@GeorgeStocker better than the mechanical IBM keyboards?

@Francisco Bob Walsh has a startup success podcast; it may be useful. Different vein than SO, but still a startup podcast.

Maybe I can write about using var + as

@Rob Z: For my wrists? Yes.

@RyanHayes The problem I find is that many questions get answered so fast, some quite good answers end up at the bottom and don't get voted up because they below some with 10s of votes.

I'm in the process of starting my tiny startup... and my goal is to try to have something like fogcreek, here in Guadalajara, Mexico, a place where programmers are treated respectfully and just the best place for programmers to wanna work in

@Joel, do you use Emacs anymore?

@GeorgeStocker nice, let me check it out

@FranciscoNoriega after about ten years I decided that the format of writing long articles saying "I did it this way. You should do it this way" is... well, boring, and also, a little bit bankrupt.

@JoelSpolsky Wouldn't make sense to invite the speakers from the DevDays 1, hopefully, with an updated content? Plus, considering the popularity of SO, it may not be an issue finding new speakers, I am guessing.

@Francisco: startuppodcast.wordpress.com

@RhysGibson Yea, that's true. Where it's subjective and there's not a check mark answer a lot, then some things get hidden. You're right.

@RakshitPai regularly

@Joel - I remember one of your blog entires had a "Quantas" Emacs screenshot

@vehomzzz just organizing all the speakers turns out to be a full time job. It took me months to do that for 10 x 6 = 60 speakers in the first dev days

@JoelSpolsky your post on Unicode is epic! I've made numerous people read it!

thanks

Would love to see @Joel do a Emacs Lisp tutorial

kill me now.

:)

hahaha

OK, RIGHT AFTER I DO A VIM-EMACS KEYBOARD MAPPING CHEAT SHEET

caplocks?

M-x set-caplocks-on

is there anyone out there like me, who has an issue with calling it "the cloud". I mean, it feels like traditional server hosting with new lipstick on it

@JoelSpolsky what about an starting a business essential booklet ala hginit? :P

m-x-butterfly

joel could write about a keyboard mapping cheat sheet, and people would still read it

@FranciscoNoriega Hehe, I just read HgInit the other day. (:

@Chris not me, "cloud" definitely beats"server hosting with abstracted OS"

@JoelSpolsky So whos idea was it for the StackExchange sites?

@donny YOURS! Every stack exchange site comes from Area51!

the left handed smiley just looks like the top of a bald man's head. Stop it. <just kidding>

@JoelSpolsky You know what I mean....the concept

@chris I'd like to see it made easier to move services from one vendor's cloud to another, such as if they all supported the same API. Then it'd be more cloudish

Hello. I just wanted to have the honour of saying hello to @JoelSpolsky personally. :)

@Francisco I'm not talking about "shared hosting", I mean "dedicated hosting". One where you own the VM

@JoelSpolsky was always curious if Jon Skeet is working for SO, despite his, possible, non-compete with Google. The quality of his answers shows as if he would =)

@wilhelmtell Hello

@vehomzzz From what I understand almost everything he does on stackoverflow, he does on the train to and from work

And belated Chag Same'ach. :p

@CLawrenceWenham true. they do support REST, but I don't think downloading the instance you are running is permitted

whoa -- that's impressive

@joel Anything significant you'd do differently if planning & launching SO/SE today?

Where's the "like" button?!

@Joel, is CityDesk still being developed?

I remember watching a Jon Skeet presentation and emailing him at 12am my time and getting a reply and having conversation with him, it was quite nice, and he's very personable

@AndréLaszlo You can star messages: chat.stackexchange.com/faq#star

@JoelSpolsky our group is having issue justifying buying new servers (considering our budget isn't that great) for SharePoint 2010, are you aware of any CMS systems which can compare?

@jschroedl I'd spell "creat" with an "e" (en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kenneth_Thompson#Attributed)

@rakshit good lord man are you from the past?

@chris same to you

lol

@JoelSpolsky I sometimes like to read your really old blog posts

@RakshitPai you should check out join.me

Where does everyone live?

@RakshitPai I think we all do :P

#yyc

or calgary

@JoelSpolsky Montreal!

@rchern: oh, thanks, but I was looking for something analogous to a nod and a smile. The message wasn't really interesting or useful. Perhaps I should spend less time on Facebook.

Long Island

@JoelSpolsky Guadalajara, Mexico :D

west michigan

Raleigh, NC

@Joel Manitoba, Canada, unfortunately.

Austin, TX

@JoelSpolsky, Göteborg, Sweden

@JoelSpolsky Hyderabad, India (currently in Florida)

Was that an a/s/l?

