The Whiteboard

user55340

1:54 AM

Something for the engineer types... bbc.com/news/technology-26822067 (non-engineers would be interested too)

user55340

I'm still intrigued by the surface ~~mount~~ paint proximity light switch.

2:29 AM

A class or method being static does not guarantee this. -- So? You conclude that, because there's no guarantee, it can't be done? Dynamic languages have no static type checking, but that doesn't mean they don't work. Static methods that don't touch state and have no side effects are stateless; the description is perfectly valid. — Robert Harvey 4 mins ago

user55340

3:35 AM

@RobertHarvey you can always pull out that discuss that blog meta post when dealing with people trying to refute blog posts on P.SE.

user55340

11

Q: Discuss this ${blog}

Occasionally there are questions asked that seek to explain some soundbite of thing someone said or wrote. These questions take a few sentences from a larger piece and ask what it means, or disprove it, or take two of them and ask which is right. It is practically impossible to teach go...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa day late, but you might enjoy this - blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2014/04/01/clippy-for-resharper

gnat

4:24 AM

-5

Q: Detecting when flow of control has shifted to native thread in java

For an arbitrary Java program for which I have full access to the source code but I cannot re-write per se, (instrumentation is permitted) how can I tell when a java thread has called into a native thread or an operation in a native thread has called into the java thread? I am free to write ...

java jvm

^^^ reopen votes are welcome. As well as upvotes, to offset meta effect ("upvotes to offset", almost like sympathy upvotes, can't believe I typed that. Oh well)

Robert Harvey

@gnat Hmm, not sure what was wrong with the question in the first place.

If I had a binding vote, I'd unilaterally reopen.

gnat

@RobertHarvey score and closure are pure meta effect I think

For anyone wondering why this has so many downvotes. — Doorknob Mar 29 at 0:59

one can argue that formally there were reasons for closure, but nothing that couldn't be corrected by simple copying of asker' comments into the post

jmort253

5:31 AM

Hello.

Not sure if this question would fit here... it sounds interesting... definitely NOT a project management question though:

0

Q: Team logistics to build a cloud service API from a Matlab prototype

My objective is to get from an algorithmically sound software prototype to a SaaS API product. To give a similar and illustrative example, suppose that I have prototyped scalable facial recognition software in a high level language like Matlab; this algorithm takes a real world image as input and...

team-management software-development process-improvement

gnat

9:27 AM

@jmort253 I would want it at Programmers (that's just a regular user opinion). A minor wording cleanup wouldn't hurt, I suggested an edit there

Seanny123

10:07 AM

Hey guys/girls/trans folk,

https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/234510/multiple-face-tracking-software-to-build-off-of
Is this question still too vague?

Seanny123

10:29 AM

Hey @gnat,

Thanks for helping me with my question. I don't think I can improve it much beyond what I've tried. I'll just close it.

gnat

10:52 AM

@Seanny123 sorry about that. We tried the questions like your before, didn't go well...

52

A: How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?

tl;dr We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out. C'est la vie. 3 years ago, a Stack Exchange site called Not Programming Related came out of Area51, the Stack Exchange staging zone. NPR was supposed to be a site where questions t...

enderland

12:33 PM

@gnat such sweet tears!

gnat

12:44 PM

@enderland if you can, give Glen's answer an upvote in that MSO question - he's just one vote off the Reversal badge. Not to mention that the answer is good :)

enderland

@gnat sure, why not give more meaningless rep

:D

there should be something that's like "epic reversal"

76

A: How do I deal with hiring reservations when resume is affected by brainsizing?

It seems this is linked somewhere as I have started receiving scattered upvotes. My curiosity has me wondering where, so if you are coming here from a link and upvoting, please post as a comment where you were linked here from! The first part here is more career advice than an answer to your s...

I have like 75+ votes on an answer to a question, though it's only currently -3, has been pretty low before (+12/-15)

gnat

1:04 PM

@enderland question is (was) at -3, while reversal is triggered at -5. I guess I just made 3 reversals by a single mouse click there. Oh no, these were already given on August/October, I returned it back :) workplace.stackexchange.com/help/badges/57/reversal

Yannis Rizos

1:31 PM

@jmort253 I don't think the "what kind of team I need" part is answerable, too many unknowns (e.g. individual skills). That said, it's an interesting question, it might generate a couple of helpful answers. I don't mind if you migrate it, the community can always reject the migration /cc @gnat

enderland

@gnat I actually think that's a great question since a lot of people have "I'm so damn awesome why can't people work with me" symdrome

jmort253

1:54 PM

@YannisRizos Here you are:

0

Q: Team logistics to build a cloud service API from a Matlab prototype

My objective is to get from an algorithmically sound software prototype to a SaaS API product. To give a similar and illustrative example, suppose that I have prototyped scalable facial recognition software in a high level language like Matlab; this algorithm takes a real world image as input an...

process-improvement

Yannis Rizos

@jmort253 Thanks, purged the migration comments. Let's see how it goes...

