@Kaz What are company numbers?

I think I found a bug in our app. i.imgur.com/0o1KjzM.png

IT's not so bad when, you know, they actually match

I'm staring to get pissed off by SO

Like non-company people using company phone numbers?

@EasterlyIrk Unique identifiers for companies. It's how you work out how much each company pays in tax, etc.

oh.

@BernardMeurer did you get closed?

-2ed on an answer

@BernardMeurer Join the club.

@Quill No, I gave a perfectly good answer and got some dick to say "this isn't code review" and -2

@EasterlyIrk Companies House in the UK manages the register of UK companies. Every single company gets a unique 8-digit company number.

Did I just miss a starfish-fest?

@BernardMeurer to be fair, you got downvoted not just because "it isn't code review" but also because originally your answer didnt' address the question.

I have a list of user-entered "companies" to match against actual registered companies.

Originally, your answer read much more like a CR answer rather than an SO one.

@DanPantry He only had the error in the first place for ussing a silly approach, and that had already been sorted in the comments

But these can often be things like "Stewart Investment Planning (Backwell Branch)"

I would not have downvoted it in it's original state but would not have upvoted it either

That said, it is fine now

or [name] @ [company] of [location]

That and earlier today a good answer didn't get accepted

although I got my upvotes

So, for each of them, I have to manually query Companies House to try and find the actual company.

@BernardMeurer That's SO, not many accepts.

I've been hanging out over at SOCVR lately

SOCVR?

SO Close Vote Reviewers

I don't have the rep to CV, so it feels like sitting at a grownups table as a small child

SOCk Virtual Reality

lol

good way to learn what flies and what doesn't

@BernardMeurer There's a reason why my CR rep is 10x higher than my SO rep

Try the Triage, you only need 500 for that.

I LOVE doing triage stuff

@Mast Yeah, I have Triage and FP/LA

@Kaz Your VBA works, so you can't post SO questions.

I do it everyday at SO

Hello, @WeareBorg

@Mast Plus the stuff I'm doing tends to already have SO qestions.

My CR rep is higher than SO because I get write rants here

@Kaz SO tends to already have the answers, when one is willing to actually search

constructive rants, but rants none the less

it's relaxing

it's relaxing fun to bash on someone else's code and earn Internet points for it

I find I'm much better at explaining why other people's code is terrible than my own.

We also have good tips on optimizing you code on PPCG.

s/optimizing/making it unmaintainable

;-)

/

you forgot your slash on the end

@EasterlyIrk I call bullshit.

There's good tips on PPCG

Unless maintainable means short.

And unreadable.

On PPCG, you get to learn about the quirky features of languages

for some values of "languages"

On CR, you get to learn about the best practices

Unless you use JavaScript, then you already knew them.

@Mat'sMug esolangs are still languages

@Quill not-all-languages?

... for some values of "features", more like

@Quill what does knowing how to optimize code written in a language nobody uses actually teach you besides things that you can't apply to any real code?

@Mat'sMug it makes you feel special inside.

Quirky features like this one? Array.apply(null, Array(N)).map(function (a, b) { return b + 1; });

@PinCrash Yes.

:D

I'm still not sure if that is a hack or genius

with javascript you can never really tell

Uncaught ReferenceError: N is not defined(…)(anonymous function) @ VM1435:2InjectedScript._evaluateOn @ VM1434:875InjectedScript._evaluateAndWrap @ VM1434:808InjectedScript.evaluate @ VM1434:664

welp

@Pimgd you need to specify N

@Mat'sMug Esolangs are great ways to learn about how different languages handle information and internal data and memory.

