The Whiteboard

Robert Harvey

12:33 AM

@whatsisname Example?

I think I've wrapped myself around the axle again.

whatsisname

huh

Robert Harvey

        Expression<Func<Order, Order, bool>> SurnameMatches = (x, y) => x.Customer.LastName == y.Customer.LastName;

Playing around with Predicate Builder.

The problem with most of these rules engines is that they're not able to take in two types for examination. So I modified Predicate Builder to take two types, a left and a right.

Which seems to work. But once you've committed to that type signature, it seems as if you have to use it everywhere.

And if you're building helper methods in each of the types being examined (like HasItem or IsActive), it gets complicated.

@whatsisname So why is C ugly?

whatsisname

1:04 AM

@RobertHarvey: c is sometimes ugly, because there are a lot of programs out there written with 1 and 2 letter variable names and other cryptic stuff

but I admit that's not really inherent to the language

Robert Harvey

Try pretty-printing a minified Javascript library sometime.

whatsisname

1:41 AM

well minified at least has a legitimate excuse for being miserable to look at

user41796

Shog stirred the hornets nest. We'll see how much rep I pull in from my suggestion to unify all of the chat sites.

whatsisname

the js source code could easily be giant arrowheads of callbacks which is no fun

durron597

@RobertHarvey the minifiers are often smart enough to do things like if -> ternary operator and changing true into !0, too

making it even harder to read

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey welcome to the times when C#'s type system get's in my way because it can't flex like ADT's can where you can have one type represented by (a -> b) | (a -> c)

JavaScript doesn't get in my way when I want to do such things which is why I prefer dynamic type systems these days over static ones like C# which lack the power and flexibility of such types

Telastyn

2:03 AM

heretic

user55340

@JimmyHoffa psst... I've got a nice little language here for you - the first program is free.

user55340

2:16 AM

@JimmyHoffa Btw, you should get your kid some camera equipment. Bet he'd like it. red.com

user55340

2:49 AM

Hmm... interesting stats on engagement rings and the like: brilliantearth.com/news/marriage-engagement-data

user55340

user55340

Apparently, men aged 45-54 don't work in jewelry shops on commission.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:08 AM

@MichaelT I honestly would probably appreciate it, but JavaScript is the one industry accepted decent loosely typed language... Python is as well, but I think I'd prefer JavaScript for it's less-strict lexical closures

user55340

Come to the dynamic side... we have control flow inspired by quantum mechanics.

Jimmy Hoffa

Perl will never be something I've opportunity to work in at scale..

user55340

@JimmyHoffa en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Perl_6_Programming/Blocks_and_Closures

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Perl's reputation in industry is

7 hours ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

user55340

@JimmyHoffa You've never touched biotech...

user55340

3:12 AM

You know the 'physics for art majors' type classes? There's 'perl for biologists' - though a bit more stem focused.

user55340

biotech.unl.edu/bioinformatics

user55340

> Custom-program solutions (Java, Perl, VBA) for something simple as conversion or integration of data files, or on the other end of the spectrum develop and program solutions for large-scale analyses (billed per hour)

user55340

The biotech is bio tech. The "I've got this plasmid here and I want to insert this gene... or "how many mutations occurred between generations 1 and 10k of this bacteria...

user55340

amazon.com/Beginning-Perl-Bioinformatics-James-Tisdall/dp/…

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT if it's analyzing data produced by devices; that was my full-time for a fair period..

user55340

3:15 AM

amazon.com/gp/product/0596003072

user55340

amazon.com/Building-Bioinformatics-Solutions-Perl-MySQL/dp/…

user55340

Perl has its place... and biotech really likes it.

Jimmy Hoffa

Yeah, creating the analytical reports, constructing weighted aggregates from the data etc was what we did in C#

You're thinking academia

I said industry

academia has no use for undegreed dipshits like m'self, and I've no use for their pay-to-play game with a family to support anywho

user55340

I drive past a fair bit of biotech industry around here.

user55340

> The Silicon Prairie is about more than technology companies and Internet start-ups. In fact, the biotech industry in Illinois employs nearly 80,000 people, according to a recent analysis by Battelle, and their salaries are double the salary of the average private sector worker in the state.

