The Whiteboard

dylanribb

12:00 AM

Sure, and I can understand that. But some of us need a little more explanation beyond what the documentation shows.

Robert Harvey

We ask them to demonstrate their prior understanding by showing us their attempt to solve the problem so far.

Some community members read that as "showing effort," which is not quite the same thing. But, we're working on that.

dylanribb

Which is why chat is nice.

Robert Harvey

As an experiment, I helped someone debug an Entity Framework problem this morning, not by looking at their code and debugging it for them, but showing them how they could debug it themselves.

dylanribb

Sometimes the "right" questions you need to ask don't unfold until you're in the middle of a problem.

Robert Harvey

A couple of hours later, they posted a second off-topic question, because they still hadn't solved the problem. Which just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished.

dylanribb

12:03 AM

Yeah, that would be frustrating.

Robert Harvey

ACK! cv-pls

0

Q: Start learning iOS or Android: which is best from a financial perspective?

Is it more financially savvy to learn to develop for iOS or for Android? I was told that if you want to sell your own apps, iOS would be a better choice since iPhone/iPad users tend to spend more money for buying apps than Android users. Instead, for consulting work, it seems that there is more...

VTC?

Vote to close.

Ah, okay.

user55340

(I'll have to dig that image up again... it was a cycle of community activity)

user55340

12:04 AM

@RobertHarvey after 6pm!

user55340

I've got my close votes or the day back.

user55340

@dylanribb In part, it has to do with the size and familiarity of people with each other.

user55340

I'd suggest giving shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html a read too...

user55340

That article is one that is mentioned in some of the early SE podcasts.

dylanribb

Cool. I'll check it out.

user55340

12:07 AM

>
4.) And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale. Scale alone kills conversations, because conversations require dense two-way conversations. In conversational contexts, Metcalfe's law is a drag. The fact that the amount of two-way connections you have to support goes up with the square of the users means that the density of conversation falls off very fast as the system scales even a little bit. You have to have some way to let users hang onto the less is more pattern, in order to keep associated with one another.

user55340

That is a key point to why comments are so hard on SE.

Robert Harvey

bluecloudsolutions.com/blog/… ... Looks like Google is the best place to ask this question. — Robert Harvey 52 secs ago

user55340

Mar 6 '13 at 18:39, by MichaelT

> Atwood: Maybe. But the cool thing about this is this is not just me, because that would be boring. It is actually me and Clay Shirky. You know, Clay Shirky is one of my heroes.

user55340

Mar 6 '13 at 18:39, by MichaelT

> Spolsky: Oh...

user55340

Mar 6 '13 at 18:40, by MichaelT

> Atwood: Yeah I know, it's awesome. So we get to talk about like building communities online and I get to talk about StackOverflow, you know, and all the lessons we've learned and, get to present with Clay. Obviously he's an expert so.

user55340

12:09 AM

That exchange was from stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W25450

user55340

One of the things to consider is that while we often have to try to get people to come in here and chat, its hard sometimes. So we don't have too much of the 'outsiders' to try to fend off... thus we're fairly friendly here.

user55340

On the other hand, you go over to the Bridge, or the Lounge... and they've got quite a few people that the group has to deal with.

OregonTrail

12:34 AM

How do you save a query on Data explorer?

user55340

@OregonTrail Its saved automatically.

user55340

@OregonTrail data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/…

user55340

However, if you sign in, all the queries that you've edited are associated with you. data.stackexchange.com/users/10693/michaelt

user55340

bug fixed... git commit, push to branch to be pulled later... and I'm off. Whee!

user20683

Nearly forgot, today I have been a mod for a year.

3

Shog9

12:50 AM

@WorldEngineer Please accept my ~~condolences~~ congratulations!

2

user20683

@Shog9 On this network they are the same thing really...

Ampt

2:16 AM

Anyone have any recommendations for a front end for django?

looking for css or javascript files to help do much of the work, as my front end dev skills are... lacking

user55340

@GlenH7 fairly straight forward query: data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/172997 - not that many.

user55340

2:38 AM

Strangest community I've found - people who make pictures that are all the colors in the 24 bit color space that use each color once and only once. allrbg.com -- and a very masterful image: allrgb.com/scrambled (the small version is in the corner)

user20683

2:52 AM

@MichaelT Seen that code golf involving generating them all?

user55340

@WorldEngineer Thats what lead me there.

user55340

Incidentally the guy who has the neat one: joco.name/2014/03/02/all-rgb-colors-in-one-image/#more-584

user55340

Read the update on that blog page

user55340

>
UPDATE: The interest in my video has become huge. Thank you everyone for the nice comments, sharing, etc., I am so happy that my images made you happy :) . My program was featured on a New Scientist article and Gizmodo and this is the biggest achievement of my career ever. The music on their edit of the video is so touching! Many people asked if they could get it printed, and I’m happy to announce that the images are being uploaded to the Society6 website where you can get real high quality stuff: http://society6.com/fejesjoco

dylanribb

5:00 AM

@Ampt: Are you looking for a full MVC framework?