Not to mention a great way to have fun in the process

@Quill so is C. Although, to be fair, that's basically an esolang sometimes. (same for assembler)

^^

There's still an underlying programming and computer science fundamental topic hidden underneath the obfuscated code

I'd rather make an esolang than use one

pretty much every regular PPCG user has either tried it, or wants to try it

@Mat'sMug he says as he writes an IDE for VBA.... ;-)

VBA is an esolang, but it escaped

@DanPantry sure you can. if you want to gauge your eyes out then it's usually genius

I'm not writing an IDE... I'm enhancing one :)

@Mat'sMug yeah yeah and Russians "enhanced" nuclear weapons ;-)

why not go the full 9 nine yards and just write an IDE

sopython.com/salad

Apparently this is a thing

@BernardMeurer wtf

> Tomato - Mild swear word

Yeah, that salad joke is old though. I think it's retired now

Just popped on SO python

@Quill because...

apparently most users don't do it anymore

and someone said Cabbage @Bernard Meurer

@Quill because VBA is in a way bound to the Application Host

@BernardMeurer that's normal

read the room rules

I was like fite me dude ur a cabbage lozer

be happy as long as they don't call you beansprout

@Mast Define optimization then.

@CaptainObvious java html question without regex?

am I the only one scanning for a regex tag on every question that has "HTML" in the title?

quick, catch it, it's a unicorn

I hope not

I didn't ctrl+f though because that would be cheating

if you scroll through a html question looking for the words "regex", the suspense is very entertaining

I thought you were @CaptainObvious then, that would have been comedically great timing @EasterlyIrk

rofl

I used to have a bot named Captain Obvious, but he got merged.

why isn't that tagged stackexchange?

wat

@Quill 5 tags

surely parsing is less valuable than stackexchange

eh

I'll tell you what

hey @nhgrif

Hey there @nhgrif

People ask absolutely terrible questions on Stack Overflow.

leave it be for future generations to horror at.

hey @nhgrif

@nhgrif links?

@nhgrif "why is it called Swift when it's slower than C"?

@nhgrif

(that's a joke, I have no idea about its speed)

wait, you all had something to say, I thought we were just spamming the guy with pings as a greeting

@Mat'sMug .....eat stars

@Mat'sMug I want to star this, but I don't want a stack overflow link on the starwall...

lol

@EasterlyIrk basically, most of the whole site... but more specifically, I believe I've down+close voted the 5 most recent Swift questions.

@Quill and this ladies and gentlemen, is why context matters on CR :)

@nhgrif it is a new language - and also the fastest growing after javascript or so I've heard (on SO)

@Mat'sMug TNB gets really weird with out of context quotes.

brb finding

@DanPantry Yes, but still... the questions are terrible.

Like, one question isn't a Swift question. It's a UXUI question and doesn't belong on SO.

link

@nhgrif, I don't think there's that many gold badge users to close swift stuff yet

give it time and hopefully it should get better

@Quill That only helps with duplicates

really

star-fish

I've seen like 50 of those for Obj-C

And a lot of Swift questions have ios on them. I am ios gold badge on SO.

it's a storyboard thing anyway

@nhgrif Oh, that works

I can dupe hammer anything tagged with iOS.

But the problem isn't duplicates. It's just bad questions.

There isn't a close hammer?

@nhgrif that's not specific to swift :)

Is that mod-only?

Not a single vote.

Make a canonical bad IOS question

@Mat'sMug I know. It's just specifically bad today.

then you can close as dupe for that one

This question can't even be reproduced:

@Pimgd lol

You can get the SOCVR script, and hope they'll close stuff, I suppose

@nhgrif yet I bet it will reproduce itself hahaha

> self.labelProva.text = "holaaaaaaaaa"

it-compiles-papa-bless

greetings

@nhgrif okay, what does ! mean in Swift? I guess ? means "nullable" or similar. I appreciate I could google this but you'd probably explain it more succinctly.

only asking due to that question having it.

The ! in Swift is a great big sign that says "I don't have a clue what I'm doing."

I'm going to write the OGL, Open Goodies License: Everytime it compiles you have to do something good for someone

Alright, good enough explanation to me.

Swift has the idea of optionals (nullable). In Swift, if you declare a variable as such:

var someOptionalVariable: Int?

It is a nullable/optional int which could be nil.

But you have to write unwrapping code in order to use it.

there are a lot of safe ways to unwrap and deal with what to do when it's nil

if let foo = bar {
    // bar was non-nil and can be access through foo
}
else {
    // bar was nil
}

let foo = bar ?? 0

^ if bar was nil, assign 0 to foo, else assign the unwrapped value to foo

> I want to generate statistical reports and, I have many deferent where clauses so the function became so long I did many refactoring but it is not enough can some one help me with some technics that these technic make the function short and readable

or this..

