English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mitch

12:00 AM

@Cerberus I had pizza made from leftovers

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist They do. But in my limited experience. you don't want to eat there.

Mitch

Not leftover pizza.

Faheem Mitha

Well, my experience is limited to Bombay, which may be atypical.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha Ironic then that the best Indian food anywhere is said to be had in London.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Yes, I was going to say (but didn't, since it might seem odd), that one of the few places I have eaten what seemed (at the time, anyway), to be reasonable Indian food in a restaurant, was in the Uk. In Cambrige, to be precise.

tchrist

12:02 AM

Your English is remarkably solid for a subcontinental. Are you by chance Kipling’s thousandth man?

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist By anywhere, I assume you mean in a restaurant.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha As have I.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Sorry, I don't get the reference.

tchrist

And Oxford, and London, and Bristol, etc.

Perhaps I should have said Solomon’s.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Solomon's?

tchrist

12:04 AM

One man in a thousand
    Solomon said
Will stick more close than a brother.
But the thousandth man
    Will stay by your side
To the gallows’ foot —
    And after.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Hmm. That's Kipling?

tchrist

Believe so.

Faheem Mitha

Maybe that's the origin of the P G Wodehouse reference about "sticking closer than a brother".

tchrist

@FaheemMitha Quite possibly.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Well, I'm not really that Indian. As you would discover if you met me. I did grow up in this benighted place, though.

tchrist

12:06 AM

The ratio of native speakers to non-native speakers of English in the subcontinent is about one in a thousand.

Did you learn English before school?

Faheem Mitha

Oh, it's from "Rewards and Fairies". Never did take to Kipling's version of English history any more than his version of India.

@tchrist It's unfortunately the only thing I speak. Both my parents were very... Westernized, I suppose, is the term.

I do like the Jungle Book, though. About the only thing of Kiplings I really like.

tchrist

Some of Kipling’s viewpoints have not withstood the test of time, by which I mean they do not look good in our eyes. Including mine. But he was a good writer.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Yes, he was.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha Ah, so I was right. It seems unusual though that you speak nothing else.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Right about what?

tchrist

12:09 AM

Thousandth Man. :)

Faheem Mitha

I speak something that resembles Hindi. Though I would hesitate to characterise it as such.

Mitch

Dickens, I hear, as affable as he comes across in his writing, was supposedly kind of a jerk in real life.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Ah, Ok.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha heh

Faheem Mitha

Are you English, yourself? Your location says CO.

@Mitch Lots of writers are, I imagine.

tchrist

12:10 AM

I’m currently Coloradan.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist I just meant, were you born in the US?

tchrist

I was born in Beloit.

Un bel lieu, tu sais. :)

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Jane Austen was probably nice.

Faheem Mitha

I quite like Dickens. Some of his stuff anyway. For example, Great Expectations has got to be one of the best things written in English.

Mitch

Byron was a total asshole.

tchrist

12:12 AM

Quite.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist That's a yes, then? WP tells me that is in WI.

Mitch

Darwin was a real family man

wait... that's not literature

tchrist

@FaheemMitha It is. But before moving to Colorado I lived in three other countries.

Spain, England, and Texas. :)

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist I've also got quite an eccentric resume. For example a Cambridge degree. Which for a Indian, is very, very, unusual. Also, possibly, not a good idea.

@tchrist LOL

Mitch

Yeah.. was any author not mostly a terrible person in real life?

tchrist

12:14 AM

I’m horrible. I’ve generally more enjoyed my times in Oxford more than my times in Cambridge.

Mitch

Why is that horrible?

I'm sure they beat Glasgow

TRiG

@tchrist Isn't it meant to be Oxford for the arts, and Cambridge for the sciences?

Faheem Mitha

Has anyone read "Puck of Pooks Hill" and/or its sequel, and has comments about it's historical accuracy?

tchrist

@Mitch I’m sub rosa impugning his alma mater without meaning to.

@TRiG So they say.

TRiG

And I remember Missee Lee having strong opinions on which had the better marmalade.

Faheem Mitha

12:15 AM

@TRiG That's an old-fashioned and now somewhat inaccurate division.

