The Whiteboard

8:25 AM

@ChrisF please feel free to decline my flag with the message "Would you mind explaining..." - that's a silly error (clicked flag instead of comment), sorry for inconvenience

user55340

3:19 PM

@JimmyHoffa I am not surprised to see you answer that haskell question so fast...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I learned a lot about C#, and cemented more firmly the things I already knew by writing answers on SO for a while, I'm far from an expert in Haskell, but answering questions about it I hope will have the same effect

heh took me a moment to realize why that Q was blue on the front-page, I only have on favorite tag and I'm not used to seeing Q's tagged with it heh

user55340

4:06 PM

@JimmyHoffa I get that when I see a perl tagged question.

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah yeah, actually those might even be less common than Haskell these days

104 haskell tags to 59 perl tags

user55340

0

Q: Is Python a good option for development of the described expert system? Yes or No

I am a mathematics graduate working on the development of an expert system for my PhD. I have never developed an expert system before but I have done some basic programming in C++ and java, but mostly scientific computing and mathematical modeling. So I am a beginner. But the basic purpose of tak...

user55340

I really think that clojure might be the right answer for the question, but the wrong answer to the problem...

user55340

(or the question in its former form)

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Why not the right answer to the problem?

user55340

4:16 PM

Well, the problem is poorly defined, which is part of the problem with the question. But the "Go learn clojure to write this" for a person who isn't a programmer may be the wrong answer to the problem.

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah

Clojure is definitely the write answer to the problem, but that's removing the developer from the equation, you're right, maybe Python would actually be a good bet for someone like him. Then again, he's a mathematician first, maybe clojure would actually be more natural to him

I don't know how a mathematicians brain thinks, so I have no idea what's more natural to them, though I have heard people say the assignment operator confuses the crap out of mathematicians

user55340

But for someone who has only done basic C++ and Java? A functional language can be a huge leap in rethinking... math background or otherwise.

Jimmy Hoffa

True...

user55340

However, if they want to work with a lisp like oriented expert system (and research based on it), then clojure would give you the java swing library for free... and there's your GUI. However, again, with the "basic C++ and Java" I strongly suspect that there are... higher than achievable expectations for the GUI.

user55340

> The project sponsor wants to have a very user-friendly interface- presenting feedback from the Expert System in graphs or as colour coded zones on a map, for example. In future there may be a requirement to interface with other services such as Google Maps.

user55340

4:21 PM

We've got a math person, with basic C++ and Java working on UX/UI issues...

Jimmy Hoffa

That's not the way I read it

I read they have a math person working on charting/data presentation

user55340

This goes back to the "poorly defined question" - is this one person? or a team?

Jimmy Hoffa

Yeah, it's a crap question

I'll agree with you there

I really don't like the dupe closures that happen on this site... I've come to understand all the others, but the dupe closures are constantly things closed as dupe of a Q they are not the same question as

user55340

> I am a mathematics graduate working on the development of an expert system for my PhD. I have never developed an expert system before but I have done some basic programming in C++ and java, but mostly scientific computing and mathematical modeling.

user55340

I really suspect its a one person - do it all - thing.

Jimmy Hoffa

4:24 PM

yeah, it's his PhD project

All he has to do for that unless I sorely misunderstand PhDs is create something in a total hack that kind of meets the requirements and then write at length about all the approaches he thought about and studied for it, the actual implemented code means squat I hear on those

user55340

There are two sets of dupes... there are the ancient ones (ancient to ancient), and the new ones (new to something else). The ancient to ancient ones are often a "this has been old, is similar to this other one, neither are great, and it would be best for the site to close it, so it doesn't attract other poor answers."

user55340

New dupes... the are often not ideal, but it is also an indication that something needs to be defined here - how does this question differ from that one. Some of them are quite rightfully duped because the older question asked the broader question that the current one.

