The Whiteboard

3:00 PM

@enderland that's a stretch... I'm no fan of the stereo-type of the antisocial geek person being the highly talented technophile... it's not me, nor most of the really good engineers I've worked with. Tons of the terrible ones I've worked with though fit that mold, and I sometimes wonder if they had their careers specifically because they fit the stereotype even though they sucked at the job

Johan Larsson

@enderland pretty drastic generalization, I know what you mean but don't think I agree. There are examples of guys in the autism spectra but most, nah.

Robert Harvey

How does a highly talented technophile suck at his job?

Johan Larsson

how do you mean?

Robert Harvey

1 min ago, by Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland that's a stretch... I'm no fan of the stereo-type of the antisocial geek person being the highly talented technophile... it's not me, nor most of the really good engineers I've worked with. Tons of the terrible ones I've worked with though fit that mold, and I sometimes wonder if they had their careers specifically because they fit the stereotype even though they sucked at the job

Oh, the stereotype.

Jimmy Hoffa

in most technical professions, from craft work (plumbing and masonry) to bio-med; jobs where you're a producer rather than a servicer- I would be willing to bet you'll find the same ratio of anti-social/pro-social behaviour.

enderland

3:02 PM

@JimmyHoffa When I say "work with people" I mean more the types of work that management/project management/etc do - meetings, managing people/resources, etc

where the primary value the role adds is related to people, not direct "knowledge work"

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland ah you mean people who are producers don't want to be managers... that's likely somewhat true

Johan Larsson

@enderland Also the 'work with people' is pretty wide. My estimate is that 90% of all meetings are disgused coffee breaks/meaningless bikeshedding sessions.

I look at it like decadence.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa yeah but not all roles with that sort of work are managers explicitly, even team leads or project managers are not "managers" but still do mostly that work

Jimmy Hoffa

@JohanLarsson I think it's less about indulgence, and more about a sense of purpose that they'd lack sitting at their desks alone not being productive.

@enderland yes; I was using the term managemer as an abstract like producer. May not be a concrete title, but managing is not producing.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa ah, yeah, that works

Johan Larsson

3:05 PM

@JimmyHoffa It is a culture that has been growing in the industry for 50 years. The result is a huge discrepancy between the view presented in the powerpoint world and the actual world.

enderland

@JohanLarsson see this attitude is partially what frustrates me, if you see 90% of meetings being a waste of time you don't see the people issues involved entirely - yes many meetings are wastes of time, but unless your company is very small you need to do things that are "wastes of time" that result in meetings

Johan Larsson

And because it is a culture it is not even quetioned.

enderland

good management types will isolate their producers (like how Jimmy is defining them) from those meetings as best possible

bad management will involve their producers in too many meetings

Johan Larsson

Group chats are good meetings.
1) Low overhead in travels etc.
2) High bandwidth.

A slack room for example.

Not often anyone asks questions about return of investment on meetings.

enderland

I had a conversation with my manager about that subject literally last week

Johan Larsson

3:10 PM

good

I tracked the cost for the last project, a very high number for four devs writing code for one year.

@enderland When i book meetings I look for the time 30 minutes before lunch. Leads to effective meetings ime.

That + agenda.

user41796

@JohanLarsson Only if company culture is that everyone takes a break for lunch. :-)

Johan Larsson

:)

I should mention that I work in a big old company. This is probably very different in a startup.

user41796

In a previous life, the manager was notorious for scheduling lunch-hour meetings simply because "there wasn't any other time available for meetings."

enderland

I think Joel on Software had a really good post about why sales/marketing people were beneficial, but I can't find it, I think most of that post is applicable here, too

@JohanLarsson oh, you're one of those people who'd rather annoy people into finishing the meeting early than facilitating a good meeting to quickly accomplish the meeting agenda? :(

user41796

They were more interested in putting out artificial fires (that they had created) than they were in doing actual work that benefited the company.

user41796

3:17 PM

@enderland I think it's a valid tactic, tbh. Especially if you know there are others in the group who will fill the meeting to the available time.