Both Oxford and Cambridge have strong arts and science programs. Though Cambridge is still somewhat stronger in the sciences, I believe. And Oxford might be in the arts, though I don't know about that.

tchrist

@TRiG Marmalade or marmalads? :)

TRiG

@Mitch Jane Austin could be quite sarcastic in some of her private letters. But people seemed to love her, which suggests she was a decent human being.

tchrist

Merely a slip of the finger away.

TRiG

@tchrist No innuendo intended this time.

Faheem Mitha

@TRiG Hitler's two sisters loved him. Though I don't mean to specially pick on Hitler, who already gets more than his fair share of attention.

tchrist

12:18 AM

John Updike once described William Maxwell as one of the wisest and kindest writers in American fiction.

TRiG

@tchrist Kipling's Kim is a paean to the British Raj. He loved India, but it was definitely British India that he loved. It's an uncomfortable book now in some ways, and certainly not one that I'd recommend without caveats. But it's also one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. That man could put words together.

Faheem Mitha

@TRiG I've heard what a great book Kim is all my life. But I've always found it unreadable.

Though the beginning is quite good. I've read that, at least.

TRiG

@FaheemMitha Heh. Tastes differ.

Faheem Mitha

@TRiG what do you think of "Puck"? See above.

@TRiG Of course. But one should always be willing to be educated.

TRiG

The toughest book I've read, in terms of language, is Virgina Woolf's To The Lighthouse. Never read anything so dense. It was worth it, though.

@FaheemMitha I've not read Puck. I should.

Faheem Mitha

12:22 AM

@TRiG ok

And of course, there is a sequel. As I said above.

TRiG

@FaheemMitha There are so many good books, though. No need to struggle through ones you don't enjoy purely for the sake of reading "good literature". It probably is a good thing to stretch yourself a little, but there's no need to feel guilty for abandoning a book. I rarely abandon books, but I have done so.

Faheem Mitha

@TRiG Oh, I don't feel guilty. But it is possible to not "get into" a book for no good reason. And agreed about there being many books.

Way, way, more than one could read in a single lifetime. Unless one was a serious speed reader, and did nothing else.

tchrist

Not even then.

TRiG

(I abandoned Middlesex because it's too well written. It had very lively language and vivid imagery; the kind of thing that sticks in your brain. And that was wonderful. Really wonderful. Until the book started describing a genocide in that same vivid detail with imagery that sticks in the mind. I decided I couldn't take it, and gave up.)

Faheem Mitha

@TRiG Author?

Oh, you're Irish? Where do you live? If you don't mind me asking? And Northern Ireland or Eire?

Though perhaps Eire should be the Republic of Ireland.

Oh, this one?

Middlesex (novel)

Middlesex is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides published in 2002. The book is a bestseller, with more than three million copies sold by May 2011. Its characters and events are loosely based on aspects of Eugenides' life and observations of his Greek heritage. It is not an autobiography; unlike the protagonist, Eugenides is not intersex. The author decided to write Middlesex after he read the 1980 memoir Herculine Barbin and was unsatisfied with its discussion of intersex anatomy and emotions. Primarily a Bildungsroman and family saga, the novel chronicles the impact of a mutated...

tchrist

12:33 AM

It’s well received, but I confess it never interested me.

Robusto

1:28 AM

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: Cooked dishes from around the world, plus some pineapples [[smorgasbord]]

room topic changed to English Language & Usage: Cooked dishes from around the world, plus some pineapples [smorgasbord]

SmokeDetector

3:09 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in title: What is a word that encompasses drugs, supplements, and foods? by tbird on english.stackexchange.com

crl

10:43 AM

Robusto

11:32 AM

Not even very good ham.

terdon

Sham ham.

Robusto

11:47 AM

Mystery meat.

Robusto

12:27 PM

So just today I find that the company lists my title as "Principle UI Engineer." That's as bad as spelling my name wrong.

I sent an email to HR, now I wonder when, if ever, this will rise to someone's short list of things to fix.

Ellie Kesselman

12:51 PM

@crl It could even be head cheese. It gives her a Hannibal Lector look.

Robusto

In the Marvel Universe she is known as Lunchmeat.

terdon

@EllieKesselman I think you meant Hamibal Lector.