@francisco I bloody jealous, it's -13 C and snowing

@CLawrenceWenham wow, nice IRC reference

@Chris I feel your pain. plus I have to walk to school in the freezing cold

@Chris lol its exactly +13 C here

@CarsonMyers up hill both ways right?

don't forget about being barefoot.

@Chris no, I'm in manitoba. It's flat. Only flat. As far as the eye can see. :(

@rchern oh man, literal lol, some things don't change

@CarsonMyers I know people from there who call it a "fly over province"

still, a little bit cold, but not like yours! (I remember being in upstate NY on 2008... it was like -20 man that was awful!)

Montreal and New York have things in common, but sometimes I feel Montreal made a deal with sauron exchanging hi-tech jobs for festivals.

@Chris my friends have told me they frequently forget that it exists.

@CarsonMyers where abouts in MB? we have an office in winnipeg

I don't mind cold, what I have an issue with, is the constant freeze/thaw that happens here. And driving on snow doesn't scare me, it's inexperienced drivers that do

Is it just an urban myth - people in cold countries work harder than the one in tropics

@twlichty Brandon

or are the people in the tropics just making an excuse :)

@CarsonMyers ha! I have an ex from Morden

If it is going to be cold, I want a nice snow to go with it. None of this freezing rain crap we get here.

@joel Last interesting code you wrote?

those damn penguins never take a break. it's impossible to compete with antarctica

-10C and snowing here!

The invention of the heater came a lot sooner than the air conditioner, though, so the colder countries were able to be productive year-round before the hot ones were

define "interesting."

non-trivial

@RakshitPai, I listened to a TED talk by swedish professor Hans Rosling. He said that compared to swedish students, indian students works hard as hell. (Not his exakt phrasing)

@Chris not sure where that even is. I've only been here about three months

@wilhelmtell I think they also bargained for ridiculous amounts of beautiful woman... Its one of the things I remember the most to my trip to montreal... they were.. everywhere!

@jschroedl hmm, i had to write an importer to convert 20 years of my email into a standard mbox format

@JoelSpolsky I see a lot of love from Microsoft for Silverlight, and not that much for WPF, do you have an insight you can be vague about?

@CarsonMyers google maps...err... bing maps is your friend

speaking of students, is anyone still in school, or are you all in the software business now?

@chris probably just a function of PR budgets

@eds I've been out of college since 2003

@Chris I suppose, I just guessed it was near here

@eds I'm first year in uni

@JoelSpolsky we're not worried, we're just wondering if eventually the teams will be merged and one product will emerge as the winner

@eds professional c++, c++/cli, wpf desktop app developer

we just inherited a large MFC, yes MFC application from an acquisitions, we've been asked to "..NET ify it"

@chris at this point, trying to "read the tea leaves," i.e., conduct Microsoft kremlinology, is sort of like eating sunflower seeds = net calorie loss.

@JoelSpolsky that is the best joke ever!

@FranciscoNoriega I friggin love this city. It's a love-hate relationship of sorts. I so wish there would be more software jobs here in Montreal. :-S But the girls here are probably the only reason why the temperatures don't drop past minus fifty.

@Chris awesome!

The one good thing is that C++ has plenty of new features allowing you to talk directly to managed code, so there's no reason to .NETIFY anything. Just keep patching it, and when you need big new chunks of code, write them in C# and call them from C++

@JoelSpolsky that is what I told them, and that upgrading it will introduce bugs guaranteed

@chris It can be done. We did just that. May want to review Feathers "Working effectively with legacy code" for inspiration

@Chris p/invoke is not too bad

oh man, I really gets me that the chrome spell checker isn't as good as the one Google search uses, good lord!

Hey has anyone here ever used a dvorak layout?

used it

for a few months

worth it?

@jschroedl i'll check it out, @Erik p/invoke doesn't scare me, it's the people who expect secret sauce from .NET that scare me

@JoelSpolsky Managed C++ is like speaking French with an English accent. It makes no sense, it's not pretty and you lose either distinguishing cultural traits.

it was great for IMing, it felt pretty good. but I had to switch back because it was impossible to use other QWERTY keyboards and friends couldn't use my keyboard

@wilhelmtell the second thing I remember was that all the 8 of us that went in the trip ended up with our butts in the ground at some point... massive slipage! And some friends where actually from there too! hehe

@wilhelmtell it only makes sense if you don't feel like throwing away and rewriting a lot of existing code, but you still need big new features that you really want to write in C#

@Carson i tried it for like a week... according to a friend, it improved his typing speed by about 5 wpm, but killed his QWERTY typing speed, so he didn't recommend it

our issue is time. It's frankly easier to pull my C++ knowledge from college and learn the MFC I need to than rewrite a large application from scratch.

