The Whiteboard

user20683

12:26 AM

is it just me or does learning Javascript feel way more disjointed than learning Python?

Ampt

It's not just you

JS is weird. No wonder Jimmy likes it so much.

That really explains quite a bit....

enderland

@Ampt quite a bit? or quite a byte?

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa's a simple man. A bit should be more than enough ;)

user20683

@Ampt it's more that JS doesn't feel unified in the way that most languages do

Ampt

I don't disagree, and the standard practices leave a lot to be desired

user20683

12:31 AM

for instance extracting a list from a string

user20683

just feels odd

user15026

@WorldEngineer Not just you, but I wasn't good with either

enderland

I have a hard time with non-strictly typed languages...

user20683

the standard library

user20683

that's the issue for me I think

user20683

12:35 AM

there isn't one with JS the same way that there is for others or it's not documented cleanly that I can tell

user55340

2:23 AM

@GlenH7 I'm feeling tempted to toss a close vote on this one... though it's only a temptation at this point. I'm also a bit more tempted to see if it should be tossed over to the Engineering.SE way

user55340

0

Q: Software development costs and influences

Note: I couldn't find a better place for this than here. Feel free to move this if necessary. I had a conversation with a friend who is a civil engineer the other day regarding (lack of) planning in software projects. I said that before the construction phase of a software development project, b...

user55340

>
I had a conversation with a friend who is a civil engineer the other day regarding (lack of) planning in software projects. I said that before the construction phase of a software development project, before developers sit down in front of a computer to actually write code, a serious and thourough planning phase should take place (requirements, design). Bad software development project end up doing construction twice or more (due to lack of planning). As an analogy I asked what would have happened if a skyscraper project would have carry out the construction phase twice, in a goal to show…

user55340

It's not that its software engineering (which is on topic here) but rather the comparison with other engineering professions.

user41796

2:57 AM

@MichaelT TY. I passed it to the other Eng mods to see what they think. I'm tempted to recommend sending it over to Engineering as I think it'll have a chance there.

Ampt

Engineering.SE is Progs Toilet bowl? I'm in!

Someone call Joel, we need a migration path

user55340

@AshleyNunn have you gotten your CE certificate yet? Cupcake Engineer!

user15026

@MichaelT I am so qualified

user55340

Btw, the official video for Scare Away The Dark rocks...

user55340

Passenger - Scare Away The Dark (Official Video)

►

user55340

3:20 AM

Btw:

user55340

0

Q: How can I make this question acceptable?

Earlier today I posted this question on programmers.stackexchange: How can a manager best communicate software development best practices to junior and mid level staff? My boss asked me this recently, and I was all set to give an elaborate answer about evidence based practices, effective...

discussion specific-question programmers-se

user55340

Though it looks like the non-P.SE MSE types are handling it reasonably without anyone here needing to chime in.

Ampt

@MichaelT by nuking it from orbit! :D

I don't even have to read the question to know that

user55340

And noting that tag, might as well toss the MSE programmers-se tag feed into our room feeds.

Feeds

MichaelT has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

0

Q: How can I make this question acceptable?

Earlier today I posted this question on programmers.stackexchange: How can a manager best communicate software development best practices to junior and mid level staff? My boss asked me this recently, and I was all set to give an elaborate answer about evidence based practices, effective...

discussion specific-question programmers-se

user55340

3:28 AM

Note of the above - all but the bottom one are rather ancient. Don't go bumping them on MSE.

user55340

→ 4 messages moved to ProgsTrash

user55340

There, better way of cleaning up that new feed spam of old posts.

Ampt

sigh ROOM OWNER ABUSE!

Stack Exchange

5:25 AM

The Codeless Code: Case 180: Past Perfect

posted on February 22, 2015

Snow still covered the temple grounds when a senior nun happened upon the old monk Shinpuru clearing dead stalks from his garden. Soon their talk turned to matters befitting two old warriors. “I liked our profession better in my youth,” said the nun. “In those days my temple was a simple place, where work was pleasant and mastery came easy. All we needed were text editors to code, make to c…

Thomas Owens

1:17 PM

If the people before me had bothered to create a good set of requirements, including appropriate models, they would have stood a chance of implementing this thing in a sane way.