Faheem Mitha

1:24 PM

@terdon <Groan>

Sorry, @terdon. Such a reaction is obligatory.

terdon

:)

Cerberus

She does look scary, ham or no.

terdon

yeah

let's

make

her

go

away

posting

by

of

crap

this

sort

tchrist

i
don’t
know
why
you
enjoy
being
rate-limited
on
one-line
posts
since
you
can
always
include
a
real
newline
for
line
breaks
wherever
you
please
you
know

terdon

Quite
frankly
it's
because
it
had
not
occurred
to
me
and
yes
I
feel
silly
now

tchrist

1:38 PM

I have a serious question.

Why do programmers inevitably make everything so fucking complicated?

Even if it starts out simply, give enough of them enough time, and they will so embellish it with endless elaborations of twisty-turny rococo abstraction layers and secret side-effects and special exceptions that it takes forever to understand and is downright dangerous to use?

I feel like they think they’re being clever and don’t realize they’re making it all worse.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist You use Perl, right? Ever tried Common Lisp?

tchrist

@FaheemMitha The answer to both questions is yes, but they are not yeses of equal calibre. I haven’t touched Common Lisp in more than three decades. Nor do I exempt Perl from what I wrote: one need but look into the ineffably long-running Gedankenexperiment disastrously called perl6 to see what happens when folks try to unwrinkle things.

You see this everywhere you turn. Old examples include Bourne shell to bash or C to C++. Then there is the rise of endless towers of framework stacks that plague us everywhere.

C is simple, C++ is hopelessly complex.

I don’t think this is the same as happens with human language in which branching dialects give rise over time to different daughter languages. This is something else. With natural language, daughter languages are not way more complex than their parents; indeed, they’re often simpler.

With software, everything gets harder and more complicated the longer it survives.

And bigger and more ponderous, until finally it falls overs from its own topheaviness.

Cerberus

1:58 PM

@tchrist That is bad, but...they probably imagined they would be the only ones using it, so it wouldn't need to be readable?

Mari-Lou A

2:10 PM

Where's @little eva? Bah humbug, non ci capisco niente...

Oh, dear. @Little eva is I think lost, don't blame her. How do I contact her?

tchrist

@Mari-LouA Do you know her email address?

@Cerberus Yes, it appends because I didn't forget to use the "-a" option. :)

Cerberus

Hi, Mari-Lou!

tchrist

@Mari-LouA Only moderators can fish out unpublished private email addresses from SE for private or semi-private communication.

Mirabile visu.

@terdon If that was a superping, thanks.

Mari-Lou A

@tchrist No, I don't. apparently she is under the impression I know my way round this place. Ha!

Little Eva

Has anyone seen Mari-Lou?

Mari-Lou A

2:20 PM

Hey!

Now, what do we do?

Cerberus

Dance?

Wrestle?

Mari-Lou A

someone set us a room, please.

tchrist

What do we do about what? You can get you gals your own room if you please.

Oh, I see.

Let us tell you how, ok?

Cerberus

@Mari-LouA You can make one.

Mari-Lou A

How?

tchrist

2:21 PM

By clicking on her profile. It will offer to set up a new room for you.

Cerberus

Clicking on her icon here.

Mari-Lou A

Fine, no probs. The link is there! wonderful xxx

tchrist

You’re welcome.

Little Eva

How do I get to the room Mari-Lou has set-up? I apologize for my ignorance ...

Cerberus

@LittleEva There should be a notification at the top of this screen?

tchrist

2:25 PM

@LittleEva Click here.

Cerberus

Otherwise, look in your inbox.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Cl didn't exist 3 decades ago. The standard is about 2 decades old ~ 1994.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha Hm. Well, $boss[-2] was quite into it.

My last lisp program was 33 years ago.

Maybe 31.

Faheem Mitha

But I guess you meant some precursor of CL.

Mari-Lou A

This is quite funny...

Faheem Mitha

2:26 PM

@tchrist $boss[-2]?

tchrist

My penultimate manager.

Faheem Mitha

You mean a boss two back?

tchrist

Precisely.

Faheem Mitha

Fair warning - I won't recognize Perl syntax if you use it.

Mari-Lou A

@LittleEva do you see the room? It's a bit bare, I've just moved in.

tchrist

2:28 PM

@FaheemMitha Well, we can drop the dollar sign, but this is unlikely to produce the results you expect in most scenarios. :) One can make it work in C with multiple pointers into the same array, but that's somewhat wicked

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Well, my guess would be that most programmers are simply not very good. Similar comments apply to most programming languages.

