The Whiteboard

Ixrec

7:00 PM

never using this definitely won't happen to this codebase in my lifetime though

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec JavaScript is a good language when you do. Objects as records and functions as functions, all you need.

Ixrec

speaking of which, today I ran across code that deliberately uses prototypal inheritance for something useful

which I think is the first time I've ever seen that happen

Jimmy Hoffa

oh? what was the use case?

Ixrec

we have a module with lots of parsers and AST transformers that's basically about taking "formulas" from the form the user writes to the form we store in the database to the form we pass to infrastructure APIs...and then in all the other directions between those forms

the three forms share a lot in common, so the "converters" and "renderers" and whatnot have a lot of code in common, thus each converter/renderer/etc for a specific form prototypally inherits from a "generic" one

Jimmy Hoffa

somebody attached some pure functions like C#'s extension methods to something I presume?

Ixrec

7:04 PM

the change I had to make today consisted of simply adding another overload to one of the converters so it did an extra trick before calling the generic version

I have no idea what extension methods are

Jimmy Hoffa

ah

user41796

apropos of nothing - local cable company will let me buy / provide my own cable modem box based upon a pre-approved list that they provide. Any thoughts on buying my own cable modem vs. renting?

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 buy, you're not going to stop renting anytime soon. I wish I had bought...

Been meaning to go buy one, if they never sent me one I would have and it would have saved me money by now

rent is cheap but, few bucks month after month...after month... though when you buy sometimes ISPs are jerks about allowing it on and won't fix your circuit if things get messed up even though it's likely not your modems fault

user41796

Reasonable suggestion, except it means I have to compare modems now. :-(

user41796

payback appears to be after 12 months

Jimmy Hoffa

7:07 PM

@GlenH7 not so bad these days, they've become so common as everyone uses one or another for the same things...

just amazon compare.

No need to be crazy picky, unless of course, you're an engineer...

.......

user114359

I see what you did there...

Jimmy Hoffa

@Snowman moral of the story, he'll wish he could have some bushmills

user41796

The list is simplified since they offer fairly decent download speeds for my area (300 Mbps) and most of the modems can't support that

user55340

Buy the cheap one and some bushmills.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I've been working on a bottle of pynch lately. Quite tasty

Jimmy Hoffa

7:09 PM

not familiar with it

user41796

blended scotch. kinda smokey, but not heavily so. really good notes to it

Jimmy Hoffa

?

As an islay fan I'm always interested in smokier scotches.. will have to remember that

MetaFight

here's what I've been enjoying lately...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa a bit more expensive than some others, but quite tasty

MetaFight

scotch is nice too.

user41796

7:13 PM

@MetaFight now, now. This isn't the bridge.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MetaFight you can't drink internet memes, but that one makes me want to drink...

alright

I

user55340

@stromms Item.matchOrder() It is then able to look at what it is and decide if it should match the buy order or sell order. IBidSize and IBidPrice both extend an abstract class (AbstractBidTicker) that implements matchOrder() with match sell price functionality. AbstractBidTicker implements AbstractTicker that has an interface ITicker that establishes matchOrder. And now your method gets an ITicker and calls matchOrder and everything else happens. — MichaelT 2 mins ago

Jimmy Hoffa

need

to

wash

that

user55340

(if you can't tell, I'm a JEE guy). — MichaelT 1 min ago

Jimmy Hoffa

baby

off

the

screen

good enough

user41796

7:16 PM

@JimmyHoffa It was annoying me as well

Jimmy Hoffa

can't have that glaring at me from my 2nd monitor while I'm trying to code

user55340

Just use mobile. Small scroll back.

user55340

Your comments should likely be edited into your answer. — GlenH7 55 mins ago

user55340

^^ obsolete

user41796

Not anymore

enderland

7:21 PM

man, I don't want to work today

Ixrec

finally got around to reading what an extension method is

they sound awesome

reminds me of how Go supports OOP

MetaFight

@Ixrec yeah, I put off learning about them for a while too. It's a shame because they can be so useful.

