The Whiteboard

Ampt

10:00 PM

tumbleweed.gif

Ixrec

@ThomasOwens Just saw the new close reasons. Thank you!

user55340

10:23 PM

@Ixrec a chance to use it.

user55340

-1

Q: Delete data separate with comma PHP

I'm trying to delete data in the database but i'm having a difficulty since they are separated with comma and my code didn't run successfully. This is my code: HTML <div class="form-group"> <label for="form-password">Campaign Statuses </label>  ...

Ixrec

with great pleasure

Ampt

Afternoon @JonEricson

Robert Harvey

First question closed under the new custom close reason?

Jon Ericson

@Ampt Certainly is.

Lightness Races in Orbit

10:27 PM

I flagged it as such anyway

assuming you mean the close-as-SO

yeah, good

Robert Harvey

Yep.

Lightness Races in Orbit

I really do think you should consider renaming P.SE to Software Design

the name is terrible at summing up the topic

Ampt

the new close reasons list who voted for which close reason - interesting

Lightness Races in Orbit

it's done that for years, hasn't it?

Ampt

@LightnessRacesinOrbit Lol... the name of progs has been oft discussed, much debated, never changed (yet)

Robert Harvey

10:28 PM

@Ampt Yeah, noticed that. I think maybe they always did that, we just never noticed it before.

Ampt

@RobertHarvey could be this - I've never seen it before, but I don't look hard.

Lightness Races in Orbit

23

Q: Could the close vote banner please be made less... well, wrong?

Take this example of a poor question and the outcome of its poverty: closed as not constructive by sgar91, ppeterka, Lightness Races in Orbit, R. Martinho Fernandes, kbok 38 secs ago Well, okay, fine. I did vote to close the question, but as off-topic. Because more people voted not construc...

feature-request vote-to-close close-reasons attribution

Robert Harvey

"Software Design" is a better name than the ones anyone else has come up with.

Ixrec

@Ampt it started doing that some time after I joined, it's not "new" but it it's not older than dirt either

Ampt

@JonEricson I meant Good Afternoon :) I always enjoy the discussions that come up when you join chat.

Lightness Races in Orbit

10:29 PM

It's not obvious in this case, but it'll still fold the "off-topic as..." down into one and stick all your names by it

just if someone else had voted "non constructive" for example their name would go alongside that instead

so it's not actually "who voted for which close reason", despite appearing to be

well, unless something has changed again very very recently — I haven't paid much attention of late

Ixrec

@RobertHarvey that's about the same one I have in mind whenever the topic comes up

Jon Ericson

@Ampt It is that too. I survived the DVM and lived to tell the tale.

user55340

@Rachel But there will always be people that suffer from the "herp derp oh look a textbox" syndrome, and no amount of renaming the site or amending the FAQ is going to fix that. — Adam Lear ♦ Jan 28 '12 at 0:35

Ixrec

I thought one of the An(n)as coined that phrase

amon

DVM? Dalvik virtual machine?

Lightness Races in Orbit

10:35 PM

> You will need to create a new password which meets the below requirements;
>
> Minimum length of 6 characters
> Contains at least 1 uppercase, 1 lowercase character
> Contains at least 1 numeric character
> Does not contain more than 2 consecutive identical characters

oh for goodness's sake

Ixrec

every time someone mentions Dalvik I think of Daleks

@JonEricson did you mean DMV?

Lightness Races in Orbit

> Please note: This link is valid for 24 hours, if you have not completed resetting your password within this time period you can request another link here.

COMMA SPLICING!!!!!

Jon Ericson

@Ixrec Probably. I'm so mixed up. ;-)

user55340

17

A: Change the name of Programmers to something that more accurately reflects the site scope?

I write this both as a 20,000+ user and former elected moderator on Programmers, and as a community manager at Stack Exchange. First and foremost: we will not be changing this site's name. Why? Well, let's talk about that. As others have brought up here, there is no evidence right now to sup...

daOnlyBG

why not psuedocode.stackexchange.com?