OregonTrail

6:05 AM

I found the name of that programmer I was looking for!

@MichaelT Kazushige Goto

His BLAS library was hand tuned for the top supercomputers of his day

GotoBLAS

In scientific computing, GotoBLAS, GotoBLAS2 and OpenBLAS are related open source implementations of the Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) API with many hand-crafted optimizations for specific processor types. GotoBLAS was developed by Kazushige Goto at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. , it was used in seven of the world's ten fastest supercomputers. GotoBLAS development has since stopped. OpenBLAS is a successor library, developed at the Lab of Parallel Software and Computational Science, ISCAS. GotoBLAS GotoBLAS was written by Goto during his sabbatical leave from the Japan ...

This is the article I remembered reading, which includes some hand-written notes on machine language optimizations

utexas.edu/features/2006/goto/index.html

The best part is that his last name is Goto

I think you often see people with names that matched their careers

Even if it is a cross-language coincidence

gnat

8:28 AM

free spam flags:

This reads like a spamversitesment more than anything. What is your relationship with this blog? It is written in a language other than English, meaning most readers of this "answer" won't be able to understand it: "Ni mungkin updatean blog saya yang paling sedikit tulisannya, kenapa..." — gnat 39 secs ago

-2

A: Which language is the most popular?

I Think The Most Populer is PHP, You can find on this link

why am I not surprised that crappy question got crappy answer

Christoph

8:48 AM

Is anyone awake?

AndyBursh

Certainly am, good sir

Christoph

I've added my current solution to this question:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/229627/how-to-manage-focus-for-a-small-set-of-simple-widgets
to the question body. Should I post it as an answer instead?

gnat

@Christoph yes please. Question body is for questions, answers should be posted separately

15

Q: Editing the question such that it answers itself

Please have a look at this question. When the question was asked by the OP, it had a scope related problem in the code snippet posted in it. 2 answers were posted for that question. But after the answers were posted, a friend of mine from Stack Overflow, edited the question(not sure with what int...

discussion edits

Christoph

As it is now, doesn't it just include my current "effort to solve the problem" as required by stack exchange?

gnat

9:41 AM

@Christoph well per my reading question demonstrates solid effort in describing design problem. Perfectionist may probably complain that it fails at what-have-you-tried but this "requirement is officially unsupported...

-16

Q: Ban "What have you tried?" links in comments

Recently on SO, I've been noticing a lot of link-only comments on (admittedly bad) questions. The typical comment looks like this: What have you tried? Now, my first instinct is to flag the comment as "not constructive" or "too chatty", but the fact is that the blog post linked to is actua...

feature-request status-completed comments hyperlinks

Christoph

@gnat OK, I'll turn it into an answer then.

AndyBursh

Morning folks. Is this a good/correct place to ask a general "am I about to hit a dead end" kind of questions? It's definitely too subjective and personal to post on the site itself

Christoph

@AndyBursh Is it programming related?

AndyBursh

9:58 AM

It is

Christoph

I think you can just ask. This is a chat, after all. Where else could you ask anyway? Your question would probably just end up in a flame war if you pick some old school forum

AndyBursh

Very true, sadly. Hopefully this won't turn in to a wall of text!

So the pertinent question is: is this a sustainable model?

I'm working on solo on an internal project, and implementing some reports. I've had a look around and can't see a good reporting solution for the platform (LAMP stack), so I'm having to write my reports from the ground up.