As biotech executives from across the globe descend upon McCormick Place this week for the annual BIO International Convention, they will have an opportunity to see that the Chicago area is home to a robust biotech hub made up of global companies, including AbbVie, Archer Daniels Midland, Astellas, Ba…

Jimmy Hoffa

3:19 AM

@MichaelT well, research science orgs and such aren't hiring large numbers of software engineers. It's the engineering orgs producing their solutions at scale that will hire me, and the engineering folk use software industry stuff...

durron597

I am officially peer pressuring my colleagues to drinking some of the abandoned beer in the beer fridge

7 PM is now beer o'clock

user55340

I will admit its easier to get Javascript solutions into industry than perl... but if you go to the tool chest of any unix sysadmin... its full of perls.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 haha. Ugh, what are you doing there at 7... man. Setting precedents is bad mmkay. Bleh; having a family and having to compete with folk like you stinks :P

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Its Seattle... they're all bachelors. Its hard to find the right companion when you wear flannel.

durron597

@JimmyHoffa I'm fixing lots of bad code

Jimmy Hoffa

3:22 AM

@durron597 gahhh.

that is officially sausage-factory level stuff right there; I really don't want to know how the sausage is made because I eat way too much of it.

durron597

5 hours ago, by durron597

cc @enderland @Ampt @GlenH7 ^^

look at the (removed) above that

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 I saw, and attempted to block it out

lalala

durron597

lol

Jimmy Hoffa

problems of the 90's have been abolished lalalala industry learned it's lesson lalalalala hums

durron597

@JimmyHoffa Oh, don't worry, the one 815 line class where this code resides (well, in mainline, not in my branch) begins with:

/**
 *
 * Ad metadata stuff, it's a bit of an uncommented/untested mess, but I swear it
 * works
 *
 */

So I've been properly warned.

user55340

3:25 AM

At least its javadoced.

Jimmy Hoffa

true, I wish more code came with such warnings.

durron597

5 hours ago, by GlenH7

W00t! Take 'em where you can win 'em

Jimmy Hoffa

/**
  * I was pretty drunk last night
  * Pretty sure this works though! I think I sort of tested it!
  * Man, how 'bout that scotch amirite?
  * /

durron597

There's also a bunch of code that looks like this:

foo.setDate(bar.getDate());
foo.setName(bar.getName());
foo.setId(bar.getId());
foo.setQuux(bar.getQuux());

i mean, foo and bar are different types, but still.

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 what baffles me is that people can pass as grueling of screening as they give and do stuff like that... just goes to show, as a whole, we really - none of us - has any damned idea how to pick out a good coder

user55340

3:28 AM

@durron597 I wrote a quick and dirty class to do that. Called BeanCloner. It works. And everyone is using it now. sigh

user55340

Whats more, BeanCloner does things like converting between Calendar, Date, and String.

durron597

@MichaelT that sounds safe

@JimmyHoffa I dunno, the guy I hired in my old job didn't write code like this

@MichaelT Is it reflection based?

Jimmy Hoffa

@durron597 sorry; I meant we as in companies.

user55340

java.sql.Date comes out of the sql layer. It doesn't searlizie nicely at all. Its a pain to make sure you have a java.util.Date rather than a java.sql.Date all over the place, so we said "Everything is a Calendar" - which is a better layer for Calendar code.

user55340

@durron597 yep. Fun!

user55340

3:30 AM

Though some annotations in there too.

Jimmy Hoffa

people lookin longingly at your employers hiring practices often as guaranteed way to sort the whey from the chaff; but somehow folks can even pass that and still write code...like that...

durron597

@MichaelT the pojos are generated by an internal framework here. Going to be hard to put annotations in

user55340

The setDate(@StringFormat("YYYY-MM-DD") String date) for making sure its the right format.

Jimmy Hoffa

everyone's hiring practices seem to be failing. I think the only guaranteed way to find a good engineer is to have a very good engineer and make them really dig into the applicants approaches..

durron597

@JimmyHoffa In his "defense", the original author is pretty junior.

user55340

3:32 AM

The thing is that while java.util.Date searlizes to an ascii string, Calendar searlizes to number of milliseconds since epoch - not as human friendly.

durron597

What I don't understand is how this code passed the mandatory code review.

user55340

So now I'm going to have a class CombinedDate { String forMeatSacks; Calendar forComputers; } class that gets tossed in the Date, Calendar, String converter.

durron597

Ah, the original commit had several approvals

here's the first approval message:

> I'm not entirely sure what all is going on but at a top level it looks good to me

> (removed) side is good to go based on testing. Make sure you revisit the DB connection management at a later date.