Johan Larsson

@enderland how can you tell?

enderland

@GlenH7 it's a valid tactic, but if you have to resort to lunch being the "meeting end" then you are not facilitating an effective meeting

Johan Larsson

When we started the previous project they scheduled 8h sprint meetings every nine work days.

enderland

and, if you work with a team that has varying lunch plans (ie if everyone on the meeting always eats 12-1 then you can do 1130-12, but if you have someone who normally eats 1130-1230 they probably won't be happy)

@JohanLarsson see I'm not disagreeing that's not a waste of time. but just because some meetings are a waste of time doesn't mean all meetings are

user41796

@enderland Sometimes it's the only tool you have in order to change company culture

Johan Larsson

3:19 PM

The result was the attitude 'What is the rush we have all day'

user41796

If you're of lower seniority on the team, then you have to resort to subtle manipulations like that in order to achieve the best outcome

Johan Larsson

@enderland Yeah, meetings range from useless to very good of course.

enderland

10% of your time being spent on sprint planning strikes me more as "hey we're doing Agile but missing the boat entirely!" than anything else (probably someone told them that was a good way to do sprint planning or something otherwise equally dumb)

user41796

Because if you've never seen two senior devs who dislike each other decide to wage a verbal duel in the middle of a meeting, then you haven't seen the full gamut of just how difficult it can be to facilitate a meeting when you don't have any leverage.

Johan Larsson

@enderland There is also estimating how much tie is reasonable. Lunch - T

@enderland I live in Sweden, now you have some context for our level of bs :)

enderland

3:22 PM

@GlenH7 oh, this happened bad enough we basically didn't have two of those folks in the same meetings (one was technically on architeture and I'm pretty sure he was sent there to get him away from our team senior :P)

paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

of course if either had people skills that would have been much less difficult of a situation, too :P

user41796

Yeah, in the particular case I'm thinking of one of the seniors had poor people skills and was just generally disagreeable. Things always had to go his way. The other one had far better people skills and was willing to stand up against bad design. The juniors in the group (like me) simply slunk deeper into our chairs in order to avoid the fireworks.

user41796

And to be fair, I didn't get along with the first guy but got along with the second. So my perspectives were a bit biased

enderland

@GlenH7 that's when you need that "waste of space management" to do those "time wasting management" things and get them to at least coexist

;)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 yes! These are the best parts of meetings! This occurrence is what I live for! It makes a meeting last forever, be less than useful- actually damaging credibility of everyone and productivity through lost morale at the same time. It is business distilled, and it is truly magnificent! Oh the arguments Ive heard from entrenched technical positions by people incapable of any sense of compromise or surrender! The thrill of inevitable work stoppage and future bickering on the horizon!

user41796

@JimmyHoffa You make that sound so good that I kinda feel bad about how I remember and reacted to those situations....

Jimmy Hoffa

3:31 PM

Whenever I experience one of these, I just know beyond a shadow of a doubt, there's going to be office drama, politics, and bullshit clogging everything around me very soon and possibly until someone moves on if I have even a cursory relationship to the project in discussion. These are the pigheaded assmonkeys that staunchly prove to me the fact that anti-social jerkfaces don't tend to make good engineers despite the endless stereotype

user41796

There's definitely some truth to that.

Jimmy Hoffa

Products are poorly engineered by sole individuals; and anti-social types always invent ways to be terrible at working with others. They're good like that.

user41796

I don't miss interacting with that first senior dev....

enderland

companies need to just fire those types of people and be done with it

Jimmy Hoffa

@enderland here is an interesting article that posits these type of people are actually valued explicitly by companies for such reasons alone. Michael O Church can be a touch cynical and I'm not sure I agree with him quite on his point in that article, but it's definitely an interesting position, and as always he reasons about his position very well.

Johan Larsson

3:40 PM

Those types of discussions arises when there is perceived seniority and not actual skill.

enderland

@JimmyHoffa oh that's neat

Johan Larsson

Don't think I have ever seen it between two actually good engineers.

user41796

@enderland Some companies hire explicitly to create a little bit of discord amongst the ranks. And again, to be fair, that senior dev was good at his job and produced solid code. I (and several others) simply didn't get along with him.

Johan Larsson

A little friction is good also ime, keeps people competitive/caring.