Jimmy Hoffa

yeah, very useful; it's how LINQ entirely works. They're great for creating an eDSL like LINQ

I just used the shit out of them to do exactly that for an asynchronous state machine...jury's still out on that...

Ixrec

dare I ask what an async state machine is for?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec requesting data from the internet then parsing it

Ixrec

7:28 PM

sounds like every app made this decade

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec it all comes down to letting me write code like this:

Try
    .Begin<string, string, Task<string>>(_httpClient.GetStringAsync, x => x.ToString())
    .Then(ResponseToXml)
    .IgnoreIfPasses(PassIfStatusIs("ok"), x => x.ToString())
    .ThenEnumerate(Elements("results"))
    .ThenEnumerate(ManyElements("elided"))
    .LogAndThrowIfFailed(_log, "Error in response from: \"{0}\" error: \"{1}\"")
    .ThenEnumerate(ManyElements("row"))
    .LogIfFailed(_log, "Status was \"ok\" but seems there were no elided to parse at: \"{0}\" error: \"{1}\"")

Ixrec

neat

durron597

@JimmyHoffa i really don't find linq terribly legible. terse, sure.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 everyone says that before they've worked with it much. Practice is all. All code is illegible until you're used to reading it.

durron597

what does thenenumerate do

Ixrec

7:38 PM

I have trouble telling what that does too but I've never attempted to learn or use LINQ

Jimmy Hoffa

.ThenEnumerate(Elements("results")) enumerates the "results" elements

durron597

so it's a drill?

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 yes

durron597

> mention (a number of things) one by one.

Why is code that drills to the next level of an xml tree called an "enumeration"

Jimmy Hoffa

more specifically, .NET will by default be lazy in handling IEnumerable<>s, I created ThenEnumerate to force their enumeration for scenarios where I want to make it eager. I could use .Then instead of .ThenEnumerate there but that won't force their iteration until a later point.

@durron597 it was a word choice I made, should I have called the function ThenIterate ? Dunno, I was pondering what to name it myself..

Robert Harvey

7:40 PM

0

A: Find index of string in an array of strings where overlap could occur

For questions like this, it's easier to speak in code. The following code is in C#, but you should be able to adapt it to whatever language you're using. First, you need a method that can determine if your search candidate matches at a particular location (What you're calling a "pair"): pu...

durron597

.ThenEagerlyDrill

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 I've never heard the term "Drill" for such a thing before you just said it.. don't know how common that would be

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa You can also call ToList() to force immediate execution.

durron597

.ThenTraverseEagerly

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey under the covers that's what .ThenEnumerate does, it does .ToArray() actually

user114359

7:42 PM

@durron597 Because it is enumerating child nodes?

durron597

it's really not though.

Ixrec

this is kinda like arguing that map() or reduce() is not an intuitive name for the map and reduce operations

durron597

.TraverseTo

those are much better names.

map:

> associate (a group of elements or qualities) with an equivalent group, according to a particular formula or model.

user114359

Does someone else feel like commenting on this question? I already gave it a try and I am lazy.

user114359

-2

Q: Off-the-shelf UI component for table-to-table field mapping?

I wanted to check with the community if there is any existing off-the-shelf component or library that handles table-to-table field mappings. Example (from Salesforce's UI): Simply put, my inputs would be a list of source fields and target fields, and the UI component should allow the user to m...

c# javascript ui

durron597

7:44 PM

> become smaller or less in size, amount, or degree.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 the Then is indicating that it's actually doing it compositionally, taking one function and applying another function to it's output

durron597

but what you're doing is you have an xml high level node, and you want the node lower down in the tree called "results", right?

so you're traversing the tree, or perhaps drilling down the tree

you could even call it "selecting" in jquery parlance

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 no, I want a list of them, not just one

Ixrec

@durron597 possibly a stupid question, but are you wondering why he isn't just using XPath?

durron597

but you're starting with a list of them.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:46 PM

@durron597 in LINQ it's typically called select, but select is lazy

@durron597 yeah, and I'm getting another list. It's the List monad. is your head hurting yet? :)

durron597

@Ixrec yes, but i gave him the benefit of the doubt that he has a domain specific reason for not doing so.