Ixrec

10:40 PM

that would be misleadingly narrow instead of misleadingly broad

user55340

AGAIN?????????? — Robert Harvey Jun 25 '12 at 15:02

user55340

@LightnessRacesinOrbit Pas$w0rd

enderland

@JonEricson that's a perk of living in a smaller town, the "DMV" is actually the local courthouse with real people

Lightness Races in Orbit

wow, so Adam thinks the incorrect name shouldn't change because content matters more than the name? how ridiculous.

Ixrec

the other part of his argument appears to be that many of the bad/off-topic questions are about "software development", so that name change wouldn't stop them

which is the valid part imo

Lightness Races in Orbit

10:49 PM

you guys complain all the time about people not understanding the site's topic. then when someone suggests changing the name to something that doesn't completely misrepresent the site's topic, it's "oh no not this conversation again no feck off we ain't doing it"

Ixrec

that's mostly because it's happened so many times and it's been completely ruled out by the gods, so there's literally no point in it

Lightness Races in Orbit

@Ixrec meh that's like saying let's not name anything unless you can cram the entire Help Centre into it

@Ixrec I'll give you that at least

with the caveat that the Gods are teh silly

Ixrec

though as I've said before I think it'd be worth a shot

user55340

It's a "it has been decided at higher levels than the community can change"

Ixrec

it'd definitely rule out at least some of what we consider off-topic

whether or not incomers pay attention to that hint

Lightness Races in Orbit

10:50 PM

if it helps, pretend I was talking to the Gods

it's absurd

daOnlyBG

@LightnessRacesinOrbit I agree with your sentiments, but upon further thought, I'm not sure of an easy-to-remember name that would be appropriate. Maybe "CodeDesign.SE"? That could also be a bit misleading

Jon Ericson

I'm curious why this question is closed. I mean, you might disagree with the idea of using TODO comments, but you'd be wrong.

Lightness Races in Orbit

it also makes you look kind of dumb when you name the site "Programmers" and then like 99.999999999999999999999999999999% of things useful for Programmers are off-topic

2

amon

@MichaelT (which doesn't mean we can't grumble disapprovingly)

Lightness Races in Orbit

it's like calling an SE site "astrology.SE" then complaining whenever anyone posts a question about anything other than Aries

Jon Ericson

10:51 PM

@enderland I followed up the DMV with a trip to city hall to pay a parking ticket. That was a fairly painless (except the cost) experience.

user55340

17 answers. More than a few being completely opinion and opposition of each other.

Lightness Races in Orbit

@daOnlyBG SoftwareDesign.SE is the closest I've thought of yet - bear in mind I still have almost no idea what the topic is here

Ixrec

@JonEricson because it's essentially an opinion poll; as you can see from the answers it's really about the "right way" to use todo comments, and there are many different equally valid ways with nothing in the question to distingish them

psr

@LightnessRacesinOrbit Though only coffee is on-topic, coffee is all things.

daOnlyBG

@LightnessRacesinOrbit "SoftwareDesign.SE" might sound bit too close to "software engineering," and that would be too restrictive, in my humble opinion

Ixrec

10:53 PM

I also feel something with "Design" in the name would be the best candidate for ruling out a significant portion of what we consider off-topic without excluding the stuff we definitely want

enderland

@JonEricson yes or no questions are not good subjective questions

user55340

0

A: Do TODO comments make sense?

IntelliJ will actually alert you if you try to commit code that has new TODOs. So, you can always interpret a TODO as "this really should happen by the time I commit".

user55340

Meh answers too.

Ixrec

the real judge of close-worthiness is always the answers

Lightness Races in Orbit

@daOnlyBG software design is clearly a subset of software engineering

it's strange that you appear to be suggesting the inverse

daOnlyBG

10:54 PM

Yes

Ixrec

pretty much every time I see a borderline question I go look at the answers and let them tell me if the question "encourages poor answers as currently written"

daOnlyBG

I'm not suggesting the inverse...?

Jon Ericson

@MichaelT Who cares? The voting is working quite well there.

user55340

-2

A: Do TODO comments make sense?