But it is more often too much and becomes and energy drain/waste of time.

enderland

@GlenH7 well derailing meetings and wasting everyone's time generally is not a helpful thing, you can create discord by being different too and respectfully disagreeing / escalating appropriately

user114359

3:41 PM

I have been reading that UTF-16 question @durron597 posted earlier and it is actually pretty interesting. But I found an answer that proclaims to be 1. a comment, but the answerer didn't have rep to comment and 2. directed at the admins of an external site. It should probably be deleted, but I cannot yet VTD answers:

user114359

7

A: Should UTF-16 be considered harmful?

Since I cannot yet comment, I post this as an answer, since it seems I cannot otherwise contact the authors of utf8everywhere.org. It's a shame I don't automatically get the comment privilege, since I have enough reputation on other stackexchanges. This is meant as a comment to the Opinion: Yes,...

user41796

@JohanLarsson I've seen it. :-) It generally occurs when the two engineers are using different frames of reference in order to evaluate the problem. And they both know they're right

user114359

I flagged it but I know there are 20k users in here

Jimmy Hoffa

@JohanLarsson I've worked with a very small number of people who were actually great technically, very smart, but utter failures at adopting/integrating other peoples approaches. One of those people was an asperger, so he would argue with people out of a general inability to communicate well, not because of any intent to compete- which people always misconstrued. He would always adopt other peoples approaches because he was too asperger not to follow given instructions when told "do it this way"

There are argumentative jerkfaces who are good technically, but yes, nearly always it's a farce.

Johan Larsson

hmm

enderland

3:47 PM

@JimmyHoffa my last team had two people who were senior devs, and self admitted "not people skills enough to get promoted" but while they were... confrontational and not the easiest to disagree with they were at least reasonable/rational, which helps a LOT

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 when the engineers are good and this happens, one or both usually back down without any real discord both agreeing to a compromise struck or to strike one post-meeting. Good engineers know they can adopt/integrate other peoples approaches well, so they're less worried about choosing the approach.

Johan Larsson

^+1

user41796

@Snowman It's in the review queue

user41796

20k'ers can't directly delete a positively scored answer.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Agreed. And in that case, the first guy who was pushing the bad idea simply couldn't step back and see why it was a bad idea.

Johan Larsson

3:50 PM

A really good engineer says thank you when someone points out a flaw in their idea.

user114359

@GlenH7 Good to know. I'm not there yet so all I can do is flag and review regardless of score.

user41796

A really good engineer says thank you ...

Johan Larsson

fixed it

user41796

I work with a lot of good engineers, but most of them do not have the level of self-awareness to rise up to that

Johan Larsson

It can be a difference due to me having a background drawing CAD.

enderland

3:52 PM

@GlenH7 engineers are proud buggers, hard to say things like that ;)

user41796

@Snowman Yep. I nearly dropped a NAA flag on it too, but thought better of it as that would likely prevent me from being able to see it in the VLQ queue

user41796

@enderland Yep, no doubt

Johan Larsson

A CAD bug is so obvious when manufactured and it does not work. If someone finds it in the 3D-model/drawings it is such a relief.

enderland

I think I will have a successful career partially because I am more eager to learn than to be right, and that makes people like you generally and makes you learn so much more

@JohanLarsson yeah, it's nice when there are objective "right/wrong" things :P

user41796

I accidentally cut in line this morning at the breakfast grill counter. I went and apologized to the person I had cut off once I realized my mistake. In hindsight, I realized just how few of my peers here would have enough awareness to realize what they had done if they were in that same situation.

Johan Larsson

3:54 PM

@enderland I have seen people jumping in the trenches in right/wrong situations. And wrong/wrong situations :)

Not yet two really good engineers.

enderland

@JohanLarsson oh yeah, but at least a third party can lay the smack down on that person and move on

Johan Larsson

Assuming there is one. And that it can be done.

@enderland out of curiosity, how old are you?

my guess: 27

enderland

4:18 PM

@JohanLarsson out of curiosity why does this matter?

Johan Larsson

> out of curiosity

user114359

Enderland is timeless. You may as well ask how old the wind or the rain is.