The reports are run from the command line (triggered by a cron job). Each report has a different command, which is automatically detected by its prefix in the DI definitions. The report and its formatting are split out between a report generator and a formatter, which are coordinated by the CLI command. The repo…

Yannis Rizos

10:40 AM

@gnat My latest question hit the "hot questions". 5 non answers in a day, and a dozen of bs comments that completely miss the point of the question. The numbers may not seem much, but are kind of impressive for a site the size of Politics. Also, someone thought the question itself was offensive. I didn't really enjoy the whole "hot questions" concept before, but now I truly hate it. With a passion.

gnat

11:04 AM

@YannisRizos welcome to the club

@gnat "Wrong" to you. I realize this is a hot button issue for you. — George Stocker Feb 27 at 15:57

feel free to join Ride The Lemmings league as soon as you're ready :)

3

A: Prevent specific sites from being overrepresented in the hot questions list

It was bad Old system was designed so that it tended to inaccurately favor questions from sites that differ much from Stack Overflow, particularly smaller and ones of conceptual / subjective-ish nature (for example, Programmers and Workplace). Compared to SO, smaller sites have much less power ...

so far it seems to be the only way that can potentially make things moving...

in The Water Cooler, Feb 26 at 7:49, by gnat

FWIW, here's timeline 1) PHP question sticks - Jan 24-29 2) Anatomy question, Tim admits "it's something that we should probably address" - Jan 27...

in The Water Cooler, Feb 26 at 7:49, by gnat

3) point that reordering has no performance cost brought to Tim's attention - Jan 27 4) "shuffle" testing begins - Feb 1

Dev

11:54 AM

I am confused like hell. I am a newbie to software industry. After completion of my probation period my manager is asking me to work on WPF or web development(ASP.NET). I am interested for WPF but uncertain about future career opportunities. Can't choose which one to go for. I want to know about the future in Windows Presentation Foundation(WPF). Please suggest me what to do

AndyBursh

I imagine WPF isn't going anywhere any time soon (I don't know a lot about WPF, so don't take that as gospel), and ASP.NET certainly isn't, so I wouldn't worry about your skills becoming obsolete any time soon if you go down either path. With that said, I think it basically comes down to which you enjoy more! There is no correct or best answer to be given.

Dev

@AndyBursh I feel a bit comfortable with WPF. Thanks for your reply

amon

@Dev Whatever technologies you learn, they will become obsolete with time (in years? or decades?). If you are inclined to specialize on WPF, then do just that. But I wouldn't want to work with WPF forever. Keep learning other interesting things as well!

Dev

12:10 PM

@amon Thanks for your suggestion :)

MetaFight

12:22 PM

Another thing to note is that WPF skills will transfer. Not to much, but they still transfer ;)

learning MVVM will help you everywhere, even when not applying MVVM. And XAML is still being using in Windows 8 apps.

the concept of a declaratively-written UI is pretty common, I hear, so that carries over.

Ampt

2:36 PM

@dylanribb Nope, just the front end for a django backend

ended up starting to tinker with Angular.js

Man we have lots of new guys popping on here more and more.

that is awesome

Thomas Owens

@Ampt Fresh meat?

I mean, nice new people who want to hang out and be awesome. Same thing, right?

Ampt

I was thinking more people to help us gang up on those ~~filthy blues~~ Nice mods

2

user55340

3:13 PM

@GlenH7 heh... I ran out of delete votes before close votes working on the ugly answers query... Its also interesting to see other 20ks show up in there and cast the third vote too.

user41796

@MichaelT It was nice to see that there aren't too many hanging out there. I'll start at the bottom of the list and work my way up to push more of those items into the current queues. Thanks for putting together the query!

user55340

Btw, when you're out of delete votes, LQ review goes back to "recommend deletion"

user55340

this is the type of thing that I saw when I cleaned up the answers.

gnat

3:39 PM

@MichaelT graceful degradation

user41796

@Ampt Angular and durandal are both solid for JS front end frameworks.

Ampt

3:54 PM

@GlenH7 good to know. I've heard really good things about angular, and I think it's going to work well for my site (one page app)

user41796

@Ampt bootstrap appears to be a good combination with angular in order to cut down on the amount of CSS you have to manipulate

user41796

but may be overkill for the level of project you're working on

Ampt

bootstrap provides me with log in funcrtionality yes?

user41796

We need to support a number of different screen resolutions, so bootstrap looks promising from our perspective.

user41796

@Ampt nope

Ampt

4:00 PM

(we use bootstrap in my senior design project so I should know this....)

ok... shoot haha

user41796

we're bolting on top of an ASP.NET MVC template to provide the security authenticatin

user41796

but there's nothing to say you couldn't whip up something similar fairly quickly

user41796

On your services side, pull the user id from the scope. no user id means a redirect to the login page

Ampt

I'm hoping to put it on top of django

user41796

I think that's where you could integrate with oauth or whatever. Jimmy & psr have played at that level

Ampt

4:02 PM

want to keep honing my python skills

I've done some stuff with oauth...

it was... interesting

user41796

that's what I keep hearing

enderland

ok I should figure out a better fix to this situation

let's say I have a function which returns an array most of the time, but sometimes doesn't return anything (say if no results were calculated)

how should I signal the function returns "nothing" ?

a null array? or pass the array byref and return a boolean?