MetaFight

@enderland I wonder how many of the question downvotes are "I don't like this guy. downvote."

user55340

2:12 PM

There is something to the "the arguments in the comments are distracting from the question and the entire thing is becoming not useful" - and "not useful" is in the mouse over for downvote.

user55340

If the answer doesn't match the question, and people think it does, but the OP claims it doesn't, 'unclear or not useful' becomes very appropriate.

user55340

That said, some of it is probably from the MSO effect where way more attention was drawn to it than otherwise merited and people went in with a preconception of "there's something wrong here."

3

user55340

enderland

2:29 PM

@MetaFight most, I think

user41796

2:59 PM

@enderland Agreed. I saw some of the comments the OP had left prior to them being purged. The OP was just being an antagonistic, entitled jerk. Opening an MSO post whinging about why people aren't reading your mind is a great way to draw in downvotes. And thanks for the reversal badge on MSO!

user41796

Spam? programmers.stackexchange.com/a/234540/53019

gnat

@GlenH7 more likely, simply very bad answer with a strong (but not definitive) scent of astro-turfing. At first sight I thought spam just like you, looked over profiles of asker and answerer, and these don't look like spammers

user41796

@gnat That's kind of the conclusion I came to as well. I just cleaned up a lot of signatures from that user. So I think they're used to forum-esque behavior where that sort of crap link would be okay.

user55340

@GlenH7 you've been slacking your rep grinding - stackexchange.com/leagues/52/month/programmers/2014-03-01

user41796

3:24 PM

@MichaelT :-(

user41796

The truth comes out - I'm really just a slacker disguised as a programmer.

ratchet freak

of course you are a slacker

you are chatting here aren't you :)

user41796

@ratchetfreak code is compiling?

ratchet freak

'Are you stealing those LCDs?' 'Yeah, but I'm doing it while my code compiles.'

user41796

oh, and my sinus infection hasn't really cleared up yet so that's not helping my productivity at all. Kind of hard to focus when the roots of your teeth are screaming out in pain from the pressure.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:30 PM

@MichaelT Just sent this to my team, my boss loves his resharper, he should get a kick out of that... I wish that were real, that would be hilarious.

user55340

The first great virtue of a programmer is laziness...

gnat

^^^ from meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/225370/…

user55340

It is quite possible to see stress in people's reputation graph...

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat I love the not answer...

user55340

3:39 PM

Highlighted area is the end of my employment at my former employer.

Jimmy Hoffa

this xkcd is weird, it just...keeps...going

if you make the right choices it's huge

ratchet freak

got a link for one of those huge ones?

Jimmy Hoffa

@ratchetfreak can you share them?

ratchet freak

there is a permalink box on the latest panel

Jimmy Hoffa

@ratchetfreak xkcd.com/1350/#p:68e16b0e-ba24-11e3-801c-002590d77bdd

Jimmy Hoffa

4:03 PM

that xkcd is a total productivity sink.

2

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I'd pin that comment except for the profanity. :-D

user41796

So consider it pinned?

Jimmy Hoffa

xkcd.com/1350/#p:3def084a-ba4f-11e3-8037-002590d77bdd

It should be pinned, if for no other reason than to warn people off

I've found 3 different pikachu-fight-scene combinations so far

My favorite so far is when pikachu uses ant colony, and it just shows him covered in ants. It's not very effective.

user55340

I'm wondering where the 'waiting for godot' sequence went.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa And SE chat isn't?

user41796

4:16 PM

@RobertHarvey <flags as offensive>

user55340

@GlenH7 Too bad you can't flag it as 'bleh' in chat.

Robert Harvey

Nice welcome this morning. Thanks.

It's April 2. Is it safe to come out now?

user41796

@RobertHarvey BTW, the unicoin porn MSO question off-taste enough that the OP should have taken it down.

Robert Harvey

Is it still there? I'll take it down myself.

user41796

It was a few hours ago, yes

Robert Harvey

4:20 PM

[contemplates DELETE FROM POSTS WHERE TAG=UNICOIN]

OK, it's gone now.

user41796

One day I'll have 10k+ rep on MSO and will be able to go back to that question to show the evils of April Fools pranks.

Robert Harvey

The Unicoin stunt generated 126 questions on meta.

user41796

Hey, that's Great! 'Cause MSO was really lacking in overall activity lately.

user55340

This one caused a bit of consternation on the net: issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-7524?aprilfools

user55340

I'm still gonna say I liked this one the best: blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2014/04/01/clippy-for-resharper

user41796

4:27 PM

@MichaelT reading over the comments, you have to wonder who is in on it and who isn't.

tgkprog

About the spring framework (Java) what do you do when, during an interview, a senior mgr asks you if you know 'Springs'? Tell him its Spring and not springs or just continue as if he asked you about Spring...

user41796

@MichaelT I laughed pretty hard after reading that one. Poor clippy. May he RIP.

user55340

The RFCs this year were meh.

user41796

@tgkprog Ignore the mispronunciation and carry on.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 agreed.

user55340

4:29 PM

@tgkprog Yep. Carry on. Don't even bother correcting it as a correction... just use the correct terms yourself.

user41796

I have had bosses prone to doing that. Generally they have had a number of things on their mind at the time. They'll figure it out soon enough when you consistently say the right name.

Thomas Owens

Oh. Yeah. What were the April 1st RFCs?

user55340

Different side of the table, true story... interview candidate asked if he knew Spring. He got all excited and said that he knew how to do replace all and create new ones and use the builder... and then realized that it was Spring not String and said "whats that?"

