@YannisRizos I would appreciate an explanation of how the questions are different. Meanwhile, with all due respect, I prefer to stick with what I see written in the questions. Dupe:

> no one on my team, in the building, or even in the neighboring locations has any background in software development.... This is especially troubling for me since I'm not very confident with my development skills in the first place

Close target:

> I sometimes would love to have someone who could tell me what is bad about my code (architecture and so on), why it is bad AND what could I do to make it better... Sometimes I ask my non java programmer colleagues if my code is "good" or "bad" but I have the feeling that they can't judge because they aren't java programmers. (They hardly program anything)

You may also check review stats of involved close voters and ask yourself, how did it happen that few guys who clearly prefer to hang on "Leave Open" side (and one who doesn't even participate in reviews at all, apparently preferring to judge on case by case basis), found this closure sufficiently compelling to cast their votes on it

@gnat Closely related, certainly, but I don't think they are dupes. Take a look at the answers of the old one. Do they answer the new question?

> I feel like I should be learning the software development process, but right now it's like I'm feeling my way through the dark.

The OP of the old question has access to other developers, just not Java developers. He isn't interested in learning general soft. dev. skills, but getting better at Java. That's reflected in several of the answers, that are Java specific. Those answers are completely useless to the new question.

In any case, my message wasn't really for the specific question. It's closely related, and the dupe closure wasn't a big deal. Just happened to remind me of this earlier discussion.

I can certainly understand wanting less whining, but that's not really the best motivator for picking a close reason. Every future reader of the question couldn't care less about the whining, but they'll certainly be a bit disappointed if they are directed to a question that's related but doesn't really answer the question they were initially interested in.

@YannisRizos okay, so there are at least two questions in one (quite broad each), one of which is answered elsewhere. And no, dupe target clearly states "other developers" isn't the case: "They hardly program anything". And, per my reading of 8 answers in target question, only 1 (1 and half to be precise) are Java specific

@gnat We're splitting hairs and going in circles. The important thing is if the answers to the old question sufficiently answer the new one. I don't think they do. I won't disagree that both questions are a bit broad, and perhaps should have been closed as NARQ or NC, but that's an entirely different discussion.

@YannisRizos believe it or not, this spring I spent well over a week, just studying various internship and junior-programmer questions, learning what "common themes are there", what is covered and where. It may look like splitting hars to you but to me it certainly doesn't...

@gnat What's that have to do with what we're talking about?

Do the answers in the old question sufficiently answer the new one? That's all there is to it.

@YannisRizos well as far as I can tell, answers in dupe target address part which is "especially troubling" according to OP: "I'm not very confident with my development skills in the first place" by poining to how they can deal with it in the absense of mentor. That part is now lost to them, thanks to "generous" reopen...

...another part that looks lost in the battle is that OP concerns about "learning the software development process", giving their environment, are better covered in solo-development tag but oh well. Who cares after finally finding out about oh so malicious dupe closure

@gnat Why is it lost? All it needs is a comment pointing to the related question, why does it have to be a closure?

In any case, please don't fixate on the specific closure. My concern was more for your take on dupes being "softer" closures in general. That might very well be the case, but please do not vote to close as a dupe to avoid drama. That shouldn't factor in at all when voting to close.

@YannisRizos what drama? I voted on what I've read in both questions. Complaints about dupe being wrong, now these were pure drama; reopening dupes in my experience has been always as easy as it gets...

...When I see complaints oh yet another wrong dupe it always reminds me the questions, you know, where OP says oh I've been searching and found nothing but when you enter their title in google, the answer is right there at the top - people don't want to invest minor effort into reopen and instead they just whine

> please don't fixate on the specific closure. My concern was more for your take on dupes being "softer" closures in general

@gnat Off topic: Does this looks like spam to you? The answer isn't completely unrelated to the question, and he is (sort of) disclosing his affiliation.

@YannisRizos per my recollection, one of the determining signs of spam is it's unsolicited - and here, it applies fully. Question is: "What pitfalls should I avoid?", answers like "Want a tool to help Port UX between iOS and Android?" are as far as I can tell, unsolicited. At this place, could be similarly unsolicited advert for some IDE, library, oursourcing / consulting / testing service, whatever

@YannisRizos okay, fine. Next time I see a question that is a dupe of 3 different ones (1, 2, 3), I'll vote for NARQ

@gnat I'll put some blame on the (crappy imho) question for this one. I'll delete the answer, but keep the account. Perhaps he'll eventually become a wonderful contributor /wishfull thinking

@gnat Yes, that would make a bit more sense. If the question is overly broad, let's not legitimize it with a not exact dupe closure. A dupe implies the question is suitable for the site, and its only problem is that it has been asked before.

