The Whiteboard

Jimmy Hoffa

6:00 PM

@GlenH7 no way

processes can live on same machines, different machines, whatever

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Eh. OK. Works for me. But IPC conjures images of running on the same physical hardware.

Jimmy Hoffa

it's about two processes, regardless of their host location

user41796

@JimmyHoffa yes way, that's what I thought. But I'm open to being educated.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens Not for me at all...

Thomas Owens

From wikipedia, "Processes may be running on one or more computers connected by a network."

Thanks, guys.

user41796

6:00 PM

yw

user41796

dang. Schooled by Wikipedia and a fake, wannabe engineer.

user41796

I'm going to go delete questions in retaliation

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 wannabe? Shit, if I wanted to be an engineer I'd stop waiting on these stock options to pan out

c'mon Ninjas-Only-CMS products, I know these will catch on eventually, and then I'll be swimming in monies! Perhaps it just needs a social media component...

Thomas Owens

However, wikipedia says that "RPC is an inter-process communication" as well. So is IPC really the "opposite" of RPC?

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens Not opposite at all, I tend to think of RPC as just one special use of IPC

user41796

6:03 PM

@ThomasOwens that was my understanding of it; but I certainly wouldn't contest the authority of @JimmyHoffa

Jimmy Hoffa

at the end of the day what's the difference, RPC is a service that accepts communications that it takes as instructions for procedures to call, IPC is a service that accepts communications-EOM

user41796

It's a slow day when blatant baiting like the above doesn't pull down at least one star.

Thomas Owens

I'm trying to concisely describe the opposite of something like RMI or CORBA, where you pass messages around instead of the whole stub/remote method thing. To me, RMI and CORBA. So maybe there's another subset of IPC that is "that other thing"?

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Authority is right! At this right I'll never certify you JH-Approved... Must be you need more monads.

Thomas Owens

Maybe I should talk about it in terms of the coupling.

user55340

6:05 PM

I've done RPC via SOAP over email (yes, a valid endpoint for SOAP)

user41796

@ThomasOwens using a message queue would imply you're using an event based application

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens Ohh you're talking about an abstraction approach, instead of saying "call method X" you just say "Here's some data!" the closest to that i can think of is Actor model

actors dictate "Just send messages but never tell other actors what to do with those messages"

user41796

afaik, all network calls (including RPC calls) will use a socket of some sort.

Jimmy Hoffa

I don't know of any other label for what you're talking about

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 To me, the difference is how you define the API.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:07 PM

@ThomasOwens This is exactly right, which is why I don't think there's a label for what you're talking about precisely... perhaps event driven is the best term

Thomas Owens

We have some CORBA-based applications now. We provide the function headers that are called to interact with the system. In this other thing that's not RMI, you would provide data definitions and a method of sending it.

user41796

@ThomasOwens I would agree with that. The RPC should abstract out dealing with the socket. Whereas an old-school client-server arrangement would have to futz with the socket

Jimmy Hoffa

because event driven refers to events/messages/data being passed around but never direct instructions being called such as in RPC

Thomas Owens

I'll go with "loosely-coupled, event driven systems" then.

user41796

@ThomasOwens yes, that's pretty accurate

user41796

6:08 PM

you could almost start talking about services there. But beware the buzzword bingo that will introduce.

Jimmy Hoffa

What you're talking about is specifically a design approach more than a specific technology or pattern like "IPC" or "RPC" so it's more nebulous. But yeah I think event driven architecture is probably the best fit terminology for what you're talking about

user55340

Off by one error #FiveWordTechHorrors

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

Jimmy Hoffa

Event-driven architecture

Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a software architecture pattern promoting the production, detection, consumption of, and reaction to events. An event can be defined as "a significant change in state". For example, when a consumer purchases a car, the car's state changes from "for sale" to "sold". A car dealer's system architecture may treat this state change as an event whose occurrence can be made known to other applications within the architecture. From a formal perspective, what is produced, published, propagated, detected or consumed is a (typically asynchronous) message called t...

user55340

Fixed that off by one error! #FiveWordTechHorrors

Tweeted by druttka on December 11, 2013 at 5:04 PM

Jimmy Hoffa

That's plausibly the most formalized term that will even almost fit you

Thomas Owens

6:09 PM

"So, we're going to build a loosely-coupled, event driven, highly scalable, real-time, asynchronous, service-oriented, system of next-generation middleware actors that reside in the embedded cloud." Do I win?

2

user41796

sorry, forgot we weren't playing bingo

user55340

@ThomasOwens I'm sure you can fit another buzzword in there.

user55340

maybe... "as a service" or "in the cloud"

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT when it comes to buzzwords, there's always room for more

user41796

I like super-scalable. Highly-scalable is soooo last month.