Johan Larsson

@enderland context

user41796

@Snowman Pretty sure he's a little younger than the wind...

user114359

@GlenH7 Maybe. When was the first smiley emoticon invented?

user114359

4:22 PM

@ThomasOwens I am not sure that question should be deleted: I think given some of the valuable information in there, a historical lock might be more appropriate. It "only" has 70k views though.

user41796

@Snowman much more recently than rain and wind. Just sayin'

user114359

Environmental effects exist for as long as they are observed, at least in my little world.

user41796

@Snowman Low views would correlate with something that few developers are familiar with... :-)

user114359

Hey I'm trying to be vague here

user41796

True, and smiley faces tend to be a little bit more timeless than other gravatars...

user41796

4:25 PM

For instance, I'm starting to feel that my shade of whatever is getting a bit dated.

enderland

@Snowman it took me a while to get what why you said this. lol :P

enderland ♦, Midwest USA

44.9k 15 134 244

user114359

There we have it. Enderland is 2 years, 11 months old.

enderland

it's so weird to see "Enderland" vs "enderland"

user15026

@GlenH7 I think we'd call that magenta?

user15026

Maybe?

user41796

4:28 PM

@Snowman I'm going to take a counter-point and argue that deletion is perfectly fine for that question. Most of the answers are heavy on opinion and light on backing evidence. The comment threads are out of control. And I don't know that the value from the top answer merits keeping that one around.

user41796

@AshleyNunn impossible to describe? :-)

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 I still love my identicon. Best ever. It looks like a ninja start too sharp to even hold! Gonna cut ya!

user41796

If I weigh the effort to clean up the UTF-16 post vs. the long term benefit.... meh, nuke it from orbit

user114359

@GlenH7 I could see that. There are probably two good answers and far too many comments for sure.

enderland

also 70k is a lot of views, just saying

user114359

4:29 PM

I wonder if SO has a good question similar to that.

user114359

@enderland yeah but look at the age of the question. Most of those views are probably inactive accounts from the dark ages of Programmers.

user41796

And there's arguments within there that are heavily regional specific if not speculative. It's not a well rationed debate, just a lot of opinion

user114359

I think at its core it might be a good question, but it would need to be asked right. I think the answers showed it is not opinion-based, there are objective ways to measure it.

user15026

@GlenH7 Been a long time since I stared down a box of Crayolas, I might just be behind on good colour words :P

user41796

@AshleyNunn I have the privilege of seeing them on a regular basis. :-)

user114359

4:32 PM

But is it worth it to clean it up or ask it again but more focused? Probably not. If anything, it could be too broad: there are tons of languages, libraries, OSes, etc that need to be considered.

user41796

Currently the UTF-16 question could be summarized "Bad effect; Bad Effect; Bad Effect. UTF-16 is just bad, amirite?"

user114359

A better question would be "how will my program break if I use UTF-16 in certain ways?" which just might be easily googleable.

user114359

Looks like he undeleted and locked it anyway. It certainly shouldn't be open at least.

user41796

Then we can be done wringing our hands with that one. :-)

user55340

The problem with historical locks is we can't fix things.

user55340

4:42 PM

Like syntax hints in the c++ block. Or c code.

durron597

so a recruiter just called the front desk of my company to talk to me about an opportunity

he's like "i found you on linkedin"

... so send me an inMail?

enderland

"hey I found out you are an unprofessional tool"

durron597

at first i thought he was calling to see if we were hiring

and I was about to interrupt him to transfer him to my boss, lol.

Thomas Owens

Dude. Next time a recruiter calls me, I'm totally transferring him to someone else. Like my boss or some other manager.

I don't see how this could be a problem.

enderland

.... unless you like your boss and the recruiter recruits him (lol) ;)

durron597

4:47 PM

@ThomasOwens You like your job much more than I like mine.

Thomas Owens

@enderland I'd send him to the director of engineering for the business unit. Or maybe the business unit president.

Let's not waste time here.

enderland

Part of me thinks that'd be funny to do, though I've never once transferred someone on our phone system and won't be bothered to figure out how :(

user114359

@enderland I can figure out highly complex software, but I am lost when dealing with office phones and fax machines.

durron597

@MichaelT Triage "Should Be Improved" is now "Requires Editing"

Thomas Owens

The other day, I learned that people buy stamps. 17 cent stamps.