@nhgrif this makes me enjoy C#'s Nullable<T> and if (bar.HasValue) { // bar has a value } else { // bar was null } even more

why?

C# is quite verbose...

what's foo?

magic

foo is a variable scoped within the if

So the point here is...

what's foo's type

Bar's type is Optional<T> and Foo's type is T

A if let foo = bar vs B if (bar.HasValue) ...I go for B

@Mat'sMug let me explain why A is better.

A prevents crashes.

lol I knew that would be your next line :)

B can't crash

With B, you can use bar without checking .hasValue

In Swift, in order to use an optional, you have to either unwrap it (in many of the safe ways to unwrap it) or use the exclamation mark like a clown

just like you can use bar with A without checking against foo

No you can't.

possible answer invalidation by Justforfun on question by Justforfun: codereview.stackexchange.com/posts/123232/revisions

Okay, so from now on for simplicity...

what does the exclamation mark clown do?

> Improved Formatting

Assume we're working with this..

 var bar: Int?
 var foo: Int

bar is always an optional int

and foo is always an unwrapped int

@Duga one of the answers: "indent your code properly"

right

This will not compile:

= rollbaccccck

let foo: Int = bar

Won't compile. Bar is an optional int, foo is being delcared as a non-optional

of course not

you can only compile with unwrapping code

let foo = bar ?? 0 // if bar was nil, foo is 0, else foo is unwrapped bar

i.e. null-coalescing operator is ??

if let foo = bar { /* bar was non nil do something with foo as unwrapped type */ } else { /* bar was nil */ }

@Mat'sMug yes

except in Swift it's called nil for some reason.

guard let foo = bar else { /* bar was nil, must exit scope */ return }
// use foo in this scope

or... there's this

let foo = bar!

This is the sin.

If bar is non-nil, foo is unwrapped bar.

If bar is nil, crash.

rookie mistake I guess

i.e. trying to unwrap a nil and forcing it into an int

The exclamation mark here is referred to the implicitly unwrapped optional operator or the force unwrap operator

right, and it can't unwrap because there's no value to unwrap

let foo: Int! = 0 // implicitly unwrapped optional
let foo = bar! // force unwrap operator

So that's why it means "I have no idea what I am doing"

There are exactly zero occasions for which the force unwrap operator is acceptable. There is exactly one occasion on which the first is acceptable.

You guys have a serious lack of ಠ_ಠ in here.

And even in that one occasion, I'm going to make the case that it's not really acceptable, but Apple is the only one that can fix it to do anything else so we just have to deal with it.

with that message is 48, and PPCG has about 2615.

@EasterlyIrk Because serious discussion going on :-)

wait wait, the first line declares foo as an unwrapped nullable int?? ಠ_ಠ

@DanPantry we have serious discussion also!

@Pimgd ಠ____________________ಠ

var foo: Int!

49.

foo here is an implicitly unwrapped optional int.

Which means... technically it could be nil, but it never should be nil.

Can we keep the horseplay to a minimum while others are talking about code?

swift-is-confusing

You do this to allow a variable to be nil, but know that it's safe-ish to do this because in practice it never should be nil.

In reality, there is exactly one occasion on which it is acceptable, and it's only acceptable there because it's up to Apple to fix and we can't do anything else about it until then.

so, in practice it's better to throw a frakkin exception.. why is that "implicitly unwrapped optional int" type even allowed to exist??

@IBOutlet var myCoolButtonHookedUpThroughInterfaceBuilder: UIButton!

Thanks for explaining this @nhgrif btw, it's really interesting

incoming duga

for a repeat offender

You should make an article for this on your blog

^^

@Mat'sMug Because in Swift, every non-optional property must have a value before initialization is complete. Having implicitly unwrapped allows you to let some things be nil while not forcing you to write the unwrap code all over the place.

@nhgrif So an example might be using property injection (for whatever reason) where even though it can theoretically be null you know that in practice it won't be?

can't it just initialize to int's default value like everyone else? (e.g. 0)

And again, the only place it's really acceptable is with @IBOutlets, which don't get hooked up during initialization, but in practice are hooked up before you ever use the code. It has to do with whatever magic Apple uses to hook UI elements to properties at run time.

codereview.stackexchange.com/posts/123232/revisions

oh wait, UIButton isn't a value type

@Mat'sMug Well, in reality, you should write a proper initializer.

exactly

class BadPerson {
    var firstName: String!
    var lastName: String!
}

^ this is bad Swift.