The third approval had no message.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:46 AM

@durron597 yeah, reviews are often a "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" culture of people not wanting to do it and grouping up to give eachother easy A's

depends on the teams

durron597

I'm trying to decide if I should just fix this and move on or like, learn Hibernate.

user55340

@Snowman store.steampowered.com/app/316610

user15026

@MichaelT that looks cute :D

Robert Harvey

5:41 AM

Five votes to close again. Oh noes!

gnat

6:20 AM

2 days ago, by gnat

^^^carriage turns back into a pumpkin tomorrow

Robert Harvey

6:51 AM

@pnuts: Sure it does. But it does require a bit of thinking effort on your part. — Robert Harvey ♦ 21 secs ago

Duga

9:02 AM

This question (with some modifications and more specific asking) may be ontopic on programmers.stackexchange.com — Trilarion 30 secs ago

Mathematics

10:01 AM

hi

Mathematics

12:28 PM

still dead

ratchet freak

people haven't had their coffee yet be patient

Thomas Owens

I'm almost done with my first cup.

Mathematics

no one is from UK I guess then

ratchet freak

mostly americans here

Mathematics

fair enough

any thoughts about this - prntscr.com/9chzn0

Thomas Owens

12:42 PM

You need to post it on Stack imgur. Use the upload button next to the box.

Otherwise, those of us behind overzealous proxies and filters can't view images.

@Mathematics That's a nice picture. What does it mean?

Mathematics

imgur.com/n2zVvi8

@ThomasOwens I am trying to change our spaghetti architecture into something atleast

Thomas Owens

@Mathematics If that's something different, you need to post it to Stack imgur.

enderland

its the same

I think. :P

Thomas Owens

Part of it is that I find the picture confusing. Why do you have boxes for "Services" and "Layers". If it's a layered architecture, show it as layers.

Mathematics

@ThomasOwens my very first attempt - but I would welcome any feedback

Thomas Owens

12:46 PM

And I don't understand what "Generic Service" or "Generic Repository" is. Maybe you need more granularity to show are things are connected.

Take a look at this picture on Wikipedia.

Mathematics

Generic is there for simple CRUD operations, whereas entity specific repository and service will be doing specific things to that entity

Thomas Owens

You see how they have bands? You would have an Application band that would include your web forms and mobile apps. But I'd even make that more specific and identify application specifics.

Mathematics

@ThomasOwens I did this morning

Thomas Owens

I think you need to add more detail. Because you say that there's some kind of spaghetti architecture. It looks pretty clean to me.

Mathematics

@ThomasOwens this is what I designed, not what we currently have

and yes - you are right, I need to add more domain specific details

in our existing architecture we are calling data access in our web forms code behind

we don't have entity specific services or repositories

we just use module based service and dataaccess class

Thomas Owens

12:56 PM

@Mathematics Ah. I thought you were documenting as-is. I think more details would be good. It's at such a high level that I'm not even sure a non-technical manager would find it useful.

Probably on the right track, though. I would look at other ways to actually represent architectures.

gnat

my "Hint..." post at Math.SE meta has recently got two delete votes. I plan to repost it here (slightly tweaked) right after deletion over there - any objections? (In fact I initially wanted to post it at Progs meta but decided it would be more courteous to give it to Math folks, as it felt like being more about their site)

Thomas Owens

@gnat Why would you post it on our Meta? What value does it add?

What you say is already in our Help Center and meta-faq posts.

If people aren't reading the Help Center or posts tagged faq on Meta, why would they read that post?

overexchange

In this example, checkbox is checked, if value returned is true in onclick="return doAlert()". What about values returned as 0 or 1 or 24? What is the expected behavior? I tested these return values

gnat

1:17 PM

@ThomasOwens good question. One thing I noticed that many Math folks delete their crappy questions after being referred to that hint. I was quite surprised to see how well it works, askers of VLQ questions from other sites rarely act like that. My understanding is, Math folks often are neither malicious nor dumb and the only thing they miss is help in realising that culture over here is much different from that at Math.SE

Thomas Owens

@gnat I could ping the Math.SE mods about making sure that isn't deleted. Or perhaps reworking it into something similar, if that's helpful.

@gnat Just to be clear - after you point them at that question on Math.SE, they self-delete?

gnat

@ThomasOwens yes, self-delete

@ThomasOwens would be great if you talk to them. As I said, to me it felt like our meta would be more convenient home, but since it's about their site, I gave them first hand in hosting it

Thomas Owens

@gnat I just don't think that we need more about this on our Meta...

It's already covered on Meta.SE in the "what computer science / programming site do I post on" question and in our Help Center and in our meta-faq and so on.

gnat

@ThomasOwens I honestly don't care where it is hosted, I only want a post where Math.SE folks can learn about the cultural differences... and decide to self-delete their crappy question

Thomas Owens

@gnat But what in your post is not already covered somewhere on Meta SE or Meta Programmers? I don't disagree with your points, but adding yet another question to update and maintain about policies / standards is not needed.

gnat

1:36 PM

@ThomasOwens as far as I can tell, other posts somehow miss specific target. They talk to some abstract uneducated newbie asker who just doesn't know anything about SE network at all. Math.SE folks are different breed, they feel like questions they post are okay because that's the way at their site. Other meta posts have an attitude "you are first time at Stack Exchange, let us explain basics" - at this point, experienced Math user would simply stop reading, because it's clearly not about them

...at SO, this probably isn't important because they catch the low quality automatically and bury it in triage. At Programmers, we don't have such a luxury

Thomas Owens

So I caught up with the Math mods. If that post gets deleted, no big deal. But I'm really not a fan of a new post on Programmers meta. Perhaps an answer to an existing question? I think that Meta should still be question / answer oriented, so one answer targeting specific users would be helpful.