.ForEachEagerSelect

user41796

@Snowman done. Doubt he'll listen.

Ixrec

@JimmyHoffa iirc, part of the point of LINQ is that being lazy/async allows it to optimize stuff in ways normally only functional languages can, is that remotely accurate?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec xpath doesn't return me a selection of XElement objects that are easy to parse. I'd use a serializer but the XML format isn't well structured and .NET's serializers are extremely finnicky

Ixrec

what is your definition of "well-structured"?

durron597

7:49 PM

anyway, the reason i couldn't follow it is because ThenEnumerate was not intuitive, not because I couldn't read the LINQ. It makes sense now.

user41796

Based upon previous searches on Amazon, when they say "Excluding adult items.Show all results" then I'm pretty certain I don't want to see all results.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec absolutely, it also can cause some difficulties though if you're not forcing execution at certain points. A common problem people have is they'll create an IEnumerable<> over a database result, then they'll go dispose of the DB connection and results and then they try to force the enumeration and it bombs because the DB isn't open with the results available any longer

@Ixrec easy to work with anyway, at another point I'm pulling apart a ton of optional attributes and elements from the resulting rows, being able to do that just by attribute/element name is much easier to understand and maintain than a pile of separate xpath queries

durron597

there's no library for this?

In Java I use VTD-XML, but there are many xml traversing libraries

Jimmy Hoffa

long story short, .NETs answer for XML has always been really shoddy, LINQ 2 XML as I'm using there is really the best and cleanest API available for it because it has pleasant failures

Ixrec

somehow I've managed to never work with XML, so no real opinion on it

Jimmy Hoffa

7:53 PM

@durron597 LINQ 2 XML as I'm using is nice, but there really aren't others that are of any sincere quality...really old ones and high performance readers for forward-only work but you have to cuff together your own state container to make those reasonable

Ixrec

but I love JSON and can't imagine anything toppling that in the near future

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec it demands structure but nobody structures it so working with it sucks...

@Ixrec JSON is magnifico.

Ixrec

we recently brought JSON Schema into our codebase, going pretty well so far

most of the bugs caused by the migration are old ones being unearthed because the new stuff works better rather than issues with the new stuff itself

durron597

Don't Repeat Yourself

Ixrec

and there's an admin tool I want to make for this project which will probably use JSONPath

everything JSON-based seems to "just work"

user114359

7:59 PM

@durron597 copy-paste fail

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec that's because JSON embodies the old credo about liberal in what you accept

Robustness principle

In computing, the robustness principle is a general design guideline for software: Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others (often reworded as "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"). The principle is also known as Postel's law, after Internet pioneer Jon Postel, who wrote in an early specification of the Transmission Control Protocol that: TCP implementations should follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. In other words, code that sends commands or data to other...

also probably because JSON is just an unbelievably simple format, it's hard to screw up a bunch of strings

durron597

You know what's an unbelievably simple format?

Ixrec

to paraphrase its inventor, it is the intersection of the data structures provided by all programming languages, as opposed to the union, thus it has what everyone needs and nothing else

durron597

Protobuf

Jimmy Hoffa

Yeah, protobuf is pretty dang cool, but dealing with bit twiddling isn't the nicest thing in all languages...

durron597

8:04 PM

@JimmyHoffa doesn't the language do all that encoding nonsense for you?

Jimmy Hoffa

Huh, never saw that it had a text format

I've only ever seen protobuf used for high performance stuff so it's always all binary

Telastyn

screw protobuf.

durron597

@JimmyHoffa the text format is the human readable, unencoded version.

it's just for reasoning about what you want your messages to look like

Ixrec

if I'm reading that page right, protobuf isn't so much a data format as it is a DSL for generating serialization code

which is also cool

durron597

i would not use protobuf to talk to a webpage

Jimmy Hoffa

8:07 PM

@Ixrec yeah, ideally you use it to create your own protocol, thus protobuf

durron597

but for two servers to talk to each other, hell yes.