Jimmy Hoffa

See and I disagree that if a Q asks a broader version, the more specific one is a dupe of it. I would say the more specific one is a better Q which will likely result in better answers, where the broader Q often won't have answers with specific details that matter to the sub-problem

the last bit there being the thing that bugs me the most, if they asked a bad question close it altogether, but if it's not closeworthy, don't call it a dupe of another Q that doesn't actually have an answer to their specific problem

user55340

With the expert system one, the old one asked about the entire process including language selection. The new one asked about language selection. Dup was the most helpful of the close reasons for the question (not a real question - overly broad, and not constructive would also be valid close reasons, though less helpful... and less controversial).

user55340

Remember that the revision that several close votes went on was programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/194969/1

Jimmy Hoffa

4:34 PM

I didn't see a dupe of the expert system one, I saw this one and was thinking about it

2

Q: How can I deal with a team member who duplicates code?

One of our team member duplicates code. Code duplication causes confusion among my team members reading his code, it causes bugs down the line when the duplicated segment is fixed in one location and not the others and it bloats the size of his code-base. I have discussed with him not to duplica...

teamwork code-smell

user55340

The expert system was what we were talking about, and the subject of a recent meta...

user55340

4

Q: What does it take for a question to be a duplicate?

I just learned that this question is a duplicate of some other question (the link to which is supplied now in the first question). Reading through both questions I cannot see how one could defer the answer to the new one from an answer for the other one. The new one is a completely different ques...

discussion closed-questions duplicate-questions

Jimmy Hoffa

It was closed as a dupe of "How do I tell a team member their code is bad" which wouldn't have specific details about code duplication (Oded for instance posted a great detail specifically about why not to copy/paste code, which would not have been given to the questioner in the Q which claimed to be a "dupe" of his)

@MichaelT I didn't even see that Q lol

I was just looking at the front page and saw that dupe-closure and felt like ranting about our dupe-closure practices because that Q is definitely not the same Q and will not have the same answers

user55340

Btw, I'm going to try something with the bookmark conversation on that expert system... and link it back to the question.

user55340

Expert system language choice

26 mins ago, 10 minutes total – 16 messages, 2 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked 15 secs ago by MichaelT

Jimmy Hoffa

4:39 PM

wth? bookmark?

user55340

Its under the 'room' menu (between room tags and avatars)

user55340

It lets you pull a section of chat out as a single chunk - that I then linked into a comment in the question...

Jimmy Hoffa

Meta-bookmark

2 mins ago, 1 minute total – 3 messages, 2 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked 7 secs ago by Jimmy Hoffa

Lovely.

user55340

I've poked my nose in some other chat rooms from time to time... some of them are very busy and active... we're rather quiet here compared to most of the sites of comparable size.

Jimmy Hoffa

Y-Combinator

51 secs ago, 28 seconds total – 2 messages, 1 user, 0 stars

Bookmarked 11 secs ago by Jimmy Hoffa

fYf

user55340

4:42 PM

Having more people in chat isn't a bad thing... and things we can do to get more people in chat asking about questions before they ask them, or how improve a question, the better.

Jimmy Hoffa

Hah, that was fun.

@MichaelT yes, I completely agree there. I'll have to remember that feature for linking people into here

user41796

5:37 PM

@JimmyHoffa RE: PhD level code; your assumptions are pretty much correct. For the most part, the quality of the code means nothing w.r.t to the thesis itself. There are the obvious exceptions for "I did perf tuning on algo XYZ" or whatever, but generally no one cares. As an example, my MS thesis involved rewriting and extending a neuronal model that a PhD had put together a few years prior.

user55340

@GlenH7 I still believe there is a significant disconnect between the expectations of the project sponsor, the expectations of the phd student, and the capabilities of the phd student (not a CS student who knows a few languages in depth, but rather a math student who knows a little bit of Java and C++).

user55340

It likely needs to be addressed as a business problem (requirements, goals, estimates, and expectations) before it can be addressed as a technical one.

user41796

@MichaelT - after reading over the question (but not all the revisions), I would have to agree. A couple of snarky comments are coming to mind about that situation, but I remind myself that we were all beginners at some point in time. My comment regarding PhD level code was to confirm Jimmy's suspicions, or at least confirm them based upon my experiences.

