you could always ignore all other users in the room

that would narrow it down

lol

@KitFox quite a lot

hey @kitfox you don't know vba, do you

it's quite a commute, 1 hr drive each way, but hopefully i'll be allowed to work from home for a couple of days a week after i've gotten used to their systems after a couple of months

@meer2kat Yeah. some.

@Jez w00t! Nice.

@KitFox isn't it awful? :(

Yeah.

All the headache of vb, none of the niceities.

Yeah :(

Signs you shouldn't be a programmer. Number One: When you create an endless loop the freezes your program and can't make it not be an endless loop.

Try 'break'.

Number Two: You feel like throwing your computer through a window...every five minutes.

@KitFox lol pretty much spot on

@meer2kat No, that's pretty common amongst programmers.

@KitFox oh good, i can fit right in then :P

Sure. Learn to use Esc and Break.

Also, Home and End.

Those keys actually do things?

The rest is just practice.

Esc doesn't work. Trust me, I tried that one lmao

Maybe you did it wrong. :-/

Once trapped in this chatroom "Esc" will never work :D

lol wouldn't be surprised

@skullpatrol hehehe!

@meer2kat why does it have to be an endless loop?

To freeze the program.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 because i haven't done this in months and don't remember how to make it listen to me

Geez, Mr.Shiny, that should be obvious to one as skilled as you.

@KitFox obviously :P

I suck at programming, and yet I have never accidentally created an endless loop...

@KitFox I, uh, was just testing.

You just have to make the loop go a limited number of times while testing.

@MickLH It requires no “red” cones to see spectral violet, that lovely stuff down round 400 nm.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Suuuuuure.

@Cerberus It's pretty funny. It copies the same file name in to the listbox over and over again....forever.

Just as you were testing the locks on my door when you were busy with that crowbar?

@Cerberus really? it's easy, depending on how your loop works.

@Cerberus How do you know if they're working, if nobody tests them?

Yeah, I've done it before. With all kinds of code.

@meer2kat Oh, dear...no idea what that looks like...

But I have neither printers nor monitors with violet. Some people do.

You don't see it, or it's not there?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If you do "loop 100", it won't be endless. See? You can make it endless after everything else works.

So the metamerism “purple” hack must serve.

I think I have deep blue spectrum perception.

@Cerberus It's super duper exciting looking. I just need it to to be like "okay, got this file. let's go to the next one" and my brain keeps saying "no, you're dumb and can't remember how to make it do that"

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm good point. I believe you.

@KitFox Sure you do, down to 380 nm or so.

That’s not in any sense of the word “blue”.

@meer2kat So check that you got the file, then increase the index.

@tchrist Blue spectrum, I said, not blue.

What does blue spectrum mean?

I’m serious. I don’t understand.

Blue spectrum is that which the high band photoreceptor responds to.

Ok.

@Cerberus heh. That's the most basic kind of loop. But what if you're traversing a data structure and the structure unexpectedly has cycles? Or what if you're changing your data inside the loop, and the test to exit the loop can never succeed? Or worse, it succeeds on your test data, but fails on some production data?

@meer2kat Ah I see, yes, that's a good use of loops, right? But doesn't your programming language have an automated way to go through all files, then stop?

it's visual basic ;)

Only deep blue something I remember was the one that did Breakfast at Tiffany's

You can get LEDs whose sharp peak is specifically below 450, making them violet.

@MickLH one last time and then i'm rid of VBA h e doubly hocket stick forever.

:D

@meer2kat what version of vba is it?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 uhhhh the one that comes with autodesk inventor 2011

Oh.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sure, in theory, it can absolutely happen, and I'm sure it happens in practice too. Maybe it only happens with more advanced stuff. Just never happened to me, even though every other beginner's mistake has, like strings without "" and variables with "", as we discussed earlier, etc.

@meer2kat wow didn't know that even had vba.

So I just had to deal with the scariest shit

To see true violet, get a prism.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 it's pretty cool stuff. but then i screw up on the basics like this

@Cerberus well, "LOOP 100" is the most basic kind of looping you can have. It's also the least flexible.

Many flowers are very reflective in that range because most pollinators see plenty well down there, much further than we do.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not sure what you mean?