Ampt

@MichaelT I don't understand this at all, where's the joke?

tgkprog

thank you :-)

lol !

user55340

4:31 PM

tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7169 (NSA) tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7168 (coffee & tea pot again)

tgkprog

that might have been ny reaction a few years back - jump the gun

Ampt

Wait is this a ticket to move the subversion development repo to git?

lmfao

Robert Harvey

I replaced the Spring Framework in the frontend of my car recently.

user55340

@Ampt now you get it.

Thomas Owens

I fully support moving the development of SVN into a git repo.

Robert Harvey

4:32 PM

238

Q: Why can't my program compile under Windows 7 in French?

I'm running Windows 7 French and I'm trying to compile this really basic program, but Visual Studio is being stubborn and refuses to comply. I also tried compiling it with both GCC 4.7 and Clang trunk on Coliru and I get more or less the same errors (output is below the code), though I think Coli...

c++ visual-studio-2013 french

The trick to making a good April 1 post is that it has to be funny. Which this one isn't.

Nor is the Apache one.

user55340

@RobertHarvey gallium.inria.fr/blog/ocaml-5

user55340

(thats an april 1 post about programing ocaml in french)

Robert Harvey

Compare with:

474

Q: Why is this program erroneously rejected by three C++ compilers?

I am having some difficulty compiling a C++ program that I've written. This program is very simple and, to the best of my knowledge, conforms to all the rules set forth in the C++ Standard. I've read over the entirety of ISO/IEC 14882:2003 twice to be sure. The program is as follows: Here i...

c++ visual-c++ compiler-errors clang

Which has this epic answer:

577

A: Why is this program erroneously rejected by three C++ compilers?

Originally from Overv @ reddit.

user55340

@RobertHarvey The other answer is "use excel" which is unfortunately true and not funny.

user55340

11

Q: Are Excel's localized function names documented

Is there a reference of Excel's localized function names? For example, the function "SUM" is "SOMME" in French and "SUMA" in Spanish. Is there an exhaustive documentation somewhere?

excel localization

Ampt

4:36 PM

@RobertHarvey The apache one isn't funny but it got a laugh out of me just for the sheer irony of the situation

plus they let it go on long enough to make people think it was happening and reading their replies is hilarious as well

user55340

I still think that think geek has the best one... like the nerf nuke.

user55340

►

Robert Harvey

Love the ReSharper Clippy plugin. If I ever decide to use Resharper, I'm totally using Clippy.

Might just buy it for that.

dylanribb

I think Visual Studio should have a Clippy plugin.

"I see you're trying to program in F#."

Ampt

@dylanribb "Would you like me to change it to C# instead?"

2

Robert Harvey

4:39 PM

Beat me to it.

Ampt

fcitw

google really needs to start looking where they grab their information from when you ask it questions

What is resharper?

I mean you couldn't pay for better advertising than that

Robert Harvey

Really? Marketspeak sort of turns me off.

And most other programmers I know.

user41796

@Ampt And how are you sure it's not paid?

Ampt

oh no, I definitely got a line in and went who the hell wrote this

but imagine if some manager who was looking for toolchains googled that and read that

Robert Harvey

Marketing departments are so clueless. They do things just because they've been done before, or because they've always been done that way. Then they wonder why their spammy answers on Stack Overflow get treated so negatively.

Ampt

4:43 PM

".... we need resharper!"

@GlenH7 is this googles ploy to get around my ABP?

gnat

in The Water Cooler, Mar 25 at 18:24, by gnat

^^^ bleh-flagging in chat? easy peasy

user55340

Ok, so there is that flag... though chat flagging makes moderators sad pandas. Or angry pandas.

dylanribb

@MichaelT Angsty pandas?

user55340

angrsty pandas!

Ampt

if comments are second class citizens, chat is somewhere in the slums of the third world

user55340

4:54 PM

@Ampt where would the bridge be?

dylanribb

@Ampt In Soviet Exchange Chat something something...

Jimmy Hoffa

Anybody here know how to make chrome not automatically just search for a string in the url bar when the string is a modified URL? like if you're on a page it never shows the "http://", and then you change the URL and it assumes you want to search because the http:// isn't there, even though it's implicitly there, but chrome just hides it when you're on a page

user41796

@JimmyHoffa it's in the advanced settings. There are a number of look-ahead type options

Jimmy Hoffa

I like it automatically searching for things, but everytime I change a URL and it decides to search instead of recognizing the implicit http is annoying

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa I think its the spaces that will force it to search for a string. I can edit my chat link above and itll attempt to go there

Jimmy Hoffa

4:57 PM

@Ampt are you sure?

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa can you give us an example URL

Jimmy Hoffa

ahhh you know what, it has to be a URL you never visited before

ahh and it can't be like something.something.com or whatever

Ampt

mine works for chat.stackexchange.com

Jimmy Hoffa

it happens only when I'm dealing with local network boxes as I address them MachineName1/someUrl and the url bar becomes "MachineName1/someUrl", I go change the 1 to 2 because I want to look on a different box and it googles for "MachineName2/someUrl" disregarding the implicit http

there's no bla.bla.bla stuff when using local network boxes

I just want to get rid of the "hide http://" at this point..

