The Whiteboard

Jimmy Hoffa

03:53

@whatsisname that is a beautiful way to write pascal in C if you are some kind of evil codebase destroyer, aka pascal coder

jmort253

05:27

Hello Programmers SE!

0

At university, when studying computer science, I visited lectures about formal methods, for example Z notation. It has been impossible for me to find or stumble upon information about any real world application of formal methods. What are projects that have applied formal methods? Was this appl...

software-development

I'm asking if questions about formal methods would be on-topic here on behalf of this user. I don't want to give him bad info. :)

I feel like the answer would be YES! But feel free to weigh in if that's not the case.

Deco

06:10

@jmort253 if his question was changed to be not-so-listey (as you've already mentioned in your comment) and was targetted to specifics, I would probably think it'd be on-topic here

@YannisRizos might have an opinion too

jmort253

@Deco Formal methods is a computer science subject, not a project management subject.

er, nevermind.

That's what you were saying ;)

Right on.

Deco

Exactly :)

jmort253

Thanks! :)

anyway, need sleep. Laters :)

Deco

Have a nice sleep~

Jim G.

07:41

27

Q: How important is it to reduce the number of lines in code?

I am a Software developer who works on J2SE (core java). Often during our code reviews we are asked to reduce the number of lines in our code. It's not about removing redundant code, it's about following a style that focuses on doing the same things with fewer lines in the code, while I believe ...

coding-style code-quality coding-standards code-reviews

^^^ Kudos to the Programmers.SE community for keeping this popular question open. Too many SE users are too inclined to close popular questions on the basis of their popularity. This is a popular (and constructive) question that we can all learn something from.

@Rachel ^^^ Do you agree?

3

Q: What problems can LINQ solve?

Each time I see a question posted on Stack Overflow on C#, I see at least one or two answers posted that solve a problem with LINQ. Usually people with very high reputation seem to use LINQ like pros. So my question is, what problems or set of problems is LINQ good for. When is it a bad practice...

c# linq professional-development

^^* OTOH, this is an interesting question that deserves to be closed because it's not constructive.

It's this subtle distinction that makes SE sites work. I just can't stand it when pro tempore moderators (not on Programmers.SE) fail to understand this distinction and are too inclined to close popular questions.

@jmort253: @Deco is right. That question is too "listy". It's just not a good fit for any SE site. You should tell that user that Yahoo! Answers or Quora would be a better fit for that type of question that encourages extended debate.

Deco

11:43

Yay just got my first Enlightened badge! I feel so... Enlightened! :-)

Rachel

12:55

@JimG. It's not the popularity that makes users want to close it, it's the not-so-good questions that are popular that makes users want to close it. Popularity is great if the question is a stellar example of what the site is for, but if it's a substandard example, then many users would prefer to close the question so it doesn't send the wrong message, even though they might let the question slide if it wasn't so popular

Also, popularity attracts more people who can close than unpopular questions, so questions stand a higher chance at getting the 5 close votes they need, or moderator flags

Jimmy Hoffa

14:28

@JimG. yay me, I finished the reopen on What problems can LINQ solve, now I'm going to edit it to justify myself to What problem domain is LINQ made for so it's not a list question

@JimG. Can you get behind it now?

3

Q: What problem domain is LINQ made for?

Each time I see a question posted on Stack Overflow on C#, I see at least one or two answers posted that solve a problem with LINQ. Usually people with very high reputation seem to use LINQ like pros. So my question is, what problem domain is LINQ supposed to be used for? Also on side notes: Ar...

c# linq professional-development

And that "How important is it to reduce lines of code" I love the question but wish the questioner would have chosen the correct answer rather than the answer he wanted to be correct heh

@Rachel You know the popularity even if subconciously does play into some people's judgements of an on the fence question they're not sure about, the more popular in those cases the more likely some folks are to close-vote

@Rachel people don't want popularity here for questions that aren't perfectly and completely in the scope of the site

@ThomasOwens You about to answer a question?

maple_shaft

14:44

** Congratulations to @GlenH7 on reaching 10k rep! Enjoy your limited moderator powers **

@JimmyHoffa @Rachel some people just get a power trip by closing stuff... They find a question that has 4 close votes and then an edit that clearly improved it, but then they decide to close it without even reading.

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Hm?

