The Whiteboard

user41796

12:00 AM

@psr yes, part of the intent of FE and PE is to weed out the field. And you make a solid point regarding salary.

user41796

OTOH, I came into my current role without having a PE. It remains to be seen what my future roles will be (if different at all) because I now have a PE.

psr

I would be worried if I thought the people hiring developers for health-critical applications didn't do a better job than the certification would.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr that was one job I had where management was degreed engineers; mechanical, electrical, etc.

user41796

@psr It's just another step in the process. And it means that someone is wiling to stamp / seal the system to indicate it meets reasonable standards of care for that domain. And that process introduces liability which becomes the big stick of enforcement.

Jimmy Hoffa

my boss had his masters in mechanical engineering

psr

12:04 AM

@GlenH7 But this step is a giant burden on those least able to bear it - people trying to start their career. One more thing that requires a rich daddy or huge student loans. It's fine if you can prove the certification works, but I don't think they usually do a very good job. It's great as a way to boost wages by not letting too many people into the club though.

user41796

@psr I understand the concern, but I don't fully agree with your sentiment. First there isn't any shortage of demand for developers. Salaries may not be what we want, but there are generally plenty of jobs. Second, the concern could just as equally be applied to traditional engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc...

user41796

And there are options to get that accreditation in order to follow that path. If anything, state engineering universities are probably far more affordable than most medical or law schools.

user41796

Third, quite a few engineers still choose not to take the FE or PE exams. (Yes, I'm looking at you @enderland). While that may have an impact on their long term career, there's no guarantee that it will.

user41796

So, is there a burden? Possibly, possibly not. It's not required. Is it a giant burden? No. And there's no way that the entire software field would switch over to requiring PEs. Just won't happen. The domain is too dynamic and there is too much demand for talent. And there are too few domains that truly require a PE's review of the software.

psr

@GlenH7 I'm not happy with the medical or law schools either :) So I hope software doesn't take that path. I think the industry has actually been well served by being a meritocracy rather than a certificationocracy.

user41796

12:10 AM

@psr There are certainly some benefits that our field has picked up that way. We have also suffered in the realm of hiring, as evidenced by the wars over FizzBuzz being a useful diagnostic or what sorts of interview questions are "good."

psr

@GlenH7 Yes, hiring is where we pay the price.

user41796

And I'll be honest, I've met folks with PEs who didn't deserve the license in my personal opinion. But their actions were not egregious enough to notify the state board. Software doesn't have a clearing house like the state boards where atrocious actions can be called out publicly and the offending person can be chastised.

psr

@GlenH7 I'm rooting for economic demand to force people to do their own, more accurate, certification. So far that has defeated previous attempts at certifications. But, yes, the downside is that people actually have to do certifying in the interview process. But that provides more pressure to make it rational, rather than some unholy standards committee.

user41796

@psr And I think the arguments for licensure are in domains where there is a higher appeal (like life) than just economics. I have seen hospital grade defibrillators fail. Economics can't bring that person back.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 But geico could save him hundreds on his car insurance!

user41796

12:20 AM

I think the key difference is that those arguing for software engineer licensure are trying to carve out a narrow slice where it's an appropriate requirement. It's not a territorial land grab.

Thomas Owens

Posted.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That particular patient better not have been driving to the hospital. They were in really bad shape to begin with.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I'm not convinced that's true in the general case, I believe it's true in your case.

Many people who want to require licensures are motivated by greed more than egalitarian ideals.

and I'm not referring to the testing agencies; just people who are inclined they could make it over the bar fine so if they get to raise the bar they become more valuable

psr

@GlenH7 Well, lives are lost for economic reasons all the time. But in any case, for the argument to fly the licensing would have to be demonstrably effective - vs. current hiring practice (not some straw man of "anyone who calls themselves a programmer"). If they can do that then it does make sense.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Remember that PEs are bound to society prior to their companies. If any engineer's company asks them to do something that could / would harm society, the PE's obligation is to tell them to bugger off (and why).

Jimmy Hoffa

12:23 AM

@psr Though how do you demonstrate effectiveness...

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 Not just PEs.

acm.org/about/se-code

Order of the Engineer

The Order of the Engineer is an association for graduate and professional engineers in the United States that emphasizes pride and responsibility in the engineering profession. It was inspired by the success of The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer, a similar and much older Canadian ceremony, and is a common presence in American engineering schools. Before joining, members must take an oath to abide by a code of ethics called [http://www.asce.org/uploadedFiles/Leadership_Training_-_New/OBLIGATION.pdf The Obligation of an Engineer]: :I am an engineer, in my profession I take deep pride...

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 no, they're obligated to hide it well so they don't lose their license over the matter, and if they're really sure they can't hide it then the obligation is to get fired

psr

@JimmyHoffa Well, if lives lost are what you are concerned about, you could try measuring that. But it is a little tough to run a controlled experiment. Stupid government regulation!

user41796

@ThomasOwens I'll quibble and argue that's a voluntary code.