Jimmy Hoffa

Happy Coffee Day

gnat

@ThomasOwens that's a good idea! do you have any particular question in mind? I also was planning a Q&A pair, thinking to ask @GlenH7 repost his answer from Math meta, but if there's an existing question to match, this would probably be even better

Jimmy Hoffa

@Mathematics the entity and generic services should be inside "services" I presume ? - also the entity / generic repo same regarding "repository". It's a classical N-Tier; works fine but there's different approaches and most importantly are the details. (The devil's in the details!)

Thomas Owens

What about making this question more generic? Identify sites that our users come from and identify site-culture and other differences in answers?

Would require question and answer edits, but it's already part of faq on meta.

gnat

2:00 PM

@ThomasOwens that looks difficult to mix smoothly. SO culture is really close to ours, as opposed to that at Math, and the messages differ a lot. What we say to SO folks is, "what you think is cr@p, is cr@p - please stop sending other folks to repost it at Programmers". What we say to Math guys is, "what you think is good, is not good here - please delete your post at Programmers". I can't figure how to carry both these messages in a single Q&A

enderland

Sometimes you just have to work with the tools you've got. Quickly closing/deleting questions here... isn't the greatest but it's OK

oh sad, we're back to 5 close votes required

Thomas Owens

@gnat I just don't want another question to link people to. It gets hard to keep track of the best one to link people to.

I don't see how it's difficult to maintain. I can't do it now, but I can edit that question by next Monday.

gnat

@ThomasOwens okay, let's give it a try. To me it's not urgent and I'm really curious to see how it can be done

Thomas Owens

I'll reformat what's there. Then I can ping you and we can look at adding a Math.SE answer. Sound good?

gnat

2:15 PM

@ThomasOwens sounds good

user55340

2:32 PM

From the past:

user55340

@Aarobot: I'm saying, SE doesn't provide a good way to exclude users who don't get it. This creates constant friction even on fairly well-defined sites. I suspect SE.SE would end up becoming something like SU: poorly-understood premise braced with an ever-growing laundry list of disallowed topics... — Shog9 ♦ Sep 14 '10 at 17:19

user41796

@gnat Use the trickery of SE to your advantage. If you select my answer on that Math Meta post then that will prevent roomba from deleting off the post.

user41796

Another alternative is to have a Math mod migrate the meta post over to our meta

Ampt

Happy Cancelled Project Day Progs!

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 No no no no. Like I said before...we don't need another post to link people to when they don't understand Programmers. Honestly, we should probably scrub our Meta at some point and edit / close / delete content that is no longer relevant.

Try to minimize duplication. Navigating Meta is hard. Let's make it not hard

user41796

2:44 PM

I thought it was Maths that is hard...

Ampt

@GlenH7 HINT: They're all hard.

Thomas Owens

Everything is hard. Except shopping.

user41796

@Ampt Hmmm, somehow I think this is the answer but it's not evident to me.

Ampt

@ThomasOwens Shopping is extra hard because you forgot the list at home. Again.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Is there precedent for cleaning up a meta site?!

Ampt

2:45 PM

@GlenH7 Well this seems like a fairly simple problem so I'm not going to spell it out for you. We're not here to do your thinking for you.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 Yes. My face.

user41796

Erm, I'm actually being serious on that one. I agree with deleting off the egregious meta posts here and there. But a wholesale cleanup seems rather unusual.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 I don't know if there's precedent. But isn't it just a good idea? I'm not saying to delete old questions and answers, but close them for sure.

And de-link them.

Mathematics

@JimmyHoffa I don't why but I don't like calling it classic n tier

Ampt

@Mathematics Retro N-Tier?

user41796

2:48 PM

I think my hesitancy comes from the fact that meta is by-design different and is meant for airing of opinions. I'd be okay with closing off questions, yes. Deleting seems wrong.