Not literally, but it was pretty intense, I was administering an IV for someone, and normally you have to flush the line with salt water to make sure it's not full of dried blood

@meer2kat Don't give up on programming just because you get frustrated with that crap. That's like giving up on chemistry because your easy bake oven doesn't do what you want it to do.

I pushed the first milliliter through slow to check for problems, it was ok, so I force the next 1ml through hard like usual

That's what my loops look like during testing.

@Kit I think we might should consider something like this:

1, 2, 3, boom the whole IV cable (installed in to the mans arm, through his body to his heart) pops and the liquid comes squirting out with pressure

I'm like FUUUUUCK

Heart cath?

PICC line

yeah

Oh!

Yikes!

No wonder you freaked.

If (is_vba) Then
    RunDontWalk()
End If

@MickLH Ouch!

Also, just to make sure it's nice and emotionally loaded, the man is my father

Was he seriously harmed?

Oh no!

Although if it makes you feel better, my dad came to from heart surgery and pulled his out. Didn't kill him.

Are you a doctor/nurse?

@Cerberus I mean you know ahead of time how many iterations you want: 100 of them. So you write that in the code. Or maybe you count something or do some math and have a variable number, but the number doesn't change once the loop starts.

No he's fine, I handled it and got a new line extension

@KitFox no i enjoy it. which is funny because programming is something i always thought i'd hate. i'm just not good at it lol. especially under pressure. my job here ends friday so i need to fix this last issue before they go. they decided they wanted to be able to select multiple files from the openfiledialog and list them each in the listbox and my brain reminded me i haven't prgrammed in over a month

the part inside the body was thankfully fine

it's funny how different interviewers see you differently. a week or two ago i had an interview with a really "traditionalist" interviewer, quick-firing questions about specific SQL syntax at me and askin really vague questions about how you'd design an OOP application, and his feedback was basically that I was useless, and had virtually no SQL knowledge

but this guy today had a much more relaxed and IMHO better interview approach and thought i was great

Sounds like a useless interviewer

@Cerberus you haven't tried hard enough

my style didnt really change between the 2 interviews

i forget that nearly everyone on this site is a programmer

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Um the 100 is just for testing. But you can keep the 100 in if you're sure that something will break the loop before 100 anyway, so end conditions.

@MickLH Good.

im not shedding any tears, though. the former interview was for a cheque-processing company (apparently they still exist) where it was made clear that their target platform was IE6-8

tech style tends to look for mistakes, behavioral style tends to confirmation.

@Cerberus I guess I don't understand what you're doing with the loop.

@Jez so you dodged multiple bullets, and that explains why their interviewer was shit

why does it explain it?

@Jez Yeah, the whole recruiting and application process has many elements that the people involved think are The Way or scientific, while in reality...

@tchrist Yeah, that's a good idea.

@tchrist I see true violet through the backs of my eyelids.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Could be many things...

mind you, these guys use Oracle whreas my experiene lies with SQL Server. I'll have to pick up pl/sql quickly

as well as ExtJS

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 production is for wimps. you have to design for the infinite unseen universe.

wait... that is production.

@meer2kat I'm totally not!! Are you?

@Jez That's not too bad. I've made that conversion just recently.

@KitFox how similar is it

@skullpatrol ESC, ESC, ESC.. argh!!!!! I can't get out!

Joins are like old school SQL server.

Unions function oddly.

@Mitch :D

@Jez Because their field of technology is providing an outdated, even archaic system, they don't need today's good programmers

They need 20 years ago's good programmers

@Jez naive question... they're that different?

But there are some nice things you can do easier in Oracle.

And if you want to learn Oracle, just download PostgreSQL on your local unix box

@skullpatrol ctrl-W works.

It's so... so close

Most of your thinking is the same, just the syntax is a little different.

@Mitch Orly?

@KitFox yeah so no big thing?

@skullpatrol yeah... watch.

Yeah, it hasn't been a big deal.

did that work?

Yes.

yes

:-O

@MickLH postgres is like oracle?

Yeah, it's pretty close.

Closer than SQL server.

In my experience, I've never had a hiccup moving a PGSQL app over to an Oracle DB

i thought you could script postgres with a bunch of different languages

not pl/sql

Well I write very "sanatized" "boring" SQL actually, in recent years none of my apps have been tied to a specific SQL server

So idk, sorry nvm

@Jez PL/SQL is awful. But then you can probably imagine that any programming language that tries to be like SQL is going to be awful.