I'm sick of dealing with this problem lol

user55340

Null object approach - an empty array is the way I'd go with.

enderland

the main drawback is then I have to wrap all code using the array with isNull types of checks

user41796

11

Q: null pointers vs. Null Object Pattern

Attribution: This grew out of a related P.SE question My background is in C / C++, but I have worked a fair amount in Java and am currently coding C#. Because of my C background, checking passed and returned pointers is second-hand, but I acknowledge it biases my point of view. I recently sa...

error-handling null

enderland

4:08 PM

whereas a byref way is more like:
if getArray(mArray)
'do stuff with mArray

user55340

Can you have an array of 0 length that isn't null?

user41796

(shameless self-promotion alert)

enderland

17 hours ago, by Shog9

VBA: "it's not the worst thing ever!"

user41796

@MichaelT - I find that I'm being surprisingly conservative in nuking answers.

user41796

less opaquely - saw a number that don't really answer the question but aren't meaningless mumbo-jumbo either. So I stay the click of execution

enderland

4:12 PM

@GlenH7 hmmm this is interesting

user41796

@enderland led to quite a bit of ponderings on my part too

user41796

It wasn't just a blatant appeal for repz

user41796

I mean, it was, but it was relevant too

enderland

I'd just like to avoid having tons of multi-line validation methods in all my "calling code"

user41796

And that's the crux of the issue

user55340

4:13 PM

I look at it as "an off question answer is the start of other people answering things in that question based on that answer rather than the question" - if the answer is bad and off question, deleting it narrows the range of acceptable future answers on the question - people aren't as tempted to do another off question answer.

enderland

I've generally been returning arrays of length 0 but then I have to do some sort of check on the return

either a "isnull" or some sort of obnoxious "is array (0,0) size"

but this seems so fragile and I don't have consistent practice on this since I'm an idiot (ie didn't think to standardize this before)

but I'm sick of running into these errors

I rather like the idea of passing the array byref and returning "true" when values added and "false" when not, but... that seems really obfuscated

user41796

whee! repz

user41796

@enderland So now you gotta figure out what fits best within the existing code base and what future, unknown maintainers may prefer to see.

user41796

And what did you say to your old boss who had contacted you? That thread dropped off of the chat room as far as I could tell.

enderland

@GlenH7 I've not responded yet, his email was... intriguing that's for sure

had an aura of mystery around it

@GlenH7 yeah that's the trick, eh

at least I know this isn't an "obvious" solutino

user41796

4:18 PM

conversations never hurt. But it's good to be wary of what's being presented. Anything requiring a degree of mystique to enhance the appeal becomes a questionable item in my book.

user55340

Oh, fun bit of xkcd in strange places: developers.lyst.com/data/images/2014/02/22/color-detection

enderland

linked in message was titled "crazy thought" - so there's that :)

user41796

@enderland it also depends upon what your UI tech will gracefully support. UIs that use binding almost beg for the empty-object instead of a null.

user55340

> Mapping from a hex value to a color name is more complex than it seems; for instance, when is a red considered pink or when does grey become black. The solution to this problem came from Randall Munroe of xkcd fame and his Color Survey.

user41796

@enderland lots of crazy thoughts have panned out. Lots have failed. Make sure you have enough in the bank to recover gracefully if it fails. :-)

user41796

4:20 PM

I took that chance without enough in the bank and dependents at home. Big mistake for me. YMMV

enderland

@GlenH7 yeah, I enjoy my current job a fair bit too. so it's hard to say what his thoughts are

user55340

And then related SO question of fun read:

user55340

219

Q: How does the algorithm to color the song list in iTunes 11 work?