Mathematics

@Ampt to be honest not even N-Tier

user55340

@Ampt some neat stats posted if you scroll back to last night.

user55340

Special historical lock for meta?

enderland

shameless upvote fishing: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/31216/196

gnat

@GlenH7 it's already ineligible for roomba because of positive score answers. I just noticed two delete votes on it, meaning one more VtD and it will go away (don't ask me why these are displayed to 101 rep asker, maybe it's a bug I don't know and honestly don't care). As for migration, for now Thomas has a different plan, we will try to integrate it into existing faq question - into "guide for Stack Overflow"

user55340

2:50 PM

11

Q: Have a special lock for meta sites for historical (out of date) policy decisions

Some sites have gone some significant changes of scope policy over the years. At one time the homework tag was policy on Stack overflow. It isn't anymore. And then there's the entire early history of Not Programming Related Programmers.SE. I'm sure many metas have these old polices sitting arou...

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Perhaps, yes. That would be good.

user55340

Sounds familiar.

Thomas Owens

At least a standard historical lock.

Something to indicate that it's no longer relevant, but not make it go away entirely.

Ampt

@MichaelT The ring stuff? Yeah, I saw that

user41796

@gnat You should open another question on their meta ranting about the VTDs. I'm sure that will be well received.

Ampt

2:52 PM

Yes, make @gnat open all the rants Rubs hands together furiously

gnat

@GlenH7 you read my mind! was planning just this (or an angry edit to that question while it is still visible). Then, I recalled that I initially wanted it to go to our meta and decided to let it go

user41796

Better yet - update the original meta post with a huge number of "edit" and "update" comments and then point to the new meta post ranting about the VTDs. That'll teach 'em!

Ampt

Man I could go for a coffee

user41796

> HINT: How could anyone even possibly think to delete my posts?!?!

Ampt

I'm still bitter about those damn Workplace mods!

cough @enderland cough

gnat

2:55 PM

@GlenH7 "you folks can't tell Newton from Leibnitz, how dare you vote delete my question!"

2

enderland

delete ampt or not, that is the question

oops, thought that outloud

Ampt

Hint: Sex sells! Although you guys have gotten better since that whole experiment started

150

Q: Team members spending too much time on Stack Overflow

Almost 8 months ago, I encouraged my team members to follow Stack Overflow so that they can read questions, help others, and build their skills. But now this has gotten out of hand. I have a team of 5 developers, and three of them each make at least 150 points on average during business hours. T...

team productivity online-presence team-building

gotta admit that's a pretty funny one

enderland

guilty as charged

Ampt

It almost reads: "Help! I introduced my coworkers to SO and now they haz more rep than me! WAT DO!"

enderland

Sometimes I wonder what I could accomplish if I was as dedicated to my job as I "should" be....

Ampt

2:59 PM

@enderland you and every manager, ever.

enderland

lol

Jimmy Hoffa

@Mathematics you just don't want the stigma ; if you don't want it to be associated with N-Tier, make a design that's not N-Tier.. You're applying proscribed knowledge rather than constructing your own analyses for designs that will allow you to evaluate your own designs rather than just measure them against standards.

Thomas Owens

I think it's time to do my performance review.

user41796

@ThomasOwens If it helps, I have successfully done what you're about to attempt. I had a great year and my contributions clearly pushed me past expectations for most of the metrics. I wrote that up, had my supervisor proof it, and at the following promotion cycle I went up a band.

Thomas Owens

Hopefully, I will, too.

Ampt

3:11 PM

I gave myself an 11/10

Thomas Owens

I go to 11.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens I tried 13 but a precision bug in cold fusion rounded it down to 7... :(

user41796

okay, when do we get our 3 votes to close back?

5

Thomas Owens

3:31 PM

Should I mention names of other people in my performance review? Like I was tasking one particular engineer on product development or worked closely with one particular SQA engineer who was the SQA lead.

user41796

-1 for not blaming Haskell. — GlenH7 14 secs ago

user41796

@maple_shaft - All mod deletions can be blamed on learning Haskell. It's the penultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Depends upon company culture

user41796

Share credit where due, yes. Still highlight what you did. Naming names is a culture thing though.

user41796

> On this team, we did XYZ. I led the most complicated portion of the project ...

Thomas Owens

3:34 PM

It's not so much credit, but like "I worked with Engineer X and SQA Engineer Y to do A, B, and C things"

And then go into my specific contributions and noteworthy stuff.

Because I work different projects with different engineers, is it noteworthy to say on Project X and I worked with certain people, on Project Y other people, etc.

smkplus

hi who is master of unity 5

user41796

@ThomasOwens My inclination is to say "No" because I don't see how it builds up what you accomplished. The review is where you get to be selfish and it's all about you.