Jimmy Hoffa

Doctors take an oath too, yet we all hear about doctors taking kickbacks for hocking stuff regardless of their oaths and licensure and lawyers the same. I don't put stock in oaths or licensure to ensure morality

Thomas Owens

12:25 AM

@GlenH7 Just like becoming a PE is voluntary.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Read up about the Hyatt hotel disaster in Kansas City a few decades back. Then read about what happened to that Engineering firm and what the principle behind that firm ended up doing in the aftermath.

user41796

@ThomasOwens True, but licensure can be stripped for violation of the ethics. What's the penalty for not following that code?

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 That's a valid point.

psr

@JimmyHoffa That's been studied to death. Doctors respond to profit in what course of treatment they choose. That's just a fact.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 That's one incident, there are far more indicence of thiefing lawyers or doctors defrauding medicare than there are of engineers doing the right thing out of moral obligation.

The difference is the immoral actions of engineers are rarely so publicized

user41796

12:27 AM

@ThomasOwens Additionally, any legal protections afforded to the PE are lost when that trust is violated. So the liability can increase significantly.

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr I know; which is why I'm saying whatever benefits licensure may have - which may be many, one cannot under any circumstances expect to find morality among them.

psr

Lawyers also have a big professional code of ethics. That's why they are renowned for being ethical.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 True. But the point is that not being a PE doesn't mean you can go and screw society.

psr

@JimmyHoffa And I'm agreeing with you. So there.

Jimmy Hoffa

So HAH!

@ThomasOwens Sure it does, perfect example, madeoff: Dude wasn't a PE, totally screwed society. If only someone made him a PE... the billions that could have been saved!

user41796

12:30 AM

@ThomasOwens No, and I hope I wasn't trying to convey that either

psr

I'm not a PE. Crime spree starting in 3...2...1

Jimmy Hoffa

Anyhow, I must my leave be taking. Cheers on the licensure but I'll keep my fingers crossed against it for totally immoral and utterly selfish reasons: I couldn't under any circumstances pass those tests.

Thomas Owens

I'm going to go watch TV. And fall asleep. Good night, all.

user41796

@ThomasOwens - your post to that article was well written. Not too blunt actually.

Alexander Ryan Baggett

1:20 AM

Hello, I heard this was the place to talk about not quite on topic stuff.

Jimmy Hoffa

Sure thing, thanks for coming here instead of just asking on the site

Alexander Ryan Baggett

So, are any of you into F#?

Jimmy Hoffa

I know it somewhat and like FP but F# stinks compared to other FP languages

Alexander Ryan Baggett

Oh, are you more of a Haskell or Erlang kind of guy?

And tell me more about why.

Jimmy Hoffa

For silly reasons, MS clearly decided against really trying to make it a production quality at some point. I suspect after implementation of the fun research stuff they got bored and realized no one would actually use it anyway so they didn't tackle the basic necessary FP stuff

Haskell, but C# day job for years doing typical OO

Alexander Ryan Baggett

1:28 AM

Yeah... I get that vibe too from Microsoft.

I have been on the MSDN several times only to find there is no code sample for F#

Jimmy Hoffa

The in-order type checker just destroys usability as you have to reorder files in your project manually and mutually recursive type definitions are impossible without a lazy runtime indirection like fparsec had to create just to do any recursive parsing

The interoperability could have been much better as well but they didn't care. None of these things are interesting so I think they just didn't have enough motivation even though they're all necessary for basic usability on real software other than small shim spaces.

Alexander Ryan Baggett

Yeah I couldn't really see the advantage of the that. I did not particularly like having to order all my files. I feel like it adds an unnecessary layer of project design that did not previously need to be present. In other words, unnecessary overhead.

Jimmy Hoffa

I would still take it over C# for certain things, but the overhead makes it the only FP language I wouldn't prefer to C# for everything.

Well ok, I would never take FP over C# for desktop winforms. Winforms and WPF are quite great.

Alexander Ryan Baggett

Agreed.

user41796

1:46 AM

@JimmyHoffa - go throw a reopen vote on this one please.

user41796

4

Q: Book on Using F# for WPF without knowing C#

So, essentially the project I wish to undertake is an SVG editor. I would prefer to use WPF because then I can leverage XAML for my application layout (that designer is so nifty). Unfortunately, I have only been using the .NET framework for just a few months, and am still unfamiliar with most of ...

wpf f#

user41796

@AlexanderRyanBaggett - if you scroll back through the transcript history, you'll see an exchange between MichaelT and I regarding your question. We were both quite impressed at the revision you made.