@YannisRizos yes maybe they're not a lost cause, we'll se

I don't have high hopes, but he went through the trouble of registering an account. That's not typical with spammers.

@gnat In my book the real key isn't the background, many questions come from the same place in people's experiences because some situations ellicit a lot of confusion and thus questions; that said, for a question to be a dupe it needs to have the same actual question, not background. If the actual questions are different, the answers will be different, therefore somebody who happens upon one question looking for answers, will follow the dupe chain and find answers to a different question

(I don't actually know the details of the Q you're referring to, I'm just speaking in general terms here, perhaps the question is the same in that particular instance you brought up, I haven't looked)

@JimmyHoffa did you see most recent guidance at MSO?

@gnat This is interesting in it's effects on us because per my reading, closed questions should no longer have questions linked to them as dupes, which seems appropriate to me anyway. If a question is closed, it's not indicative of a well answered question and this advice says the purpose of dupe closure is to give the asker and future readers a good answer

@gnat I think the guidance there is on my side still :P It has a distinct focus on the fact that dupe is not closure, dupe is just another tool for answering a question

they even took [closed] out of the title for dupes, you shouldn't use dupe to close a question, you should use dupe to answer a question

Hell, I would like to see dupe in the flag rather than close vote menus, a dupe is obvious and doesn't need voting (though it should show up in a review queue for voting even though a mod could reasonably link as dupe without votes)

but that's a bit far. I'm happy with the changed and guidance there

> The fundamental goal of dupes is to help people find the right answer by getting all of the answers in one place. It is not to just clean up clutter.

(emphasis mine)

@gnat So do I win yet, or are you still unconvinced? I'm not trying to offend, just trying to convince (you are after all the hobbyist janitor around here who affects as much as the pros, convincing you of things pays dividends)

@MichaelT no, this is only temporary. Reading this will enhance their coding quality many times.

@MichaelT Null!

Hmm, so how many points on the Joel test did you personally have to provide at your former company?

(Actually, I just looked it up to answer on my own behalf and I directly or indirectly account for 4).

eesh

@psr I think there's a void portion of the joel test in the fine print reads something like: Do you use MUMPS? Subtract all points.

I find it altogether very strange that you worked in a retail outlet?

I suppose if you ranked languages by "Joel test bonus point factor" MUMPS would be about -5.

that a retail outlet would employ a register software developer on site..

"Can I wrap that in a level of indirection for you?"

@MichaelT No I suspect as much, but I would expect them to be at corporate headquarters, not at a retail site

oh

back in pittsburgh dicks was a big employer for the IT industry because they were headquartered there

@psr you largely freelance don't you? Or are you an FTE? I would expect a freelancer need supply most of the joel test points themselves

@JimmyHoffa -I've done both but currently FTE.

Ah, that's almost more disturbing; that anyone still brings on FTE's for mumps rather than just doing consulting patchwork

@psr Is there an engineering team there working with you, or at all, or is it just you?

There is a surprising level of new development in MUMPS, actually.

There is an engineering team.

Well that's nice then at least you get some feedback on your MUMPS, I'm guessing that's uncommon for a MUMPS developer

We are doing a rewrite - but the rewrite must be in MUMPS (I am not totally clear why). I am doing the backend of the rewrite pretty much on my own at this point. I'm doing "MUMPS - the closer to good parts" so it's hard to get feedback, and perhaps hard(er) to find other developers. But it ought to be worth it to avoid idiomatic old school MUMPS.

@JimmyHoffa - But you complain about C# being verbose - dear God is there a lot of ceremony! Just having C# collection handling (I guess I do - but C# 1.0) and higher order functions (what I've got is worse than delegates) would save much tedium.

@psr I would think sincerely about writing my own preprocessor if there were any more ceremony than C# has, I think about it with C# sometimes..

