The Whiteboard

user55340

00:34

@WorldEngineer the mostly defunct blog. Have we considered doing a "pontificate on this otherwise off topic / too broad topic as requested by users"?

user20683

@MichaelT it's something I'd considered and basically we tried that for a while. It was hard to drum up volunteers to do the logistical work.

user55340

The previous blog appeared to be more of a "write on something that interests you" or "try a monthly challenge." I'm thinking taking a page from Stack Overflow's documentation idea of "request a topic"

user20683

@MichaelT this is an idea I'd entertained and I want to say I'd toyed with it in here.

user55340

Chat is great, but the ideas for topics need to come from outside for it to be something that we'd get readership for.

user55340

(we do have a bit of echo chamber in here)

user20683

00:36

@MichaelT that's not what I said

user20683

I said I'd broached the subject of doing a "here is a topic" before in here

user55340

Ahh, I though thats what was meant by "I'd towed with it in here (chat)"

user55340

But I don't want to write on "this is the topic of the month"

user20683

@MichaelT Main thing is to make sure that we can get a consistent and present editorial staff

user55340

I'd rather do "here is a meta post with 40 'write on this' ideas" from out there (pointing in general direction of the user base)

user20683

00:37

Dynamic literally up and disappeared on me

user20683

and no one else seemed truly interested in doing the grunt work of editing this stuff

user20683

I remember effectively rewriting a non-native speaker's work into something coherent. I'd rather avoid that issue.

user20683

or at least not be the sole responsible entity

user55340

The "not a native speaker" is a "you need to first run it through a grammar checker - either Microsoft word, or spellcheckplus.com or the like"

user20683

@MichaelT this required considerably more work than that.

user55340

00:41

Think of it more as a peer review from academia and say "nope, this has significant grammatical and syntactical errors" - if it takes more than 5% more time to fix it than read it, reject it.

user20683

@MichaelT the issue at the time being content and that silly idea of every two weeks publishing something

user20683

00:58

@JimmyHoffa I'm trying to figure out how you bolt Spacemacs onto Emacs

user20683

like I did the clone thingie

Robert Harvey

01:20

@WorldEngineer All you need are editors? I can do that.

I thought content creation was the actual problem.

user20683

@RobertHarvey it was both

user20683

it was attracting people with the whatever you want model

user20683

and also getting through the content in a timely manner which given that I was working semi-full time, taking 12 hours of classes, chairing two clubs, and being a mod, was a little iffy at the end

user20683

and then Dynamic gets sucked into high school

user20683

and that's that

user55340

01:22

The blog thing though... consider that in 12 - 16 weeks (2x 6-8), SO Documentation might be showing up here. The "show me an example of a singleton and its usage" are going to be the requests we're going to get. If we don't try putting those questions now in the blog, it will be hard to say that Documents isn't the right place for it given what SO's is looking to be.

Robert Harvey

Editing is easy. Creating good content is very difficult. It requires a lot of research, and in a perfect world you get thoughtful members of the public (not Youtube riff raff) to hammer it until all of the edge cases have been smoothed out.

Very few people, including the vast majority of bloggers, know how to do this well.

I can do it, but it would literally consume me for several days to write a good article.

And I'm not even sure it gets read. (" The 'Programmers Blog?' There is such a thing?")

user55340

@RobertHarvey If it has a post more recent than 2013...

Robert Harvey

It's hard... Just sayin'.

user55340

It is. And we also need to write what our audience wants to read.

Robert Harvey

I'd love to do one on general architectural principles. Not the whole three-tier or MVWhatever, just "Why software is divided into layers, and how to make the decision where to divide it."

user55340

01:27

This isn't a "linked in - write things that have an impact factor" type blog post that people are after.

user55340

IT Needs to be a Better Business Partner (yawn) - sorry, but that's what I felt like after the first paragraph.

Robert Harvey

Also, "Programming is not quilt-making: why you're using software patterns wrong."

user55340

Heh.

Robert Harvey

"Software Development is not a Popularity Contest."

user55340

The spot where we could (I believe) have a useful blog is in the "user wants to know how to get the most out of programming when MOOCs and books are not enough?. Yea, thats part of the 'deleted questions' topic seeds...

user55340

01:29

but those are questions that people have.

Robert Harvey

Write code. Write some more code. When you're done doing that, write some more code.

user55340

Let them ask it, in a meta answer on the blog topics... and then have someone answer it. As a full on well written blog post.

user55340

Its not a good question for the main site. But it is something that people would like to write about (and go back and forth in blog comments). And that is a reasonable outlet for some of our well written but completely off topic and not a good fit for Q&A that we get here from time to time.

Robert Harvey

Sounds good to me.

Jimmy Hoffa

03:01

@WorldEngineer you just git clone the repo into your ~/.emacs.d folder, which requires first that you have a ~ folder - if you're in windows you need to set an environment variable home or homepath or something for that

When you run emacs it automatically looks for it's init and configuration in your ~/.emacs.d folder

user20683

@JimmyHoffa the one in the registry?

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer you using windows? I don't know any registry stuff

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I thought you were using this thing on Windows

user20683

because you always use Windows

Jimmy Hoffa

I am

user20683

03:03

ah

Jimmy Hoffa

tada. Environment variables in 3 steps. Set your "home" environment variable to some folder

and put the .emacs.d folder in that home folder

The environment variables have user level and system level - create the home environment variable at the system level so it's available for all users

(system is the bottom part)

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I am the only user

user20683

and the only user that this would matter for in the forseeable future

Jimmy Hoffa

nah, there's a built-in administrator user which is what executes anything when you get that elevated-privileges request

if you have IIS on the box it has a variety of users. There's the system and network service users which run the myriad of system and network services in windows by default.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa it's a laptop

Jimmy Hoffa

03:09

Just use system environment variables as a rule or else you'll have no idea why some shit isn't working

user20683

a generic laptop

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer still has services, IPC doesn't run itself

windows-key+r services.msc to see for yourself

Ampt