user41796

To be honest, book requests leave me queasy. But I was willing to get over it in your particular case due to the effort you put into salvaging your question. And as an aside, if it doesn't reopen in 12 - 24 hours then it would be fair to flag for mod attention and request a reopen.

user41796

Whichever mod that reviews may not agree, but with 2 or 3 reopen votes already on there that should help. Both @MichaelT and I can throw mod flags to plead the case too.

user55340

I'm a jvm'er... and so clojure (and scala) are my preferred FP languages.

user41796

1:51 AM

@MichaelT Hey. You missed the great PE debate earlier.

user55340

I saw it...

user55340

PE stands for... Pretend Engineer?

user41796

"Pretty much"

user41796

It's one of those weird acronyms where a word gets hidden.

user41796

I'm reasonably certain now that @psr thinks I'm insane (which is true) and @JimmyHoffa thinks I'm a bigger nutter than he had been led to believe (which is also true). But I certainly respect and understand where they are coming from. And those pushing the envelope need to improve the way they address the concerns from the field.

user55340

1:55 AM

I don't think you're that crazy... but then I've also read a bit of Steve McConnell too. So...

user41796

So you're in the club. Welcome.

user55340

I understand the issues at hand, the risk management... that when you look at IT projects and see how risky it is to do any of them some directors go into the corner of their office and cry.

user55340

Obligatory Coding Horor link: codinghorror.com/blog/2007/09/…

user41796

And we need to keep moving forwards towards a solution. But I don't think we've found the solution.

user55340

DIY meets Software Estimation - construx.com/10x_Software_Development/…

user41796

2:00 AM

Sorry to send you into history so much

user55340

I'm ok now... looking into how to attack my Fractran Interpeter.

user41796

Now if only one of us was blue and we could nuke messages...

user55340

2:15 AM

So... Steve's kids' fort... it looks remarkably like the one my parents did for my niece and nephew.

user55340

user55340

Single sloped roof, on a hillside, decking around it with railing.

user55340

> Superficial appearances aside, however, there are 10 16' 2x8 pressure treated joists in that pile, and those suckers are heavy. There are also 3 12' 4x8 pressure treated beams in that pile, and those suckers are really heavy!

Mike

we need a better word than 'fort' for that

Kody Manharth

@MichaelT That's pretty impressive. One of my friends growing up had a similar (though smaller) housing unit suspended in a tree with a wrought iron spiral staircase leading up to it. Hid dad was a welder, which leads me to presume that Steve is quite the carpenter to put that together.

@Mike Indeed, more of a modern castle really to a child.

user55340

2:39 AM

@KodyManharth checkout "Treehouse Masters" TV program.

user55340

They're doing silly things like...

user55340

Thats a 600 square foot "treehouse"

Kody Manharth

@MichaelT That's nuts

But I like it. Wonder how much rent is.

user55340

Timelapse of that project. animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/treehouse-masters/videos/…

user55340

2:44 AM

The house in the background was an older couple... and when the family was over (kids & grandkids) the living room was too small. So this is the new 'living room'.

Kody Manharth

Pretty clever, it looked like it had plumbing too. That's a snazzy touch

user55340

Yep. Budget was $200k.

Kody Manharth

That's a hefty budget. I'm reading the article attached to the fort it's a nice use-case for general long term planning.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:02 AM

@GlenH7 Nutter? Nah, I didn't think you got your PE/FE/WhateverE because you didn't believe in the cause. Many people do for good reasons, I just hope to never get turned down for a job due to not having it, but that's the risk I run anyway heh

Nihal Sahu

3:28 AM

A doubt >

I'm 13 and do a bit of programming with another developer... How can I use my whiteboard and what size do I need?

user55340

There's everything from writing on 3x5 index cards to entire walls painted in ideapaint.com

Ampt

3:46 AM

just introduced my roommate to meta programming and reflectin

I think I blew his mind

make sure you don't skimp on the paint... some instances really suck

my school used a few different kinds and some are great and others dont clean for crap

one good trick I know is to go to home depot/menards and ask for 'shower board' its a waterproof board that works great as a whiteboard, and its literally <10 bucks for an 8'x4' sheet. Kinda hackey but I love it

user55340

@Ampt ruby-esque? or java-esque?

Ampt

java-esque

i think reflection is limited to java (I think)

right? thats just the word for it in java?

user55340

@Ampt We actually used them at menards... and they work ok, but don't erase completely. Over time the surface gets 'meh'. Its not so much they don't erase completely, but the solvents in the dry erase markers eat away at the surface.

Ampt

@MichaelT yeah but for <10 bucks I'll just get a new one each year in college and cut it to fit my new room

works great for me

user55340

Well, java has its flavor of meta-programming. "Do it, but don't be ugly" and kind of discourages it overall, unless you really need it.

Ampt

3:49 AM

yeah it's tough in java... python is hella easier

user55340

Ruby is like "Meta programming for everyone! Its a core feature of the language!"

