of companies need people with the analytical mind capable of solving it

psr

@JimmyHoffa I think they were trying to look just a little like Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner

André

17:09

@whatsisname, nods I think these puzzles show "problem solving" skills. Even if you just google it

whatsisname

there's no reason you can't brute force number 5, and then it should only take a few minutes

to write up

Robert Harvey

@André He looks like the love child of Rutger Hauer and Ben Kingsley.

enderland

@rolfl I might do these, i've wanted to get better with Java and they seem like good problems to do

André

haha

enderland

and I will make lots of "wtf" mistakes since I have minimal Java knowledge

whatsisname

17:11

time to get lunch bbl

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa I feel like I need to smoke something recently legalized in a few states in order to fully understand this video.

It's like a 45 minute Dilbert Mission Statement.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey yeah, a recruiter pointed me at that, and there've been others similar... gah. Those are not software places

Robert Harvey

Consultants, probably. You can get so many billable hours out of this kind of discussion.

But where does it lead? Hopefully, something concrete, tangible, effective and useful.

That music (and his voice) is so hypnotizing. I can't stop listening.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey of course, he's a marketer, that's the whole point - if you listen closely you can hear "give me your money" repeated in the background on a loop

psr

@RobertHarvey Lot's of gripping extreme close-ups too.

durron597

17:37

@Snowman Omg I know you've seen the question but have you seen this answer yet?

Robert Harvey

17:53

In Problem 5, are the calculations allowed to go negative?

whatsisname

and I'm back

@RobertHarvey: as in could the 'running total' halfway through go negative?

Robert Harvey

Yes.

whatsisname

why wouldn't it be allowed?

Robert Harvey

OK.

Well, because you can make it a little smarter if you're only dealing with positive numbers.

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