Thomas Owens

So I would just be like "I led an engineer" and so on?

user41796

yes

user41796

Exceptions to that rule would be when name-dropping is to your advantage.

user41796

3:38 PM

> I led the CEO's pet project to investigate XYZ. On a daily basis, I briefed the CEO on project progress and preliminary results.

user41796

So if you worked with some high visibility folk, then name dropping them is to your advantage

user41796

If they're just regular folk, then they are just cogs in the machinery like the rest of us.

Thomas Owens

Makes sense.

Robert Harvey

3:54 PM

@Ampt Managing your workers via SE proxy.

Ampt

@RobertHarvey I got that vibe too

Thomas Owens

@RobertHarvey It's a new strategy. I should write about it. Could be bigger than MBW.

user55340

@Ampt @RobertHarvey thecodelesscode.com/case/216

user55340

Burn with fire: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/304747/…

Robert Harvey

Fired.

I mean, burned.

overexchange

4:05 PM

In this code, who passes event to callback function f? How do I know that browser will pass the event, before writing such function f?

Robert Harvey

@overexchange Which browser event do you plan on hooking it up to? Does this browser event have a method signature with one event parameter?

Or perhaps you're binding event to something else in the code.

overexchange

am hooking f to onkeypress event

Robert Harvey

OnKeyPress doesn't appear to have a method signature containing an event parameter.

overexchange

yes

it points to null

So, how does one decide that function f has the right signature

to be as call back to that event

Robert Harvey

Have a look here:

18

A: Capture key press without placing an input element on the page?

jQuery also has an excellent implementation that's incredibly easy to use. Here's how you could implement this functionality across browsers: $(document).keypress(function(e){ var checkWebkitandIE=(e.which==26 ? 1 : 0); var checkMoz=(e.which==122 && e.ctrlKey ? 1 : 0); if (checkWeb...

and here:

19

A: Capture key press without placing an input element on the page?

For non-printable keys such as arrow keys and shortcut keys such as Ctrl-z, Ctrl-x, Ctrl-c that may trigger some action in the browser (for instance, inside editable documents or elements), you may not get a keypress event in all browsers. For this reason you have to use keydown instead, if you'r...

They have code samples.

In other news, am I the only one that finds the Mozilla documentation impenetrable in some places?

developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Events/keydown

user55340

4:22 PM

Documentation sucks. Stack overflow thinks they can do something about that.

Robert Harvey

I wish them luck.

Given Stack Overflow's colorful history, I imagine an enormous roomful of monkeys bashing away at typewriters.

Thomas Owens

...I attended 35 of the Engineering Process standard meetings held so far this year. That's more than anyone else, including the full time process improvement staff. o_o

No one else from the Software team had to fill in for me. Even if you group the numbers by discipline, I single-handedly made the software engineering team the most frequently represented functional group.

user41796

I thought there was a prohibition somewhere against cruel and unusual punishment.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens so in short, everybody is rather convinced that TO guy is a touch off

Duga

Welcome to the 21st century. Files belong in a cabinet with a brass handle. In this day and age where the cool kids plonk their code in JSFiddle and pounce on the Run button or dabble around in a Swift sandbox for instant gratification, this answer isn't going to win over many potential Haskell programmers. The really cool kids are probably heading over to Shen where they can have all the type goodness they want, and then some. — ack 57 secs ago

user55340

4:38 PM

Duga triggers on Haskell now too?

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT lol

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT RIGHTLY SO.

user55340

-3

Q: What's the best way (best practices) to categorize support cases coming in from our customers

If the goal is to develop better software based on customer feedback, support cases are a good way to hear the voice of the customer. However we get thousands of them. How do I best categorize them and mine them to know which way to proceed in our product. Can anyone point me to some good resou...

development-process sdlc product-owner technical-support

user55340

@MichaelT so there is nothing I can learn from others on how to do this? Common pitfalls to avoid, Tips and Tricks, etc.? — Mark 2 mins ago

user55340

Missing the point.

overexchange

4:57 PM

1

Q: Query on callback function receiving KeyBoardEvent instance

In the below code, <form action="#" id="sampForm"> <input id='charInput' type='text'> <p id="keyData">Key Data Here</p> </form><br> <script> document.getElementById('charInput').onkeypress = f; function f(event) { var char = getChar(event || window.event) ...

javascript javascript-events eventhandler

Ampt

Proposed that since we were getting cancelled, we redo the whole site in haskell and hand it off that way

status-declined

"I believe you'd get your ass kicked saying something like that, man." youtube.com/watch?v=lV7DzFP6FUY — Jeff Atwood ♦ Jan 18 '10 at 10:56

context or not, that's hilarious

user55340

@overexchange when getting into that nitty gritty of JavaScript questions, SOs JavaScript chat room is likely a better resource.