Thomas Owens

6:10 PM

Better?

user41796

embedded?

user41796

surely you can manage embedded if you're doing real-time

Thomas Owens

We're going to embed the cloud.

user41796

Bam!

user41796

Now you've got a winner

user55340

6:12 PM

@GlenH7 I remember back in college, the guys taking processor design (ECE 555 I think) were describing the lines and cashregister systems at different eating establishments in processor jargon.

user41796

I'm proud to be able to say "I was there" when you completely switched to the dark side.

user55340

the difference between Subway (slow) and Subway (rush) vs McD...

Thomas Owens

Needed more middleware.

user41796

@MichaelT that's hilarious.

user41796

@ThomasOwens do mods not have a timer for editing their chats?

user55340

6:13 PM

@ThomasOwens If you drop off the "we're" you would have something you could post to twitter.

user55340

Or I could give that to our twitterers here...

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 Looks like no.

user41796

ok, now I have a reason to want the diamond.... :-)

Thomas Owens

We can also edit other people's messages.

user41796

That's cool. A little creepy, but cool.

Thomas Owens

6:16 PM

So I've gone down the Wikipedia rabbithole...SOA 2.0? WTF IS THIS?

Oh. It's just complex event processing. nbd

user41796

SOA 2.0?

Thomas Owens

Event-driven SOA

Event-driven SOA is a form of service-oriented architecture (SOA), combining the intelligence and proactiveness of event-driven architecture with the organizational capabilities found in service offerings. Before event-driven SOA, the typical SOA platform orchestrated services centrally, through pre-defined business processes, assuming that what should have already been triggered is defined in a business process. This older approach (sometimes called SOA 1.0) does not account for events that occur across, or outside of, specific business processes. Thus complex events, in which a pattern of...

user41796

SOA doesn't need a v2.0

Jimmy Hoffa

clientsfromhell.net/post/69691947184/…

This reminds me of a story from the CSRs at a previous job I worked. True story:
*ring ring*
CSR: Hi, <redacted> how can I help?
User: Yeah, the software seems to have gotten into a strange state or having an error I think, it's frozen and has a message about exception something...
CSR: Ah, ok well I'd be glad to help you but for our logging and inspection of the issue for the future we'd really appreciate if you could send us a screenshot
User: Oh ok sure, one moment
CSR: *waits 5 minutes*
User: Ok it should be there now!

user41796

@ThomasOwens sounds like a bit too much astronaut architecture there. And full disclosure, I have helped design and put in a few SOA implementations.

Thomas Owens

6:18 PM

@GlenH7 CEP is really cool. Most engines have a SQL-like language with temporal concepts.

user55340

Blam! Pink'ed that screen...

Thomas Owens

So rather than just taking an action on a single event, you look for sequences of events to trigger services. It's a stupid name. It's still SOA.

user55340

(so satisfying when you cast the last vote to delete)

user41796

Getting to CEP was always the holy grail of the SOA training I went to, including the SMMI. IIRC. Everyone kind of waved their hand at it and said "yeah, this likely won't happen in our lifetimes."

Thomas Owens

I played with it in 2007.

user41796

6:21 PM

My training was around that time too.

Thomas Owens

The idea was to use it in conjunction with NLP to take textual data (or, even better, speech-to-text output) to determine events. Stream text through CEP engines, and alert uers.

user41796

That's really slick. We were just consultants trying to transform enterprises. I think what you were trying to do was more useful. At least you know where you were trying to get to.

Thomas Owens

The intended audience was emergency responders and/or boots-on-the-ground military.

Instead of people listening to radio chatter, it gets streamed through this software. However, neither CEP nor voice-to-text were good enough to be useful in our environments.

user41796

sounds like a cool project. It's kind of amazing thinking about what is now almost trivially possible as compared to 10 or 15 years ago.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I know, like those lazers they have zapping people from satellites. Just a little google maps jiggering and boom you've bored a 2cm hole in someone's head from space. Strange times we live in!

user41796

6:27 PM

@JimmyHoffa That's why I only walk around in my portable Faraday cage. Too many spooks running around. The cage isn't really a problem unless I'm trying to make a call on my cell phone. Reception is kind of poor.

user55340

@GlenH7 The key to avoiding the spooks, is to go where the spooks really are.

user55340

United States National Radio Quiet Zone

The United States National Radio Quiet Zone is a large area of land centered between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia and the Sugar Grove Research Facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia. The Radio Quiet Zone is a rectangle of land approximately in size that straddles the border area of Virginia and West Virginia. It includes all land with latitudes between 37° 30′ 0.4″ N and 39° 15′ 0.4″ N and longitudes between 78° 29′ 59.0″ W and 80° 29′ 59.2″ W. The National Radio Quiet Zone protects the telescopes of the NRAO facility and the antennas and receiv...