The new iTunes 11 has a very nice view for the song list of an album, picking the colors for the fonts and background in function of album cover. Anyone figured out how the algorithm works?

algorithm user-interface itunes

enderland

single (well not married) FTW :D

@GlenH7 its annoying something like this works so nicely, I can't tell if it's clear or not though

Sub testByRefArrays()

Dim v As Variant, i As Integer
If mArrayHandler(v) Then
For i = LBound(v) To UBound(v)
Debug.Print v(i)
Next i
End If
End Sub

Function mArrayHandler(ByRef p_arr As Variant) As Boolean

p_arr = Array(1, 2, 3)
mArrayHandler = False

End Function

user41796

Bleh. VBA makes my skin crawl. :-)

user41796

4:21 PM

for VBA, it's reasonably clear.

user55340

18 hours ago, by Shog9

VBA: "it's not the worst thing ever!"

enderland

hahaha. well this example could pretty easily be other languages too ;) only difference is the way pointers work in VBA is so unclear it'll make you cry

user41796

@MichaelT I didn't pin it, but I did add the 5th star. :-)

enderland

fine if you have never experienced them elsewhere, but man it's annoying when you want to go "this is 90% of a pointer damnit why isn't it 100%"

it's probably worthwhile for me to adopt that convention though, honestly, it'll stop so many of my problems

user55340

php trivia:
$foo = "2d9";
$foo++;
$foo++;
# What is $foo at this point?

user41796

4:22 PM

@enderland they had to add some odd compression to help out with the performance...

enderland

performance, vba? what planet do you live on

user41796

@MichaelT why do I know it's not "2db"

user55340

@GlenH7 3. "2d9"++ == "2e0"

user55340

And then 2e0 is understood as a floating point number, and becomes 3 when incremented.

user41796

@enderland on my planet, we have an embargo against VBA. Must go into quarantine where someone who drew the short straw has to port it.

enderland

4:25 PM

oh so that's what the short straw means...

user55340

Other php fun: news.php.net/php.internals/70691

user41796

@MichaelT that's ... brilliant

user55340

> Back when PHP had less than 100 functions and the function hashing mechanism was strlen(). In order to get a nice hash distribution of function names across the various function name lengths names were picked specifically to make them fit into a specific length bucket.

user55340

(I seem to have broken some peoples brains with that quote)

enderland

@GlenH7 this makes code so much more clear. I'm an idiot for not doing this before

user41796

4:28 PM

@MichaelT this is why I avoid PHP. And VBA. And a number of other languages

user55340

@enderland Not at all - sometimes it just takes someone to show something that makes it click clearly.

user55340

(... and there's likely a question ban in the making)

enderland

@MichaelT the problem is when that person is yourself and you realize the time it took to complain about "how bad is this strategy" is basically less than a fraction the time you've spent fighting issues due to it and that it's not actually that bad ;)

user55340

(hmm... might take a bit longer... but I suspect the person is on the border of it (more questions in the 'view all questions' - but a good percent are closed too)

user41796

@MichaelT The book request? Or the really unclear interface request?

user55340

4:34 PM

Book request. (glance at programmers.stackexchange.com/users/121368/… )

user41796

@MichaelT looked like they were high enough rep to avoid that, but I could be wrong.

user55340

MSO has stories of 1000 rep people getting question bans.

user55340

It takes longer... but its still possibe.

user41796

yeah, and that's a pretty storied question history

user55340

Most of the rep came from one hot question.

user41796

4:36 PM

I'm gonna go downvote all of their questions to see if that triggers a Q-ban. ;-)

enderland

@GlenH7 or serial downvoting and YOU get banned

(not that serial downvoting gets you a ban but... hey more dramatic that way)

user55340

Note the ';-)' at the end.

enderland

thanks for that discussion, that is going to make my life a lot easier in terms of trapping errors/failures than I possibly imagined

gnat

@GlenH7 "it ain't that easy" - remember Goma?

7

A: How did this user amass more than 2k worth of reputation?

A word of caution, based on an advice given in comments in another question: ...just don't go on a down voting spree..., last time he made it into Meta three people started downvoting everything and they were caught by the serial voting script. It ain't that easy... ...not that I sug...

user55340

Actually, with 10k, I've gone on delete voting sprees with Goma. That, or historical flags when he's got something kind of useful.

gnat

4:51 PM

@MichaelT yep, I recall doing same with closing sprees at his questions. Serial delete/close votes aren't considered abuse, since these are non-anonymous and pass through community review by design

in The Water Cooler, 52 mins ago, by gnat

pondering a title for meta request to run mod elections, can't decide between "Need more guys to clean the toilet at Workplace" and "Need more guys to check if everything has been flushed properly and that the bowl is clean at Workplace". Which would be better?

in The Water Cooler, 33 mins ago, by CMW

@gnat Uncle Sam style: "We want you (to flush)!"