Jimmy Hoffa

woo... wrote a little sproc that given a table and set of delimiters, lists the columns and or data types with those delimiters so I can sit here and execute it in varying ways to make it generate column lists in the syntax necessary for merge statements, select statements, ADO.NET code, etc etc

need to kick up a repo and variety of sprocs for some tables that are of distinct size..

user55340

There are not that many of us that are sufficiently versed in the innards of JavaScript engines to be able to properly answer that.

Duga

I think it would do you more good to look into how file systems work. If you have trouble understanding those concepts, you can ask specific questions about them. (If they're more conceptual and not specific to an implementation, they probably belong on Programmers.SE.) — jpmc26 10 secs ago

Ampt

5:12 PM

@JimmyHoffa yeah but can you make one that closes all the questions on P.SE?

Robert Harvey

5:24 PM

@Duga I can learn a functional language as powerful as Haskell without suffering the mind-bending pain of Haskell? Where do I sign up?

Ampt

@RobertHarvey For 8 low payments of 39.99 I'd be happy to send you a DVD tutorial!

Robert Harvey

I love it when people end their long-winded diatribe with "Anyway, I think this whole comment conversation is off topic."

> Thanks for the spam about sham.

Ampt

So long and thanks for all the ~~fish~~ spam!

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Surely the answer is "read the docs?"

Though that Mozilla article I linked to was a bottomless pit.

> The Shen kernel is under BSD and currently runs under CLisp, SBCL, Clojure, Scheme, Ruby, Python, the JVM, Haskell and Javascript.

What does that mean? Is this thing a cross-compiler?

durron597

5:59 PM

Delayed Reaction

Robert Harvey

Mike Nakis: resident Java evangelist and language bigot.

I have a cure for that: Resharper. That is, if you like your hand held all the time. — Robert Harvey 3 mins ago

@RobertHarvey it's no better than meta guidance referred to in my prior comment — gnat 23 secs ago

Indeed.

user41796

@durron597 Just a wee bit delayed, yes

enderland

6:18 PM

Speaking of delayed responses, this answer from over a year ago on SO just got accepted earlier this week (????)

Telastyn

How can you evangelize Java these days?

enderland

:popcorn:

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn sadly many people still do... ugh, I'm so tired of feeling stuck in ages old technology around people who are convinced WCF, SOAP, and Java are the future...

enderland

@JimmyHoffa the future is death. everyone dies, always!

Telastyn

future of enterprise software maybe?

Jimmy Hoffa

6:29 PM

@enderland that's success, not the future

One day, nearer for some than others, every last one of us will return zero.

Robert Harvey

Or null, depending on your type signature.

Telastyn

throw new TelastynIsDeadException();

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn it's not an exceptional case.

enderland

@Telastyn the trick is... what does the handler for that look like? or is that a will

Telastyn

yeah, it's pretty much a will invocation method.

@JimmyHoffa - it is for me :P

Jimmy Hoffa

6:35 PM

@Telastyn then for everyone else near you should throw new TelastynException() as you're apparently one indeed.

Telastyn

I see no problem with this arrangement.

also, today is 1:1 day, so might be a little off kilter.

GeoMint

Hello, what is programmers.stackexchange.com ?

enderland

@JimmyHoffa no that's having kids

@GeoMint what do you mean?

GeoMint

i know some people use to ask about their code in stack overflow but what programmers is about?

user41796

Conceptual programming design problems

Robert Harvey

6:45 PM

1

A: Strengthening the Dupe Hammer with General Questions

Reference questions are perfectly fine, so long as they're well-written. Poorly written reference questions are going to get closed just like every other poorly-written question. Some examples of good reference questions: What is a NullReferenceException and how do I fix it? How to fix "Header...

@gnat: ^^

GeoMint

@GlenH7 what's the difference with stack overflow/

Telastyn

stack overflow is about more concrete things: "how can I do X?"
programmers is about theoretical sort of things: "why should I do X?"

GeoMint

hmm thank you

Ampt

Also we have more coffee and scotch.

that's an important distinction too

Aug 28 at 20:24, by Thomas Owens

Picture Programmers like a small conference room with a whiteboard. No computer, no books, no papers. You write your question on the whiteboard and experts walk by. Someone sees one that they can answer, they stop in and help.

2

user41796

^^^ Preferably with a bottle of scotch to share.

user41796

6:58 PM

Today's thought experiment: What if we allowed borderline off-topic questions but only after the OP contributes to the community's scotch fund? For purposes of the discussion, assume a proportional payment of scotch related to the degree of being off-topic.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Time to hit up the shop tonight; what say you-> Brandy, or Mead?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I'm not as big of a fan of brandy as they tend to be sweeter

Jimmy Hoffa

Or perhaps Sheri... honestly don't think I've ever tried that stuff.

user41796

Ironically, I love sweet meads.

user41796

Southern Comfort and hot chocolate?