Ixrec

@JimmyHoffa that does sound like the ideal use case, yeah

durron597

if i'm doing ajax, use JSON all the way obv

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 but why not just use JSON then? Then you can use a web page and a server to talk to whatever endpoint you're talking to...

durron597

@JimmyHoffa it depends on the domain

Jimmy Hoffa

8:08 PM

@durron597 not really, depends on the lifetime and growth potential: Will this thing you're writing be used in 2 weeks? Yes? Ok, it will be used 6 year from now by people who are trying to put a web-accessible front end on it.

scope creep is one indefatigable (Word of the day!) constant in corporate life.

Ixrec

I'd consider protobuf if my servers were doing something time/performance-sensitive like multiplayer gaming or voice chat

I'd definitely start with JSON though

durron597

@JimmyHoffa scope creep is like starcraft Zerg creep. Gross, purple, spreads everywhere and bugs crawl out of it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ixrec yeah, performance and compression is it's niche except less so recently as JSON has grown beyond all reason to the point people have made extremely high performant JSON libs and you can go down to BSON to improve it

Ixrec

@durron597 no, it's much worse, at least you can see and measure Zerg creep

durron597

Thought I might get a star if I made that one message ;)

Jimmy Hoffa

8:12 PM

On the subject, if you've never seen it before, worth being aware of MsgPack as a good easy to use alternative that lives somewhere between JSON and ProtoBuf

Big selling point for it is they already have libraries they maintain available for damn near everyone, they sell interoperability support that Protobuf doesn't quite have with protobufs varying maintainers across languages

or rather, they don't sell it because it's free

user55340

8:29 PM

Hmm. Wish there was a way to get mike of the variable question in here.

user55340

It's a reasonable question - just not a good main site one.

user55340

It's the type of thing you should discuss, not answer.

user41796

@MichaelT link?

user55340

Awkward.

user55340

Id 300406

user55340

8:31 PM

programmers.stackexchange.com/q/300406

Ixrec

why did SE go offline the moment a legitimately interesting algorithm question appears in the feed

user41796

@Ixrec That's what I was wondering too

user41796

Woops. SO is down too

user55340

I'll +fav it once I get a chance.

user55340

Billions in lost productivity! Or gained. Beak out the nerf swords

user41796

8:33 PM

Site is back

Jimmy Hoffa

> 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.

user41796

@MichaelT is it worth super-pinging him?

user55340

Maybe.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa there is a story I read about a biological attack, and only those in the purified air of a computer platform survived.

Ixrec

aaaaaand self-delete

blargh

user55340

8:35 PM

@Ixrec the variables?

Robert Harvey

teh variablez

(FTFY)

Ixrec

3 mins ago, by Ixrec

why did SE go offline the moment a legitimately interesting algorithm question appears in the feed

the quesiton

user41796

@Mike Would you care to discuss your question here in chat?

user55340

@MattJohnson: Note: I'm not criticizing your question, just clarifying your comment ;-) It is commonly accepted that these kinds of questions are kind of circular, because in order to be allowed to ask the question in the first place, the thing to name has to be a well-known concept with a single canonical name, which means that strictly speaking in order to know whether or not the question is on-topic, you need to already know the answer. So, we try to walk a very fine line and err on the side of closing, which is necessary for site quality and unfortunately annoying and unhelpful for askers. — Jörg W Mittag 5 mins ago

user41796

superpings are hard

user55340

8:38 PM

One of the best explanations of naming trouble.

user55340

I recall a theory of programming languages class where we wrote code in ML. Technically, no variables.

amon

@MichaelT variables aren't called variables because they can be reassigned, but because they are symbols without a fixed value. Antonym: constant, a symbol with a fixed value. See also: maths.