That's like...less than half a stamp!

enderland

4:50 PM

@Snowman I feel like there must be a sort of legitimate business model for making printers that do like 2 things

Thomas Owens

Our printer prints, scans to PDF, scans to paper, and faxes! 4 things!

I want to make one that does 11 things.

enderland

@ThomasOwens funny story, I bought stamps yesterday from a kiosk in the post office, it looked like you could print them in any value above 20 cents you wanted. Then it printed out the stamps which was really interesting, I didn't realize the post office had this tech

Johan Larsson

you can make it spy on you

user114359

Considering a high end printer already scans and copies, I think sending a PDF is fine too. But that is enough.

whatsisname

printers are machines created by satan

Thomas Owens

4:51 PM

@Snowman That means it emails!

Maybe it should have the ability to send random emails.

Johan Larsson

printers usually have nice UIs, open this hatch with animation

Thomas Owens

Maybe it should run a full blown OS and an email client.

whatsisname

if by nice UI you mean miserable

Johan Larsson

I mean nice.

whatsisname

whenever a printer has some goofy touchscreen interface, it invariable takes 1 second or more to process a button press

enderland

4:53 PM

@Snowman our entire computer system now has a login process through our badge - so when you print you print to some print server, and then can get the documents on whatever computer you find (which is really convienent.... as long as the stupid client works :P) and it saves all your info for email address, etc

@whatsisname yup....

bad UX abounds with printers

apple should make one

user114359

@enderland I like simple. I am fine with scanning and emailing PDFs, that is extremely useful and convenient. But that is enough.

enderland

Yeah. Printers (and washing machines/driers) are such great examples of bad UX

whatsisname

although, when I was in college I worked for a dept at the university that had a pretty glorious xerox copy machine

it had a lousy UI as well, but it did some amazing stuff

it had two complete printing units, one upside down, so it would print double-sided pages with a single pass through the machine

did like 300 pages/minute or something like that

that job sucked though

user114359

0

Q: What should we do with "Should UTF-16 be considered harmful?"

Today we stumbled across an old question: Should UTF-16 be considered harmful? I'm going to ask what is probably quite a controversial question: "Should one of the most popular encodings, UTF-16, be considered harmful?" The long and short of the question is that UTF-8 is unambiguous an...

discussion specific-question popular-questions

enderland

I was only slightly amused to see you post that link @Snowman and then nearly immediately see @gnat join...

gnat

5:04 PM

10K folks, you've got to visit tools page sometimes, to avoid missing true gems. I just saw that "Give me code..." sketchup question getting an undelete vote. Fantastic. I think I need to bookmark that

@enderland nah I joined only to share above ^^^

user41796

@gnat I'm half tempted to vote to undelete just to know who cast that vote

durron597

@gnat I gotta get 10k first. feel free to upvote any of my answers o.O

user41796

And @amon is now on the front page of all time users

gnat

Don't Tempt Me Frodo!

►

user41796

@gnat I'd only do it if we had enough voters hanging around to quickly banish it again

user114359

5:09 PM

@gnat I have seen undelete votes on questions that are completely orthogonal to "on-topic" and I always wonder who votes for them.

gnat

@Snowman I also saw these on "orthogonal" questions, and frankly these feel fair enough. Of course I disagree with undeletion and of course I will re-cast delete vote if it's undeleted, but people should have right to maintain their views on topicality. That sketchup stuff is a different beast, it's plain gimmecodez. Maybe someone clicked it by mistake, I don't know

durron597

@Snowman So apparently I'm too lazy to write up an answer for you but not too lazy to make a cat pic.

Amazing how that works

Stack Exchange

Developer Turned Manager

David Haney on August 7, 2015

In February of 2015, I was promoted to Engineering Manager at Stack Overflow. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Stack Spotlight: Bethany Marzewski

Rachel Maleady on August 13, 2015

Learn all about Stack Overflow Marketing Manager of Customer Happiness, Bethany Marzewski.

user114359

user114359

Too busy resting, eh?

user15026

5:25 PM

Yay! Managed to help on-site guys with two wireless installs today! (This is a very new thing for me at work, so I am just excited that I could get through it without issues!)