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Yeah there's a simple trick for that, it's like how two negatives make a positive you just put the phone in it's own mini faraday cage then it works inside a faraday cage because it's cage cancels out the other one

user55340

You can only use diesel vehicles there because the sparkplugs are too noisy.

user41796

@MichaelT I think INL has something similar

user55340

6:29 PM

It was originally created to listen to radio signals bouncing off the moon from the Soviet Union back in the cold war. Needed it to be real quiet to be able to pick up that faint a signal. Thus, where the spooks really are.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I heard about this on NPR recently, they were talking about how they really do monitor the air and locate them, knock on their doors and tell them "Sorry but we really do need radio silence, you'll have to turn off all your WiFi equipment"

they were saying they have to do that once a month or so someone doesn't realize it and turns something on and before they know it they get a knock on the door

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Yep. Microwave ovens must be in cages. There was also a case of the radio patrol finding an old electric blanket used to keep an old dog warm (he commented that was an easy thing to fix - get a new blanket).

user41796

Just checked - I couldn't find a radio free zone for INL. But I know that due to their remote location they have some of the benefits of an RF free zone.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 INL?

user41796

Idaho National Laboratory

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is an complex located in the high desert of eastern Idaho, between the town of Arco to the west and the cities of Idaho Falls and Blackfoot to the east. It lies within Butte, Bingham, Bonneville, and Jefferson counties. The lab currently employs more than 4,000 people. History The federal research facility was established in 1949 as the "National Reactor Testing Station" (NRTS). In 1975, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was divided into the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The Idaho sit...

user41796

6:33 PM

I met some of the guys who do infrastructure work there. Crazy cats.

user55340

A steak pun is a rare medium well done.

user41796

gonna have to flag that one

user55340

Could have fun and post that over in ELL and ask "what does it mean?"

user41796

@MichaelT You would need to use a throwaway account though

user55340

7:01 PM

'ello @YannisRizos ... been a bit since we saw you in here.

user41796

@MichaelT He needs to steal Thomas' design idea to help salvage the Greek economy.

user41796

And I'm thinking the "change deleted post background" request might have a chance of surviving if I tag it as "always Friday in Iceland"

user55340

If you do, wait till friday... just in case.

user41796

It would take me that long to put together a good enough piece anyway

iCanLearn

Am I the only one who thinks that people on Workplace SE tend to over-analyze things? I mean, sure, you can be careful about everything and that might give you better results, but I'm not sure if it's (psychologically) worth it.

user41796

7:05 PM

@iCanLearn examples?

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT (Shhh, I'm not here, I'm in a meeting ;)

user41796

@MichaelT apparently (according to the MSO meme post) AFII doesn't have to be posted on a Friday.

user41796

@YannisRizos You should suggest this: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/12596852#12596852 as your latest and greatest design idea.

Thomas Owens

DO IT!

user41796

Isn't that brilliant? I'm sure he wants to claim full credit, but some of us helped out.

Yannis Rizos

7:12 PM

@ThomasOwens Heh, I tried to pin that twice before I notice it was already pinned.

user41796

Bah. Us puny room-owners can't repin. :-(

Yannis Rizos

Crap, did I un-pin it? And now it tells me I can't pin it again because "a moderator cleared your vote".

user41796

@YannisRizos yep, you did. And I think because I originally pinned it I can't. @MichaelT or @ThomasOwens want to try and re-pin?

user41796

Although now I don't feel as bad about not being able to re-pin. :-)

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Work has been pretty hectic lately. On the plus side, we just started building a bakery chain's website and they always bring tons of little treats to our meetings. The meetings are looong and boring, but at least they are also delicious.

user55340

7:16 PM

@YannisRizos you might like poking into programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220947/…

user41796

@YannisRizos That's a brilliant approach to encouraging people to show up to the meeting.

user55340

Although the name for that one doesn't come through anymore...

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Huh, Andy (~Leslar) left us? The account was deleted.

user41796

@MichaelT I wonder if we could float a request to replace "Community" with "Thor" for that example and it's related kin.

Jimmy Hoffa

Ugh, I was just in a meeting where it was suggested we back office guys just render some bunch of interactive web pages as HTML strings with string concatenation out of our services.. bad for sooo many reasons but how do you explain "That's the definition of a spaghetti system" to someone who writes PHP

@YannisRizos HUH? HOW???

user55340

7:18 PM

@YannisRizos Not sure at what level it was deleted... or who was fed up with whom.

user41796

I know of at least one question of his that had an up voted answer (which was mine). So I think that would complicate it being a self-delete.

