The Whiteboard

Q: Are start ups attractive to developers?

@GlenH7 I never failed a review audit because they always stand out and strange, and I don't want to fail the audit, but I have circled back around to close vote what I passed the audit with a "leave alone" vote

user41796

@MichaelT "link or it didn't happen" :-)

user55340

-3

In your direct experiences(as opposed to opinions), are start ups attractive to programmers? Especially those that offer equity when you know you could be getting a sure salary somewhere else. Again, in your direct experience, do programmers like developing with people that know little or just le...

lol

user55340

2:49 PM

That particular form was revision 2. programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/203325/2

@MichaelT No. I don't care about your free beer or free food or stock options or whatever. Unless you're saving the world or something, gtfo.

Is that an acceptable answer to the question?

@MichaelT It is so terribly easy to tell the non-programming goats apart in the way they speak in their questions on this site...

user41796

@ThomasOwens You're a mod, of course that's an acceptable answer. Open it up; throw that one in there; and then close it back off. :-)

@ThomasOwens I will throw all of that out the window without question for the opportunity to work with talented experienced people I can learn from, but priority number one ahead of all that is not being a meat-grinder. The best salary and colleagues isn't worth the worst treatment, or even bad treatment in general.

1. no meat grinder 2. people I can learn from 3. who even cares beyond that?

user55340

There are a number of enthusiastic 20 somethings just out of college who think they can make the next great thing. Some can... but 99.999% can't.

Q: Dog-1 testing as a synonym for integration / system test

2:51 PM

@JimmyHoffa That's true. I want to work with smart, talented people who want to teach me how to save the world.

user55340

In general, creative people either want to work somewhere they will learn something - be it from more experienced co-workers or being able to research explore new ideas.

user41796

@MichaelT free beer is a nice bonus after that though. :-)

user55340

People who volunteer to clean the 'adopt a highway roadside' area get a free beer.

user41796

My "What the What?" question of the day:

user41796

0

In the company I'm working for the phrase Dog-1 is used for the software testing scenario where the first piece of data passes through the complete system. Has anyone heard this phrase in a similar context? There's nothing on Google about it in a software development context, so I'm guessing its...

testing terminology

user55340

2:59 PM

I'm more curious about the path the user took to get here...

user55340

-1

Q: Script or bat that will make shortcuts

I want to make bat (windows) file that will move * files from desktop to x folder and then make shortcuts on the desktop (they must be linked to files in x folder). So: the problem is: There is no way to make shortcut using bat. Only using third-party applications... Or/and using scripts. I need ...

scripting

user55340

his only other account is an MSO one that had the same question (deleted now).

@MichaelT Good point, I spent ~3 years working somewhere that I had nobody to learn from, but they recognized I was capable ahead of the other engineers they had so they let me do a ton of research and design work, self-driven exploration is another great way to learn in the absence of talented colleagues

I learned through trial and error a lot of my personal opinions in that way which was valuable, something you don't get so much learning from other people, even when they're great

Plus I learned a lot of soft skills because I was the driver on a lot of work so had to sell people on it as well as organize with people to make it fit with schedules and other active changes occurring etc

user55340

The "no learning" was one of the reasons I have to HR at my previous employment. They wouldn't send us to conferences, they wouldn't (couldn't) hire better people, they wouldn't let the consultants (who did know more) spend too much time with us, and didn't give us enough time to research on our own.

@GlenH7 What the?

business project-management teamwork terminology testing time-management web-development

3:19 PM

@MichaelT Sadly many HR orgs are trained explicitly to do just that to ensure limiting their employees to exert control. Clipping an engineers wings if you will. (Which is a misnomer, they only trim the edge feathers, and as new ones grow to replace them they continue to do so, they never genuinely injure the wing)

...because tangents are fun!

SkeetJon

144 4

user55340

@JimmyHoffa From my point of view, its a "huh?" thing. If they make their employees happy and let them grow, its better for both the employee and the company.

@ThomasOwens does that count as pretending to be someone your not?