But no. They ran off and created XSD files and interface definitions without thinking about what the thing actually had to do and what it didn't have to do what what kinds of functions make sense.

ratchet freak

isn't that the story of all old APIs

"if only the guys making this **** knew the problems this implementation would bring they would never have done it this way!!"

Thomas Owens

It's not problems. It's things that make absolutely no sense.

For example, there exists a "StartupCommand". It's supposed to be ingested by the system to turn on. However, the system is a long-running process. If it's not running, how can it ingest the command? There are no requirements visible that say it should support a startup command, but there it is.

If they took 5 minutes to reason through the sequence of this activity or how the interface would work, they would have realized that it's stupid.

durron597

@GlenH7 This coworker is not a programmer ;)

Telastyn

2:04 PM

dilbert.com/strip/2014-08-11

Thomas Owens

2:17 PM

@Telastyn Except I disparage technology decisions made after I've been involved because no one asked me.

Telastyn

same thing, basically

Thomas Owens

Sometimes, I'll disparage technology decisions made after I'm asked, too. I try to be an equal opportunity disparager.

It's not easy. But I do try.

Thomas Owens

2:43 PM

Right now, the fact that Arizona doesn't do DST is screwing things up.

ratchet freak

@ThomasOwens DST always screws things up

Thomas Owens

I still support Massachusetts seceding from Eastern Time and going to Atlantic Time.

That would screw everything up. Except actually make winter tolerable.

Telastyn

I'm just disparaging this 150 line unit test...

ratchet freak

the only safe way is to use UTC throughout and only display anything from other timezones in the gui

Thomas Owens

@ratchetfreak I prefer to use New Earth Time.

Except my start point is the geographic center of the United States.

ratchet freak

2:46 PM

@ThomasOwens That will not sit well with soo many people...

also date-line through china?

Thomas Owens

I know, right? It's so bad, but dates and times suck.

Let's go shopping.

ratchet freak

the time system was never meant to unite the entire world...

Thomas Owens

Maybe we should just destroy all clocks.

Who cares about time? Just do stuff.

ratchet freak

or always use the present as epoch

Jude Niroshan

3:10 PM

Hi fellas!!! This is the first time i have entered into a chat room in stackoverflow ...... i'm very much pleased to meet awesome programmers !!!

enderland

@JudeNiroshan This is a fun chatroom ;)

durron597

@enderland Hey do you think my post is a duplicate? I can't see vote counts but I know it's got both up and downvotes

user55340

44 more rep and Jon skeet gets close votes here.

durron597

@MichaelT I bet all his rep is from migrated questions and him searching himself

user55340

@ratchetfreak @ThomasOwens cosmopolitan time? Eastern standard tribe?

user55340

3:21 PM

books.google.com/…

user55340

Noting to do with the drink. Just one time zone for the world.

user55340

Eastern Standard Tribe

Eastern Standard Tribe is a 2004 novel by Cory Doctorow. Like Doctorow's first two books, the entire text was released under a Creative Commons license on Doctorow's website, allowing the whole text of the book to be read for free and distributed without the publisher's permission. == Plot summary == The novel takes place in a world where online "tribes" form, where all members set their circadian rhythms to the same time zone even though members may be physically located throughout the world. The protagonist, Art Berry, has been sent to an insane asylum as a result of a complex conspiracy. Told...

user55340

@durron597 skeet is the new kibo?

user55340

James Parry

James Parry (born July 13, 1967), commonly known by his nickname and username Kibo /ˈkaɪboʊ/, is a Usenetter known for his sense of humor, various surrealist net pranks, an absurdly long .signature, and a machine-assisted knack for "kibozing": joining any thread in which "kibo" was mentioned. His exploits have earned him a multitude of enthusiasts, who celebrate him as the head deity of the parody religion kibology, centered on the humor newsgroup alt.religion.kibology. == Background == James Parry grew up and lived in Scotia, New York. He showed early computing skills, such as being able to open...

user55340

... Back when you could process the entire news feed with moderate processing power.

enderland

3:28 PM

@durron597 eh it's only 1 vote

durron597

@enderland I'm annoyed because nearly everyone who's posted on it seems not to understand what the problem is

It's like they all hate management so much and feel no loyalty to them so they can't understand why someone would want to share information with their bosses

Telastyn

?

user41796

@MichaelT The other two mods were lukewarm. Let me look it over and see if I can scope it to be constructive over on Eng. I'd want to push it in a direction so that it wouldn't really fit here on Progs.