Ampt

dont let my senior design fool you; I work with html and css more than ruby :(

somehow I got stuck on front end

user55340

Nothing wrong with that at all.

user55340

I really dislike ruby's excessive meta programming philosophy.

Ampt

well i dislike reflection so I guess our opinions cancel out.

user55340

3:51 AM

Things like "here's a gem that has a class that you point it at the database, and it queries the database, and then meta-programs all the classes you'll need to access it"

Ampt

JK I know nothing and defer to your judgement wise one

user55340

(and if you think I'm joking... guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_querying.html )

Ampt

oh I know you aren't

we use gems like that mwahahha

user55340

On one hand, its kind of neat. On the other hand... no. No. Just don't do that.

Ampt

no, do it more

exactly

I like the way you think

user55340

3:55 AM

Oh, in your copious free time... maven.apache.org/guides/getting-started

Ampt

LOL

you literally got a good belly laugh out of me

user55340

catb.org/jargon/html/C/copious-free-time.html

Ampt

maybe if I didn't decide to do everything the hard way..

user55340

> 1. [used ironically to indicate the speaker's lack of the quantity in question] A mythical schedule slot for accomplishing tasks held to be unlikely or impossible. Sometimes used to indicate that the speaker is interested in accomplishing the task, but believes that the opportunity will not arise. “I'll implement the automatic layout stuff in my copious free time.”

user55340

Back to maven briefly...

user55340

3:57 AM

Please wait while Maven is downloading THE INTERNET

Tweeted by kolovos on August 22, 2012 at 11:09 AM

user55340

blog.sonatype.com/people/2011/04/…

user55340

Alternatively, go download maven, and then clone github.com/shagie/TestingWithHsqldb and then do 'mvn package' or 'mvn eclipse'

Kody Manharth

So would writing a C# server application that allows you to execute C# functions from an EF model be considered meta programming?

Ampt

EF model?

Kody Manharth

Entity Framework.

user55340

4:03 AM

I'm not familiar enough in C# to say if it is or isn't. Though typically, such things to touch some degree into meta programming.

Jimmy Hoffa

@KodyManharth not really

that's more just delegation

Ampt

generally I consider anything that calls code that you don't see at code writing time to be meta-programming

Jimmy Hoffa

metaprogramming is about when you change code with code

Ampt

although I am definitely uneducated in the eways of black magic

Jimmy Hoffa

just executing code is delegated execution

metaprogramming is code that creates or defines code for instance

user55340

4:05 AM

Querying information about the class to be able to invoke it...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I don't count that...

Ampt

this would then be meta meta programming

we're talking about code that writes code

Jimmy Hoffa

I think of macros; metaprogramming is in C# when you emit C#

expressions in C# are metaprogramming; you can construct code dynamically using them then execute it

user55340

In Stripes (one of the many java web frameworks), theres the ability to make a bean class which you can then do ${bean.something} to fetch the value of something from the bean. But wait, its actually constructing a call to the function getSomething() on the fly.

Kody Manharth

Ok, so the fact that I'm using a CodeDOM to generate separate functions into a class would be metaprogramming?

Jimmy Hoffa

4:06 AM

or IL emitting is meta programming a la protobuf.net

@KodyManharth "generate separate functions into a class" ?

user55340

So it goes looks at the bean class, finds the method named getSomething() and invokes it -- that falls into the realm of meta programming. Reflection is just one tame version of it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT right that function construction on the fly is relatively metaprogramming

@MichaelT yeah.. either way, it's a soft term regardless

and frankly has no value as a term to the C# community-- we're all too busy writing LOB and enterprisey shit to bother doing metaprogramming.

user55340

Metaprograming isn't something thats well defined.

Jimmy Hoffa

aye

Kody Manharth

@JimmyHoffa Each function is represented by an EF entity. I can load seven of them into a class and compile that class, and then load it's resulting assembly for use by the server.

user55340

4:08 AM

Metaprogramming

Metaprogramming is the writing of computer programs that write or manipulate other programs (or themselves) as their data, or that do part of the work at compile time that would otherwise be done at runtime. In some cases, this allows programmers to minimize the number of lines of code to express a solution (hence reducing development time), or it gives programs greater flexibility to efficiently handle new situations without recompilation. The language in which the metaprogram is written is called the metalanguage. The language of the programs that are manipulated is called the object...

user55340

Also a good read - c2.com/cgi/wiki?MetaProgramming

Kody Manharth

@MichaelT The Wikipedia is what is what cued my curiosity. I've been trying to find an elegant way to explain the project.

