The Whiteboard

1:23 AM

@BarryTheHatchet sorry for the delayed reaction, but consider something like: output=$(date 2>&1); if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo $output; else echo fail; fi; or, with a failing command: output=$(datee 2>&1); if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo $output; else echo fail; fi

Duga

10:58 AM

I never understood why such a question is off-topic. It is definitely a question that can be answered (not simply discussed. I was not asking for subjectively about the "best" for this or that, and it is a question related to programming. Also, as written in the help center, my question does cover "software tools commonly used by programmers". So seriously, some of you guys need to quit being pretentious. This question seems perfectly valid. The Stackoverflow community seems more toxic by the day. — Bitious 31 secs ago

Ixrec

11:30 AM

> Is there currently any stable C Matrix and Vector libraries available for Windows? Or any bigger C math library which includes these mathematical concepts?

nope, that's pretty objectively off-topic

I was hoping for something a little more interesting than that given the length of the comment

enderland

@enderland - "You should not design an application based on which design pattern you want to use" - I quite clearly stated that the exercise was to "solidify my understanding of the command pattern", under these circumstances, I think you are wrong. — dangerousdave 1 min ago

sigh. this is the attitude that @RobertHarvey gets so frustrated with. "this design pattern is teh best! how can I use it?"

Ixrec

11:47 AM

and the sad part is that's completely irrelevant to the question; the fact that he wants to support undo/redo means some form of command pattern is probably mandatory anyway

er, actually, if it ceases to be the command pattern when you add a second method to the objects, then I would indeed not use the command pattern...

enderland

@Ixrec there's nothing wrong with wanting to use it as the pattern, but if you decide that you are going to use a specific pattern without first determining why your application supports it... of course you are going to run into problems

Ixrec

mm-hmm

enderland

@gnat that sort of thing is a lot better done by moderators >.>

Ixrec

I suppose the real question is how doing an exercise where you've decided in advance to use pattern X can help you understand the pattern better; if there's no decision-making based on the actual requirements of the code, then there's no learning involved

@enderland link? I see no messages from him today on my screen

enderland

per my reading your edit in rev 5 invalidated about 8-10 prior answers. Have you considered notifying answerers about this (with comments)? Have you considered voting invalidated answers down to help readers see that answers missing the point of the question aren't welcome? — gnat 2 mins ago

Ixrec

11:57 AM

I find it bizarre that you're getting so much criticism for editing a question that was objectively off-topic

who cares if we're invalidating answers that were going to get deleted otherwise?

enderland

it's not that much criticism honestly, only bryan really has reacted (and it looks like he self-deleted his answer?)

Ixrec

more than one comment making the exact same point feels like a lot to me given how much participation the average meta Q gets

gnat

@enderland have you considered flagging?

enderland

@gnat honestly I don't feel like moderators here are active enough to really put in the effort required in a question like that

maybe that's too defeatist

gnat

@Ixrec I for one am not happy that this edit cost me 7 repz so far without a slightest chance of refund

@enderland so, let me see. You invalidated answers and let them hanging without doing anything, right. So that now hundreds readers ('cause this mess is in HNQ) can come and see that it's okay to drop anything remotely related to the topic of the question and get their portion of cheap upvotes from lemmings. Thank you

Ixrec

12:10 PM

@gnat ???

gnat

@Ixrec unlike editor I voted on the invalidated answers

Ixrec

they were crap answers before the edit too...

which is the whole reason that kind of question is off-topic

enderland

@gnat I just downvoted 10 of them...

Ixrec

@gnat I don't see how enderland's edit makes this more likely than it was before, several of our HNQs already have this problem regardless of whether or not we ignore their on-topic-ness

yes, that situation sucks, which is exactly why I concluded that next time we need to do this sort of editing and downvoting before the lemmings give everything >10 upvotes

enderland

or moderators who want to be involved other than handling comment flags....

Ixrec

12:13 PM

(you're not supposed to mention that!)

(I assume)

brb

enderland

@Ixrec whatever. Thomas is the only one I see interact much with site, ever, if I didn't know there were more moderators I would suspect that he was the only one here

gnat

@enderland FWIW Yannis removes about handful blatantly bad questions almost daily (I see this in 10K tools page)

enderland

@gnat ah, that's nice

Ixrec

I very frequently see blatantly off-topic questions get nuked by Yannis or Oded

they have to be exceptionally blatant to trigger nuking, but it definitely helps