Thomas Owens

@GlenH7 What direction would it go that it wouldn't be OK on Programmers?

user41796

That's what I'm not certain about yet. :-)

Thomas Owens

3:38 PM

I've been pondering that question. It's 100% on-topic, it's just not answerable without writing a book. Or two.

user55340

@ThomasOwens drawing more on more traditional engineering background that people with SE job titles but not PE background may lack knowledge of?

Jude Niroshan

Any idea what has happened to so called 'palmtop' which had been taught us in school?

Thomas Owens

The reason for the difference is because that software is...well, soft.

It's more easily changed than hardware. But the assumption that making software changes is cheap isn't necessarily true. It may be cheaper than changing hardware, especially in a manufacturing setting where you have tooling to build custom hardware.

user41796

Yeah, I give up on that question. In re-reading it and seeing where the answers started heading... Meh. I think I'd just as rather VTD than VTmigrate.

user55340

... Cost of pos software at employer^^ > cost of new hardware to run software. And that says a bit.

ratchet freak

3:43 PM

@JudeNiroshan it turned into the tablet

Thomas Owens

Isn't that true often? It's a lot easier to enhance software than enhance hardware. I can add new functionality to my software without drastically changing size, weight, or power of the system. So as long as there are the right physical resources, we can churn out physical systems and apply new software. The hardware design process is done and it becomes a software design process and a manufacturing process.

Jude Niroshan

@ratchetfreak It's so freaky ... never came into my mind

Thomas Owens

Of course, it does depend on the software. If I need drastically more computational power or a hardware widget that doesn't exist on the platform yet, then the software change would also drive hardware changes.

Jude Niroshan

why use case scenarios?

durron597

4:24 PM

<politics>So the Republicans are giving Janet Yellen hard questions and the Democrats are giving her softballs. What does that say about the Federal Reserve's independence?</politics>

Robert Harvey

I can remember taking my "political science" class in college, reading the textbook for the first time and thinking "this isn't science; it's chaos."

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt this is the biggest problem for JS, the standard practices with it are awful

Robert Harvey

Nobody reads Crockford?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa js has standard processes?

Jimmy Hoffa

> I see said the blind man who picked up his hammer and saw

Robert Harvey

4:28 PM

saw what?

user41796

@RobertHarvey Oh, you mean non-linear, second order differential equations then. Yeah, those are fugly.

Robert Harvey

No math in that book.

Just insanity.

user41796

No math in that other book. Just insanity as well. :-) Yes, I speak from first-hand experience

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 experience of what, the book, or insanity?

user41796

yes

user55340

4:40 PM

I'm fascinated by the narrators of Cthulhu stories to continue to write as they are devoured by insanity. Maybe they go on to write about Econ.

user41796

@MichaelT Wasn't John Maynard Keynes one of the principal authors of the Cthulhu series?

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I heard on the radio he was Cthulhu

user41796

Yeah, I get confused. Always hear about how people worship him

user55340

Say Keynesian three times and... Agh!

user41796

But when you start digging into what their saying, there's a lot of circumlocution going on

Jimmy Hoffa

4:47 PM

@GlenH7 all his rhetoric basically sums up as "come to the dark side, we have cookies"... though the opposite rhetoric seems to be "come to the dark side, we've privatized the cookies but you can buy a pack after your first day on the job, now get in that factory, these cookies aren't going to make themselves."

user41796

cookies?! I'm in. And yes, I stopped at cookies. Should I have kept reading?

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 cookies?

enderland

People keep having girl scout cookies here

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland I've finished 2? 3 boxes? in the past couple weeks

just opened another last night...

enderland

they are a trap

Jimmy Hoffa

4:49 PM

though I strongly disagree with the concept. My wife always buys them regardless

enderland

my team lead had a few here and we... destroyed them

Jimmy Hoffa

The other Saturday some little girl at the grocery store was asking everybody walking out if they wanted to buy girl scout cookies, I told her I don't support companies who employ child labor and kept walking. Not kidding.