In my experience, TODO should be used to indicate that a piece of code is not usable and tells the reader what's needed to make it usable (either locally or elsewhere). TODO annotations should not be used to indicate that some piece of code would be nicer if modified in some way. Examples includ...

Lightness Races in Orbit

@daOnlyBG you said "software engineering" would be too restrictive when, in fact, it would be too broad

user55340

10:55 PM

@JonEricson would you rather us down voting more new users?

Ixrec

I feel like you're using a definition of software engineering that's completely different from all the definitions I've heard other people use in the past

which I suppose proves this entire discussion is pointless

Jon Ericson

@MichaelT No. But feel free to downvote bad answers.

Lightness Races in Orbit

@Ixrec who?

user55340

New uses giving answers that are bad, and in line with the other bad answers in the poll of experiences and local "we go it this way"

Ixrec

the main one I remember is a few weeks ago I asked in here what "software engineering" means, and why the programming most of us do is nothing like it, and @ThomasOwens and @whatsisname spent a significant amount of time explaining it to me

@JonEricson For the record, I cast the final close vote on that TODO question because I saw a poor answer on it in the First Posts queue today

daOnlyBG

10:57 PM

@LightnessRacesinOrbit I wasn't comparing software engineering against software design- I was comparing both to programming. Both would seem a bit too restrictive, since not all coding is necessarily part of "software"- or rather, the term "software" implies GUI, I/O, etc etc

user55340

Is it worse for a new user to have the experience of "interesting question, too bad it's closed" or "interesting question, I'll answer it, why is everyone down voting me?"

Jon Ericson

@Ixrec Poor answers that never get read hardly hurt the quality of the site. Downvote (or not) and move on.

enderland

also notice that many answers there are basically, "well, I do it this way...." which is pretty much the definition of primarily opinion based

daOnlyBG

@LightnessRacesinOrbit I suppose it doesn't exactly help that many of us here understand "software engineering" to imply different things

Ixrec

^ this

enderland

10:58 PM

and the top answer basically says "this is a personal preference"

Jon Ericson

@enderland I'd say that Oded knows his craft better than most. Certainly better than me.

enderland

@JonEricson so is his opinion better? just because one opinion is "better" or "more trustworthy" doesn't change that question being primarily opinion based. I mean heck, most of the answers basically say that

> answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise

amon

@JonEricson my reading of that question is that it's way to broad. Essentially, it asks “what is the best way to keep track of TODOs? Inline comments or an external tracking system”. Again, it's theoretically possible to write a great answer, but no such answer has been provided. Instead, dozen of people chiming “my IDE highlights them”, “personal preference”, “in language X, you can use this feature”, “in my opinion, …” etc.. Such discussions are apt for Reddit, but of no value here.

Jon Ericson

To note: the reasons I hear to close it are all related to "question smell".

enderland

the reason that question is a bad subjective question is because it's asking a yes/no question that is basically a poll of opinions. If questions like that should be on topic, why does SE have a blanket "primarily opinion based" close reason across nearly all SE sites?

Jon Ericson

11:01 PM

@enderland Yes they are. He's clearly a gifted and experienced programmer. So are most of you all.

user55340

Something smells. It attracts new users who get a bad experience when providing another poor answer.

enderland

@JonEricson so we should vote up his answer because of the user who posted it? what about the other half dozen answers that say equally "in my experience"

Ixrec

@JonEricson actually, most of them are about the quality of the existing answers, no need to smell the question in this case

user55340

And it does fit a pre defined close reason to a very high degree. Not an unclear as a proxy.

enderland

his answer was posted first. so it's highest upvoted. unsurprising HNQ effect, most likely

user55340

11:03 PM

Personally, I don't agree with oded there.

user55340

More in line with the next one. I am also a build process type and have todo get warned about in analysis and commit hooks.

Jon Ericson

@MichaelT Good to know. Too bad your experienced knowledge is locked away in chat...