@MichaelT I agree, but you know how shallow minded many business types are, often times the only comprehension they have for exerting pressure on their bottom line is through savings, which can only be had in engineering departments by appropriately controlling the workforce, many business people don't understand innovation is another technique for exerting pressure on your bottom line because it's too hit or miss

Hm. I don't know.

He has a different avatar and doesn't appear to be trying to be malicious.

savings has guaranteed quantifiable effects on your bottom line, and many business types only like what they can count, they can't count possible income, but they can count the money they didn't spend

@ThomasOwens Aye, I get that, I'm just curious. There's every possibility that's genuinely his name too, he just reversed the order to not be mistaken

Q: Canonical "what next" curated question?

@JimmyHoffa I'll look into it. I actually rarely look at user names unless a flag specifically mentions it.

user55340

3:29 PM

@JimmyHoffa Oh, do I ever know. One of the first 5 index cards I handed HR was "you are hiring creative people, expect them to want to do creative things."

user41796

3:40 PM

@ThomasOwens We have a few Skeets on Programmers. Here's the "real" Jon. programmers.stackexchange.com/users/8958/jon-skeet. This is a fake Jon Skeet who literally copy / pasted the real JS's profile: programmers.stackexchange.com/users/27909/jon-skeet. And the fake Jon Skeet goes by Rakkun on SO: stackoverflow.com/users/703016/rakkun

user55340

Btw, Monday is rolled around... Thoughts?

user55340

0

From programming practices starting (a stereotypical "what do I start with" college question): Community: Since this question keeps coming up in one form or another ("what should I do next?"), and it's technically off-topic for the site, I suggest we curate this one as a canonical question. –...

discussion off-topic

@MichaelT Close them all. Canonical questions would be useless.

They wouldn't help anyone.

Anyone beside the individual asking the question, assuming they provide enough details, that is.

A: Canonical "what next" curated question?

4:08 PM

:10152915

0

I'm strongly against this. I think the concept of 'canonical question' altogether won't work, it'll send the message that the topic is relevant and appropriate to ask questions regarding to the many new visitors who won't know better, further as you pointed out the answers wouldn't work for most,...

user55340

I do agree with @GlenH7 - if there is to be a canonical question (I don't agree on this), that it should be a properly crafted CW one rather than an arbitrary one.

I agree on that point, but my problem is it would have to be Community WikiPedia to properly cover the topic, the only alternative to that is a link dump which is crap content and either scenario has the same huge problem: 1 year from now much of the content will be inaccurate; people won't continually update the whole (huge) set of content to keep it current

user55340

Well, I spelled out my thoughts in the question - I think they are either too poor of an answer that isn't any more help than the close reason, or they are detailed enough, that they only help one person (and other people think that its ok to continue to ask).

user55340

It would probably be a better blog post.

I don't even think that it's possible to write a blog post.

Answering "what's next" is impossible, unless you answer it for each and every individual, taking into account their background and their future goals.

user55340

4:40 PM

@ThomasOwens While answering what next is impossible, it might be possible to answer the abstraction - "How do I find out what to do next"?

@MichaelT Across embedded systems engineer, web developer, usability engineer, quality engineer, process engineer, database designer...?

@MichaelT How about one more layer of indirection - "What should I ask to learn how to find out what to do next?"

... "How do I ask a question, which will get answers that answer all the questions I could have without first knowing what questions I have?"

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Why should I learn what I should ask to learn how to find out what to do next?

user41796

To reframe the discussion a bit, I think a canonical answer needs to be found / decided upon before we can ask the question. And yes, I'm not oblivious to the Douglass Adams references hidden in there

user41796

4:55 PM

For me, the canonical answer boils down to "it doesn't really matter; just pick something that sounds interesting to you."

user41796

which is admittedly not terribly practical for all the advice seekers we see

Blog - Stack Exchange: Say Hi to Nine of Our Newest Newbies

Also it's not altogether accurate, again the nuance of different scenarios, sometimes maybe it really truly matters

I think it's just a nonsense idea and something we altogether shouldn't trifle with, but so does everyone it seems in large part, so I'm just not going to worry or think on it

Stack Exchange

6:19 PM

Joe Humphries on July 01, 2013

The year is half over, and we’re still hiring like crazy. This year we’ve added 22 associates, which means our employee count has increased by 23.4% in the past six months. Yay math! Raise a glass to these fine folks, and join me in congratulating them on their new awesome jobs.