(seriously, who has their kid hocking wares on a nice saturday morning instead of at a park playing or something?)

enderland

lol

That's better than people selling them at work for their kids

Jimmy Hoffa

though my wife can't help it and always buys them, and after they'd in the house it's not like I aint going to eat them...

enderland

Which I find a bit... missing the point

Jimmy Hoffa

4:51 PM

@enderland and what exactly is the point?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa You'd cringe at the internal marketing they use then

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I'm not one for cringing, more of a rage until I extricate myself from the terrible things

enderland

@JimmyHoffa as I understand it, to help eople be involved in their fundraising process and putting forth effort for the otherwise free monies

I don't think it's ever really bad to promote "money comes from work"

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland Translation: So the profitable company has to spend less money on employees, by using volunteers

enderland

In this case I think it adds value to the kids, sure

user41796

4:54 PM

@JimmyHoffa Girl Scouts profitable? Not hardly

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland sure, but I want my kid to get paid then, not just volunteer to help some company profit

user55340

It's awkard. Door to door in this weather isn't always feasible. Door to door some places can be dangerous (seriously- the data I look at now...). Store door misses the point. Fundraising at work is problematic at times (bosses kid is selling xyz).

user41796

@MichaelT door to door has really been dropping off for all organizations that have traditionally used that approach

user55340

There is no good answer to this. I'd buy Keebler and donate the difference in cash to the troop.

Jimmy Hoffa

Teaching your kids to volunteer so someone else can make money off his work just gets them in the habit of working without expectation. I'd rather my kid learn to work with expectations so when people try to make him the sucker he'll tell them where they can put it

user41796

4:57 PM

@JimmyHoffa At least for girl scouts and boy scouts, about a third of the unit price goes back to the troop or pack

user41796

So a dollar and change goes back directly to the girl's troop. Another dollar and change goes to the local council. And the final third pays the bakery

user41796

Ditto with the crazy priced popcorn from cub & boy scouts

user41796

scouts that run other fundraisers generally see a little bit higher returns to their local unit. 40 - 50% isn't unheard of depending upon what they're selling

user41796

@MichaelT - that's a very difficult one to answer correctly.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 was going to say, they'd make more money selling off the shelf or home made by a long shot

user55340

5:01 PM

Yep. Glad I'm not a policy maker. Just working on getting the data plumbing more efficient so the appropriate people (policy and public) can make properly informed choices.

user41796

@MichaelT And there's a lot of value in that too. Sometimes good decisions can't be made because the data isn't accessible.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa The local councils have odd rules on that too. The council's primary source of funding comes from the cookies or popcorn sales

Jimmy Hoffa

(hell home made they could make a mint, and then you would really be teaching the kids a lesson: You all need to make 100 batches of cookies this month. Work together, get it done, and look at this ridiculous profit margin. $500 to a few 10 year olds is nuts)

user41796

So they generally require a scout unit to participate in the council fundraising campaign (and feeding council coffers) before the local unit can have a private fundraiser

user41796

@JimmyHoffa There's limits to that though

user41796

5:03 PM

Homemade == inconsistent, and likely lower priced.

user41796

But that's also where the scout units get into selling christmas trees or spring flowers or whatever

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I've yet to make an acceptable thin mint at home... Oh, other mint.

enderland

@GlenH7 it also means "lawsuits" for some people...

user41796

@enderland No doubt

durron597

5:16 PM

Poll the room: after merging a feature branch into trunk, testing complete, how long do you leave the branch in the repository?

enderland

@durron597 have you pushed yet?

Telastyn

indefinitely, diskspace is cheap and my companies are always too cheap to hire dedicated build engineers.

durron597

@enderland Yes, everything is done for this branch. Production deployment, testing, everything

enderland

we had some folks earlier who removed their local commit history, but had forgotten to push, and wanted to go back and see their previous commits... woops

durron597

@Telastyn The branches directory can get large and full of really old revisions. Besides, just because a branch is deleted doesn't mean its changeset is gone

@enderland This is svn anyway

Telastyn

5:19 PM

yeah, and? I don't think I've seen old branches deleted in my career.

enderland

@durron597 oh. well then you get the joy of everything being centralized! :)

Telastyn

(but for now, food!)

durron597

@Telastyn hm, maybe i'll make a branches/archive/ directory

user41796

5:32 PM

@durron597 I'm used to cleaning that up only when there's enough cruft laying around to justify the effort

user41796

Or if you're wanting to schedule something - 6 months to a year is usually safe.

user41796

But if it's not cluttering things up then "meh"

enderland

5:46 PM

Jesus christ, the rules on this website are so completely random. Under what obscure circumstance would it be acceptable for me to solicit opinions on documentation writing? None? Ok then, moving on. — Matt Korostoff 20 hours ago

"none" ?

user41796

@enderland Soooo, you'd like us to migrate that over to TW, right?

user41796

Lemme go flag that. brb.

enderland

-2

Q: How can a manager best communicate software development best practices to junior and mid level staff?