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT: I read with interest the answers on that "what is the best type to use for money calculations" question. Whatever happened to the use of Currency for these things?

BigDecimal is the new normal?

user55340

@RobertHarvey Java doesn't have a specific currency type. Joda Money joda.org/joda-money handles most of what you'd want if you do.

Robert Harvey

docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Currency.html

user55340

@RobertHarvey Currency codes it looks like.

Robert Harvey

Oh.

user55340

4:54 PM

> Gets the symbol of this currency for the default locale. For example, for the US Dollar, the symbol is "$" if the default locale is the US, while for other locales it may be "US$". If no symbol can be determined, the ISO 4217 currency code is returned.

Robert Harvey

Man, Java looked like such a good idea when it first came out. Then Microsoft created C#, and Java looks like an old man now.

Ampt

@RobertHarvey HERETIC!

gnat

> The method returns null for territories that don't have a currency, such as Antarctica.

user55340

So that you can find out that the USD has two fractional digits from there.

gnat

send me to Antarctica

user55340

4:55 PM

@gnat Apply to work at Ice Cube.

user55340

IceCube Neutrino Observatory

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory (or simply IceCube) is a neutrino telescope constructed at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Its thousands of sensors are distributed over a cubic kilometre of volume under the Antarctic ice. Similar to its predecessor, the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA), IceCube consists of spherical optical sensors called Digital Optical Modules (DOMs), each with a photomultiplier tube (PMT) and a single board data acquisition computer which sends digital data to the counting house on the surface above the array. IceCube was ...

user55340

icecube.wisc.edu/jobs

gnat

@MichaelT I'll drop it into my whiskey

user55340

None currently... but sometimes there are jobs there.

user55340

@gnat theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/…

user55340

4:57 PM

> When you spend nine months isolated in nonstop, freezing darkness, you run out of the good beer fast.

user55340

(and the drinking problem down there - thefix.com/content/antarctica-alcohol-problem00437?page=all )

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Funny how, if you're around long enough, you begin to recognize the things people use to solve problems. If you look at that photo carefully, you see that the circuit cards in that thing are quite ordinary, and the outside of the casing is surrounded by an ordinary hose clamp.

user55340

@RobertHarvey Its the scale of it that is impressive.

Robert Harvey

Yes, it is.

user55340

Robert Harvey

5:04 PM

I'm actually impressed by the use of ordinary materials. Except for the photomultipliers (and the spherical cases), you can probably get everything that you need to build one from a consumer-grade electronics supply house.

And a hardware store.

user55340

The photomultiplers might be a bit challenging for the sensitivity.

Robert Harvey

How to serialize and deserialize a Linq expression

Every day I learn something new from the SE network.

user55340

@RobertHarvey did you see that sequence point from Code Golf?

Robert Harvey

Didn't see that.

user55340

25

A: Undefined Behavior Killed My Cat

C (sequence point) deadcat.c: #include <stdio.h> int main() { int i=3; int k=0; k=i+(++i); if (k==7) printf("The cat is fine. k=i+(++i) =%d\n",k); else printf("The cat is dead. k=i+(++i) =%d\n",k); } Execution (or not): $ clang -w deadcat.c -o deadcat; ./d...

user55340

5:13 PM

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    int i=3;
    int k=0;
    k=i+(++i);
    if (k==7)
        printf("The cat is fine. k=i+(++i) =%d\n",k);
    else
        printf("The cat is dead. k=i+(++i) =%d\n",k);
}

user55340

$ clang -w deadcat.c -o deadcat; ./deadcat
The cat is fine. k=i+(++i) =7
$ gcc deadcat.c -o deadcat; ./deadcat
The cat is dead. k=i+(++i) =8

Robert Harvey

Shrodinger's compiler.

user55340

Sometimes its hard to see sequence points and undefined behavior in an SSCCE. This does a very good job of it.

dylanribb

Open question: Is impostor syndrome (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome) common among programmers/developers?