Matt Charette, Sales Representative (Careers 2.0), New York

Matt was born and raised in New Jersey, USA. He began his career at a small start up before making his move to big banking at Merrill Lynch. He spent three years in finance before making his move to Stack Overflow. After hours, Matt loves to h …

6:51 PM

@Ampt after you've been on the site for a while, you'll see such a mass of questions of a nature that are just so boring or wasteful, you'll get tired of seeing them all over and over heh

user55340

Thats why on many of them, I leave a comment only - an upvoted answer prevents it from getting deleted eaislly.

Yeah, I usually leave a lot of comments, but I'm trying to give good answers to subjects I know a little bit about

user55340

One idea is to rewrite the question into something that fits better.

True. That question probably could have been turned into a constructive one. Maybe I'll give that a go, as the concept is a good one for newbies. Probably not the right site for it, but it can always be transferred

user55340

Even if the question gets closed, it still can help them learn (by example) of better questions.

7:00 PM

I'm still getting used to the whole Stack Exchange format still. I love all the knowledge in here though. I'll often start digging through older questions when I'm waiting for tests to run or code to compile

Drunken stupor over. No accounts destroyed (I think?). Posted an answer that's full of crap, but I'm getting upvotes so I don't really care.

user55340

@YannisRizos Did you "fill up empty space in bars" as asked on UX.SE?

Q: Should I fill empty space in bars?

well. That escalated quickly with that question. Guess he doesn't plan on coming back

user55340

45

It's about bar-charts in a table. Every row has a bar, which visualises a value of the row. The biggest value of the whole table is the maximum of the bars and not necessarily on the same table-page. So most of the rows gonna have bars, which are shorter than the maximum. If I fill the empty s...

info-visualisation progress-bar charts user-perception

user55340

@Ampt One bit to consider, we aren't google... or even meta-google. Or wikipedia. We shouldn't try to be, the site doesn't fit that well.

7:11 PM

@MichaelT Heh, I just saw that. I guess I did... There were a series of events, one in a park the other in bars, sponsored by Amstel, promoting their newer brands. Some of the people organizing the events are close friends, and... free beer all during the weekend.

Maybe this is my view because I've not been here long, but it seems that what we are trying to do is create a large repository of knowledge in a question answer format. It's a different format, but the idea is the same right? Granted, that last question was a little bit open ended and not a great example, but the idea that while we do it differently than google and wikipedia, the idea of a easily searchable index of knowledge and solutions still stands. Just my .02 though

user55340

@Ampt one quantifier on that - "a large repository of quality knowledge" - people want to come to SE to get the answer and be done, rather than wading through dozens of posts/questions that are only tangentially similar, or don't have an answer at all.

@MichaelT At some point during the weekend I must have read your answer here and thought it was great. Got a gold Publicist badge for it.

user55340

@YannisRizos Heh... so you're the one to blame for that. I kept wondering why that question and answer (which I initially felt as 'ho hum, but I can give an interesting definitive answer to" got so much attention)

Good point. Quality is definitely key here.

user55340

7:20 PM

(note, I'm not complaining... 155 rep one day, 180 the next, 30, and then another 130)

user55340

@Ampt Questions that are a regurgitation of wikipedia, or the top links of google aren't that helpful to the goal of quality.

Ok, maybe regurgitation wasn't a great word choice. I wrote that all without any reference. I agree that finding an article that answers the question and copy pasting it isn't a great way to build value, and that isn't what I did ;)

user55340

@Ampt I wasn't claiming you did (please excuse me if I seemed to indicate that)... there are other answers out there that are a cut and paste block from wikipedia.

user55340

Something to consider is in the SE business model, we are content generators, but not the person the site is built for... the business model is around the next person to come to the site with that question (and finding it).

@MichaelT no harm, no foul. I was just clearing up my use of that word. What I had meant by it is that what I know on that topic, I learned from wikipedia and other like sources, and I was simply revising that down to what I wrote there. He could have easily gotten that same knowledge from those sources, without me, but I did some of the leg work for him.

user55340

7:24 PM

Transforming a poor question into a good one, even if it isn't exactly what the OP asked, is good for the site... within reason.