My boss asked me this recently, and I was all set to give an elaborate answer about evidence based practices, effective use of code snippets, making content searchable, etc. Then I realized—these are just my opinions. I'm wasn't following my own advice. In order to talk authoritatively about w...

software-industry management documentation

durron597

@enderland Haha I love the workplace's 404 image

enderland

heh

user41796

5:57 PM

hee hee

enderland

I was confused, didn't think I deleted it there... o_O

enderland

6:15 PM

0

Q: Expanded explanation of conditional statements in Python

Can someone provide a resource that gives a detailed breakdown of conditional statement components? For instance. Here's a fragment: def the_term_here(): if 1 < 2: print "great" I'm hoping to find something that would run: "Okay, 'def' means you're defining a term. That term is c...

python

I think this isa much better question for chat...

How do you avoid feeling like a help vampire when you are introduced to a completely new technology as well as new domain knowledge? Is it basically "you will" ?

user41796

@enderland help vampires don't attempt to learn on their own and prefer for others to do their work for them

user41796

Oftentimes, they'll repeatedly ask essentially the same question over and over again

user41796

So try to remember what you have already been taught; do your research as best you can; and try to ask questions that show you put some effort into trying to understand before asking

enderland

@GlenH7 I think that's one of the most intimidating things for me in this current team, lots of really experience people with lots of domain/technical knowledge and... me

I absolutely feel like an idiot often :\

user41796

We all started from the same space

user41796

6:24 PM

If you don't have a notebook yet, then get one

user41796

make sure you write things down and take notes

enderland

@GlenH7 OneNote!

There's just so much... EVERYTHING to learn :)

user41796

LOL, I remember those days too

user41796

"whoops"

enderland

Yeah, current boss wasn't happy about it to say the least

@GlenH7 Yeah. I am applying for a dev position and most of the devs here are senior folks, so I am DEFINITELY a young'in by age/experience...

user41796

6:27 PM

I wouldn't be either if I were him

user41796

@enderland Don't forget to leverage current boss in that application. Ask him to put a good word in for you

enderland

@GlenH7 Yeah, I think I will, though the vibe I got from people was "oh, that team? meh"

durron597

@enderland Won't new team be pretty unhappy that you're leaving already after all this grief they've gone through?

enderland

@durron597 Nah, they know I'm temporary to them

@GlenH7 it's fun learning constantly, but man oh man is it intimidating and frustrating to feel like an idiot too often :P

user41796

6:45 PM

@enderland pitch it as "I'd love to work for your team, but I understand you don't have the slot. Can you help me out so I can stay full time here with the company?"

user41796

@enderland Learn to listen more, talk less. :-)

user41796

And it's okay to couch suggestions with "this is probably naive for some reason I don't understand, but could we do XYZ instead?"

enderland

@GlenH7 It sounds like they can adjust the pay grade for the Java dev position, so I think I have ok odds if there are not more qualified people...

user41796

Worth a shot. Worst they can say is "no soup for you!"

durron597

@enderland What actually is your Java experience?

enderland

6:49 PM

Yeah, there will for sure be availability here for future positions too...

@durron597 nothing :\

durron597

@enderland Read this: amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmanship/dp/…

There's probably a free PDF of it somewhere online

enderland

@durron597 I just ordered it from our internal library...

durron597

@enderland In my opinion, that is the single most important book for anyone trying to learn how to write production code in an object oriented language

user41796

McConnell has some good ones too

user41796

Although I haven't read Martin's yet

enderland

6:57 PM

@durron597 I hopefully will have a bit of free time when I kick my thesis back out of my hands >.>

durron597

Some of the things in it are a little controversial, but it has made modifying and testing my code so much easier. I can't even describe

Telastyn

clean code is fine, but can be dangerous for someone who reads books as a set of rules to follow.

pragmatic programmer is more insightful I think - explains more of why to do things.

durron597

@Telastyn Is that Hunt & Thomas?