Ampt

could you access the local machines with HTTPS?

that seems to always show

user55340

5:13 PM

@gnat btw, Hacker newsed: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7516595 (not much activity on it - just something to keep on the radar)

Ampt

@MichaelT is that some sort of front end for SE quesitons?

user55340

Hacker News = high brow /r/programming - news.ycombinator.com/news

dylanribb

@MichaelT Most of the time. There is still some occurrence of shenanigans, but it's much lower than /r/programming.

user55340

Its a 'this question showed up on their radar, so keep its activity on yours'

Ampt

theverge.com/2014/4/2/5573400/…

I only want it if she calls me chief

gnat

5:18 PM

19

Q: Auto-protect questions that get more than N answers from new users in a 24-hour period

Expanding the criteria for auto-protection has been discussed in the past: Should we automatically protect all questions with more than N answers? But I think that discussion addresses the wrong problem: Protecting a question with a large number of answers doesn't do anything to fix the probl...

feature-request new-users protected-questions

^^^ this feature would be very handy in cases like that. Would allow even smaller sites fly through popularity spikes unsupervised without too much damage

psr

@gnat I downvoted before I knew it was on meta so I'm sticking to it.

user55340

An interesting HN post recently tangent to XKCD: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7511762 (article: chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/… )

gnat

@psr that's respectable, of course. I myself felt a strong urge to DV when I noticed how asker spoiled the question by incomplete reference to VM spec

user55340

5:33 PM

For some python numpy types: matplotlib.org/xkcd/examples/showcase/xkcd.html

user55340

ARG (out of close votes)

Thomas Owens

Things that piss me off: Commented out code. #ifdef OLD_CODE.

lrn 2 version control pl0x

dylanribb

@ThomasOwens I've seen "// This is no longer needed" THEN WHY IS IT STILL IN THE FILE?

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens tell this to my DBAs... yesterday we had a bug I had to track down to one of our systems had an old sproc because our DBAs have zero configuration management/process control

Thomas Owens

@dylanribb Exactly. It's one thing to ifdef to toggle between implementations. It's another thing to ifdef out old code that is no longer needed.

Not needed == throw it into the fires of hell

Jimmy Hoffa

5:40 PM

causes constant problems... I'd say I don't understand how in this day and age they have decided to continue working in that way, but their manager is a high ranking Navy guy, so it makes sense

dylanribb

@ThomasOwens Maybe people are scared of VCS or they don't trust it? We have a similar problem with our marketing team who put multiple copies of design files into an "ARCHIVE" folder that they then don't touch for years.

Jimmy Hoffa

he's of the opinion bureaucracy is a better solution than technology

Thomas Owens

Other things that piss me off: fileName_v1, fileName_v2, fileName_v3 in SharePoint.

SharePoint is version control. kthxbai

user55340

Its because people don't do a good job of commenting on commits so those aren't easily searchable.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens haha that's the dumbest thing I've heard...

@MichaelT Here the comments are the commits - how about that for VCS? :D

user55340

5:42 PM

So people go "where did that old code go" and can't do a search against the commits to see "removed XYZ" eaislly.

Jimmy Hoffa

(at least for the DB code..)

dylanribb

@MichaelT Relevant: xkcd.com/1296

user55340

I miss the p4 time lapse view: perforce.com/resources/tutorials/time-lapse-view ( or perforce.com/resources/presentations/developers-corner/… )

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I think good commenting practices are just so uncommon that people don't actually know how to do it in a non-onerous way. When I came here a year ago now (damn, already...) no one on my team ever commented checkins. Now they all do, and I suspect it's just because they got used to looking at version control and seeing my comments which are tiny but concise

Thomas Owens

I've found the best way to implement changes is to just do something.

2

user55340

5:45 PM

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT ?

user55340

Easily see what changed in the history when. That makes people less afraid of removing code.

Jimmy Hoffa

My commits are never more than a sentence unless there's multiple fixes, then it's two sentences and no more. I think people so often expect commenting commits is supposed to be like a detailed diatribe so they avoid it altogether. They see how I comment quickly and concisely in version histories and decide they can manage that

user55340

@ThomasOwens screen shot from p4 time lapse view.

user55340

Blue is when that block of code was added, red was removed...

Thomas Owens

5:46 PM

Ah.

user55340

so you can see that some code existed from revisions 2-3, and then was removed with reivsion 4, and other code was added with revision 4...

user55340

If you can easily see the history of the code, then you're less afraid of removing some code that "you might need later" - even though its in version control.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens very true. "Lead by example" has an intonation that you have to be in a leadership role, which is completely untrue. Just showing success even in a non-leadership role is often enough to garner mindshare in your techniques

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Anyone in an organization can be a leader.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens wholey untrue.

dylanribb

5:49 PM

I think a lot of it is just "Well, we've always done it this way and no one has questioned our methods."

I ran into a lot of that at my previous and current job.

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Well, some people aren't qualified, I suppose. Or don't have the innate skills.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens it's an organization problem, not individual

dylanribb

@JimmyHoffa It's sort of like "If everyone is a winner then there can be no losers", right?