Jimmy Hoffa

15:01

@ThomasOwens I was going to ask if a question would work, but now I don't remember what the question was.. :) so uh, good morning instead I guess

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Oh. K. Good morning.

Jimmy Hoffa

When did Oded get a diamond?

@ThomasOwens I remember, could I ask if anyone can point me to an actual study on the consequences of increased lines of code? I swear I read such a study at one point, but maybe that was anecdotal, either way it's a request for a study which have been both identified as good fit and at some points bad fit so I don't know where to place that

Is it good fit or bad fit?

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa I'd say bad fit if you're explicitly asking someone to search. I think the MSO question was deleted because it kind of got out of hand, but one point was "Stack Exchange is not a search engine." If your question is eliminating the need for human thinking or experiences, it's probably not a good fit.

maple_shaft

15:23

talked with potential customer for over a year, suddenly it is an immediate emergency that they have a customized version of our product in the next 2 weeks... boss asks me if it is possible, "Yeah", i say, "If I branch from main, horribly hack and disfigure the code with no hope of ever extending or adding features to it again, and if they are okay with us not testing, then sure" ... Didn't expect the boss and the client to say DO IT IMMEDIATELY

Thought my horrid explanation of what will happen when they ask for additional features would have killed the idea in its tracks

Pay attention folks... this is how the road to inescapable irepairable technical debt begins

and I started it

user55340

@maple_shaft Is this the "do php for free" one? or another one?

user41796

@maple_shaft - thanks for the congrats!
Yes, that's the beginning of horrible, irreparable technical debt. Ick. bad.
I had a similar conversation with one of my product owners last week that was going down the same line. Ironically, it was also for a client that wasn't paying us for the work (similar to your case). I flat out said no because our backlog is so deep that I couldn't afford the lost opportunity cost to pursue a hack like that without payment.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - Oded probably picked up his diamond when he joined the SE team. Take a look at his profile: programmers.stackexchange.com/users/4767/oded

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens It's not asking someone to search the internet so much as their memories, I've searched and come up short

I suspect the only way to find such a study would be some other engineer remembering where it were

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa It's effectively the same thing. You might be able to phrase it in a manner that will also allow for people to contribute their experiences and expertise. But finding a document is a job for a search engine, not a human being.

Jimmy Hoffa

15:38

@maple_shaft haha how long have you been developing now? Managers will always say "Yeah go for it" if you say you can do it, and expect that if you can do it asap, you could also fix any resultant problems asap

@ThomasOwens balls. People's experiences will be... wayyy too subjective and any one developer who hasn't run a genuine study won't have a full picture of the scope of SLOC and consequences so they'll just be giving an opinion based on a miniscule amount of the data they have percieved

Wow, joined SE, lucky dog.

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa about 8 years now

@MichaelT this is a different project... and funny you mention it because I even told him that I can only do one or ther other, he can't have both... he gave me this look like I told him his dog just died

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft also (accurately in large part) developers are expected by managers to oversell the risks and not understand the full picture where in the real world the risks are actually minimal to the end user

user41796

@maple_shaft - definitely don't kill the boss's dog like that. ;-) He wants his cake and he wants to eat it too AND it better taste dang good.

maple_shaft

Well I don't feel sorry for him. He promises too much to too many people, and when he double and triple books our time like that, he ends up looking worse to everybody

but then he tells me Oh I have been in this business for umpteen years now and this is just the way it works and if we did <<maple_shaft suggestion>> then it would work out worse in the end

The sad thing is, he is by far the BEST boss I have ever had... ever.

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft how long have you been working for this manager? I usually find (with a decent manager) I can get them to trust my assessments over time by being realistic about the risks and dictating the resultant consequences realistically and in terms they understand "If we do X now, then you accept that in the future they will not be able to search that data without me redoing X as Z, whereas if we do Z now search functionality will be trivial"

maple_shaft

15:46

and he actually asks for my opinions in sales and business meetings

he just doesn't listen to me

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft make him sign off on consequences, get it in writing, when managers don't listen to you, put the ownus on them

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa I explained it in much the same way, factual, realistic and he understands but is still consistently unconcerned with the realistic possibility that long term we may be creating more trouble for ourselves

SO NOW...