Lightness Races in Orbit

@daOnlyBG o.O It doesn't but okay.

user55340

It is already in several other answers there. Why add another that says the same thing again and makes it harder to read?

Lightness Races in Orbit

but at least now I understand what you were getting at

daOnlyBG

11:06 PM

@LightnessRacesinOrbit I mean, it sure did a while ago when the topic came up for discussion

Lightness Races in Orbit

@enderland It's a closure in the form of an answer! Odd.

user55340

And provides further endorsement of a noisy question?

Lightness Races in Orbit

@daOnlyBG nope

brb

enderland

this conversation confuses me to what the point of the "primarily opinion based" close reason really is. to me, this question is about as perfect of a fit for it as any I have ever seen... :(

user55340

Occasionally my knowledge filters it's way to blog posts which are a better platform for pontification.

Ixrec

11:07 PM

@enderland I think that's how most of us feel, I don't understand this either

I'm trying to figure out what my policy is on TODO usage and I'm coming to the conclusion that I just throw them out whenever I feel like it and no one's complained so far

user55340

Alternatively if someone asks a workflow and build question about the way to hook up comments and the build ... That has an answer.

Jon Ericson

@enderland I suspect that my definition of "opinion" differs materially from yours.

enderland

what makes a question primarily opinion based?

user55340

Do you have three examples of good opinion closes that we could look at?

Jon Ericson

To me "primarily opinion-based" means: the opinions of experts are as valid (or invalid) as the opinions of novices.

Ixrec

11:13 PM

what would be an example of such a question?

user55340

Why / how should we distinguish that?

user55340

A novice way of using todo is just as valid as mine.

Ixrec

my way is almost certainly novice

Jon Ericson

@MichaelT Here's one. I'll have to look at older questions to find more.

enderland

@JonEricson you don't find a question that has so much, "in my opinion..." answers to be a question that likely indicates that's the case? especially one where voting results are nearly perfectly sorted based on post timestamp?

user55340

11:16 PM

Such things are largely a question of taste, but certain code quality tools can insist by default that they're in a certain place. — Robbie Dee 9 hours ago

user55340

That could go on the todo question too.

Jon Ericson

@MichaelT I'm guessing most novices don't know that there are IDE hooks to support TODO comments. That takes experience and knowledge.

user55340

That is my way of using it.

Jon Ericson

@enderland Not when it's "here's my opinion and here are some facts/reasons to support it".

Ixrec

well, on the off chance anyone cares about my opinion:
- The criterion that "expert opinions are more valid than novice opinions" applies to *every question ever asked*, good, bad, on-topic and off-topic. So it's not very useful.
- The meaning of primarily opinion-based that I'm used to is "all opinions (expert or otherwise) are about equally valid, i.e. there is simply no way to determine whose opinion is 'best'"

Jon Ericson

11:19 PM

@Ixrec Does it matter where you put setters and getters in a class definition?

Ixrec

probably not

user55340

I like automaton. I had a todo comment trigger a issue in the bug tracker. But again that is me.

Ixrec

there's certainly no one right answer for all classes, if there is a right answer for any class

user55340

Check style can complain about out of order getters.

user55340

I put them at the end, or in alpha order with all methods.

Ixrec

11:21 PM

@JonEricson Do you have an example of a question that you would consider primarily opinion-based?

user55340

Bugs me quite a bit when I feel the need to change from one to the other.

Jon Ericson

@Ixrec That was one. I'm looking for more.

enderland

I think what it comes down to is I have a much higher standard for a good question than you @JonEricson - to me, the exact wording on the primarily opinion based reason comes is practically defined by that question - "Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise."

Ixrec

@JonEricson oh that was one you thought should be closed? I thought you were citing it as one that shouldn't have been closed

blargh

enderland

the "expert" answers are basically answers to, "what cool IDE features are there for using TODOs in code?"

user55340

11:23 PM

Including that awful IntelliJ one.