Jimmy Hoffa

> see also: DIE DIE DIE

ok yeah, I think I've been here too long now... time to go home....just need to write...one more..class...

user55340

I recall the professor calling them values or bound parameters... Though that was long ago.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I quite like the terminology of "binding" for these types of things, it's a different perspective and I think explains it better. It's a common terminology in LISP I believe - "binding environment" becomes a natural term for a closure

I should look at that Q you guys are talking about now

but..one...more..class..

user55340

8:48 PM

You can classify later.

Mike

8:59 PM

Hey guys, where am I? ;) :)

user55340

You're in chat. Welcome.

user55340

A bit from the question:

user55340

> In my next exam at university I need to answer the general question: Why use variables?

At first it was really hard for me to find an answer and get me ready for the test because I never really learned programming in school. I did learning by doing because I really like to write programs and because of that my focus was never on such, at first sight trivial looking questions like Why use variables? (Silly me..)

I am especially interested in java as this is the programming language we use at university. (But the question can also be answered in a general point of view, because the questi…

user55340

(For the non-10k users)

Ixrec

I'm not sure I understand the question

user55340

9:06 PM

The question posted was a "I'm going to have this on an exam... Is what I think right?"

user55340

Which is a really awkward fit for a main site question.

user55340

Perfectly fine in chat.

Mike

Ok, I understand.. Yeah sorry folks I was getting thus feeling pretty fast after posting the question

Ixrec

can't argue with that

maybe I need to go find the actual question and read all of it, still not sure what Mike's asking

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/q/300406

Ixrec

9:10 PM

hm

ratchet freak

that's a vague question at the best of times

user55340

Yep. That's why we worked to get @Mike in chat.

Ixrec

@Mike I think the missing clarification is "Why use variables as opposed to X?"

without the X it could mean pretty much anything

ratchet freak

historically speaking data used in programs have to be referable in some way

Ixrec

"Why variables (that can be changed) instead of constants?" for example is a totally reasonable question, and some programming styles/languages support having all named values be immutable

ratchet freak

9:12 PM

depends on context as well

user55340

Val vs var in some languages.

user55340

144

Q: What is the difference between a var and val definition in Scala?

What is the difference between a var and val definition in Scala and why does the language need both? Why would you choose a val over a var and vice versa?

scala

Ixrec

and while we wait for Mike to clarify I'll watch some more Doctor Who

user55340

Though admittedly this is confusing the issue.

Mike

Ok I have one question, is this now about to teach me how to improve my questions in advance or about the answer to that question. I don't mean this in a negative way, I just want to clarify what this is about :)

Ixrec

9:14 PM

@Mike both

user55340

Or either.

Mike

Ok

Ixrec

questions usually need to be asked well in order to be answerable, especially in programming

user55340

We can help with answering this question and help in asking a better main site question.

Ixrec

and in many cases clarifying the question ends up being the same thing as answering it (c.f. "rubber duck debugging")

Mike

9:16 PM

So I was thinking to get a general answer about variables why use them I was expecting that there is a endless amount of facts/advantages to answer the question in a general way. That was my motivation

With endless I mean something like less than ten

user55340

It is an all too frequent situation that a question that looks reasonable is unanswerable because we know it is... Very awkward trying to explain those.

Mike

I don't wanted someone to narrow down the answer to the smallest advantage variables bringt. Just something which gets me feeling ready to answer the question at exam

But I understand now that the way I asked the question was wrong

user55340

So... Why variables? Different components need to indicate a change of state to each other. Variables are one way to accomplish this.

Mike

Yeah good point

user55340

There are other ways. Invoking a function with a different set of (unchanging after bound) values is one such. This is often seen in functional programming.

user55340

9:27 PM

May 9 '13 at 16:57, by MichaelT

(defn pi
  ([] (float (* 4 (pi 1 0.01 0 true))))
  ([term tol accum pn]
    (let
      [t (/ 1 term)
       a ((if pn + -) accum t)]
      (if (< (* 4 t) tol)
        a
        (pi (+ term 2) tol a (not pn))
      )
    )
  )
)

user55340

No variables. Just bound parameters.

user55340

And a few unchanging values in let to make it easier to work with.

user55340

I won't claim that is good code at all though.