Jimmy Hoffa

That's fine, so long as you get in writing that he made that decision INFORMED, it's not your problem

Then if he ever gives you crap about it, or anyone else, just go to his manager or whoever else and say "Look here, this was his decision, he was informed, he decided as such against my recommendation."

maple_shaft

we are doing this small hack job for 4 figures, but if he held out and played hardball like I told him he should, then I am confident the client would have folded, we could have done it right and made 5 figures

Jimmy Hoffa

I've seen bad decisions come back and bite managers in the ass before in precisely this way and seen them get trasnferred basically to the basement with the can of raid for it

If you don't keep track that he made the decision though, it could come back on you

Always make those types of recommendations in e-mail and archive it

maple_shaft

15:50

@JimmyHoffa I have it in writing, but this company doesn't work that way. We are ver small and blame is usually spread and ignored

Jimmy Hoffa

Yeah, in an organization like that then just don't sweat it.

It'll be doing work the wrong way which sucks because we spend years studying and practicing our skills to do them the right way, and hate being forced to do it the wrong way; especially if it is done consistently. So find a new place, but no reason to stress over it if there will be no true retaliation

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa If this were a corporate shop I would agree, get it in writing, signed in blood, notarized and blessed by the Pope ... and even then office politics will still probably find some way to blame you for it

Jimmy Hoffa

also in a place like that never give more than your 40, if they don't care about their quality to their customer and don't genuinely value you, no reason to value them. If they're pushing harder then that, seriously, find somewhere else.. You've got enough years in and with your SE score surely have plenty to show on your careers.se page

What is your mainstay? PHP?

maple_shaft

@JimmyHoffa I actually have a consulting company that was interested in reviewing me because on my resume I listed, Elected Community Moderator Programmers StackExchange 2011-Present

Java and .NET

Jimmy Hoffa

hah nice

Well there ya go then. Find a new gig and think nothing more of it. Go back to that consulting joint if you can, those places look fantastic on resumes if you still have any inkling your resume needs further selling to get you where you want to be

maple_shaft

15:56

I tell head hunters and recruiters that I am a Java and a .NET developer and they say which are you more proficient it... I say both... and their heads 'asplode... they just can't seem to wrap their mind around the fact that I am just as capable in both

Jimmy Hoffa

The consulting gigs look awesome and teach a lot if you can swing them and deal with the odd hours and travel etc for a bit of a while because you'll show experience at a ton of different places doing a ton of different things.

maple_shaft

> You got Peanut Butter on my Chocolate

whatsisname

wow virtually every question on the front page is closed lol

lot of weak questions though

maple_shaft

> NO, you got Chocolate on my Peanut Butter!

Jimmy Hoffa

lol, right.

maple_shaft

15:58

@whatsisname Yeah unfortunately we have a high noise to signal ratio here...

Jimmy Hoffa

Head hunters suck but they're unfortunately a necessary evil. My last place was a spectacular place to work, but because of corporate HR we were only allowed to hire through recruiters (specifically approved ones)

that's not always the case and many of the places that live with rules like that are terrible

but it's not uncommon especially talking enterprisey stuff (.net/java)

user55340

Back in the .com boom days... Headhunters who place someone typically get a finder's fee of 10%. Selling a internal phone list to a company to a head hunter could make lots... all the calls to find an unhappy dev (who will get paid $100k in the new job)... it could be quite profitable.

maple_shaft

enterprisey is where the steady money is at

user55340

The big win was when a headhunter was able to place a C?O at a company. 10% of $1M is "I don't have to work for the rest of the year."

maple_shaft

@MichaelT Devs making $100k... lol ... not in my city

Google has an office in Pittsburgh, they MIGHT pay 6 figures to their engineers, but they would be the only ones

user55340

16:03

@maple_shaft Not mine here now, either... but when I was in SF... I was an internal app in house dev and I was making $90k. Head over to the product engineering and $100k to $250k was not uncommon at all.

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft you're in the burgh? I was working out there at my last gig, got good relations if you're interested

maple_shaft

@MichaelT Yeah but thats SF... a tiny 120 year old house is like $800k+

@JimmyHoffa oh yeah? Who did you work for?