Jimmy Hoffa

"All you have to do is you know concatenate some strings what's the big deal" -> Right, all those rendering and templating engines for HTML exist because generating HTML is really just stupidly simple string concatenation...yep..

user41796

@JimmyHoffa That's awesome. Take that one on a T&M contract without any guarantee of deliverable.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 That's an S&M contract...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Depends upon the client.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:21 PM

Luckily I basically talked them down to "How about just handling data from our services instead of scraping HTML from our services OR we'll create a proper ASP.NET website if you want to scrape HTML for some god-awful reason"

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Keep being practical like that and people will think you're a real engineer.

psr

@GlenH7 I don't at all think you're insane. For certification to work it needs to get a lot of tough things right, and I think it can do more harm than good if it's done wrong. You're just more optimistic about the chance of it being done right, and probably about how much good/harm it would do. And it isn't easy to tell which of us is more accurate.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Who said I was practical, after I talked them down to that I convinced them to throw out their databases and use in-memory flat file stores across a cloud mesh where we'll execute a non-stop prime sieve to ??? then profit!

user41796

@psr I think I'm obligated to disagree with your first statement, but I concur with what you're saying about certification.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa and you got them to agree to convert to PHP?

Yannis Rizos

7:24 PM

@JimmyHoffa @MichaelT No idea who deleted the account. I'll need to ask someone with direct access to the database to find more details and... I'm not going to waste my and a CM's time for Leslar. He was bypassing a year long suspension, I've only tolerated him because he showed some (little) improvement. But since he decided to revert to his old self, killing the account seems justified.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos I was asking you how to talk sense to a PHP programmer, not about leslar

@GlenH7 No, it was a PHP person suggesting we just string concatenate to create HTML

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa ???

user41796

@YannisRizos If I were guessing, I'm thinking it would be pretty easy to identify who pressed the red button.

Yannis Rizos

Ah, this:

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Ah so you're trying to save the greek economy, just have to wait for the profit part eh?

Yannis Rizos

7:26 PM

8 mins ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

Ugh, I was just in a meeting where it was suggested we back office guys just render some bunch of interactive web pages as HTML strings with string concatenation out of our services.. bad for sooo many reasons but how do you explain "That's the definition of a spaghetti system" to someone who writes PHP

psr

@GlenH7 You would have to be crazy to disagree!

user41796

@YannisRizos Jimmy jumped in mid-conversation and tried to hijack it towards PHP

user41796

@psr And now I'm stuck in a never-ending loop of in-determinism.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 the term is non-determinism, what kind of real engineer are you...

must be from new hampshire

user55340

@YannisRizos don't forget the network wide one for longer.

user41796

7:28 PM

@JimmyHoffa You are a fool ...

user41796

(I love that quote)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa "PE" stands for "Pretend Engineer" apparently.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 ? don't catch the reference

user41796

user41796

Forgot you hadn't hit 10k yet.

user55340

7:31 PM

@YannisRizos wasn't so much suggesting that you poke... don't need to use up that credit from "sure I'll moderate Politics.SE" that you've got. More just a "huh, he finally annoyed someone who had a big button"

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Hm, with a bit more detail and less language bashing, "how do you explain "That's the definition of a spaghetti system" to someone who writes PHP" could make an interesting main site question.

Oops, wrong ping there.

user55340

22 hours ago, by MichaelT

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. — Andy Harglesis 4 mins ago

Thomas Owens

Can anything even measure picoseconds?

user41796

@YannisRizos it's okay, he wasn't getting his pings right either

user55340

@ThomasOwens news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/…

user41796

7:32 PM

Apparently the answer is "yes"

user55340

Quite a few things are in the picosecond range that are measured. Clock jitter appears to be the most interesting one in papers.

user41796

The hyperbole of that comment was actually kind of funny. It was the lack of context and track record that did it in.

Thomas Owens

How many decimal places is a picosecond again?

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Really? Iduno. "How do I explain X to someone who doesn't get it" is well answered across the site already. And the language bashing is in good fun, though the fact that some here don't understand why string concatenation to generate HTML web pages is a terrible idea is not so fun

user41796

@ThomasOwens -12 I think

user55340

7:34 PM

> A picosecond laser is a laser which emits optical pulses with a duration between 1 ps and (usually) some tens of picoseconds. It thus also belongs to the category of ultrafast lasers or ultrashort pulse lasers.

user41796

just below nano, which is 9

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens P is the 16th letter in the alphabet so 16.