Hahaha I was going to say, I kind of stole that question out from under him. Changed the title, changed the question and provided the only answer. Still falls within what I believe was his original intent though

user55340

Consider this one I redid... programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/183982/revisions

Wow. huge difference. Definitely a better question.

Makes me want to take this little question and turn it into a killer. I may have to open this up when I get home from work and see if I can't make it applicable to programmers in some way.

7:53 PM

@YannisRizos I really hope that contraception technique was something you completely fabricated, both because I really hope in all of history that has never been done, and it's a fantastic fabrication.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Looking for articles for the "is that for real...?" blog?

Heh

@YannisRizos How long will closed Qs be "On hold" before they are "closed for permanently not being good is junk garbage crud"

user20683

@JimmyHoffa 5 days

user20683

then it automatically becomes "closed". It's a name not a state change.

8:11 PM

@JimmyHoffa Nope, I'm afraid that happened. Sorry for the visual.

user20683

@YannisRizos Given what the Romans did with the back scrappings from the bathhouse's it's really not that bad...

user55340

@YannisRizos btw, you should try for a gold publicist badge for MSO or M.P.SE...

user55340

Thats far more worthy of a drunken night.

@WorldEngineer Ok, I tried resisting, but can't: What did they do?

user20683

@YannisRizos Mixed them up into salves, balms and various internal tonics and sold them to the public.

user20683

8:17 PM

oil + dirt + skin slough + whatever else

user20683

because patent medicines are totally not a 19th century thing

user55340

everything2.com/title/Sheep+gut+condoms

user20683

@MichaelT We eat those

user55340

somewhere I stumbled across info that the romans also used goat bladders, and the egyptians used linen.

user20683

they are called Sausage Casings

user20683

8:26 PM

linen had to have been...rough.

user55340

Yes, but if you wanted to use one as a condom... how would you do it?

user55340

(I do have the links for references at the bottom)

Yes, waiter? You can cancel my dinner thank you.

user55340

> Some companies at the time built quite a market for re-used condoms.

@YannisRizos Stop drinking, if it involves uncovering information like that, you're doing it wrong.

user20683

8:28 PM

@MichaelT akuse.com/Blog/blog_pics/thisthat/oldest_condom.jpg

user20683

They still make Lambskins btw

user55340

Then there's the goat eyelid sex toy...

Actually I knew a girl who was allergic to latex and had to use those until they came out with the new ones that were latex free

@JimmyHoffa Why? Perfect conversation starter.

user20683

@MichaelT ...

user55340

8:29 PM

everything2.com/title/The+goat+eyelid+sex+toy

user20683

...

user55340

@YannisRizos ... Yannis walks into a bar with a bag of crock manure and ashes... "Hey baby, want to head out to my place... I've got protection right here..."

@WorldEngineer You think linen is rough? The Japanese used horns and pieces of tortoise shells.

user20683

@YannisRizos How...what...I don't even...

user55340

@WorldEngineer added longevity... never get soft.

8:33 PM

@WorldEngineer Search for "kabuto-gata". Or... don't ;)

You know @JimmyHoffa this is not what I imagined it would be like when you said I should join the whiteboard lmao

user20683

@Ampt This is not typical for the Whiteboard.

user55340

@Ampt All work and no play makes Jimmy...

user20683

This is tame for the Bridge though

user20683

and totally innocuous by the standards of the Comms Room

user20683

8:38 PM

Where in Profanity with a side of WTF!!!! is the order of the day

user55340

Have to pass the time between the serious questions.

Hahaha it's all good, just a change of pace from the usually austere programmers.se

@Ampt It's not usually like that. The power crazy mods kick us out every time we try to have a bit of fun in here, no idea why they haven't intervened yet.

(aren't you a mod..?)

user20683

@YannisRizos speaking of, where is Maple_shaft?

user20683

8:40 PM

@Ampt nah, he just plays one on TV.

@WorldEngineer ah phew. I was worried that this was gonna go on my record.

user20683

@Ampt Record? You'd have to do something really bad for that.