Jimmy Hoffa

@maple_shaft was steady place great people to work with and paid competitively. Not sure if they're hiring right now but they were generally always hiring

user55340

Nah, no 120 year old houses... they all got burned down in the fire/earthquake. And you've gotta commute 2h to find something that you can buy that costs less than $1M.

maple_shaft

@MichaelT Earthquakes and $1M homes... sounds like fun

user55340

16:07

The amount I paid for my house (double lot, big lawn - I'm looking to plant some fruit trees there) is less than the amount that a former cow-orker put down for the loan for the down payment for a condo (that is now underwater - $$, not global warming) in San Jose.

user55340

@maple_shaft Back to this question of tech debt some time ago... could you say "ok... but next time you ask me to touch this code, it will cost XYZ hours to fix the code so that it can be worked on again - someone will have to eat that cost."

maple_shaft

@MichaelT Well that is just rewording the same question in a different way

it is not a matter that he doesn't understand

perhaps he just knows something that I dont

user55340

16:29

@maple_shaft As I mentioned in the latest "should I rewrite?" question, as programers we can advise all we want, but we aren't managers... we aren't the ones that make the call for ROI and long term risks/plans. So yea...

maple_shaft

oh no...

another potential lead wants to sign now... what is this bizarro world?

Jim G.

17:22

@Rachel I respectfully disagree. It's not the popularity that makes users want to close it, it's the not-so-good questions that are popular that makes users want to close it. Yes, users and certainly many moderators close questions with this premise in mind, but I really feel like many have an intrinsic fear/dislike of popular questions.

@Rachel Also, even if you still disagree with me on this point, I think that you and the Programmers.SE moderators have done a great job of editing and keeping such popular questions open.

@JimmyHoffa Yep. Just +1'd it.

user55340

17:51

Integers are pointless.

Jimmy Hoffa

18:10

I hate when I see a question with 12 answers and feel my answer is correct and completely not even mentioned by anyone of the many other answers, I end up having to write the 13th answer and feeling like I'm adding to the spam by doing so

3

Q: Should I try persistence in flat file before database?

Somebody explained to me that since in agile development, policy and the application logic should be more important than details such as persistence method, persistence decision should be taken at the end. So it might be a good idea to start with simpler persistence such as flat files, until we r...

architecture agile database persistence

user55340

18:21

@JimmyHoffa I can flag it as not an answer for you so that some mod would move it to a comment...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT it what? every answer on there is an answer, just nobody else seemed to address the root of the problem the questioner is running into, I pondered putting my answer into a comment but it really is more

on the other hand, maybe I'm wrong. I'll let the votes decide that. I just hate adding another answer to a question with that many answers already

Yannis Rizos

I haven't suspended anyone in a while... Any volunteers?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I would be tempted to write an answer that incorporates all the other answers and addresses the root problem.

user55340

@YannisRizos I'm not sure if there are grounds for suspending anyone here. I don't even like coffee.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT If you do that I'll delete my answer.

Yannis Rizos

18:30

@MichaelT If had valid reasons to suspend anyone, I wouldn't be looking for volunteers ;)

Jimmy Hoffa

I only add to the spam when something really important is missing, otherwise I try to stay out of the fray where there's that many people already

user55340

@JimmyHoffa The "I'd be tempted" was more of a suggestion of "maybe you could rewrite your..."

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Are you saying we are particularly low on garbage folk lately?

@MichaelT lol, it's a thought. Yep, a thought.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Garbage collection runs periodically... we're all part of the permanent generation.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT are you saying I'm a leak?

user55340

18:33

@JimmyHoffa That depends on your undergarments.

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Yes, and the q-ban takes care of most. Also that leslar troll hasn't found a way to circumvent the IP ban (yet?)

user55340

(I wonder how I can keep going with these awful puns before Yannis starts looking in my direction)

Jimmy Hoffa

awful puns indeed, not even bugle quality.

and zaltor the merciless let's few puns go unspoke

@YannisRizos and yet we still have untold numbers of closed questions. I don't disagree with the closures, but sheesh we have a lot of garbage Qs

wish the lack of garbage people would translate to a lack of garbage Qs

user55340

@JimmyHoffa September has never ended.

user55340

Today is the 7099th day of September by my count.

Jimmy Hoffa

18:40

translation: My beard is nostalgic for brown

user55340

I'll hit 40 this year... there's a bit of white in there, but its a few annoying hairs. I was in college when that happened.

user55340

('93, not the white hairs)

user55340

When I lived in San Francisco area, a bunch of us from "alt.sysadmin.recovery" would have a "end of September (hopefully) party." for a few years in a row (the satanic.org crew also showed up - back when you could get real domain names they picked that for their servers... made t-shirts with the intel swirl and "evil inside"). Much inebriation was had.

user55340

Apparently we didn't drink enough - its still September.

user55340

snort - trying for some nastalga, looking at google groups for alt.sysadmin.recovery and it has a "translate message to english" banner on the top of nearly every post... they contain sed and perl.