I'm the only one with logic to back up my answer, ergo you are wrong "real engineer"

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa I was more thinking that "why string concatenation to generate HTML web pages is a terrible idea" would be the basis of the question, not "How do I explain X to someone who doesn't get it". And after the first couple of good answers, all you'd need to do is email the question to your PHP loving colleagues.

user55340

1 pulse / picosecond == 1 THz.

user41796

Pico-

Pico- (symbol p) is a prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of 10−12 or . Derived from the Spanish pico, meaning peak, beak, bit, this was one of the original 12 prefixes defined in 1960 when the International System of Units was established. The radius of atoms range from ~25 picometers (hydrogen) - 260 picometers (caesium). References

user55340

7:36 PM

Light travels 0.3mm in 1 picosecond.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Only fair to school you with Wikipedia when that was done to me earlier. :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos I know why it's a bad idea, I've seen people go down that route... though yeah that is true that it could be used in such a fashion. Though frankly that's way more aggressive than I'd prefer to be (relationship among some of the teams here is tenuous at best already)

user55340

> 330 picoseconds (approximately) – the time it takes a common 3.0 GHz computer CPU to add two integers

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Ah therefore it's 3. So 3 or 16.

user41796

Where's that red button?

Jimmy Hoffa

7:37 PM

@GlenH7 What was that? I can't hear wikipedia over all your wrongness.

user55340

user41796

And soon enough someone will come along and complain that we're just like The Bridge.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Let's be realistic here, The Bridge couldn't possibly drink as much as we do.

user55340

@ThomasOwens btw, picosecond lasers are considered the economical versions when you want ultra fast laser pulses. There are also Femtosecond (-15) laser pulses too.

user55340

Femtochemistry

Femtochemistry is the area of physical chemistry that studies chemical reactions on extremely short timescales, approximately 10–15 seconds (one femtosecond, hence the name). The steps in some reactions occur in the femtosecond timescale and sometimes in attosecond timescales, and will sometimes form intermediate products. These intermediate products cannot always be deduced from observing the starting and end products. Femtochemistry allows exploration of which chemical reactions take place, and investigates why some reactions occur but not others. Many publications have discussed the ...

Jimmy Hoffa

7:40 PM

@GlenH7 not enough of them are engineers! Fake engineers know how to put a beverage down.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa You would too if you had to remember the difference between nano and pico.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 hey I was trying to be inclusive here, fine you're officially out of the club!

user55340

o_O

user55340

Attophysics

Attophysics is a branch of physics wherein attosecond (10-18 s) duration pulses of electrons or photons are used to probe dynamic processes in matter with unprecedented time resolution. This branch of physics which involves studying some of the fastest physical events is also known as attoscience. The majority of attoscience employs pump–probe methods. Today, attophysicists mostly study molecular phenomena, such as how a particular protein breaks down under X-ray bombardment. "One of the primary goals of attosecond science is to provide more insights into the dynamics of atomic electrons...

user55340

They're gonna start running out of SI prefixes to describe their field.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:42 PM

@MichaelT AHA! I finally know why he called it "atto"parsec, it was initially a performance improvement over the old parsec library

user55340

Who is ever going to take zeptophysics seriously?

Jimmy Hoffa

(significant performance improvement)

@MichaelT Zeptologists.

user41796

@MichaelT Fans of Bob Marley?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Zoroastrians?

user55340

Yoctochemistry?

user41796

7:44 PM

@MichaelT No, no. Zoro chemistry

user55340

@JimmyHoffa When you tell them its a sextillionth of something, you're going to get snickering from the highschool students.

user41796

@MichaelT That's the real answer to the STEM problem.

user41796

Good way to get them interested.

user55340

@GlenH7 Sextillonth, Terahertz, Exabytes, and Millions?

user41796

By the time they know what those mean, hopefully they'll have found something else to sustain their interest.

Yannis Rizos

7:47 PM

@JimmyHoffa Then I'm afraid you've hit a wall with this one. PHP is (amongst other things) a template engine and string concatenation is pretty fast (compared with other PHP stuff, not in general). There's a ton of (crap) documentation advocating for... everything. There even used to be a fairly popular blogpost by Rasmus (PHP's orig. author) that essentially advocated generating HTML with concatenation.

Your PHP colleagues will need a lot of re-education to understand why what they are proposing is a dirty hack that eventually will come back and bite you. Hard.

user55340

There are things that php was meant to do and were optimized for... so its not as bad as people who come from another language would believe.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Yeah, far from my place... but that is some good background to explain where that thought might be coming from, thanks

user55340

That said, everything in php is a dirty hack that will come back to bite you hard.

2

Jimmy Hoffa

theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/dec/08/…

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Heh, that's... accurate. However, things have been improving rapidly lately, the latest revisions of the language are impressive (compared to their older counterparts). Unfortunately it will take a couple of years for all the awesomeness of the latest versions to reach the majority of PHP developers out there, as 70-80% of shared servers out there are stuck in 5.3 (or worse).