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens my last place, my manager got an earfull from someone elses manager when I gave a suggestion about how to do something; I was in a non-leadership role and so that I would give a suggestion was seen as insubordination

dylanribb

If everyone gets a trophy then it makes the act of getting a trophy meaningless.

Thomas Owens

5:51 PM

@JimmyHoffa Management is a role. Leadership is a quality of a person.

dylanribb

If everyone is a leader then the concept of "leadership" is sort of meaningless.

Jimmy Hoffa

@dylanribb untrue. if everyone get's a trophy, when someone doesn't get a trophy; holy crap they must have done a shite job

dylanribb

@JimmyHoffa "Everyone gets a trophy! Except Johnson. Johnson, you're a terrible employee and you should be ashamed of yourself."

Jimmy Hoffa

@dylanribb binary stack ranking on a reverse bell curve

@ThomasOwens it may be a quality, but having leadership qualities, and being allowed to lead others are two different things. Not all organizations allow organic leadership

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa You said anything about being allowed to do something? Maybe it's just me, but if I see a better way to do anything and it's not prohibited or has low impact to other team members, I just do it. I've had great ideas that were spread to the rest of the team as a "we should all be doing this". I've also gotten my hand slapped.

user55340

5:58 PM

Yea ha!

user55340

~/project/.../code (gh1180 u+310)$ git push origin

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens the "not prohibited" part is what you're missing. Some organizations have only one allowed way. All ways not dictated to you are prohibited by default.

user55340

(thats not my fault - I had to work off an old branch for awhile and then did a 2 month merge)

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa I'd really like to see how such a rigid organization ever manages to implement changes and survive as a business.

Jimmy Hoffa

(sometimes I think having no degree has meant the orgs that have been willing to hire me are usually just the very jacked up ones that do everything backwards)

dylanribb

6:01 PM

@ThomasOwens They basically survive by being the only company offering a very niche service/product until a more flexible competitor comes along and crushes them.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens Size. My last places software serviced 50% of the mortgages originated in the country. It was basically never changed, and the little unit off the side of their main product that I worked on was broke. You wonder how they survive? They lose money, tons of money, and their software really didn't work just about at all, but the overarching enormous corp made enough that it didn't even notice.

Thomas Owens

@dylanribb That's pretty much the only option.

Jimmy Hoffa

@dylanribb flexible competitors can't compete in every section. Place I worked for, their clients were the large banks across the nation; small startups can't even get in the door to talk to them about offering a product. Many industries are an old boys club

Rotating CEOs that came from the banks that were the clients

user55340

Former employer had an estimated $180k / employee revenue (with ~40k employes)... and those are 2010 estimates.

dylanribb

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, I worked for a software company where it was the same. Basically they wouldn't let anyone else in due to customer relationships (and the fact that the industry was about 15 years behind everything else).

Jimmy Hoffa

6:03 PM

@ThomasOwens never mistake the strength of the causal relation between software quality and company revenues

user55340

@gnat on learning java without an IDE... we learned Java back in the 1.0 days when the libraries where a bit smaller, and no 3rd party frameworks...

Thomas Owens

I guess I couldn't imagine working in a place that was so inflexible. I totally understand the need for repeatable, measurable processes, but not without a desire to improve.

Robert Harvey

Sometimes I'll read an answer on Stack Overflow or Programmers and think "Now that's a very useful answer." Then I'll look at the user card and realize that I wrote it.

user55340

Now days as soon as you touch java you're hit with some web programing framework, probably an ORM too... or swing or javafx and a library thats quite a bit bigger than it was in 1.0 days.

dylanribb

@ThomasOwens It's pretty terrible. One of the reasons I left my last gig after only a year. We only had 6 people in the company but I swear it had way more red tape than any larger company I've worked for, primarily because the president/CEO wanted control over everything.

user55340

6:06 PM

Back then, it was vi, and javac in make files. Now you've got dependancies and everything else adding some confusion in there too.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ThomasOwens like I said, I believe having no degree has meant the opportunities for me have more often than not been the companies with their shoulders scratching their ass

I suspect many folks don't see as many really screwed up orgs as I do

user55340

Pure, simple, command line Java - yep, you can do that in an editor and javac again... but I'm not sure how many people are starting out with that or trying to jump in more deeply and learn modern java.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT what is java"fx" ?

dylanribb

@MichaelT This has been a big hurdle in regards to learning Java for me. I get drowned in a sea of frameworks, plugins, libraries, etc.

The paralysis of choice.

Jimmy Hoffa

I've long wondered everytime I see javafx

user55340

6:07 PM

@JimmyHoffa oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/overview/… rich client platform

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I appreciate the buzzword. What is it?

user55340

Old days it was AWT (Abstract Window Toolkit). Then for awhile it was Swing... now its JavaFX.

user55340

The framework for windows and buttons.

dylanribb

JavaFX is a GUI framework, I believe.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Oh a desktop UI framework?

dylanribb

6:08 PM

Yeah, that.

Jimmy Hoffa

gotcha

user55340

That doesn't look hideous.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I'm unconvinced.

How is it to work with?

user55340

Dunno... I'm a web guy... haven't played with the front... though having dealt with awt in the old days... this doesn't look hideous either in code or interface.

dylanribb

@MichaelT Do you do Java for the web or?

user55340

6:10 PM

@dylanribb Backend Java. Servlets, JSP and the like.