Jimmy Hoffa

@KodyManharth sounds like metaprogramming, also sounds like a bad idea unless there's really good justification

Kody Manharth

4:39 AM

@JimmyHoffa I'm using it allow arbitrary code reuse between synonymous game objects, as well as allow real-time online creation capabilities for an authoritative game server. i.e. check if a sword/ability/event/etc can only be used by a knight. Assuming that knight or sword, or a given ability/event aren't concretely defined by the engine, but by the scripted library. I got the idea from the way the Aurora engine implements scripting.

Matt D

4:51 AM

you're using EF for that?

O_O

composition always trumps inheritance.

Kody Manharth

5:01 AM

@MattD The only thing that is inherited from is the base entity, which is for look-up and tracking purposes. Each object can implement specific forms of an interface, or it's own version, contain other objects, scripts, etc. without needing to inherit from anything else. For instance the above example would be an IRequires which is passed a reference to the script containing the check for "knight".

Matt D

sounds pretty hideous and brittle. sorry

Kody Manharth

It's a experimental prototype.

Matt D

you could probably implement the same kind of thing using a traditional component type system.

without tying yourself to EF and a database.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:29 AM

@KodyManharth Yeah, I'm with @MattD on this one... EF is really not meant for things like that and while it's surely clever, sounds like way more than necessary

I mean, what does it give to you? There's likely many simpler implementations that give you the same benefits

Kody Manharth

@MattD @JimmyHoffa Sorry I was making sure I understood/remembered component engines.

Matt D

@KodyManharth its always fun to try crazy stuff out. but at the end of the day, if what you're doing has more "cute" than simplicity.. you gotta ask yourself why :)

@KodyManharth at the very least you'll learn a lot about EF.

@KodyManharth learn how to use the DB migration tools too. they're pretty handy

Kody Manharth

@MattD I learned a rediculously large amount about EF. The original goal was to save the driver (Think LPMud) assembly it's self as a member of the model and only recompile it when needed, but I ran into signing issues.

@MattD @JimmyHoffa The final goal was (apparently) an object-component engine-esque (messages, behaviours, interest management) server-side engine. And EF would have be the method for assigning behaviors and storing data.

I wanted to allow the players the ability to modify certain things one their own. Hence the OLC capabilities.

But I definitely see what you mean.

Kody Manharth

6:03 AM

BTW - Thanks for the input.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:50 AM

@KodyManharth Yeah, it's really neat and always good to do interesting stuff like that to learn. I usually do stuff like that when I'm writing minor utilities at jobs etc, that's how I learned WPF and got a really good feel for static extensions was by overusing both in some little utilities we needed at previous jobs I had etc

As for allowing players the ability to modify certain things, another approach that could be fun for learning would be embedding a scripting engine and learning how all that works

That's something I've been interested in trying myself, trying to stuff one of the javascript or python engines in or whatever to an app I write

Kody Manharth

@JimmyHoffa That's theoretically what it is. It's just C# scripting as opposed to like Lua.

Jimmy Hoffa

@KodyManharth well you wrote a C# scripting engine like thing, I'm curious how embedding one in a C# app would work to make it interoperate with your runtime environment etc

Kody Manharth

But yeah I did it for my last semester of classes when I didn't have a programming class. Technically all it does at this stage is load a script from the EF store and execute it over a network shell.

The other stuff was "The Plan." You guys saved me going from a spike solution to a full blow prototype.

I could take just the CodeDOM/compilation engine out of that, provide it with a hook system for passing parameters and pulling back the returns and it should work for what you're saying. If I am understanding what you mean.

Matt D

most of the time, for something like a mud

you can actually not use a scripting language and express most things simply with data

but then im not such a huge fan of scripting for small projects

it adds overhead, it adds complexity, it means you have multiple toolsets

Kody Manharth

7:06 AM

@MattD I was looking at making a start->finish workflow to make a MUD using nothing but the scripts. (Hence the original question on metaprogramming.) But yes, in the four weeks I spent on this I could have had a MUD instead.

Like you said much like a component engine (without realizing it.)

Kody Manharth

7:23 AM

digresses

I need to get this Flash code working, so I can sleep.

Reut Sharabani

8:34 AM

so, python, camelCase or underscore?

Mike Pennington

@ReutSharabani, it depends. Please see the PEP 8 Naming Conventions

Reut Sharabani

I've read it, is there no standard? it says there you can choose whatever you want, pretty much...

Mike Pennington

Ummm really?

How closely did you read?

**Function Names**

Function names should be lowercase, with words *separated by underscores as necessary* to improve readability.

I gave you a direct hyperlink to the naming conventions ;-)... perhaps you could read that again?

Reut Sharabani

just did

thanks

I'm not sure what to do, I asked it cause I'm using code from last semester (not mine) and it has camlCase already... I think I'll re-factor the whole thing...

gnat

9:18 AM

@GlenH7 I'd vote reopen if the question title was rephrased to something like, "Why do MSDN resources require C# as a prerequisite to in-depth study of F#?", or "How do I approach a serious F# project without C# knowledge?"