Jimmy Hoffa

18:53

Integers are point*ers* @MichaelT ftfy

user55340

@JimmyHoffa No, integers have no point in them. Floats do, but its pointless to use those in most cases.

user55340

And found the drinking party nostalgia... groups.google.com/d/topic/alt.sysadmin.recovery/21hp-jHcKbE/…

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT 0 <-- look it's a pointer. I win

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Back in the days when I was active on Everything2, one would occasionally find a stub of a something - a single line answer just to have something in there. The type of thing "Italy is a country in Europe" - and then someone would come through and write a new thing on Italy that would completely cover everything about Italy in the rest of the nodes... and they would get removed (leaving yours to collect all the rep... mhawawhawhawhaw cough)

Jimmy Hoffa

19:27

No idea what everything2 is

I know of c2 but not everything2

user55340

After slashdot sold out to Andover, one of the devs (Nathan Oostendorp) went off to start another project. It, and perlmonks were based on a rather abstract engine of 'nodes'. Everything2 was a rather free form subjective place (there's a section of it that competes with livejournal at the time - daylogs).

user55340

Everything2

Everything2 (styled Everything2), or E2 for short, is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter. Writing on E2 covers a wide range of topics and genres, including encyclopedic articles, diary entries (known as "daylogs"), poetry, humor, and fiction. History The predecessor of E2 was a similar database called Everything (later labeled "Everything1" or "E1") which was started around March 1998 by Nathan Oostendorp and was initially closely aligned with...

Jimmy Hoffa

subjective indeed, I see that by the top post

which is basically a rant and speaks of a nice place that no longer exists in the UK (and never existed in america)

user55340

Personally, I loved misinterpreting the subject and writing something else about it. everything2.com/?node=marriage+encounter

user55340

everything2.com/title/Casual+Gods

Jimmy Hoffa

19:40

haha, so basically slashdot got sold out so you went and trolled everything2 instead?

user55340

No... this is what e2 wants.

user55340

I was never a /. troll, nor an everything2 troll. Rather, it was the idea for writing something. Things are grouped by title - so two things with the same title are in the same spot. and this was designed to be that way

Jimmy Hoffa

haha

that is pretty funny

as are the casual gods

maybe if I pray real hard my next job will be believers

user55340

Another in my serious of the modern pantheon... everything2.com/title/Traffic+Light+Gods

user55340

I think that both of those were vaguely inspired by American Gods by Gaiman... the idea of the modern pantheon of gods such as media and technology.

user55340

19:47

Early in my writing - green wave, later Traffic lights that don't stay green long enough for everyone waiting to get through.

Jimmy Hoffa

Is it acceptable to put put information under a title that is factually incorrect? Not just made up, but outright lying? For instance: "Italy" : The a continent in the Sahara.

Or is that then trolling?

user55340

There is nothing wrong with writing fiction. Its a site for writing not knowledge.

Jimmy Hoffa

Well, fiction and lying are different

I think I get it

user55340

20:11

@JimmyHoffa And the 'sold out' aspect - was a "Nate came into a bit of free time and some extra funds so he took on a new project."

srikanth chandrasekaran

20:30

How can I create a slideshow with only html,css and javascript?

user55340

Quite a number of ways.

user55340

Googleing "slideshow javascript" returns many, many results. Is there some specific part you are having trouble with?

srikanth chandrasekaran

Is there a software for windows, which lets me create slideshows with a gui interface and gives me the source code at last? the only catch is , i need to use only html, css and javascript

Jimmy Hoffa

@srikanthchandrasekaran if you mean "Can I" then the answer is yes, as for "How" that's for every software engineer to figure out

srikanth chandrasekaran

I am looking for software with gui interface , that also gives me the code

Jimmy Hoffa

20:47

@MichaelT nntp is the usenet protocol, no?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Network News Transfer Protocol. Yep.

user55340

@srikanthchandrasekaran You are looking for some 3rd party code generation software for slideshows?

srikanth chandrasekaran

@MichaelT yep

user55340

21:02

I'm not aware of any, I am sure they exist.. but I'm a server side guy (Java EE)... Others might know. I'd be more tempted to write my own code than buy third party... or write my own and then sell it.