@JimmyHoffa Also don't forget that strings in PHP are mutable. We can do things with them a C# dev can only imagine (or use a stringbuilder for).

user41796

7:55 PM

@YannisRizos And that's a selling point?

user55340

(need to finish asking that questionable MSO question / feature (that unclear doesn't count for majority when doing close vote reasons)) so that I can ask the question / feature to pop up a warning on how many questions are linked to this one when casting a vote to delete.

user55340

@GlenH7 It can be. It means that modifying them (especially appending to them) isn't the pain that exists within immutable string languages.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Flexibility is key. PHP devs love their (our) strings and arrays (even though they aren't arrays).

user41796

I should have been more clear in that pitching the feature as a way to hack things into being wasn't immediately appealing. But I failed. <sigh>

Yannis Rizos

Some of us even love our objects (even though they are arrays (which aren't really arrays))

user55340

7:58 PM

By not interning strings and making them immutable, along with pass by value rather than reference it means that you avoid some of the security issues that exist, again in immutable string languages.

Yannis Rizos

Let's argue about whether Haskell or Clojure is better while somebody else ships products using PHP and duct tape.

Tweeted by agentdero on February 29, 2012 at 9:11 PM

user41796

@YannisRizos True. There's a lot to be said about getting the bills paid.

psr

@YannisRizos Counter proposal - Let's skip the argument, and implement in Haskell immediately, while PHP developers are busy concatenating strings to make HTML.

user55340

@YannisRizos best Haskell thing I've seen - Rail to C compiler. github.com/mtolly/rail

user55340

@psr You still won't implement CHUMPS....

Yannis Rizos

8:04 PM

@psr I tried Haskell once. You might remember it, it was the day ~500 ProgSE questions went the way of the dodo (had to channel my rage somewhere...)

2

psr

@YannisRizos Heh

I really hate that tweet though. It literally argues that PHP development is more effective than not writing any code. Way to reach for the stars!

Once CHUMPS is done, it will be more effective than getting hit in the head with a pipe.

Yannis Rizos

@psr The way I read it, it has more to say about how silly language comparisons are than anything (good) about PHP.

user41796

@psr I think it's a not-quite-eloquent expression of the "git 'er dun" mentality.

user55340

(for those who don't know... CHUMPS is a C# and Haskell layer on top of MUMPS...)

user41796

@MichaelT and it's valiantly fighting its way through the standards committees.

psr

8:11 PM

@MichaelT Wait a minute. Do you think I've been talking about hospital MUMPS all this time? I've been talking about the Monadic Untyped Message Passing System - precursor to Smalltalk and haskell. It already has a C#(effectively) and haskell layer.

user55340

@psr I was thinking hospital MUMPS... because that would be so much fun to get @JimmyHoffa to be coding haskell for it.

user41796

@psr I can't believe the atrocious claims the patent trolls laid against it.

psr

@GlenH7 Yes. But since you can "git 'er dun" in any language, it's a sad, sad thing if that becomes your rallying cry.

@GlenH7 And all the deaths had nothing to do with the language itself. Nothing!

user41796

@psr yeah, that claim of theirs is completely bogus. I mean, there really isn't any other plausible explanation. But they way they phrased it and tried to ping the blame? Totally bogus.

user41796

@psr In some ways, that tweet really demonstrates the limitations of twitter as there are too many possible meanings that are all valid but have different impact.

lEGenDRy

8:26 PM

may i ask algorithmic question here related to programming ?

user41796

@lEGenDRy absolutely. And will likely be more constructive than the room's recent chatting... :-)

lEGenDRy

my question is we are given a tree (undirected acyclic graph ) with N nodes and N-1 edges. Nodes can be either white or black , initially all white . given m query of 2 types . 1) either we can toggle the color of node 2) output number of nodes that are connected to given node such that all nodes in that path have same color as that of given node . I thought of heavy-light Decomposition of Tree for answering query in log(n) time but im not able to come up with a solution.

user41796

@lEGenDRy So you're looking for algorithms to navigate through the graph?

lEGenDRy

yup... i want each query to get efficiently answered...so can you throw some light on this ?

efficiently in the sense O(log n ) complexity per query

user41796

@lEGenDRy I'm not that strong on searching graphs, but others in the chat room may be. That would also be a valid question for the main site if you demonstrate some research / show what you've already tried.

user41796

8:34 PM

To be more clear - posting the question without showing any work will likely get the question closed. Programmers.SE expects homework questions to come with a bit of research behind them. Part of the intent is to make sure you (the student) are still learning even though you've been given the answer.

user55340

@RobertHarvey of note, that idea for unclear not being counted for the plurality is because of you - programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/220794/… had 3x unclear votes before you cast your dup vote. If Chris hadn't stepped in, it would have been closed as unclear rather than dup and your suggestion would have been lost.