Robert Harvey

JavaFX looks like Oracle's answer to WPF.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey well that's good

dylanribb

@MichaelT Gotcha. I've always been interested in that but run into the problem I noted above.

Robert Harvey

"FXML is an XML-based declarative markup language for constructing a JavaFX application user interface. A designer can code in FXML or use JavaFX Scene Builder to interactively design the graphical user interface (GUI). Scene Builder generates FXML markup that can be ported to an IDE where a developer can add the business logic."

Jimmy Hoffa

Back-End development FTW. Diddling with controls and layouts makes me want to gouge my eyes out most the time.

user55340

6:11 PM

@dylanribb Yep... and thus the IDE that makes some of that life a lot easier.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey yeah, sounds like XAML

user55340

And I'll owe @Ampt another $0.05, but try IntelliJ if you're going to get seriously into Java coding.

dylanribb

I'm a backend JavaScript/Python guy, myself.

Jimmy Hoffa

@dylanribb you mean you're a django/node.js guy?

user55340

Familiar with PyCharm then I assume?

dylanribb

6:12 PM

@JimmyHoffa Nope. =P I use JavaScript for our ERP system and Python to write rest frameworks and server-side tools.

Jimmy Hoffa

(I don't even know the back-end python frameworks... what do they write webservices in?)

dylanribb

I actually prefer Flask to Django.

@MichaelT Yes. I've used it a bit. Just haven't shelled out for the paid version.

Jimmy Hoffa

@dylanribb what do you use to write rest frameworks in? and the JavaScript you write is front-end then, you mean?

dylanribb

@JimmyHoffa We have Flask, Django-REST, and Twisted.

Jimmy Hoffa

O right, I've heard of twisted

Robert Harvey

6:14 PM

@gnat: You can learn how to program without an IDE. But IDE's are such a time saver. Writing source in a text editor and compiling it with an .EXE feels very much like punching cards, submitting them to a batch processor, and getting a half-inch thick printout of your errors, which is what I did in the 80's. The only real difference is the turnaround time.

dylanribb

@JimmyHoffa The ERP system we use has access to server-side JavaScript tools, so I write add-ons and customizations for that, primarily.

Robert Harvey

Dropping your card deck was always a fun thing.

@gnat: I saw your comment, and then remembered that most of the people in my Java class did use a text editor. I used Netbeans.

Jimmy Hoffa

warp FTW

(and that's an old benchmark, current warp has far more improvements, beats nginx out)

Robert Harvey

Are those all the same kind of framework, or do they do different things?

gnat

@RobertHarvey you got to be kidding. Student programs / projects have to be simple to be effective to teach stuff, this makes it quite irrelevant whether to use IDE or not time-saving wise. For learning, other factors are better be taken into account when choosing between CLI/editor and IDE

Jimmy Hoffa

6:18 PM

@RobertHarvey different things sort of... WARP is like writing ASP.NET request handlers (ashx), Yesod is very similar to ASP.NET MVC, the others are an abstraction level closer to that

dylanribb

@RobertHarvey I don't know a lot about warp, but I'd say node has become pretty general purpose and branched outside of just serving as a web framework.

Robert Harvey

@gnat [shrug] I was already a seasoned programmer by then, so I was more comfortable with IDEs. I was probably not representative of the rest of the class, for which that was their first programming course ever.

dylanribb

We use node for building/compiling, for example.

Jimmy Hoffa

@dylanribb node's original purpose wasn't to serve as a web framework

that part was the branching out heh

dylanribb

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, you're right.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:19 PM

the original purpose is alive and well

dylanribb

My bad. =)

Words are hard.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey yesodweb.com/blog/2011/03/…

Robert Harvey

@gnat: In the early days, there really weren't IDEs, although interestingly, the very first programming language I learned on (Benton Harbor Basic) had Intellisense... Sort of. If it knew by the context that you were typing out PRINT, it would complete the word for you. It sort of gave the illusion that the computer was thinking.

dylanribb

What I meant to say (with @JimmyHoffa's corrections) is that node is more than a web framework, but I don't know enough about warp to determine if the comparison is a fair one or not.

Jimmy Hoffa

The neat thing about haskell is the runtime does things asynchronously like node without requiring the CPS because of the purity it's easy for it to reorder concurrent behaviour in any way it wants knowing that sequencing and race conditions are basically impossible

Robert Harvey

6:21 PM

Ah, Warp is Haskell.

Jimmy Hoffa

2

A: Minimal warp webserver example

Here's a minimal Hello World application using warp. Run it, then navigate to http://localhost:3000. This example will show Hello world. In order to keep this example minimal, URL paths are not handled at all (the same content is delivered for any path). For a slightly longer example incorporati...

@RobertHarvey you should look at that little snippet of code. That's all it takes to stand up a restful webserver in Haskell, I think you'd appreciate seeing how easy it is to do something that is real-production type task

Robert Harvey

Functional programming ==> higher learning curve, but better productivity?