Jimmy Hoffa

6:59 PM

ewww

user41796

Although it's been way too long since I've had SoCo. I can barely remember what it tastes like

Jimmy Hoffa

Haven't had SoCo in ages; but to my recollection it was a gnarly sweet bourbon with berry nast

user41796

Yeah, sounds about right

user41796

Ought to go well in hot chocolate

user15026

7:14 PM

@GlenH7 No, because I'd never get any ;)

user41796

How we distribute that scotch is yet another discussion, yes

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 distribute? oic, yes, we must tell people we will "distribute" it. Mmm indeed...

user55340

@RobertHarvey ...

user55340

@Ike Questions like that should simply be closed as Too Broad or Unclear, not Closed as Duplicate to a reference question that provides general guidance but no actual answer to the OP's specific problem. — Robert Harvey ♦ 26 mins ago

user55340

The thing is that dups (on so) can get closed with one vote. Too broad takes five.

Telastyn

7:34 PM

SoCo is fine. Good to mix with stuff.

user55340

Oldest American liquor IIRC.

Robert Harvey

7:54 PM

@MichaelT Which is why I've advocated for super-close votes for higher-rep users that work across all cases, not just dupes.

66

Q: Give high-rep users extra weight on close votes

As a person's commitment to the community increases, I think we should make it possible for high-reputation users to fast-track the closure of certain questions. See here for some of my rationale. Here's what I propose (subject to tweaking). To qualify: User must have 20K of reputation. Us...

feature-request vote-to-close vote-to-reopen

Also note this "sliding scale" approach, which gradually gives users more power to close as their reputation increases:

65

A: Give high-rep users extra weight on close votes

Though this question specifically discusses high-rep users, I would not feel comfortable having my vote be binding. Instead, I would propose a tiered close vote system since close votes can be cast beginning with 3,000 reputation. This would also remove the tag or downvote requirement. Reputatio...

user55340

@gnat they've deleted it on meta math.

gnat

...Hint: Programmers.SE doesn't do coding help and expect research before asking — gnat 1 min ago

^^^ just click it :)

...though this asker likely won't care. Their SO profile suggests q-block over there

whatsisname

missiles launched

user55340

8:19 PM

Ok... There you go. All the bits on duplicates. Mods, please note that the way you handle answers has implications on duplicates being valid or not.

Thomas Owens

8:30 PM

Yesssss. I managed to justify an Above Target rating in all of the Product/Technical and Quality/Process Improvement goals on my performance review.

4

Aaron Hall

What's it called when you want to commisserate in a positive and uplifting sort of way?

Thomas Owens

Celebrate.

It's called celebrate.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Props

Aaron Hall

It would just come across as over-the-top sarcastic.

Thomas Owens

Now I'm on to the competencies.

Aaron Hall

8:33 PM

Ok, let's try it - "I just love it when people give talks at conferences and mention ~~hacker school~~ recurse center, even better if they can make it actually relevant to the talk!" throws confetti

Yep, definitely over-the-top.

@ThomasOwens oh, missed that, congrats. :)

user114359

@MichaelT Good snowmen are hard to build. I'll spend $10 on that.

Thomas Owens

@AaronHall What is recurse center?

I Google'd, but their site is not accessible from work.

Aaron Hall

It's a recruiting firm with aspects of an exclusive/elite free tech school as a thin facade.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Jimmy Hoffa

@AaronHall never heard of it

Aaron Hall

8:50 PM

I watch too many conference talks on youtube.

They're in NYC. I guess it's an attempt to establish credibility, I shouldn't be so judgemental, I probably come across similarly when I talk about my activity on StackOverflow.

But I promise I only do it when it's germane.

user41796

@AaronHall You're from NYC. You're expected to be judgmental.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 also, he must wear nothing but black and he should continually appear as though he's being rained upon.

Aaron Hall

@GlenH7 I am. Not that I want to be. I want to be filled with compassion when I step on a subway car and my nostrils fill with the stench of a nearly dead drunk homeless person who hasn't bathed in a long but indeterminate time period.

Instead, I get angry and indignant.

Human condition I suppose.

Jimmy Hoffa

@AaronHall this is why the robot's will win. They won't care if their fellow robot hasn't been oiled or has a low battery, they'll just devour it whole like an egg roll and use it to power themselves and the eaten robot will be grateful. We are so doomed.

user41796

Sometimes the learning opportunities we're given aren't the ones we would have picked had we been given a choice in the matter.

Transcript for