Presumably the ceremony is consistent, redundant, and predictable from a subset of the ceremony. Make a preprocessor that takes some subset and just expands it into the proper ceremony you need. C# does tons of that

using(FileStream fs = new FileStream("C:\bla.txt"))
{
  // some code
}

is just expanded into:

FileStream fs = new FileStream("c:\bla.txt");
try
{
  // some code
}
finally
{
    ((IDisposable)fs).Dispose();
}

foreach(string someStr in someStringCollection) { blabla }

is:

Enumerator<string> stringEnumerator = someStringCollection.GetEnumerator();
while(stringEnumerator.Next())
{
  string someStr = stringEnumerator.Current;
  blabla
}

genuinely writing a parser/expander for things like that is not difficult

@psr go for it, just check in the expanded forms and nobody is the wiser (other than the fact that your code somehow ends up with less bugs and get's done faster)

write the parser/expander in haskell, give yourself some sugar for the worst parts

give yourself delegates, make the expander just create an actual method just like the C# compiler does

Create your own inambiguous delimiter, _*_ to *_* and inbetween you get to define a delegate signature or place a delegate to call or your own DSL of whatever sort you wish

@psr I presume you can't nest functions inside of functions? (forget passing them around as variables, I just mean for scoping)

@JimmyHoffa I already do a lot of code generation - but whole methods or classes, to get around some language limitations. The preprocessor might help with some of the other issues. If the preprocessor isn't the source code you lose maybe 90% of the benefit though - sort of like writing Haskell and maintaining machine code.

No such thing as nested function scope.

@psr what do you mean preprocessor isn't the source code you lose benefit? The preprocessor would just give you some sugar constructs just like other languages have

If you use the preprocessor once then just use what it generated, it would be sort of like writing Haskell and maintaining machine code.

Well of course

That's what I suggested, you just check in the resultant code

If for no other reason than because some place that requires you to use MUMPS is likely not open to some modifications to the language directly which you maintain. So long as all you give them is the resultant MUMPS the world is harmonious

Oh, you're suggesting maintaining the code with preprocessors, hey go for it. maintain that hidden from prying eyes if you want, doesn't particularly matter

@psr does it have namespaces or any real form of function grouping? modules? or is it all old school files with include directives?

classes? anything?

if it has some but it's not arbitrary scaled that's the worst scenario for generation because your expander has to worry about scoping. If there's none then no scoping to worry about, if there's arbitrary nesting then you just nest inline and don't have to worry about it, otherwise you need to make sure the expanded forms get placed within the correct scope which may be outside of the lexical scope of the preprocessor constructs themselves so you have to figure out how to find parent scope

As far as being misguided goes, that question about takes the cake.. boy howdy

Although there are several things that could be described by the word "namespace" (one of which is called a "namespace"), none of them are what you are talking about. Everything is a global namespace, no includes. Actually, no files, classes are stored in the database. You can serialize them to files.

    someString()
      quit "Hello, World!"

    hello() _*getString

      write _*getString(),!

      quit

    main()

      hello() _*someString

I made a higher order function DSL :D

(That is probably totally not MUMPS)

(still probably not mumps at all)

@psr That makes it easy at least. Any expansion that requires generating new methods you just put the new methods in the same functional scoping as everything else; global. No need to worry about scoping when you try to insert generated bits.

just remember, a preprocessor is not a type checker. (Though you could make the preprocessor execute the compiler as a post-step to validate types)

Oh wait, MUMPS is err typeless isn't it?

shit shit shit...I took a moment to read another codeless code too.. I'm screwed.

@WorldEngineer Neat. Though having poked at underscore.js I can't say I gave two craps for it. a fold and cons function is all you need to easily create every other of the generic basic higher order functions desired, in that way underscore's a functional library giving basic functional paradigm functionality to a functional language which already has all that.

and everything else it had was stuff aimed at making javascript behave how OO programmers would want it to, which it shouldn't do anyway.

Other than the fact that book is advertising _.js I expect it to be quite good, who better to teach javascript than a lisper

@WorldEngineer yeah that's basically how I feel. I'm happy with jquery for how accessible it makes the DOM, but I never touch any of the .extend or other utility crap (ok I use $.each sometimes just because not all browsers have Array.Map yet)

Smart move since python's your goal anyway it seems

@WorldEngineer Be less so, in either case it would be the wrong company

I kid, some ruby folks are extremely smart, regardless of their odd choice for a language. VB.Net however is wholey without reason which means the company is willing to make unreasonable decisions

MUMPS is real?

I thought it was just a story The Daily WTF tells to frighten young programmers.

… I don't know how to respond to this.

visit daily WTF for more info?