Robert Harvey

@dylanribb Only among participants of Stack Overflow. Spending ten minutes there underscores the fact that you really don't know anything.

dylanribb

5:17 PM

@RobertHarvey: Is that why I felt so devastated the first time I had a question closed? =)

user55340

@dylanribb The key thing that kicks it off is being brought into a community where there are so many smart people.

user55340

The people who use it and are competent go from being the best at the company to "oh my, any of these people could get my job in a heartbeat"

enderland

@dylanribb I probably have this, actually. Being in this chat sure as hell doesn't help any ;)

dylanribb

@MichaelT: I could see that. I also wonder if isolation brings it about, as well, since you don't really have an outside perspective on how good your work is?

user55340

@enderland Maple has mentioned it too.

enderland

5:20 PM

I'm just a huge perfectionist - coding prevents you from ever being perfect even if you are the .1%

dylanribb

@enderland: Oh I know I suffer from it. But I mostly work alone.

enderland

as do I

I always try to keep this in persepctive too, I'm only 25 so in some regards I'm quite young - many of the experts are older and have just had more time to make the mistakes/learning things I have done

that helps me a fair bit, at least as applies to SE

dylanribb

See, I'm 28, and I feel so old for being so new to the field.

I read some about some 16 year old kid who built some amazing thing and I'm like "Well, crap."

Or guys who were writing BASIC at 6 years old or whatever.

enderland

yeah I've come to terms that I'll never be "that guy"

dylanribb

I also lack a CS degree which doesn't help.

enderland

5:24 PM

I'm ok with that, surprisingly, but what is hard is the "wow I feel bad at my job" feeling occasionally that comes with it

dylanribb

Yeah, agreed.

Do you find that it happens in waves? I find that one week I'm like "Well this is the crappiest piece of code ever written", and the next week it's like "Hey, maybe I'm doing okay with this"

Robert Harvey

The hard part about being a programmer is not writing code, it's asking the right questions. Nowhere is this more evident than on Stack Overflow, where much of the community effort is spent trying to help people articulate their problems effectively.

dylanribb

@RobertHarvey: Definitely. I'm struggling with that right now, in fact.

Would a somewhat general question about unit testing for an external system fit better on Programmers or Stack Overflow?

user55340

5:39 PM

Writing code is easy. Writing code that does what the customer wants can be hard if you lack the communication skills to drill into the requirements.

2

user55340

On SO, this goes both ways... the person doesn't always know what they need to ask to write the right program... and people trying to help them don't always communicate that they need to ask questions of both people.

Robert Harvey

I didn't mention requirements, but that's exactly what I had in mind with "asking the right questions."

enderland

I think that also goes towards asking other programmers/google too, especially when you are learning more about dev. Eventually you get a good feel for "what do I need to ask" and can get a lot better help from either

user55340

Working tech support is a good thing for programmers do at some point in the career.

user55340

They they get a better idea of all of the interaction necessary, and know when they get asked a question from a person who has all the info up front and can follow directions.

dylanribb

5:45 PM

@MichaelT: Agreed. I spent like 8 years in tech support before getting into development.

Robert Harvey

Ah, technical support. I once did that for a well-known PC manufacturer, many years ago. I did everything from tell them to turn the power on to help them reformat and reinstall their software over the phone. I had a shelf five feet wide with binders containing reference information. I knew where to find the answer to anything. I fielded an average of 40 calls per day.

...

I made six dollars per hour.

user55340

@RobertHarvey my favorite tech support call was a guy who had a single user system and hated having to log into root to do admin... so he did a "chmod -R 777 /"

user55340

But the thing with those calls is that you learn how to ask a question - either of the customer or of your co-workers to find out the information - or the escalate the question (the upper levels would bounce back down questions unless we had all the necessary information).

Ampt

@enderland @dylanribb haha you guys are old

dylanribb

@Ampt: Yeah I'm practically dead.

enderland

5:51 PM

Kids these days....

@dylanribb I think I lack a fair bit of self confidence in many regards, partially because of being a perfectionist

@dylanribb this is also hard when your stakeholders, coworkers, or boss have literally no idea how much work or what is a "good job" - you could add a button for 1 min worth of work that people go "you're awesome!" or spend 8 hours chasing an obscure 2 character code fix, but your boss/coworkers will see the first as way more awesome

dylanribb

@enderland: Definitely. Sounds very similar to my situation (which you may have read about yesterday). I work under the CFO, VP of Marketing, etc., but none of them know anything technical. Hard to have an accurate gauge of progress in that case.

user939259

Hi guys, I'm new to programmers SE. I posted a design/style question at codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/43619/… but it was closed as off-topic. Would it be on-topic here?