Yannis Rizos

21:21

@JimmyHoffa Hm, our closure rate has been steadily decreasing, it's nowhere near where it was a year ago. It's about 20% now, and it was 40% a year ago (very rough numbers, don't quote me on this).

user55340

@YannisRizos There's more data hiding in that answer... it would be useful to know "closed within 24h" as the rate. I suspect there was a great closing splurge as people still readjusted and found old subjective questions.

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT That's true, there was a major clean up effort last April / May that screwed up stats.

user55340

I am further curious as to how many closed questions are from people who are question blocked at SO.

Jimmy Hoffa

Putting UI aside, does anyone here know what discourse is supposed to do differently than being a responsive forum?

Differently than awfulBB, everyone's favorite, s/awful/whatever/g

Yannis Rizos

21:38

@MichaelT SE doesn't really track question blocks, last time I asked (aug) someone had to dig into the database. More than half the questions asked in the previous 3 months from people blocked on SO were closed.

@JimmyHoffa Nope, responsive forum (that's already filling up with crap) would be more or less my description.

What's the difference between discourse, Medium, and Branch?

> I haven't seen any pedophiles on here yet, that alone sets it apart from Reddit imho

3 hours ago, by Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Yes, and the q-ban takes care of most. Also that leslar troll hasn't found a way to circumvent the IP ban (yet?)

....and he's back. <sigh>

user55340

I looked at the question list, saw a long, absurd name... am I right?

user55340

I'm curious about his rl age (I know I can only guess). He hasn't gotten to the point of understanding that the more you know, the more you realize you don't know everything.

Yannis Rizos

The clone I spotted shouldn't be visible, I deleted his one question. But he usually creates accounts in bulk, so you're probably right.

user55340

21:54

"This is why I am still struggling with learning x86 Assembly, x86 machine opcodes, hardware stacks, segmentation of memory, processor design, hardware and systems programming, instruction sets, memory addressing and managing, and it's all stressing me out because I'm still learning other "higher-level" things as well. " --- It certainly sounds like him.

user20683

We need a Goma Detection AI contest

user20683

or something

user55340

0

Q: Deliverables in a software development project

Following a standard framework of project management, for a software development project we will provide deliverables (documents and software) at the end of each month : My question is: From May to June, while software is in development, what would be the deliverable for each month? Each doc...

project-management documentation projects-and-solutions

user55340

I wish things could be cross posted - this is one that both PM.SE and P.SE would be interested in. And P.SE might have more insight (and give better answers), but it isn't off topic here.

Jimmy Hoffa

22:23

Yay me, last answer of 7, but made it to the top of the stack :D even beating 2 dudes on here I know are better engineers than me. gives self a gold star

oh crap, did that question get reddit'd or something?

Deco

23:04

@JimmyHoffa I gave you a gold star

well it's gold on my screen

user41796

@WorldEngineer - I've been pondering that very question as well. I'm having a difficult time digging up research on it as I don't know the correct search terms. It's also not clear if the underlying premise is valid. (The premise being that a person's writing can be a reliable identifier of someone) Hacker Factor Gender Guesser is an interesting start, but it's heavily US centric. I haven't reached out to the owner of that to see if he's continued his research.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - that was a solid answer you put in on there. Really drew the varied aspects together. And I gave you 10 pts closer to that fabled 4400 (re: yesterday's conversation)

Deco

/saddened-sigh.. do my morning scroll through questions on PSE... 80% [closed] :(

user55340

@Deco from ELL (which I poked over at briefly), the cake thing at weddings... its very common in United States.

user41796

23:25

@Deco - we tried to close out some of the trash questions for you so you could focus on the higher quality questions. There's been some litterbugs on P.SE lately. :-)

Yannis Rizos

@Deco You're in a bad timezone, typically most of our crappy questions appear just before you wake up. Easy solution: Change continents.

Deco

@MichaelT - awesome, I might edit my answer with a comment "confirmed it happens in United States"~ thanks for checking out ELL too

@GlenH7 @YannisRizos Thankyou for your hard efforts, maybe a continent change is in order - we're a bit upside down in Australia anyway :)

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