@WorldEngineer Hasn't showed up in chat recently, but his last comment on the site was a couple of hours ago.

So, he's... around?

user20683

@YannisRizos From what I hear his new job is...less than satisfactory.

Yeah, but still better than the old one (the old one doesn't exist anymore, the company went under... or something like that).

user20683

8:44 PM

@YannisRizos Tanked the week after he left I think

user20683

apparently he was the only one keeping things together.

user55340

bus factor 1 at the company level? ouch.

bus factor. That's a new one!

"The bus factor is the total number of key developers who would need to be incapacitated (as by getting hit by a bus/truck) to send the project into such disarray that it would not be able to proceed"

user55340

Bus factor

In software development, a software project's bus factor (also known as truck factor, or bus/truck number) is a measurement of the concentration of information in individual team members. The bus factor is the total number of key developers who would need to be incapacitated (as by getting hit by a bus/truck) to send the project into such disarray that it would not be able to proceed; the project would retain information (such as source code) with which no remaining team member is familiar. A high bus factor means that many developers would need to be removed before the project would necess...

user55340

(for some sites, if you link the page as a chat message by itself, it will import it into chat)

user20683

8:47 PM

An example:

user20683

user55340

Images too.

user20683

imgur

user55340

If in doubt, just link it... it might show up.

user20683

and a few other places

user20683

8:48 PM

Images from other places get uploaded to imgur I think

user55340

I think images as a file type...

user55340

I doubt you have construx.com in the whitelist (not that it shouldn't be).

user20683

Parallella is now OSH - cnx-software.com/2013/06/30/…

user55340

So blog posts, questions and answers from any SE, comments, chat messages...

user55340

8:51 PM

wikipedia, amazon, as best I can tell, any image. Youtube.

user20683

Vimeo

user20683

vimeo.com/thopla/nimbusmachina

user55340

if it works, it would be just the link, not the embed..

user55340

blip.tv/play/AYOTuhcC.x?p=1

user55340

Still nope.

user20683

8:54 PM

hmm no Vimeo either

user20683

I know I've seen other media sites

user20683

@JimmyHoffa

user20683

typedarray.org/concurrency-in-javascript

9:06 PM

@WorldEngineer yeah, I was just about to add a worker to something I've been working on lately, initial load takes forever because there's a large initial payload which needs to be processed

I like that it uses message passing

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Smalltalk -> Self -> Javascript

user20683

incidently a company that I'm thinking of applying to uses Ruby

haha whatever happened to the no hipsters for WorldEngineer rule? Heh

user20683

I don't really care because I'm fairly certain they aren't fly by night

It doesn't really matter at the end of the day, so long as they have good engineers for you to learn from, and they aren't a meat grinder

user20683

9:08 PM

Thoughtworks?

user20683

They send you to a 6 week OO bootcamp upon hiring apparently

You're looking to join ThoughtWorks?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa they are localish, and I know someone who works for them

I've heard some bad things but it's Fowler's company, how bad can it be.. Thing is it's a consultancy, no telling how much time you'll get on any given project plus consultants don't get treated particularly well from job to job often

user20683

figured as much

9:11 PM

But whatever, it would be a fine start for your career

it's a big name

and it broadens your tech since Ruby isn't one of your current

user55340

Consulting lets you get an idea of what you like (and don't like).

user20683

I've done a tiny bit of toying with it.

user55340

Having 3 jobs in 3 years is a bad thing as a FTE... but not as a consultant.

user55340

As a consultant, the experience is seen as a plus.

@MichaelT not always, depends on if it's a meat grinder or not, some consultancies are (way common in Java) but I would expect ThoughtWorks to be decent

There's lots of consultancies out there that just get anybody with a pulse, and sell them everywhere they can, burn 'em out and keep getting new folks to sell around, the quality is crap but they places they get auctioned to don't care because they're usually doing crap quality work themselves

user55340

9:14 PM

@JimmyHoffa At the same time, again... it lets you find out quickly what you like and don't like.