user41796

But algorithm questions are definitely on-topic for main.

user55340

(context for above)

user55340

-3

Q: Count unclear as an abstain for reason vote

A duplicate close question has some implication of an unclear to it. We think the question is the same as this other one. If it's not, the asker should edit the question or clarify why it isn't the same as the question it was marked a duplicate of. The request: Make it so that the unclear vote...

user55340

(and yea, don't +1 that because its me at all... I've got enough MSO rep to run something up a flag pole and see if anyone salutes)

user41796

8:36 PM

@MichaelT I offset the trend anyway. :-)

user55340

I really do think that a close vote set of UUUDD should be dup instead of unclear though.

user41796

@lEGenDRy - and if you haven't found anything to spark your thoughts, have a look here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos for instance, you can flaut templating engines and just concatenate a ton of consts and dynamic variable values with ifs and switches nested everywhere to ensure in certain scenarios you get an error message here or not or this error message or this list of error messages or a success message with this value or that value and that for just one little space on the UI...

lEGenDRy

@GlenH7 nope buddy....thats not required ...but thnx anyways :)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 There you go again being all egalitarian and such, tosser that and think more pragmatically: A homework question that's just "Write an algorithm to search this graph" answered with "<CODE>" is about as useful to anyone else at all as a 302 to github

Side note, Much as Jarritos lime soda is great, their cola ist sehr schrecklicher

user41796

8:41 PM

@JimmyHoffa I know, I know. Me and my fancy ideals of wanting students to be able to actually learn while they are at school. Absolute crazy talk.

user55340

Way to improve (or permanently hinder) visibility of your open source project: name the files in common spam terms. nigeria.c, viagra.js, nubile.java ... then anyone searching for these will find your open source project!

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Dijkstras algorithm for search? It's for pathfinding, but node-finding I would think dass nicht so gut, ja?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa lmgtfy.org was next....

user41796

@JimmyHoffa lmgtfy.com/?q=graph+search+algorithm

user41796

@JimmyHoffa real engineers know how to bend a tool to their wishes. (And also when to pick a different tool)

user55340

8:52 PM

Real Engineers write in Fortran. On punch cards.

user41796

@MichaelT But then we use Haskell to convert it back to C#

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 also on punch cards

user41796

@JimmyHoffa 'natch

Jimmy Hoffa

Have you guys seen the USB3 micro-B plug yet? Weird.

user55340

@Ampt java interview question: what is the difference between static { foo = 1; } in a Java class and {{ foo = 1; }}

user41796

9:00 PM

@JimmyHoffa link or it didn't happen? :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

classic micro-B plus an addenda basically

guess so that classic micro-B cables can work in the USB3 ports just at USB2 speed since the ports are backwards compatible

the cables however aren't, obviously

the plug just looks weird, it's super thin and long, looks like it would bend and snap pretty easily

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, I'm kind of scratching my head at that one.

Jimmy Hoffa

they totally should have gone bonkers and went with some crazy micro-din for the addenda piece, that would have been fun :D plus a lot more stable connector..

enderland

@MichaelT I generally use that reason when someone asks a question where there are either a lot of potential questions they are asking OR they aren't really actually asking something, both of which are definitively "unclear what you are asking"

user41796

@enderland - chuckle

user55340

9:08 PM

@enderland I've seen 5x unclear votes... but UUUOO (3x unclear, 2x off topic) should be off topic because the people who did the off topic recognized what the question was about and could give more precise information about how to fix it rather than just 'unclear'.

enderland

@MichaelT That's what I'm saying though, a question which is unclear could be off topic - but maybe it's on topic when made more clear

@GlenH7 me, overanalyze things? you should hear my friends give me crap about thisone. lol

user55340

@enderland Are we disagreeing that we're agreeing?

user41796

@enderland - yeah, I.... I expected to see some examples.

enderland

No, I think I just see "unclear" as a sufficient reason for closing a question

Maybe on WP we just get a lot more "lots of text not clear what question is" types of questions which require multiple clarifications to really know what the asker is saying

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I agree! I mean I disagree! I mean PE's should dig ditches because ditch diggers are underqualified, the risk of flooding is too great! Get your shovel @GlenH7!

user41796

9:12 PM

@JimmyHoffa the word I'm thinking of rhymes with ditch....