@wilhelmtell C++/CLI is much better than the abomination that was MC++

@snitzr @eds alright thanks. I almost changed my keyboard layout with squares of post-it note

@CarsonMyers Dvorak wouldn't help for coding

@CarsonMyers My friend uses it. He switched because he only used his index fingers to type on qwerty. Now he types crazy fast, but on dvorak. So if you need to re-learn typing, it might be a good idea.

I have a very nice expand for the MFC acronym.. how does MoFo Complicated Sound?

@CarsonMyers I've been typing dvorak for years

@snitzr There's a programmer's variant of dvorak, too. I wouldn't know how effective it is though

@CarsonMyers yeah I tried it for a couple months... if you are really proficient in QWERTY it will be hard to get really fast in Dvorak... but it WILL kill your QWERTY skills, probably reduce them by over 50%

@FranciscoNoriega I disagree.

@chris look into Visual Assist X -- code nav tools alone can help make MFC bearable

and you look stupid when you have to use someone else's computer

Thank god, I was "born" after the generation that had to use COM and MFC

because you forget qwerty really fast

I type just as fast on Dvorak as I do on Qwerty. And I make sure to use Qwerty a bit each day so that I stay proficient on both.

I code in the safe waters of .NET

@RakshitPai Don't say COM

@rchern haha, keyboard training

I only know how to type one thing in dvorak though: "ödkbvnmar öd", on a standard swedish keyboard, it will produce "setxkbmap se" :)

It makes me a minute or two to switch, but I type at least 75% of my "old" Qwerty typing speed now after about 2 years since switching.

@Chris would you rather it be MFC or VB6?

I absolutely prefer Dvorak though.

I look at COM and I look at IoC and there are scary similarities

@JoelSpolsky I'm currently team lead and I've been approached by another manager under the same product who is looking for a technical lead...I'm interested, but this manager is remote, I'd be interested in your opinion on remote managers?

@rchern yeah its good for english

not too good for other languages though

@CarsonMyers by brother and I switched at the same time, but we both switched back. Had to hunt and peck on QWERTY. I wonder if I did it like @rchern it would work. Ditto on prefer Dvorak

I had to quit due to a lack of accents

@JohnSonmez Why?

@ZIPCodeDatabase wait, you're a zip code database and you want to be a technical lead?

and other characters like ñ

@Erik either is painful, we've been spoiled for a long time with .NET, trying to get something as simple as a directory listing from C++ is an exercise in gymnastics

I found dvorak very intuitive. Within a few months I was typing faster than I ever was in qwerty.

lol no that was something i was messing around with...i need to change my name back

Subjective question, but meh.

Anyone here who had to write address parsing code and thought that it was going to be easy?

I just realized, I should be working on my clients request instead of chatting, doh!

@RakshitPai you mean street address parsing code?

@rakshit I understand that in the countries of former yugoslavia, addresses are written upside down (country, then city, then street, then name).

@snitzr I see. So you'd use it if everyone used it and you didn't have to use qwerty?

@rakshit -- wait -- I have a reference for you -- hang on

@rchen thanks. Do you just switch the keyboard mode or do you own an actual dvorak keyboard?

@JoelSpolsky that makes so much sense, it's from largest to smallest

@rakshit check this out: columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html

@CarsonMyers yeah, it's like speaking the native language, if everyone speaks qwerty, you have to use it

@CarsonMyers Nope, just layouts setup in Windows. I have Dvorak > Qwerty > Japanese > Hebrew setup in that order. Though Japanese and Hebrew I don't use as often.

@JoelSpolsky Thanks Joel!!!

@CarsonMyers, ctrl+shift to switch between Dvorak/Qwerty and then alt+shift to switch between English/Japanese/Hebrew. (:

looks like my name got cached...i changed it in stackoverlow, oh well!

@JoelSpolsky is there a reason why the team didn't choose something like nHibernate instead of L2S when they wrote SO?

@ZIPCodeDatabase, log out and log back in otherwise it'll sync within an hour I think.

@snitzr I think @rchern would disagree with you. She appears to speak several languages :)

@rchen I just added a third language to my keyboard layout which has made alt+shifting properly a lot more difficult.

@JoelSpolsky reason rather

@JoelSpolsky any new developments on Frogger: The Legend Continues? When will that be out?

yeah i tried logging out...hopefully it'll switch back

@RakshitPai Because this is a family friendly chat, no need to say COM

@JoelSpolsky you can't tell i'm tired. That sentence made no sense

@Chris (1) you can edit your messages in this chat system (2) i have no idea

er, switch i mean

@CarsonMyers @rchern I am monolingual sadly. Maybe it's how my brain is wired.