Telastyn

yes, though I was thinking of the wrong book

Code complete was what I was thinking of, sorry.

durron597

@Telastyn That's McConnell, right.

user41796

7:06 PM

@durron597 Yes, McConnell wrote Code Complete

enderland

@durron597 Is it fun to read? I have been looking for something to read recently...

Telastyn

yeh

durron597

@enderland You should also read Effective Java if you haven't already.

The reason why this author wrote this article is because it's very easy to write craptacular Java code. (Honestly it's easy to write craptacular anything code, except maybe Haskell ;) ) But these books will put you on the right path.

enderland

Well, I don't even know if i will be writing in Java ha

:)

durron597

Wow. I had forgotten to change a call to org.joda.time.DateTimeFormatter.parseDateTime to a custom brute force implementation in a utility program and it's running so much faster

durron597

7:43 PM

I just noticed... my 10636 rep on SO is only good for top 3% overall. That means that more than 1/50 users have 10k rep. That seems like a really high percent, no?

enderland

is that per year?

durron597

no, overall

I'm ranked 6513 out of about 400k users

Telastyn

7:56 PM

I like how everyone else in the top 10-20 have been here a year or two more than me.

enderland

8:17 PM

well just applied for that job

user41796

Good luck!

enderland

Yeah, we'll see what happens...

I've become ~~aware~~ cynical of the process

Telastyn

business is like hotdogs

user41796

Nothing is perfect. Things are easier when you at least understand the process

enderland

@GlenH7 I had an HR manager basically explain the entire process to me last week, for better or worse - understanding what happens is helpful but still...

user41796

8:21 PM

That's actually very useful. Every company has particulars that they follow. Knowing those helps you understand your chances better

user41796

It also gives you a better understanding of when to let things occur on their own because it's out of your control

enderland

Yeah, knowing how they select internal candidates to interview is nice (doesn't help me have the skills they want that I don't have yet though)

user20683

Timsort is broken

2

user20683

@durron597 It's very easy to write craptacular Haskell code. Getting that code to compile is entirely another matter.

durron597

@WorldEngineer Where is that fixed? Java 8 only?

Err, Java 9 only??

user20683

8:35 PM

"fixed"

user20683

according to the authors anyway

durron597

This is a huge deal. Good thing I never sort Very Large™ arrays

user20683

easy enough workaround: if array is mumble mumble in size or larger, use largeArraySort()

user20683

same as you would for large integer multiplication

user20683

you switch algorithms

overexchange

9:12 PM

@WorldEngineer my question is still on hold, does it still need more clarity?

user20683

@overexchange reopened. Flag it next time

user41796

go go nuclear shotgun shells!

enderland

Something like that

First bit of optimism I've had towards this entire process in a looong time

overexchange

9:30 PM

@MichaelT when we say class an ADT, does that mean 'class' defines what representation and use is?

durron597

So I just found out that the market data sold to us by Chicago Mercantile Exchange Datamine team was in Europe/London time, not UTC like it was supposed to be.

If you're not going to get UTC, at least give it to us in your own time zone

Telastyn

isn't London in UTC, or do they have daylight savings too?

durron597

(My troll would have been "London and UTC are the same zone, everyone knows that")

@Telastyn They do have DST

Telastyn

shrug my current job cares very little about non UTC times

unlike 2 jobs ago which involved to the minute scheduling of content across the continent

that was less pleasant.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn this is the way it should be... Everything should be UTC until a user is looking at it. Unfortunately, people eff that simple rule up all the time, and the result is always even more screwed up datetime logic

Telastyn

9:43 PM

totally.

Jimmy Hoffa

DateTime math is hard enough when you're consistent about it, inconsistency in it just ensures you'll want to scalp yourself

Telastyn

at least I work in C# primarily. decent datetime libs

durron597

@JimmyHoffa I agree completely, which is why it's so baffling they would send us London data

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn same. Though people sometimes say the standard libs aren't good enough, the horror stories from the Java side that caused Joda to become a requirement are far worse than anything anyone deals with in C#'s standard lib. And there's Noda if you really need it

I suspect the lack of operator overloads is what makes Java's DateTime stuff so treacherous, the standard TimeSpan and DateTime objects in .NET with their ability to be used mathematically interchangably makes the majority of DateTime math fairly straight forward

Telastyn

the only problem I've had is teaching my peers about DateTimeOffset

user55340

9:50 PM

@overexchange (1) huh? (2) I'm on a phone and thus terse. I can't explain much beyond quips.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Telastyn I haven't had the opportunity to touch it yet, but I understand the latest SQL Server supports timezoned datetimes too as DateTime2 or some such

Telastyn

what I remember from Java is that Timespans aren't their own structure, and you also need to worry about Calendars in addition to Timezones

good.