Do you need XCode to develop for iOS? Never messed with that magic

I can see why

class SlightlyBetterPerson {
    var firstName: String?
    var lastName: String?
}

@BernardMeurer If you use Swift, no, it works on other platforms without XCode (Linux)

This also works. The ? is better because it's much safer to work with, but it also means you're writing unwrapping code when you use it.

in C# when you declare a private readonly string _firstName; field, you have to initialize it in the constructor.

class WontCompilePerson {
    var firstName: String
    var lastName: String
}

^ this won't compile

@Mat'sMug or in the field itself. private readonly string _firstName = 'foo';

yes

(the first two compile and the properties get default values of nil)

@DanPantry Cool, papa bless, any recommended IDEs ?

point being that readonly prevents post-initialization assignments

The third won't compile because there's no way to initialize the class.

@BernardMeurer I don't develop Swift, just sharing the word.

class DefaultValuesPerson {
    var firstName: String = "first"
    var lastName: String = "last"
}

@nhgrif swift classes seem to behave a bit like .net value types then

@nhgrif Any non-OSX bound IDE you recommend?

This will compile. The values can't be nil. They are mutable. This is blech. We've got sentinel values.

@DanPantry I forgot you develop Angular

class ProperPerson {
    let firstName: String
    let lastName: String

    init(firstName: String, lastName: String) {
        self.firstName = firstName
        self.lastName = lastName
    }
}

^ this is proper Swift.

@BernardMeurer I'm not sure that you need Xcode, but you do need to be on OS X to develop for iOS. And using anything other than Xcode for iOS would be very silly.

does Swift not have constructors?

@Mat'sMug That's what init is. That's a constructor/initializer. Not a function/method.

@nhgrif Sigh, but macbooks are just so overpriced

(Thanks for the answer tho :))

@BernardMeurer You can write Swift on Linux.

so the init identifier has a special meaning then

Yes. init and deinit are special methods on the class. Initializer and deinitializer.

@nhgrif But my point was to develop for iOS

makes sense

There are also the idea of required initializers and convenience initializers.

Just for the funs of it

@BernardMeurer Get a job with a company that provides MacBook Pros as your development machine. Tons of companies do unless you're developing .NET stuff (and even then, the .NET devs at the company I work for use MBP machines with bootcamp or something)

Why would you want a macbook

@nhgrif I'm still about to go to college, I'll see if I can buy one with student discount :)

and self is like a this. would it be legal to prefix the firstName field with, say, an underscore, and then do _firstName = firstName (almost typed a semicolon) in the init method?

@Pimgd To beat your ass in chess with style?

And to develop for iOS

or it's frowned upon to not be explicit about accessing self?

I was kinda hoping to play without engines, thanks

possible answer invalidation by ShinyMK on question by ShinyMK: codereview.stackexchange.com/posts/123226/revisions

@Mat'sMug A required initializer must be implemented or inherited by all subclasses. Swift initializers are not guaranteed to be inherited. A convenience initializer cannot call to super.init, but must call a designated initializer on the class (or another convenience initializer which eventually chains down to a designated initializer). Designated initializers must call to a super class initializer (if you're inheriting from a class).

@Mat'sMug Yes. It'd be legal, but we wouldn't want to make our public properties prefixed with an underscore

wait, they're not fields?

@Mat'sMug It is not. Our style guide at work specifies you should only use self when necessary.

ok

Self is necessary when scope hides the instance method/property or when you're in a closure.

They are considered properties.

so fields are implicitly public... or is there some magic going on behind the scenes that gives them proper encapsulation?

@nhgrif Is that something done often in style guides or is the company being one of the few doing that?

uh, ish...

or there's a different syntax for private fields?

private let thisIsAPrivateProperty: Int

or

private(set) var thisIsAReadOnlyProperty: Int

everything-is-a-property ...looks like they did it right then.

but there's also this...