user41796

5:57 PM

@MichaelT - that question ... it's like a train wreck. I just can't walk away from it. I want to help, but almost all of his "point me in the right direction" questions are appropriate only within chat.

user41796

@Rachel - thought I would say "hi." I haven't seen you online in a bit, but I've been off-line quite a bit lately too.

user55340

@GlenH7 I know... he doesn't yet have 10 rep... but I tried to point out the chat nature of the question with the bookmarked conversation.

user55340

Btw, that Y-Combinator is an amusing meta joke.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:55 PM

-4

Q: How many softwares developed till date

The question might look annoying but I need that info for some research on the softwares developed so far. I want to know how many software are developed so far in the world. Are there any statistics we can find or some way? We can categorize the software in following categories. I have search...

software

Anybody care to hazard a guess? Let's see, there was pac-man, the amiga, winamp, I'm going with 3.

psr

Can we count each individual genetic algorithm? Can we? Please?

Jimmy Hoffa

Is an abacus technically software or hardware?

user55340

Bernoulli numbers, pacman, google. I get three also...

user55340

Although I should swap emacs for pacman... I'm sure there's a pacman mode for emacs.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:19 PM

Anybody here ever done any work with sip?

user55340

7:37 PM

@JimmyHoffa Only from a sippy cup years ago...

user55340

8:59 PM

Fuel for @gnat 's passion of hot questions... when an old question gets resurfaced for whatever reason, it often has a large number of views that causes it to go right up to the top.

user55340

5

Q: What have you learnt that has a steep learning curve?

Recently, I've invested time in learning the intricacies of Git and it has got me thinking about time and learning. (My previous experience with version control systems was only limited use of CVS and SVN.) It took me a whole day's worth of reading to be able to understand the concepts and differ...

learning recommendations learning-curve

user55340

740 views, 10 answers, top of the hot.

Jimmy Hoffa

9:10 PM

Burn it with fire

@MichaelT 1 more close vote

Yannis Rizos

-2

A: What have you learnt that has a steep learning curve?

what have you learned, that has a steep learning curve, that you would possibly recommend to a fellow programmer. For me I feel that there is one basic answer to this question: Experience It's the one thing you can't quickly teach or learn, or take a formal course and in x weeks be proficient....

This is the kind of answer that makes me wish I could downvote more than once...

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos why is the text gray on that answer?

Yannis Rizos

9:25 PM

@JimmyHoffa Even the font doesn't like the answer.

Answers are faded out a bit below -3.

-5 (or -8?) on Meta.

gnat

9:45 PM

@MichaelT "hot garbage waves" yeah. It's less painful in closeable questions, but even in these hotness lemmings brought in by braindead collider, do their damage "hey I can chit-chat here and get a nice portion of cheap rep before it gets closed..." And it's especially sad to see many real good questions falling a victim of this bug

14

Q: Answers quality in hot questions

For few recent months, I've got a habit of downvoting answers which quality doesn't look OK to me. These probably can be generally described as low effort and/or these lacking relevance to question asked. Opinionated slogans, claims that are not backed up by appropriate references or by ...

discussion answer-quality hot-questions

But hey, they say it's "just doesn't have the priority you think it does" oh well

No, the plan is to wait for evidence that this even can be abused. Close-warring was an actual, visible problem at one point, but the mechanics for how delete works are already considerably different and in four years there's not been any indication that this part of their design isn't working just fine. Also... You're really stuck on that hot question thing, @gnat - and that hasn't been declined, it just doesn't have the priority you think it does. — Shog9 Apr 11 at 13:55

Jimmy Hoffa

10:01 PM

I made appropriate warnings in my flag that they should delete that question before you saw it @gnat to avoid your rant. They brought this on themselves.

Yannis Rizos

11:14 PM

Please compose your complaint in some way other than an ejaculation of disparagement, with something that at least resembles an argument for your point of view, and maybe even a proposal for change. As it stands, this is just a waste of our time. — Josh Caswell 20 mins ago

"an ejaculation of disparagement" - I'm going to steal that!

user20683

My personal one is: "Please stop vomiting nonsense."

Expert system language choice

Meta-bookmark

Y-Combinator

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