Jimmy Hoffa

which would really solve a massive amount of these scenarios. Half the datetime issue trouble comes from the fact that DateTime's have a timezone, but as soon as you stick it into SQL server it loses it, then reading it back you get it with a TimeZone of unknown

user41796

So we should get rid of SQL Server then?

Jimmy Hoffa

They even have a timezone coming into IIS because deserializers associate the client's timezone/location from their header with the DateTime object if it's done right

@GlenH7 No, just use the later version

user55340

9:52 PM

@GlenH7 switch to access.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Excel, the graphs are prettier

user41796

@MichaelT I prefer flatfile

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 you don't need delimiters or new lines or anything, just stream the bytes endlessly and let somebody else come up with the regression analysis that makes sense out of the data. Data's data, right?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa well, yeah, duh. That's not obvious?

Duga

10:05 PM

This post may be better suited in the programmers or mathematics SE sites. SO is for programming related questions, not advice on how for you to build algorithms - thank-you — Alex 1 min ago

@Alex questions like this are definitely not appropriate in current form for programmers.se — enderland 1 min ago

user55340

10:18 PM

Edited meta post on p.se for so... Poofreaders get bonus points.

durron597

@MichaelT Poofreader? Like, if I read it and disappear?

user55340

Might also be a poo freader. Not sure what that is though.

durron597

@MichaelT must be something like fprintf or fscanf

user55340

Maybe they work at expertsexchange.

Simon André Forsberg

Ohoy. Can anyone take a look at this deleted SO question and see if there were anyone who actually suggested the OP to post on Programmers?

durron597

10:34 PM

@SimonAndréForsberg Nope.

> First question is an opinion. The link I suggested explains the different use cases. It is up to you whether it is preferable. The second is also opinion as I don't think anyone can even agree on which linter to even use, never mind the various options available. – Mike Cheel 31 mins ago

gnat

can we please burn this job ad with fire?

@SimonAndréForsberg asker has a solid presence at Programmers ("3 years, 7 months" per profile), it could be their own decision

user20683

@gnat boom

gnat

Roxette Crash! Boom! Bang! Live

►

Simon André Forsberg

@gnat explains it.

Duga

This question is about career management and is probably better suited for "programmers". — 500 - Internal Server Error 31 secs ago

Simon André Forsberg

10:44 PM

@gnat Is it Roxette day or something?

in TCG Creation, 3 hours ago, by Simon André Forsberg

Roxette - Crash! Boom! Bang!

►

Duga

@500-InternalServerError this is a very bad fit for Programmers, see meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6488/40980 Recommended reading: What goes on Programmers.SE? A guide for Stack Overflow — gnat 22 secs ago

durron597

10:57 PM

@SimonAndréForsberg I wonder if comments containing the What goes on at programmers.se link are basically always going to be false positives

Simon André Forsberg

11:18 PM

@durron597 that can be accomplished. Just have to assign some negative score to it

although perhaps I should consider some regex

user55340

Then you'll have two problems.

user55340

And who knows... The pony may finally arrive.

user20683

Feb 5 at 20:55, by World Engineer

Nov 8 '13 at 23:04, by World Engineer

If your database is flat-file, then Regex is your SQL and your problems have no equal.

user20683

@MichaelT what setup do you recommend for using Clojure?

user55340

IntelliJ, light table or night code.

Simon André Forsberg

11:31 PM

@MichaelT You should see my latest answer on Code Review

user55340

153

A: What is meant by "Now you have two problems"?

Some programming technologies are not generally well-understood by programmers (regular expressions, floating point, Perl, AWK... and others). These can be amazingly powerful tools for solving the right set of problems. Regular expressions in particular are very useful for matching regular lan...

Simon André Forsberg

11:43 PM

at least I'm not considering parsing HTML with regex! Just checking for some programmers.stackexchange.com URLs

I want to match programmers.stackexchange.com, programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic, but not programmers.stackexchange.com/q*** and not programmers.stackexchange.com/a***, shouldn't be so hard.

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