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 The word I'm thinking of rhymes with dutup

user55340

It is sufficient reason to close it. But if someone was asking some really odd java question that I couldn't make heads or tales of... or 2 other people... (3 unclear), but then two people familiar with the depths of the class loader said "its a dup of XYZ", those dup votes disappear in the final reason and the person asking the question doesn't get the additional guidance from the dup close.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - you know, twitch twitch twitch so you can dig faster

enderland

@GlenH7 hitch? I don't get it

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland No it's witch, because all engineering is magic anyway

enderland

9:14 PM

@JimmyHoffa my coworkers routinely refer to what I do as "magic"

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland If you see one of them with a duck, run.

user41796

@enderland that's because you're an engineer

enderland

@JimmyHoffa hah, I shared the "rubber duck debugging" article with one yesterday. @#%@#

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - witch was not the rhyming word I was thinking of

enderland

@GlenH7 no it's because I write code - which even basic code is magic to non-developers

@GlenH7 I KnEw it was HITCH! I win

Jimmy Hoffa

9:16 PM

@GlenH7 Kitch, because you just love fashion and style?

user41796

I already told you guys, it's twitch

user41796

'cause the trench needs to be dug deeper

user41796

Although my safety training made me think twice about digging deep and narrow ditches due to the chance of the walls caving in. Those were some crazy videos we saw.

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland I bet he meant rich, because that's what he'll be when licensure is ordained and he takes all of our jobs

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - I'll still be begging for SQL help

Jimmy Hoffa

9:18 PM

@GlenH7 Niche, because you'll relegate us all to DBAs?

gnat

He was caught for something
They knew he'd never done
And he was diggin' ditches
Out in the burnin' sun

►

Jimmy Hoffa

Always with the big entrance @gnat...

enderland

just use this query:

SELECT * from SQLbrainz

I've had to learn a fair bit of SQL for this project (basic stuff at least). It's rather fun. Somewhat intimidating doing design of a database as a non-database person though...

user41796

@enderland My challenge is not knowing as many of the commands as I would like to. So something that's reasonably easy to do with the right commands ends up impossible.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Because real engineers don't sully their heads with technical details, you draw UML and somebody else will make a program that turns that into a system, it's not your problem... Air getting thin up there in real engineer world? ;P heh the commands are really the easy part, you probably know all the normals and types of indexes and what all of that stuff means and does which is really the harder stuff

user41796

9:26 PM

@JimmyHoffa I don't like indexes to clutter up my tables. They take up too much space and slow queries down. Of course, I wrote my own DB engine in assembly. So it's pretty darn performant.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I know! That's why we make sure not to have any in our CMS's, gee you'd make a great fake engineer too!

@GlenH7 Truth be told, I worked with a fake engineer who honestly believed that one hundred percent, they refused to have any constraints, fkeys, pkeys, indexes, any of it because "it slowed everything down too much"

the mind boggleth.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Those are "architects", not "engineers"

user41796

@JimmyHoffa you have a way of spoiling my trolling. <sigh>

user55340

(had one table at previous employer that had 1GB of data in it... and 1GB of indexes on it)

enderland

@JimmyHoffa where can I find this world

@JimmyHoffa at least it makes it easy to update stuff, you never have to worry about some SQL restriction stopping you. Data integrity is overrated, amirite

user41796

9:43 PM

@enderland People always blather on about referential integrity as well. They're just blowing a lot of hot air.

enderland

@GlenH7 I have been making a few considerations on the "long term maintenance" vs "good database design" question...

user41796

@enderland prime directive - build for the people that will maintain the crap you built.

enderland

It's rather frustrating to have to do that

also odds are I will maintain it, or, no one will :(

user41796

@enderland then build for yourself knowing you'll have to fix something crazy after a long weekend and while you've got a splitting headache.

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT ChrisF cast a binding vote on that question.

enderland

9:50 PM

@GlenH7 Hah, yeah. Don't say that. :\

user55340

@RobertHarvey Yep. And thus forced it to a dup. Which was the right thing.

user55340

And it got me to thinking about "why should unclear take precedence over a dup if someone else figured out what it was really asking?"

user41796

@enderland I have thanked "past me" many, many times for leaving clear comments about why I made an asinine decision in the code I wrote.

enderland

yeah I've realized most of my comments now are more the "here's why I did this section in this way" instead of "this is what this code does"

user55340

Its an idea... and I stand by my "it should be posted on Meta" as its something that does add to the body of knowledge of how things work (and don't work) and may get someone else thinking about a better solution to my dilemma some day. Alternatively, its something that someone else could target with a dup when its posed again in a different way.

Jimmy Hoffa

9:56 PM

@GlenH7 But how do you put a bribe in source code?

enderland

@JimmyHoffa just include the hack into the office vending machine

psr

@GlenH7 Code like the person who will maintain your code is a homicidal maniac, and he knows where you live. In more detail: Quit your job, move, get a restraining order, and try to find work in a new profession under an assumed name.

enderland

@psr see I'd absolutely LOVE it if the person who maintains my code is even close to my level of competence but I'm 90% sure he/she won't be

Transcript for