Mike

So I got maintainability, readability. Optimizations and error detection at compile time in statically typed languages. Defining of scopes would I also see as advantage when defining variables see private protected.. In e.g. java

user55340

Aside, @Mike ask your professor what foo is in the following code: final int foo = bar ? 4 : 42;

user114359

9:34 PM

Use variables when you have more data than you have fingers to count it.

Mike

I think I need to clarify I working 30 hours next to my study, so I doing hard to learn everything as expected I just try to get as much out of it as possible (I hope you understand.. I am no native english speaker). I also think that this answer should not be to detailed because it is one out if many and I everyone needs to answer one question (42 people 2 hours of time)

Ixrec

I guess the real question is still what definition of "variable" the test is using, we're all sort of assuming the "value which can change" definition because that's the simplest one for which the question is interesting, but a lot of people probably just think of "variable" as meaning "name of a thing" for which there probably is no coherent answer

user114359

Variable in the broad sense is simply a name for a memory address. More specifically, you can add the semantics of change, which is enforced by the compiler or runtime environment.

Ixrec

which leads to the question becoming "Why do we use memory addresses?"

...I'm having trouble coming up with an answer to that one

amon

I think, but am not entirely sure, that {variables, storage locations, function parameters} of either the read-only or read-write kind would be necessary for Turing-completeness.

user55340

9:48 PM

Write only memory!

Ixrec

you could even argue a pushdown automaton has variables/storage locations

so good thing you said necessary and not sufficient =)

user55340

Ohh. Helpful flag display changed. Probably the source of that blip of maintenance offline.

user55340

One of those - should we undelete?

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/q/300407/40980

user55340

(That is not my undelete vote on it currently)

amon

10:02 PM

@MichaelT I cast the undelete vote because it's actually a good, useful, relevant, and on-topic question. And it's mercifully short! And has a nice answer. I do not understand why the OP deleted it – did they mean to mark it as resolved?

Ixrec

my instincts are telling me that's a really meh question but I might be biased against git branching questions since almost every single one I've ever seen immediately struck me as "you are massively overcomplicating this"

user55340

Just checking - I try to avoid acting on posts I have a vested interest in.

Ixrec

for that particular question I feel like it's probably too broad, in the same way that "Why would you ever use <language feature X>?" is too broad; it boils down to a poll of examples where none can be "better" than another

user55340

I'll look at it more tonight to see if I can tweak it to have a problem statement with it.

user55340

Being deleted makes it particularly easy to fix quietly.

Duga

10:30 PM

Your solution seems to make sense to me, but I'm not sure what your question is. Perhaps this question would be more appropriate on Code Review (if you have actual code) or Programmers (if you don't). — stiemannkj1 41 secs ago

enderland

10:43 PM

@Telastyn in other news, playing the Bogue is absolutely horrible

user55340

11:33 PM

@Ixrec (and pinging @amon too) - I modified the contents of programmers.stackexchange.com/q/300407 - does it look better now? (and FWIW, does my answer still answer it?)

Ixrec

my instinct is yes and yes, though I have near zero familiarity with "gitflow" so can't say for sure

looking it up now and as expected this is immediately feeling overcomplicated, BUT it does say "release branches" which seems to me like partial confirmation that your answer is basically correct

user55340

At Employer^, we implemented a gitflow-esque system... and we did have two releases going on at the same time.

Ixrec

I think my only real issue is I have no idea if the new question has anything to do with what the OP was asking, but considering it got deleted I suppose that's not much of a concern

user55340

We had a X.0.0 release going out (three week effort to get everything done and complete), and while in that we found we had to do another release for some features that a customer wanted... so go back, branch that one to another release branch...