@JohnSonmez I still don't get the joke

@CarsonMyers I speak English. I learned about of Japanese before I traveled to Japan, and want to continue to learn it. Same when I visited Israel. If there were more hours in the day I'd love to learn more Hebrew and then more Japanese.

@snitzr so am I. I don't find it too sad. I'm too poor to travel anyway

I used to know a good deal of French, but sadly I've forgotten it over the years. ):

"On January 1, 2005, Serbian Post introduced a six-digit address code for each Serbian postal address, to replace the previous 5-digit postal code." Thanks Serbian Post Office!

@RakshitPai COM is evil. Talking about COM in a programming channel is like talking about a dirty sanchez in church to your pastor.

@JoelSpolsky I am going to make a business case to not support Serbia

@JohnSonmez What's wrong with that? :)

@JohnSonmez COM may be evil, but it's what you must use to connect to most of Windows components

@rchern sweet, I used to know a tiny bit of japanese from high school. How different is Hebrew?

Japanese, Hebrew, pretty much the same language.

anyone here affected by the Gawker Media hack this week?

@joel sarcasm? Or... really?

@CarsonMyers sarcasm

@ami ah.

@wilhelmtell oh yeah I just remembered something... you guys are at -13 C but you got heaters there... when it gets cold here (say about 5-10 C) we have nothing but blankets, lots and lots of blankets. And Pijamas.

@JoelSpolsky Oy!

Is there a heuristic that lets you know when you have started abusing a language feature?

@Chris I got squirrely emails from some friends this week. The scam where they say they're in London and they need you to wire them money, etc, etc.

@rakshit when child protective services shows up at your doorstep

Watashi wa sukoshi nihongo wa wakarimas! (I hope thats "correct romaji" :P)

I learned Hebrew for a couple months, then ended up working 90 hour weeks for a project at work the couple months before my trip to Israel, went cold turkey on learning Hebrew and pretty much forgot everything I learned. I was not happy. When I travel I like to experience the culture and learning a bit of the language is included in that for me.

@rakshit your name is awesome it makes me think about a really crappy cloud data provider.

lolz

has anyone had any success with the new Dynamic type in C#? I tried using it with Excel and it threw an except because a range had a number in it instead of a string. Or rather the secret sauce of "guessing" converted the value at runtime and my app crashed

@FranciscoNoriega that works too, up to some temperature.

@JohnSonmez Sweet lord man!! That is my real name

@FranciscoNoriega I think that second wa should be a ga?

@RakshitPai I know that is what makes it awesome.

@rchern I spent two years in Israel between high school and college. Some of my best years ever.

@JohnSonmez It is Sanskrit for "protected"

@rchern I think you are probably right too :P

@Ami Nice. I spent a week there over the summer in Jerusalem. Was ready to go back before we even left hehe.

@JoelSpolsky @rchern ah, Hebrew. I remember.

@FranciscoNoriega Generally a dangerous thing to think. (;

@rchern how long ago?

Favorite productivity tool? emacs, visual assist, 4loco?

@rchern I was in Israel one and a half years ago. :p

@Ami This past sumer. 4 months ago.

@rchern stupid adult life... Studied japanese for a year and then I had to quit studying japanese when I started working half time while finishing uni a few years ago.. I really really liked it

@jschroedl notepad++

@jschroedl my intellect :)

@jschroedl willie mctell

I was surprised at how many people have been to Israel in this chat, but then I realized I went to Israel in college

so, me too

I flew over Israel on my way to the US

@jschroedl DevExpress' CodeRush/Refactor! Pro devexpress.com/Products/Visual_Studio_Add-in/Coding_Assistance

that counts

hehe

I heard @JoelSpolsky was in an elite military unit and jumped out of planes. In Israel.

@jschroedl for code, resharper hands down

agreed

was pushed.

@JoelSpolsky did you scream the whole way down?

@JoelSpolsky You must have been giving them a hard time about learning C

can't remember, too busy pissing myself and just generally passing out

@JoelSpolsky do you think that the 8 hrs/day standard is any good? I think that 6 hrs would be a lot better, 8-2, less "after lunch sleepiness" induced lack of productivity (we have lunch at 2), less "Im been here all day long I wanna go home!", more time to do personal stuff, family, learn japanese... sigh

I heard he dropped loaves of bread the whole way down

@FranciscoNoriega Push that forward a couple hours, 8 is early!

@jschroedl old JoS reference, nice.