@KitFox Oracle supports modern join syntax.

@Jez They have a PL/SQL-like module

@MickLH How do you deal with scenarios where the servers don't often have a lot of compatibility? date/time datatypes and functions come to mind.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I usually just "Keep It Stupid Simple" :P

I rarely use SQL in part of a design, it's more just a data storage and query engine the way I use it

And I do something very bad, I use unix timestamps instead of SQL date time

Exactly because of the compatibility issues

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I forget sometimes that I work with archaic stuff here.

@MickLH enh. That's not so bad.

@KitFox Not oracle 8 or 9!

looks shifty

No, actually. I think it's 10.

Last commercial job where I had to do SQL was ridiculous, my cross-server habits came in handy because their network was a stronger antonym for homogeneous than exists.

10.6, if it matches my Toad installation.

@KitFox I'm not sure that's a valid number

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It just breaks the rule that you should use your DB to store data - in the best way your DB can do it. Is it bad to break a rule? Sometimes not :)

!!isNumber(10.6)

@KitFox I don't understand. Use the !!/help command to learn more.

Damn.

There were Oracle, Postgres, and MySQL servers in the same round robin :/

@oerkelens Well. You are storing data. In a number format. That data is a number. The number represents a date-time. it's not the worst thing. What does "best way" mean? depends on your needs.

@MickLH Throw in DBII, DB400 and DB400 with a Lansa access layer, and we're in business :(

It sure would be one way to get around the fact that many dbs use different date apis.

And redundant SQLite databases of incremental backups, that some pieces of code used to draw data from instead of the real DB

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Best way is the way that is most suited for the data you are storing. And storing a date as a number, or a number as a string, it all works, but it is usually (and rightly) frowned upon :)

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 SQL is awful itself.

@oerkelens Storing a number as a string is different than storing a date as a number. And there are valid reasons why you'd want to do both.

Actually this one FUCK at that place wrote a script that worked on the SQLite dumps, until it needed some specific function where it would do a retry loop with some MySQL code until the round robin randomly gave it a MySQL server :'(

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I started by saying that :) And I did not use "usually" for no reason ;)

Just blasting invalid commands through the "good" servers from inside the LAN

@MickLH That sounds like one for the DailyWTF :)

They work closely with the US government :'(

@MickLH yikes

I consider reporting them to the feds

@MickLH Ach, government and semi-government are sometimes the worst

They are trusted to keep up with regulations, but I was the only programmer there who even knew what FIPS was

Their "encryption" is security by obscurity

And the senior database architect literally got ANGRY at me for suggesting we encrypt the sensitive data and at least HASH the passwords

Obviously, I wanted a salted hash, but I would have settled for a hash, but no... MF'ing plaintext

@MickLH A major Dutch telco recently announced (after allegations about a security breach) that their customer data was safe - they encrypted it with UTF-8

Lol sorry for ranting, it feels like a therapist session in here now for me

@Mitch Because you’re half Vulcan?

any Americans/Canadians in here; how would you interpret this gesture

if the guy on the left were American/Canadian?

3 main ways come to mind for me

"Peace", "Give me 2 seconds", "I'm watching you!"

yawns

heh, interesting

and any people outside the US/canada?

“I’ve got just two things to say to you, young man!”

@MickLH FIPS: guaranteed to be insecure and obsolete.

@tchrist where are you from

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well how else is the NSA gonna spy :P

@Jez Up yours

@Jez Well, I know both what it means and what you are trying to show. Those are my two things.

@tchrist eh?

@Jez It looks like he's saying he has two of something. "Caught TWO fish!"

you're American too right?

But it is not a cisatlantic gesture of anal prestidigitation.

seriously, to English speakers outside the US, that sign means "fuck you" :-)

im surprised you dont seem to be aware of it

@Jez we know

@Jez Wrong.

We just don’t do that.

But in Canada and the US it doesn't mean that.

would you do it if non-USians might be watching?

I’m surprised you were unaware that we understand it but do not mean it.

@Jez I don’t do shit like that.

There are bimanual gesticulations that leave no doubt.

@Jez Probably "2", but it could mean many things...

They are not especially popular with motorcyclists, however.