Ixrec

actually now that I look at this more, I think the only difference between this and what my team does is we don't have the "master" line on the far right; we just have the release branches

user55340

11:38 PM

@Ixrec thats one of those "when you give up on the question, we can work to really fix it.

Ixrec

I assume the master line makes sense in a shrinkwrap context where eventually the release is DONE, as in actually DONE and on shelves to never be changed again

which is not the case where I work

user55340

In the Vance model, gitflow develop is the mainline. Master is a git convention for the "this is the one that has the final stamp - build from here"

user55340

So, is the question better (and still short enough for @amon)

Ixrec

it's definitely better, it actually tries to be specific enough to potentially have an answer

user55340

I approached it as "lets run that 'what if there was a persistent release branch forward and think about the problems it causes'" and then wrote that as the question.

Duga

11:44 PM

StackOverflow is specifically a site about code -- programmers.stackexchange.com and careers.stackexchange.com are better places for non-coding-centric issues -- but even for them, it may not be entirely topical (chatty isn't good; neither is broad, neither is opinion-based). Please read through the Help Center about what kind of questions are welcome here. — Charles Duffy 43 secs ago

user55340

With the gitflow model, think of it as "stability of the build increases as you go from left to right"

user55340

@Duga careers.SE doesn't even exist

Ixrec

@MichaelT is there a model that doesn't have a progression from less stable to more stable?

user55340

@Ixrec svn kind of.

user55340

-2

Q: What was your experience as a Software Engineer when transitioning from Game Development to "Business" Application Programming? (Without CS Degree)

This is my first post, and I figured I would start off with a fun question. I want to hear your stories and experiences with getting to where you are today. To start, I'll describe a bit about myself and go further into detail about my question. I was hired by an indie game development comp...

unity3d computer-science software-engineering

user55340

11:45 PM

^^^ MEH!

user55340

@Ixrec I've branched off a feature release to make a more stable build that I would then merge into a different branch of mine. It was a bit of a mess.

Ixrec

I'm having great difficulty making sense of that statement, which I guess proves your point

user55340

Feature A was a branch. It was a bit unstable, but had occasional moments of stability. So I branched feature A to feature A stable and did merges from feature A into feature A stable when it was. I had feature B which depended on feature A changes... and I'd merge feature A stable into feature B.

Ixrec

ah

user55340

branch on incompatible policy - bradapp.com/acme/branching/branch-creation.html#PolicyBranch

Ixrec

11:48 PM

my reaction to that is if any part of what you said sounds like a good idea, that means the branch has lived too long and the feature needs to be split up into smaller chunks

user55340

There were other problems with this project that forced a few less than ideal things.

user55340

I needed a stable library build - I couldn't follow the latest snapshot one. And Jenkins wanted a branch for that build. So, I branched and stabilized.

Ixrec

that makes a bit more sense

user55340

Part of the issue was that feature A was "high risk development" with a moderately volatile code line. So it couldn't be checked into trunk until it was complete. Since feature B depended on A, it too was (by necessity) a different branch - not something we could check into trunk.

user55340

Otherwise, all low risk development and maintenance efforts were done in trunk. Once A was complete and B finished up, we then branched trunk and merged both of our features into that and cleaned up everything and merged it back into trunk and it was all done.

Ixrec

11:55 PM

yeah now it's clicking

I think I did something like that on a very tiny scale once or twice

as in B was 1~3 commits, and worked on while I was waiting for A to get code reviewed

Telastyn

@enderland I dunno, I kinda liked the bogue bomber loadout. Independence is not great. soooo much grinding, and every once and a while you end up in tier 8 matches and just wait 15 mins to die.

user55340

482

Q: xkcd-style graphs

I received an email to which I wanted to respond with a xkcd-style graph, but I couldn't manage it. Everything I drew looked perfect, and I don't have enough command over PlotLegends to have these pieces of text floating around. Any tips on how one can create xkcd-style graphs? Where things loo...

plotting

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