Jimmy Hoffa

(and holy crap can that little snippet serve up "Hello World!" at blazing speed ;D)

@RobertHarvey that's a fair statement

gnat

@RobertHarvey I used to work alot with IDEA and Eclipse, and in the projects I used these, IDE was the only sensible option to do the job, but from what I seen I made a strong preference to have team newcomers understand how CLI tools work. Worst nightmare is to get someone who thinks stuff works only in IDEA 3.2.1.128 or Eclipse 2.3.4.666 Ganimeo. Students taught with particular IDE are at risk of acquiring quite counterproductive er... beliefs

dylanribb

@RobertHarvey I've definitely incorporated functional concepts into my JavaScript code and seen a boost in my ability to get certain kinds of things done more easily.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:25 PM

though I don't know if it's necessarily harder to learn or just foreign. You'd have to ask someone who learned FP first

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa I'm still not convinced about the human interaction story with FP. CRUD and UI are mutable by nature.

Jimmy Hoffa

to basically everyone, fp isn't the first thing they learn so they learn it from a standpoint of having tons of hard-learned lessons already that don't apply

dylanribb

Haskell looks pretty foreign to me, but just looking at the small webserver snippet you posted, I can understand what's going on.

Robert Harvey

@gnat Learning the language is one thing. Learning how to write a program productively with a large framework and libraries is something else.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey Of course they are! But FP teaches you not to do things without mutation, but to model that mutation, by modeling computations you can effectively use transactional memory etc so that you can avoid race conditions and tons of other stuff

Robert Harvey

6:27 PM

Monads again.

Jimmy Hoffa

No no, transactional memory

different thing

think databases

Robert Harvey

You mean that stuff they have in Clojure?

Jimmy Hoffa

you don't worry about mutating data because you have ACID

dylanribb

Frakking monads.

Jimmy Hoffa

imagine if your in-memory variables had ACID

Haskell's had that for ages

user55340

6:27 PM

For me, the thing is the immediate feedback that an IDE can give a student rather than the compile/debug cycle for syntax errors.

user55340

Half of the stupid questions on SO would go away if the person was using an IDE that caught the missing ;

user55340

Writing a bunch of code and then trying to figure out why its not compiling because of a stupid syntax error isn't productive when you compare that the student could be told of "squiggly red line here now" which gives immediate feedback.

Robert Harvey

The only problem that I have with IDE's is that you don't have to remember anything. Intellisense remembers for you. Of course, it could be argued that frameworks change often enough that you shouldn't rely on your memory.

gnat

@RobertHarvey for someone whose mind isn't stuck in IDEA 3.2.1.128 or Eclipse 2.3.4.666 Ganimeo, picking up a new IDE is a matter of 2-3 months of intensive coding. Unlearning and re-learning stuff may easily take longer and go harder

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey STM (Software Transactional Memory) is something that's been around a long time. It's just very hard to implement outside of pure languages because when everything you do may mutate things all over the process full of side effects, the transactional parts of your memory require more fine grained control which is why we write all the locking mechanisms we do in imperative code, hand-spinning the transactions. Pure languages however can have STM easily and performantly implemented.

user55340

6:30 PM

Additionally, much of the tools of debugging are deeply ingrained in the IDE. JDB isn't a practical thing to tell students to use.

user55340

(frankly, gdb had a several week learning time that wasn't part of coursework for me back in college)

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat alternatively, make them all use EMACS and they never have to learn an IDE again...

;D

user55340

^^ flag as offensive

Robert Harvey

@gnat Most of the things Visual Studio has I never use. The most important capabilities to me is the ability to navigate ("Go To Definition") and to rename things globally. Intellisense and automatic code-style indentation are very "nice to have." I could live without almost everything else.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey yeah, but that little auto-implement interface helper and find all references are both pretty damn great...

user55340

6:32 PM

(wow! another response to this... - and this is why you need to use an IDE)

user55340

I would suggest starting with reading this article and looking into exactly what values are causing it to continue looping. — MichaelT Mar 22 at 3:11

user55340

@MichaelT Sorry about yesterday, I was stressed and I'm still unfamiliar with this website! Thanks for the links you sent, they really helped me out with my debugging process. Cheers! — NeverWalkAlone Mar 22 at 21:32

user55340

I am surprised and glad to see an apology. Thank you very much for such. Learning how to debug will ultimately put you head and shoulders above your peers when working in an academic setting and when looking for a job. Its great to be able to pick the right solution and code it bug free from the start, but for any code of worthwhile complexity that ability to pick the right solution from the start rapidly fails and debugging becomes very important. Keep at it. I've heard it said that programming is the art of debugging an empty file. — MichaelT Mar 22 at 21:41

user55340

Yeah, that is about as true as it gets! I try to plan them out beforehand and work out the debugs before I even type in the code, but like you said sometimes you don't always pick the right solution and that's where you found me stressing out like it was the apocalypse! But that link you sent about splitting the problem space really helped me in my analytic process for debugging my programs so thanks again! — NeverWalkAlone yesterday

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa "Find all references," yes. I've used "auto implement interface" maybe six times.

user55340

6:33 PM

By learning how to debug, properly, with the IDE the OP was able to figure out how to solve that problem and future problems.

Robert Harvey

Teaching how to fish.

user55340

Yep.