Jon Ericson

@enderland Yeah. That might be too broad. It would probably be better to ask for particular programming ecosystems or something. But there are facts to be cited.

enderland

@JonEricson yeah, but those are to a different question than "todos, yes/no?"

user55340

1

Q: What is better to design or discover interface

Let's say you have some issue to develop. And as recommended practice it is good idea to use interfaces ( I don't mean GUI, I mean interface or abstract class ). And you can apply two ( I'm pretty sure, but for now I noticed I apply two ) ways: Design interfaces upfront and then implement them....

java c# design

Jon Ericson

@enderland Sure. I just think it odd to close a question as opininated where the top answers include facts to back them up.

user55340

Opinion or not?

enderland

11:25 PM

> "I would say this is more of a personal preference"

Ixrec

@JonEricson the facts they include are rather incidental to the question; that IDEs do something with TODOs is not empirical confirmation that TODOs are useful

no one's citing a study that said projects using TODO comments are 10% more efficient

enderland

just including facts into an answer doesn't make it not an opinion based question, either

user55340

> Finally, in my opinion it still makes more sense to have them in the code, at the right place, precisely answering the question "where should I make the change" than somewhere else outside of the code.

Ixrec

I get the feeling this is going exactly the same as the last conversation we had with Jon

user55340

> It may make some sense, at least I use them sometimes. The key point is to use consistent tags such as TODO or FIXME so that they can be easily found with simple text search.

Jon Ericson

11:27 PM

@MichaelT I was on the fence. I think the problem with that question isn't that it prompts for opinions, but that it wasn't reasonably scoped. I'm not going to spend much time designing a UI for the script I use once and throw away. But I absolutely should for my website that I hope will be used by all sorts of users.

Ixrec

and I still don't have any ideas on how to make it go somewhere useful, rather than merely reconfirming the massive disconnect between us and the powers that be

user55340

Does it not fit the "you should not ask questions of this style" pattern to a T?

Jon Ericson

@Ixrec No. But it is evidence. If you don't think they are useful, I'm sure there are ways to find counter-evidence.

enderland

@Ixrec SCOTCH

Ixrec

@JonEricson that's not even what the question was asking; OP was comparing two different ways of designing interfaces, not asking "interfaces, yes/no?"

user55340

11:29 PM

> In my industry, developers are encouraged to make JIRA (or etc) entries instead of todo comments because not everybody gets a chance to see the // todo entries. But sometimes in large projects a custom attribute gets defined along the lines of...

user55340

> In my experience it depends. The main factor is whether or not the team is disciplined enough to follow up on these "little" comments. If they do then yes they make sense. If they don't then these comments are just a waste of time and you may want to look into other options, e.g. story cards.

user55340

Opinions.

Jon Ericson

@Ixrec Dur. Yeah. I didn't read that carefully.

@MichaelT Backed by experience.

Ixrec

@JonEricson It's evidence that IDE developers thought they could get more people to use/like their IDE if they added that feature. Whether that says TODO comments are useful or not depends on a lot of supplementary opinions about how IDE feature sets are designed.

enderland

@JonEricson but you can apply this to 100% of questions, too

Just because something can be "backed by experience" doesn't necessarily make it not an opinion

Jon Ericson

11:31 PM

@Ixrec Nobody says you can't talk about the whole picture.

Ixrec

it would have to be experience of X leading to good/bad thing Y, not just experience of doing X

@JonEricson adding more opinions does not (necessarily) make the original opinion less opinion-based

user55340

Ask oded if todo comments are a matter of opinion.

user55340

Or Adam.

user55340

Ask if people should use them. Then ask if a question asking if people should use them is an opinion one in the context of SE.

user55340

You may get two different answers from the first one. You are unlikely to get two different to the second.

user55340

11:35 PM

The todo comments is not going to converge to a right answer.

Ixrec

I'm disappointed there isn't a "how do you use todo comments" question on Quora

that would be perfect for that site

user55340

Everyone uses then differently.

user55340

And everyone saying how they use them in an unmanageable question.