I guess... I don't think you'll find anything you like when you're expected to work 60+ hour weeks at the becking whim of whomever you've been slaved to though

Those places commonly only hire H1Bs though, they're the immoral people who will gladly take advantage of the fact that if they fire the employee he's deported

Is consulting a common first step for programmers? I've always heard it the other way around; consulting is an end game goal

user55340

I started out at Taos Mountain (contract shop with a pulse)... went to a startup (bounced paycheck), back to a contract shop (Tek systems), and then programmer.

psr

Junior programmers can play an important role in padding billing hours without particularly needing to be able to contribute anything.

user55340

Then programmer, and now back to consulting.

user20683

9:17 PM

1

Typewriters

Proposed Q&A site for proposed Q&A site for users and collectors of typewriters.

Currently in definition.

user20683

O_o

user55340

Also, the client effectively pays for your training when you are on a project.

user20683

I worry the audience for this proposal will be rather narrow

user55340

@WorldEngineer At least two people... one collector, and the guy in the woods who still types out his manifesto on a typewriter.

user20683

@MichaelT You mean RMS?

user55340

9:19 PM

The problem being the guy in the woods doesn't have cell phone coverage to get to the site.

user55340

RMS uses emacs to type everything.

user20683

@MichaelT true

user20683

but what does he use to Print?

Interesting! Didn't realize it was that common for the rookies to get assigned to consulting projects

user20683

@Ampt Given the horrible panic of many of SO's users and the overflow to us, I'd say that's very common.

user55340

9:21 PM

@Ampt they can do things like write acceptance tests and the sort.

I'm going to school for Software Engineering and I've just never heard of anyone I know who went to a consulting agency right out of school, so I guess we are the exception rather than the rule.

@Ampt It's quite common, remember consultancy's don't build clientele and capital off their quality, they usually build it off their ability to quickly staff any given need

Having highly experienced folks often isn't their goal

(though that's not what they'll tell you when their marketing folks are selling the service, marketing is where most of their budgets go often times)

user55340

Its one of the consultant secrets... they want to bill you for as much as they can. Agile lets them say "Oh, you want us to start over? Sure..."

user55340

@WorldEngineer odd... that guy who is asking about C++ ide and is question banned... no longer has any other accounts on the network linked.

user20683

@MichaelT you sure?

user55340

9:33 PM

(or it just might have been a glitch)

user55340

I was sure when I wrote that.

What does it take to get banned from SE? I'm surprised that programmers.stackexchange.com/users/95403/user95403 isn't gone from his derogatory comments..

user55340

It takes a bit, and a bit of persistence at it. If the comments can get cleaned up, they are...

user55340

programmers.stackexchange.com/users/95403/…

user20683

@Ampt flag stuff as offensive if it is so

user20683

9:39 PM

I reserve the right to dispute or ignore your assertions

That's what I did. It had some racial slurs and as soon as I flagged it it dissapeared

user20683

@Ampt mods are faster than you think ;)

not trying to point any fingers, I was just curious as it was pretty offensive and wasn't sure if he deleted it before anyone saw it or if it wasn't considered grievous enough for a ban.

user55340

P.SE has low traffic, mod flags tend to be addressed quickly.

well that was crazy fast then hahaha. Like milliseconds fast hahahaha. That or someone already flagged it before me

user20683

9:43 PM

@MichaelT We actually have pretty high traffic

Well compared to the typewrite site... lol

user20683

stackexchange.com/sites#traffic

user20683

Actually compared to most sites

user20683

13 out of 100+

user55340

There's little enough traffic I can read most everything that comes through.

9:45 PM

wow

user20683

Traffic != questions

user55340

The reader traffic : writer traffic ratio may be a better indication?

user20683

stackexchange.com/sites#questionsperday

user20683

questions per day

user20683

16th

9:49 PM

36 questions per day puts us at 16th? wow

user20683

@Ampt keep in mind that we basically die on the weekends

user20683

so it's really more like 50

I can believe that. In users we're 6th

user55340

Poker: questions per day: 0.1

err.. 7

user20683

9:51 PM

given our specialized nature and typical depth required to answer well here, it's unsurprising that we have many lurkers.