Thomas Owens

0

Q: Pair Rotation in a team for effective pair programming

We follow pair programming in our company and always face the issue of balanced and effective pair rotation within the developers on stories. We follow a simple metrics in which every developer's name is mapped with every other developer and we mark the respective intersection whenever two devel...

agile pair-programming extreme-programming

That just seems...wrong to me.

gnat

@RobertHarvey as I mentioned already, in simple student projects, these shouldn't matter

user55340

But the thing is, using an IDE is teaching a person how to use a fishing pole rather than giving them a hook and telling them to go catch a fish. It makes the entire process easier and is a tool they will use going forward.

Thomas Owens

6:35 PM

The idea of splitting up a pair by time. Knowledge sharing is good, but splitting up teams in the middle of a story?

user55340

@gnat A good debugger does matter.

user55340

Without that they're bashing their head against the wall and asking someone who is using an IDE to solve it for them.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa Getting threaded programming right is easier than most people make it out to be. Certainly, it's not trivial, but... The program I'm currently working on has maybe 21 threads in it. I manage the complexity by using blocking queues.

user55340

A far too often thing for SO is the plea for the OP to learn how to debug - but they can't do that reasonably without an IDE.

Robert Harvey

You can do it with Console.Writeline, but that's really tedious. Then again, it's a great way to learn.

gnat

6:37 PM

@MichaelT last time I helped someone to learn, absence of debugger has been easily fixed by introducing logging. Of course, their project was simple

user55340

It is a necessary and often useful way to debug and learn - you don't always have a debugger available (web apps are notoriously difficult to debug at times). That said, I'd rather have a new hire who knows how to add a breakpoint than putting System.out.println() throughout the code.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa: That Yesod framework looks like it might have some of the answers that I'm looking for.

user55340

(And an earlier message in that chain... did link to the how to program that does include that debugging technique as essential)

user55340

@NeverWalkAlone Each question is a separate question - please don't change the question you are asking to ask about a new problem -- ask a new question instead. Please also remember that StackOverflow is a very poor way to getting a walkthrough of debugging (please look into learning how to use your IDE's debugger - it is a valuable skill (How to be a Programmer: Learn to Debug) — MichaelT Mar 22 at 2:50

Robert Harvey

A lot of web development is boilerplate. Setting up routing tables, creating database schemas, and dealing with forms can all be long, repetitive code. Yesod’s has simple DSLs for templating, persistence, routing, and much more. But more importantly the DSLs are correct: they are all compile-time checked to get rid of the runtime bugs.

user55340

6:41 PM

The second item after the how to debug is titled "How to Debug by Splitting the Problem Space"

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa: Is there some sort of consolidated reference for all of the Functional Programming concepts that we talk about (monad, closures, etc.)? Or do I just need to dig into TAOCP?

user55340

@RobertHarvey Not sure TAOCP would help there.

Robert Harvey

Oh wait. Wrong book reference. The one that MIT used to use for teaching Scheme.

user55340

SICP

Robert Harvey

Yes, that one.

user55340

6:46 PM

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a textbook aiming to teach the principles of computer programming, such as abstraction in programming, metalinguistic abstraction, recursion, interpreters, and modular programming. It is widely considered a classic text in computer science. It was first published in 1984 by MIT Press and written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, with Julie Sussman. It was formerly used as the textbook of MIT introductory programming class and at other schools. Before SICP, the introd...

user55340

Oh, btw, I got my copy A Pattern Language - very different way of looking at them.

user55340

Should be required reading for anyone asking for a pattern.

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Which one is A Pattern Language again?

psr

I don't think SICP has any category theory though.

user55340

A Pattern Language

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a 1977 book on architecture, urban design, and community livability. It was authored by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein of the Center for Environmental Structure of Berkeley, California, with writing credits also to Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel. Decades after its publication, it is still one of the best-selling books on architecture. The book creates a new language, what the authors call a pattern language derived from timeless entities called patterns. As they write on page xxxv of ...

Thomas Owens

6:49 PM

@MichaelT Ah.

The patterns book.

user55340

The Patterns before computers book.

Robert Harvey

Before software patterns became all the rage.

user55340

The thing is, its not building blocks or tools or hammers... its solutions to problems.

user55340

But the design comes first. Then a problem is encountered, then the pattern is applied to solving that problem.

Robert Harvey

Mixed-use development

Mixed-use development is—in a broad sense—any urban, suburban or village development, or even a single building, that blends a combination of residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or industrial uses, where those functions are physically and functionally integrated, and that provides pedestrian connections. The term ("a mixed-use development") may also be used more specifically to refer to a mixed-use real estate development project—a building, complex of buildings, or district of a town or city that is developed for mixed-use by a private developer, (quasi-)governmental agency...

user55340

6:53 PM

I'm designing a building, I need a place for people to wait. That is a patten - "A PLACE TO WAIT".

Robert Harvey

Heh. Smuggle Truck had a waiting room, where you could wait 18 years to get your green card.

Thomas Owens

I'm designing a building and it has an exterior and I need to set the tone for the rest of the building!

Robert Harvey

Taupe works.

Oded

@ThomasOwens Interesting book, even if one isn't that into architecture.

Thomas Owens

:\ I just heard a preorder a Galaxy S5 ad and got excited. It's for T-Mobile, not Verizon. Dammit, Verizon, give me my damn S5.

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