Jon Ericson

@MichaelT I think that's less true if you focus in on specific environments.

user55340

TODO comments considered harmful

user55340

11:39 PM

And counterpoint: c2.com/cgi/wiki?TodoCommentsConsideredUseful

Ixrec

11 mins ago, by Ixrec

I get the feeling this is going exactly the same as the last conversation we had with Jon

user55340

Those are also experts.

Ixrec

I need to start resisting the urge to comment

user55340

The tdd experts say a todo comment should be a unit test.

user55340

That isn't even represented in the answers we provide.

Jon Ericson

11:42 PM

@MichaelT Yeah. I used to write tests in Perl and the test harness does something interesting with TODO blocks. A simple comment is a lot less useful.

user55340

Another environment!

Ixrec

some of my TODO comments are about refactoring the things that make certain modules impossible to unit test

user55340

YAGNI.

user55340

(Joking)

Ixrec

I was just about to ask, I ain't gonna need tests?

I suppose technically you never need them

user55340

11:44 PM

The refactoring. It will come when it's needed.

Ixrec

technically I could write code with butterflies

Jon Ericson

In a completely different domain, here's an opinion based question.

Robert Harvey

> A factory (BigMappingFactory) which uses other factories to create the mappings from configurations. Therefor the BigMappingFactory has a list of MappingFactories and those MappingFactories can be added to the BigMappingFactory (extendability). Each MappingFactory has a canHandle-Method, so the BigMappingFactory can iterate through the MappingFactory and ask each one to handle this line of the configuration file. A MappingFactory creates a specific Mapping, which is then used by the Mapper.

>_<

user55340

Techno babble generator?

Robert Harvey

-1

Q: Design Pattern for extendable factory with configuration file

I need a hint for an architecture decision of a library. This library reads documents from files and maps the documents to another format. This mapping is highly configurable. So the user has to write a configuration file like this: id = 001 # direct mapping from an entry ...

java design-patterns architecture

Ixrec

11:49 PM

pattern babble

Robert Harvey

Typical architecture astronaut.

user55340

-1

Q: When do Data Architects really play their part? I have never seen this activity in our IT team

I constantly come across Data Architecture and have read about it (to some extent) in TOGAF study. But, where do Data Architects come in... when is there a need to provide a "data architecture"? I have worked in a functional role and liaised with Developers to manage an agile system. However, I ...

architecture data

Robert Harvey

Excuse me while I go write a GUI Interface in Visual Basic... See if I can track his IP address.

Ixrec

so what is a "data architect"?

my company doesn't bother with all the fine-grained job titles so that's greek to me

Robert Harvey

I've always called them DBA's.

Ixrec

11:52 PM

lol

user55340

Aka golf player.

user55340

c2.com/cgi/wiki?ArchitectsPlayGolf

Ixrec

I like how bad management is an "anti-pattern"

user55340

That's how c2 categorized many things.

Ixrec

I'm a bit baffled by the popularity of c2 actually, I've never seen any legitimately useful content there, just lots and lots of unsettled debates about what buzzwords mean

user55340

11:56 PM

It was the first wiki.

Ixrec

really?

user55340

It was also where many agile big names gathered to hash out things.

user55340

c2.com/cgi/wiki

user55340

c2.com/cgi/wiki?WardsWiki

user55340

Ward Cunningham

Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer who developed the first wiki. A pioneer in both design patterns and extreme programming, he started programming the software WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the website of his software consultancy, Cunningham & Cunningham (commonly known by its domain name, c2.com), on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository. He currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon, and is a programmer at New Relic. Previously he was the Co-Creation Czar for CitizenGlobal. He is Nike's first Code for a Better World...

user55340

11:59 PM

WikiWikiWeb

The WikiWikiWeb is the first ever wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by its inventor, programmer Ward Cunningham, to accompany the Portland Pattern Repository website discussing software design patterns. The name WikiWikiWeb originally also applied to the wiki software that operated the website, written in the Perl programming language and later renamed to "WikiBase". The site is frequently referred to by its users as simply "Wiki", and a convention established among users of the early network of wiki sites that followed was that using the word with a capitalized W...

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