Some people pay money to jump out of planes

@Francisca we use a 35 hr work week

@FranciscoNoriega I think it's much better to give programmers a quiet space to do their work. Even if they all share the same office. Sometimes you can't tune everything out with headphones. Basically I agree with Joel on the private offices matter

@rchern 9-3? :P

@chris We have private offices -- definitely agree they rock

@FranciscoNoriega or more so, I start work at 6am most days, and end at 2pm. My employer is great about, "we don't care when you complete the work, as long as it gets done ontime"

@JoelSpolsky @FranciscoNoriega Yea, What's the workday (in general, not counting release madness) at FogCreek? Do you guys provide those perks to keep devs there day and night (I've seen that places before..60+hrs the norm...more on releases)? Or is it really Heaven?

the norm is about 40 hours.

@RyanHayes I think also depends on who you hire

it's mostly about getting your work done.

@Chris, yeah definitely... the 6 hrs thing would just be on top.. I mean everybody willingly stays extra hours from time to time when in the zone or just when excited about something.. but it sucks when you are completely out of the zone and there is just about 40 mins left and you HAVE to stick to the schedule and just sit there waiting for the clock like Fred Flinstone

@Chris @rchern now THAT is too early haha

@FranciscoNoriega it's OK, I avoid traffic completely, which is my biggest frustration

@JoelSpolsky How does the staff balance coding with collaborating?

@joel After salary, what's the major expense for a small s/w co? Insurance? Rent?

@FranciscoNoriega we also do all our dev in VMware, so it's easy to take a VM home if you want to continue

@Chris still, its awesome your place has that philosophy, its how I think it should be too

@jschroedl I'd say rent is insane in NYC.

@jschroedl rent!

@FranciscoNoriega yes, but you need to earn it. Some other groups (we are a small group in our division), don't have that opportunity because of contact with outside clients. Most our stuff is for internal people

@RyanHayes "the rent is too damn high!"

@FranciscoNoriega True.dat

@Ami haha

@JoelSpolsky would i be way off if i said your company doesn't really bear the israeli startup spirit, nor the american corporate spirit? how would you describe the mantra of fog creek in a sentence?

@Chris I don't know if it is just because must companies think they must stick to the schedule because thats how its been done for ever.. or just the lack or management to grade their workers performance by merits/goals rather than by office hours... or who knows maybe once you start a business you see thats the best/easiest way.....

@Chris... yeah, when there are outside clients its pretty much out of the question...but for internal stuff

@wilhelmtell it's a kibbutz!

Looking for a good tech based movie for the weekend, any recommendations

@FranciscoNoriega I think the key is finding where you belong. It's time consuming. I found mine thought a person I've respected for a long time.

Watched Code Rush on youtube

@Rakshit if going with classics, Office Space :P

@RakshitPai I just wached "The Net" last night

Any non-jarjar Star Wars movie?

Watched: 12 weeks with geeks

code rush is cool

What ever became of the interns who made copilot?

@JoelSpolsky yea, it is something lot of devs can relate to. Late night sessions, pizza, dew

@Ami Thats just ridiculous

Raise your hand if the first thing you thought about after reading @JoelSpolsky's recommendation was certain IDE productivity booster?

/raises hand

@FranciscoNoriega /raises hand

@JoelSpolsky thanks, you just gave me something to watch during lunch tomorrow

@jschroedl two work for us now on Kiln, one went to a hedge fund, one works for Microsoft on Visual Studio

Hmm, random question. I'm looking for holiday gift ideas to get a group of webdev coworkers. Any help? I pretty much came up blank.

The Social Network: "he's wired in"

oh no YouTube!!!!.... my ADD is kicking in!

@rchern Red Gate tools

PEPPERMINT BARK

@JoelSpolsky OMG Stockpile it! It's going away soon!

@RakshitPai I was thinking something fun...like a dart board or nerf ball. Ha!

mmmm

@JoelSpolsky peppermint....bark?

wow, in that documentary with Netscape, when it was filmed, I was in grade 11

@rchern Profilers are fun :)

@RakshitPai But not fun in a need a coding break kind of way. q:

did anyone else felt motivated to create, but at the same time kind of depressed of not having done something really great after watching The Social Network? :P

@rchen yoga/wrestling mat

@FranciscoNoriega i haven't seen the film yet, partly because I'm absent from that part of the internet

@FranciscoNoriega If I was coding to while listening to "A familiar taste" - I could create something useful as well :)

@FranciscoNoriega I was and currently am steeped in a startup project so that film was really motivational.

well, its just that, being drunk in a few hours he did another app that managed to get +20,000 views 4 hrs after publishing