Reut Sharabani

10:59 AM

I'm trying to write a simple python module to communicate with an API. It has to log in and do some operations on a restful mechanism.

I had a look at requests and did something that works, but the design is bad.

Any tips? Somewhere to look at for inspiration?

Thanks (please tag me in reply)

Mike Pennington

11:15 AM

@ReutSharabani...
http://codereview.stackexchange.com/

ChrisF

12:10 PM

@gnat - Re your habit of downvoting cross posts. It would be easier if you didn't down-vote the ones that were on topic on programmers - specifically that one about SPA - unless it was a bad question of course.

It's not easy to let you know that I've closed/migrated the SO version from the mod queue/question without declining your flag (which I don't want to do).

gnat

12:30 PM

@ChrisF deal. :) I recall our last conversation wrt c/p flags and this time, I'd go without DVs at "our" copy of the question. Voted down for unclear "SPA" term. Was going to fix that after I found an SO question that made it clear, but you handled the flag faster than I figured corrective edit for undownvote

ChrisF

@gnat Cool. So if I see a down-vote from now on I can assume it's because you think it's a bad question as well as being cross posted.

gnat

@ChrisF Right. In cases of bad questions I leave explanatory comment when downvoting (did it this time too, it's deleted but diamond allows you to see it)

ChrisF

Ta. That'll make it easier to clean things up.

user41796

@gnat - I'll look at changing the title. I don't think it will change the intent of the question all that much.

user41796

And looking at the reopen history, it would appear that other reviewers still disagree with the resource request aspect.

gnat

12:50 PM

@GlenH7 yup. As much as I appreciate effort put into the edits (which by the way revealed a perfectly fine underlying non-resource question), I am still uncomfortable with title being gimmeabook. Both for making bad example for others, and for the risk of attracting crap answers in long term

Reut Sharabani

1:13 PM

@Mike,

thanks, but I can't expose this code (sensitive)... I'm now in a point where I want to know if I'm logged in but don't know how to tell.

I log in successfully but if the server disconnects me for whatever reason I don't know how to re-connect and send the request again (at least one time, or using some exhaust)

The code works now, and we're not into changing server logic so we want to keep working with sessions (and not tokens)... But I can't think of a way to cleanly implement try-login-if-failed mechanism

Thomas Owens

1:36 PM

@GlenH7 Now that I'm at work, I'm re-reading Chapter 18 of McConnell's Professional Software Development (one of the few that he didn't post on his site). I forgot that David Parnas, who was influential in the early days of software engineering as an engineering discipline, was/is at McMaster Univeristy. This whole part of the chapter compares my school to McMaster with regards to how they view software engineering.

"The McMaster program sees software engineers as engineers who develop software. The RIT program sees software engineers as programmers who create software using an engineering approach." "Programs like the RIT program won't provide software engineers with the engineering background needed to pass current Fundamentals of Engineering exams."

The chapter also contains one of the few statements from McConnell that I disagree with: "The more common need in the software industry is for software engineering that produces economical business systems, but the criticality of some systems (including software in nuclear power plants and airplanes) calls equally strongly for software engineering."

I don't think that criticality has anything to do with it. In fact, because software engineers spend less time learning about fluids, materials, statics, dynamics, and chemistry and more time learning about design, implementation, verification, and formal methods, someone like that may be better suited than a software engineer to work on safety critical systems.

The trade-off is that more time may be necessary to learn the domain. But I'd take that trade-off any day.

blackbee

i am given a FD == F{A->B,B->C} the question was whether it is in 2nf ... i said No. was i correct... ?

Thomas Owens

@blackbee What notation is that? I've never seen it before.

blackbee

A functionally determines B {A->B}

knock knock

user41796

2:08 PM

@gnat - have a look now. Title & some of the body changed to focus on the F# aspect. Thanks for the title! programmers.stackexchange.com/q/220937/53019

user41796

@ThomasOwens That perhaps may be the crux of the issue. Spanning that gap would be the key (I think) to making licensure really work

blackbee

2:24 PM

@MichaelT are u free today?

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/12574407#12574407 @ThomasOwens

user41796

You'd laugh if you could see the debate waging in my head now. On the one hand, I can see the benefits of engineers writing software as they have the knowledge to provide cross-checks across a variety of domains. Their weakness lies in not having as deep of a knowledge of software constructs. The flip side is developers (need a better term since that one is loaded) writing more efficient code because of the constructs but not being able to cross check specifications.

Thomas Owens

@blackbee Unfortunately, I can't really get into code in this. It's probably too close to what I work on at work. I recommend looking into tonal curves and contrast stretching.

user41796

@blackbee - based upon what @MichaelT was saying yesterday, you've probably reached the limits of what we can provide through the chatroom. Hopefully we gave you some items to research and help you keep moving forward. But I don't think we can resolve your current roadblock for you.

user41796

@ThomasOwens - I have a feeling there won't be a reply to your comment on that IEEE article, nor will there be an update based upon my second comment.