Robert Harvey

@user939259 That looks like a suitable Stack Overflow question.

user939259

@RobertHarvey thanks, I'll repost there

Ampt

6:12 PM

Wouldn't it be better to migrate?

user55340

@Ampt Its part of the great debate. There is a school of thought that "if it has no answers, its better to repost"

Ampt

@MichaelT Great debate? Is that like a time war?

user55340

@Ampt Kind of... it even has historical locks.

user55340

And apparently doing not to preset site list migrations is a bit of a pain. Doing a migration of an already closed question means reopening it, and then reclosing it.

Robert Harvey

Migration is a bit of a blunt instrument. It's complex, involves too many people, and risks closure on the target site and locking on the source site. I reserve it for Academy Award quality questions.

user55340

6:21 PM

4

Q: Proper use of class constants in Python

This question specifically relates to the use of the class constants ABOVE and BELOW in the sample code below. I have a few different classes in different modules that look like this: class MyClass(object): ABOVE = 1 BELOW = 0 def __init__(self): self.my_numbers = [1,2,3,4,...

python design constants

user55340

Question appears to be doing well there.

user55340

Heh... some code trolling going on in this one.

user55340

-1

Q: how to print n number of stars without using loop or condition

Suppose we are giving run time value of n and we want to print the n number of stars in a single row without making use loop and/or condition. How we can do it in java?

java

user55340

String manyStars = "**************************************************************";
System.out.println(manyStars.subString(0, runtimeVar);

user55340

System.out.println(new String(new char[n]).replace("\0", "*"));

user939259

6:24 PM

I find it pretty hard to figure out whether questions go on stack, programmers, or (sometimes) code review

Honestly I usually default to stack only because it has the most traffic

Robert Harvey

If you're sitting in front of an IDE, it belongs on Stack Overflow. If you're standing in front of a whiteboard, it belongs on Programmers.

Code Review happens at the very end of the process.

user55340

76

A: Which computer science / programming Stack Exchange do I post in?

Stack Overflow Implementation problems, and question on software tools commonly used by programmers. If your code or your IDE doesn't work, ask on Stack Overflow. Does not welcome subjective questions (any more). Programmers The main focus is whiteboard questions, problems that you face while...

user55340

If you start writing O or Σ, it belongs on CS.

user939259

That answer says that stack "does not welcome subject questions anymore". To me, design questions like the one I posted seem to be subjective. Does the answer mean some other kind of subjective questions?

user55340

@user939259 "What should I name my cat?"

user939259

6:29 PM

heh

user55340

user41796

@RobertHarvey Keep in mind that MS created J# as the direct answer to Java. And that was a steaming pile of sumptin'.

user55340

There was also a period where questions like "what is your favorite dilbert comic" or "what is the best book for learning compilers" were acceptable.

user939259

@MichaelT lol I thought you made that up

user41796

@user939259 regrettably, it was for real at one point in time.

user55340

6:32 PM

-1

Q: What's the off-topic part of this question?

So I asked a question which doesn't jibe with the normal flow of questions on this site, but I don't think it is off-topic and I edited the question to specifically relate it to software development and appease even the minute details of the commentators to no avail I'd be tempted to ask "Why is...

discussion off-topic

user55340

user41796

@MichaelT "ah, the bad old days."

user55340

At one time, questions like that were acceptable on SO. As SO got older and realized the problem with them, they created Not Programming Related which had some growing pains, and then renamed it to Programmers.

user55340

Now we ~~migrate all the questions like that to the Workplace.~~ delete them quickly.

2

user55340

(heh, looking at recently deleted... @WorldEngineer obviously spent his 1 year anniversary out drinking tequila with Yannis... and maybe learning some Haskell too)

user55340

6:43 PM

@GlenH7 we're gonna need another mod to play Good Mod now.

user41796

@MichaelT put another reason on the tally list to justify elections then. :-)

user41796

IIRC, you're not as big of a fan of tequila. So that might make you more qualified to be mod instead of me.

user41796

Although I'm more likely to go on a scotch fueled nuke session than a tequila fueled one.

user55340

Gin or brandy... or a nice bottle of wine.

Robert Harvey

They must provide living facilities for Programmer Mods in Antarctica.

user55340

6:51 PM

@RobertHarvey If you dig through everything2.com/user/iceowl (note the 'home node picture') and go to the writeups that he wrote... you can get some antartica stories.

user55340

Things like everything2.com/title/…

user55340

(his older ones are often more ice based... but some of the newer ones too)

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