Though I have no direct experience in corporate programming environments.

I've only ever worked (and studied) in universities.

I'm generally very impressed with Common Lisp. But as of right now, have had no opportunity to use it for actual work. Unfortunately.

tchrist

At the university you can have good and bad programmers alike; that was two jobs back. My last job had with only a few exceptions nothing but bad programmers from India and decent ones from the States. My current job has nothing but extremely good programmers. It’s hard to generalize.

@Cerberus Yes. Note that saving errors is different from saving normal output.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist I'm talking about global averages.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha Sturgeon’s Law.

Faheem Mitha

Which I don't have any statistics for, granted. But there must be someone out there using PHP, for example.

tchrist

2:35 PM

> Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Faheem Mitha

The first time I saw PHP I wanted to scream and run. Apparently it does not produce the same reaction in other people.

tchrist

@FaheemMitha I rather suspect it does.

Just not in enough people.

It is universally derided in all programming circles.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Were the programmers from India working in India?

I mean, were they working remotely from India?

tchrist

@FaheemMitha That does seem to be the problem, yes. The good Indian programmers I’ve worked with have always been Stateside.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist Hmm. Were they on H1-B visas?

tchrist

2:38 PM

@Cerberus You can always take your entire command and append a copy of its errors to a logfile.

Faheem Mitha

The Stateside ones?

tchrist

@FaheemMitha No, residents.

Faheem Mitha

@tchrist oh

tchrist

Hm, I might be wrong. I don’t know how Gurusamy Sarathy first came here. He had a rather thick accent at first.

Little Eva

2:56 PM

Hey Guys, can I delete a comment made here? if so, how?

tchrist

@LittleEva Only within 2 minutes of having done so. If it is important, you can flag for moderator attention with a custom request that it be deleted.

Little Eva

Thanks t, I did that, too.

tchrist

You’re welcome.

terdon

@tchrist No, just a regular, run of the mill ping.

Little Eva

4:10 PM

tchrist, ok I'll bear that in my mind. ;-)

terdon

Hi @LittleEva, @Mari-LouA was looking for you.

Little Eva

@tchrist - recently?

@terdon sorry, recently?

terdon

→ 141 messages moved to Room for cerberus's android

@LittleEva Yes, around the time you were trying to set up a room I think. You've probably sorted it all out by now.

NaCl

Hello guys

Little Eva

@terdon, I've been trying to share a 701 mb file w/Mari-Lou, using Google Drive - she says when she tries to dl she gets a 404 error, anyone know why?

NaCl

4:21 PM

As I want to participate in the Cambridge Advanced Certificate this December I'm searching for a platform to send some writings to, to let them, the guys behind that particular platform, check if my use of English is appropriate. Would it be okay to ask on english.stackexchange.com for such a service or is that blatantly offtopic?

@LittleEva Maybe a permission thing...?

tchrist

> The 404 or Not Found error message is an HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested.

@NaCl Blatantly off-topic.

Usually a 404 is a bad path.

@LittleEva But if Mari-Lou got it via a "share" action on Google Drive, I find that odd.

NaCl

@tchrist Thank you for your response. Do you know any site which would help me out?

tchrist

@NaCl No I don’t, sorry.

Little Eva

@tchrist, Mari-Lou said she was able to access/view the link (movie) but received that error message when she attempted to DL.

tchrist

Google Drive is a mystery to me. :(

Little Eva

4:29 PM

@tchrist, me too, trial and error will reign

@NaCl, she can actually watch the movie, just not DL, which is really what I'd like her to be able to do, thanks for responding.

NaCl

@LittleEva Well not even by using a flash-video-downloader-thingy? Might do the trick if every straw is gone

Little Eva

@NaCl, a flash-video-downloader-thingy? That's a whole other mystery (I'm obviously a novice playin' catch-up. No, I've got to invest time reading instructions (when all else fails, ya know?). Thanks ya'll.

tchrist

→ 175 messages moved to Room for cerberus's android

NaCl

oh well

tchrist

→ 2 messages moved to Room for cerberus's android

SE is sure a lot easier when you can just do what needs doing. :)

terdon

4:45 PM

That it is.

terdon

5:13 PM