Thomas Owens

2:39 PM

@blackbee If you can narrow things down to get a specific question, the Signal Processing Stack Exchange site does take questions on image processing.

blackbee

ok

user41796

My confusion of the day. int * int returns an int, not a long even if you're assigning it to a long. And with the numbers I'm playing with, it's easy to overflow an int Sigh.

user55340

3:12 PM

@blackbee My knowledge of the tools is more as an artist (my hobby is photography). I can probably deal with the code behind the math, but the math itself isn't my favorite area of computing.

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT I'm not an expert by any means, but getting to do some of the stuff that image processing tools do is kind of neat. In fact, there's an inordinate number of software and systems engineers who work in the image processing side of the job and image scientists who have photography as a hobby.

user55340

It is very neat, just math was the worst of my computer related classes in college. Matrices, derivatives, splines, and such... I really don't have the foundations for explaining the code or the algorithms (or debugging it). On the other hand, if you want to talk about how changing the contrast in film works...

Jimmy Hoffa

4:00 PM

@GlenH7 .NET has some config settings on the project you can specify when it compiles that it will overflow integral math like that back to minvalue

I believe it's in project properties, or it might be something you have to put in the assemblyinfo, don't remember. Not a common thing to diddle with but when you run into those integral math overflows like that...

alternatively, just cast each value to a long before multiplying if there's any chance they'll be at that size..

user55340

Caching is easy and trivial #FiveTechWordHorrors

Tweeted by thomasfuchs on December 11, 2013 at 2:53 PM

user55340

Off by one error #FiveWordTechHorrors

Tweeted by thomasfuchs on December 11, 2013 at 2:50 AM

user55340

(note: its supposed to be five words... thus...)

user55340

geekwire.com/2013/…

Ampt

1

Q: How should we "pick the comfortable programming language" in an interview?

When they ask you to choose the programming language you are comfortable with before an interview, is it to ask questions about the programming language or to check how well you code in it? Like for example, if I don't know what iterators are in Python but I'm comfortable with Python because of ...

programming-languages interview

interesting question

I thought it was fairly strait forward until I saw the before the interview part

user55340

4:07 PM

git push origin master —force #fivewordtechhorrors +@izs

Tweeted by tonylukasavage on December 9, 2013 at 6:49 PM

Ampt

In all of my interviews when they say "In whatever language you want, do X" I usually just say "Is pseudo-code ok?" and no one has said no lol

Thomas Owens

I prefer to see pseudocode. It shows that you can think in terms of a design without invoking language features.

But then again, I'm a very meta person.

Jimmy Hoffa

Haskell looks like pseudocode to most

user55340

export EDITOR = rm -rf

Jimmy Hoffa

that's what I would do it in from now on if someone gives me a choice... though I'm generally always given the language "Do it in C# because that's the job"

@MichaelT that's evil..

user55340

4:11 PM

That test just fails sometimes #FiveWordTechHorrors

Tweeted by larryrprice on December 11, 2013 at 4:01 PM

user55340

These are funny

Thomas Owens

"It wasn't answered on StackOverflow" was one. Unfortunately, Stack Overflow is two words.

Ampt

false. in the browser there's no space

user55340

Put it in an iFrame. #FiveWordTechHorrors

Tweeted by creativedrewy on December 11, 2013 at 4:11 PM

Ampt

@MichaelT keep them coming. I'm losing it over here

user55340

4:52 PM

Let's get Sales's feedback first. #FiveWordTechHorrors

Tweeted by noyesjesse on December 11, 2013 at 4:45 PM

user55340

Sales told the Client, yes! #FiveWordTechHorrors

Tweeted by CLouvi on December 11, 2013 at 4:50 AM

user55340

Or from last night's conversation...

user55340

This project requires Entity Framework. #FiveWordTechHorrors

Tweeted by DotnetDouchebag on December 11, 2013 at 4:51 PM

Jimmy Hoffa

> I'm making a Twitter client #FiveWordTechHorrors

@MichaelT Iduno, I been trying to get them to use EF here but I'm getting a lot of skepticism. I think it should work and it appears totally capable for our purposes but there's a ton of griping out there about it...

user41796

5:18 PM

@JimmyHoffa That's what I ended up doing. Casting was quick enough and made sense for that scenario. Thanks for the tip about playing with the overflow behavior.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Early versions of EF sucked. Any time you wanted to upgrade, you trashed a lot of things and rebuilt them. More recent versions of EF have resolved a lot of the earlier grumbles.

user41796

It's taken a long time to get to a usable state.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Yeah - that I recognize. Though it's unfortunate, the internet is littered with these "EF is garbage" gripes and now it's quite good from my analysis...