user55340

@WorldEngineer Most of the professional sites "die on the weekends"

user20683

@MichaelT true

user20683

I guess that makes me the Lich Lord of Programmers

user55340

I'd be curious to see if the Jewish Law site gets many questions on Saturdays...

user20683

@MichaelT after sundown they might

user20683

9:53 PM

also bear in mind that not all Jews observe the Sabbath equally.

user55340

It becomes a question of how they handle the 39 melachot.

user20683

same as some Christians spend all Sunday in church and others watch football and attend on Christmas and maybe Easter

user20683

right

user55340

However, given the population of those who can answer questions... I would tend to suspect they do recognize that.

user55340

(tangent - a summer Ramadan is challenging)

9:56 PM

@WorldEngineer how's the matasano stuff coming? Get any of them done? Even the first bit?

Anyways I'm off! Take it easy all.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa haven't had time

user20683

I took a look at them

user20683

still debating language

I was fidgeting with perl because giving up and going with Haskell because it's what I enjoy anyway

I did like a couple things I saw with perl for it (some of the string manip stuff looked like it would simplify things for me) but just wasn't worth not enjoying solving it

user20683

10:04 PM

Speaking of perl, I ran into a guy trying to convert his text to speech application for the mute into a windows 8 app. It's currently a perl backend with a Tk/Tcl frontend.

user55340

I could certainly see that combo. Though, there are perl Tk interfaces too.

user20683

@MichaelT older guy from South America

user55340

search.cpan.org/~ni-s/Tk-804.027/pod/UserGuide.pod

user20683

tcl is the bees knees down there for a certain set.

user55340

There are some very strong tcl groups, and tk meshes nicely with it.

user55340

10:07 PM

its a very respectable glue language... not my choice, but thats my choice.

user55340

(A friend of my brother's went to work for Scriptics back in the dot com boom days - a startup spinoff of tcl from sun).

10:43 PM

Hi All. Just wanted to ask if this was the most appropriate of the SE sites to post a question/discussion (are discussions really allowed on the site?) regarding how to best develop an e-commerce "reserve a product before purchasing" type system?

user20683

@JayGilford type of or type system?

@JayGilford Thanks for asking! Discussions don't fit on any SE site, they made SE to gather quality content for the internet at large to consume like wikipedia

user20683

type system has a very specific meaning here

Every question should be able to have an authoritative answer

@WorldEngineer he means type as a synonym for like there

@WorldEngineer "Type of" is correct

user20683

10:47 PM

@JimmyHoffa figured but going for clarity because you know...Programmers /pedantic

@JayGilford Though if you have very specific questions that could have authoritative answers, please ask them! It sounds like you have a large situation at hand and you could likely come up with a hand full of different very specific questions to ask

Haha I'm pretty pedantic myself - I see where the confusion arose

@JimmyHoffa Yes. OK I will post the question and I guess we'll find out if it's going to get downvoted/closed. I hope not as I would imagine it would be quite informative to other users using different languages/e-commerce carts

@JayGilford No please dont

we have enough bad content on the site

don't just litter and hope it doesn't get closed

(it will, trust me, we close too much shit here because everyone thinks P.SE is a dumping ground)

user20683

Test it in chat first

I see. Do you have a suggestion as to whick SE site would be best

which*

user20683

10:53 PM

@JayGilford drop the question in here

@JayGilford I said none, this is not a discussion forum

user20683

I can tell you if it's too broad or too opinion-based

Ask a question that can have an authoritatively correct answer, if it's just asking for discussion I'll poke you in the eye and run away

@WorldEngineer OK. I will have to compose it first as I've not even done that yet for the reason I don't want to go against the SE principles of being a Q&A

@JimmyHoffa You know just how to turn a guy on

Ahhhh the deadly silence of a joke gone too far :P

user20683

This room just kind of dies

user20683

10:58 PM

it happens

user20683

nothing to worry over

I suppose the simplest way to sum up my question would in fact be that I'd be wanting feedback/suggestions on features for a particular system I am building

In retrospect, I imagine that would be wide open to discussion rather than a definite answer

user20683

@JayGilford yeah that's not going to be a good fit.

user20683

Depending on what the focus is, there are various chats that work for that.