I mean really... I don't see anything wrong with using it at all, especially with the sproc support it has now

user41796

It's like a poor question with a long comment chain that gets edited into a good question. Unless someone gets rid of all of the now irrelevant comments, the question is still doomed.

user41796

Kathleen Dollard is a big advocate of EF. Super smart woman who really knows her tech.

user55340

5:25 PM

Every technology is burdened with all of its history that has since been fixed. "Java is slow"

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT let's be honest though... Java is slow... ;P #BetterYetItJustMeansRemarkOutAndIgnoreEverythingAfterIt

user41796

> You are a fool ... every picosecond your program has access to in its processing time means everything. If I could thumbs down you I would

user41796

I think we now have a de facto comment to use anytime there's even a hint of performance considerations.

user55340

Oh, let me find my performance gripe last night...

Jimmy Hoffa

From now on anytime I hear someone say "hashtag" I will immediately stop listening because I'm not supposed to process what comes next anyway.

user55340

5:29 PM

0

A: I want create a power pyramid of “*” with Java.

You code calls System.out.print method exponential times, one call per character. I/O operations are expensive, so this is NOT good approach. Compose the strings in a seperate method and use System.out.print only for printing. Please refer the code below: public static void main(Strin...

user55340

Its slightly better now.

Jimmy Hoffa

... power pyramid?

user41796

I fear that there's only a few of us who understand the reference behind that comment.

user55340

But he was recommending using StringBuffer insert method.

Jimmy Hoffa

Pyramid power

Pyramid power refers to alleged supernatural or paranormal properties of the ancient Egyptian pyramids and objects of similar shape. With this power, model pyramids are said to preserve foods, sharpen or maintain the sharpneses of razor blades, improve health (some people "were so energized that they could not cope with the dynamo effects they experienced"), function "as a thought-form incubator," trigger sexual urges, and cause other dramatic effects. Pyramid power is one of many pseudoscientific theories regarding pyramids. Such theories are collectively referred to as pyramidology. ...

All he needs to know right there...

user55340

5:30 PM

Compare append vs insert code in the abstract class.

user41796

5:41 PM

19

Q: What language, or language feature, do you wish made it to the mainstream?

Some languages in the past have been influential without ever reaching wide adoption. For example, many languages owe much to the design of Algol 68, even though few compilers were ever written for it. The Dylan language was killed by Apple but had a clean and interesting design. What other prog...

programming-languages language-design language-features

user41796

Fishing for down votes please. It's CW so it won't cost you any rep. The down votes will help it be deleted more easily.

user41796

Another CW down vote fishing request

user41796

14

Q: Are there non-programming related activities akin to solving programming problems?

I'm talking about particular activities, for which you can draw parallels with the specific kind of reasoning needed when solving programming problems. Counter examples are activities that would help in almost any situation, like : take a shower or any other, somewhat passive activities, whi...

self-improvement personality lifestyle problem-solving

user55340

@GlenH7 first one I hadn't done, second one I did some point back.

user41796

Thanks!

user41796

5:45 PM

I have burned through all of my up / down votes today. <sigh>

user55340

@GlenH7 Now you're just left to staring snarky comments?

user41796

Nah, therapy through delete voting instead

user41796

I wonder how badly an MSO request would fare to change the shade of pink that's used.

user55340

"I want it to be red, like dripping blood. After N hours, the color of the deleted background should be a dark reddish brown... like dried blood. I want to hear the scream of the bits as the get sent to /dev/null never to be seen again - please include a .midi file of this when viewing a deleted question"

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 My flagging philosophy (though disagreeable to you and many others apparently) makes dealing with these things so much easier... When my flags start getting declined frequently rather than rarely I'll change my philosophy, but until then I'll just chalk it up to "woo I'm helping!"

user41796

5:54 PM

@MichaelT If I stole that for my question, it would totally be worth any down votes I attract...

user55340

@GlenH7 You know you need to become a MSO troll before you can get your diamond.

user41796

dang it. You know how to throw down the perfect challenge.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT shit, are you saying I'm more qualified for a diamond than the "real" engineer over there? ooo watch out @GlenH7, you got competition now!

My platform: I will pin all the things, also it may no longer be apparent that P.SE existed before about november 2011 after I've been in office for a month.

Thomas Owens

Is there a general term for the class of applications that utilizes data passed in over something like a socket or a message queue instead of being RPC-driven?

user41796

@ThomasOwens VTC - primarily opinion based.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:58 PM

@ThomasOwens IPC

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Inter-Process Communication? Even if they are on different physical devices?

user41796

@ThomasOwens Beyond client-server vs. network type (browser) applications?

Jimmy Hoffa

IPC is your most general catch-all "I have some out-of-process transmission medium for communication"

You can even use IPC mediums to communicate from one process to itself...