2

user41796

Where's a par-tay cat meme when you need one?

user15026

@Snowman This is totally going to be in my head all day

user15026

I get stupidly excited every time I learn something new here.

user15026

There is still SO MUCH to learn, but my toolbox is getting bigger every day

user41796

@AshleyNunn It's all part of that developing a sense of mastery

user114359

5:27 PM

user41796

So despite being a cyborg, you're still part human.

user15026

@GlenH7 I close more tickets on my own than I used to, so that's pretty great.

user15026

@GlenH7 Unfortunately, I am still squishy and meat based :P

user41796

@AshleyNunn That is goodness. "Always improving" is a good thing

user114359

Personally, I am a meat-based neural network computer.

user15026

5:29 PM

@GlenH7 I can feel myself learning, if that makes sense?

user41796

Yep, definitely

user41796

It's a state, and IMO it's important to be able to recognize when it's occurring.

user41796

Irony is when Main asks if I want to move a conversation to chat and I'm already in a chat room with the other user that I'm exchanging comments with.

Robert Harvey

5:47 PM

What would be the regex to match the first n characters of a string?

user41796

[a-z]{#}

user41796

where # is the n characters you want to match

Robert Harvey

Does that just match lowercase alphabetic characters?

user41796

yes. Use [a-zA-Z]{#} for either case

Robert Harvey

What is any character? Just an asterisk?

(as you can see, I've never used regex)

user114359

5:51 PM

* matches zero or more

user114359

Wouldn't it be easier to take a substring than to use regex?

user41796

@RobertHarvey so you want the first n characters regardless of alpha, numeric, or symbol?

Robert Harvey

Yes.

Johan Larsson

yeah substring

user41796

I'm within substring in that case. But let me check real quick for the regex way

Johan Larsson

5:52 PM

.{n}

user114359

Yep, I always forget about .

user41796

@JohanLarsson Yep, that's it

Robert Harvey

@Snowman This program has Comparator objects. It doesn't have one for Left or Right, but even if it did, the comparators only take Expected and Actual for parameters, so there's no way to pass in the number of characters. Hence my dilemma. There is a Regex comparator, so I'm going to use that to pass in the number of characters.

Regex101 says it works perfectly.

One more thing to add to the voluminous list of things I need to learn.

@JohanLarsson Thanks.

user114359

@RobertHarvey fair enough, I was just trying to see if there was an easier way.

user41796

@RobertHarvey spend enough time to be semi-familiar with it, but don't stress the exact syntax. It's easy enough to look up the syntax when you need it.

user114359

5:55 PM

Sometimes people go into a problem thinking how to cram an AbstractFactoryVisitorAdapter into the program when they just need printf()

user41796

The hard part is understanding what you want to match and possibly grouping

user114359

I know I do sometimes.

Johan Larsson

I'd say the hardest part with regex is formatting it so it can be read

Ignoring pattern whitespace helps

Robert Harvey

@Snowman The comparators are driven by table definitions. Everything that's done in this particular engine is defined in a SQL table somewhere. Including the comparators being used.

Hm, I wonder how he's passing in the regex?

Johan Larsson

@RobertHarvey Do you use VS?

Robert Harvey

5:56 PM

Yes.

Johan Larsson

There is a nice plugin, lemme find it

user114359

So, this is happening: imdb.com/title/tt3743822

Johan Larsson

regexr.com is dcent for repl

user41796

@Snowman oneboxing is limited to a fairly small range of sites

Johan Larsson

@RobertHarvey this

user114359

5:59 PM

@GlenH7 I know, force of habit.

Robert Harvey

@JohanLarsson Ah, nice. Thanks.

user41796

@Snowman Would've looked good if it had oneboxed

user41796

I should've thrown more jalapenos in the chili I got from the cafeteria today.

enderland

6:11 PM

you could just eat them now, and then pretend they were in the chili... "if it all ends up in the same place"

user41796

@enderland Unfortunately, I'd have to buy another cup to stash the jalapenos in

enderland

solution: eat a handful all at once?

user41796

Mmmmmm

user41796

I'm disappointed that my jalapeno plants at home haven't been producing much

user41796

Of the four plants, I've only had one pepper this year

user41796

6:14 PM

That said, it was unbelievably hot

enderland

bummer. my wife and I are really looking forward to being able to garden (you can only grow so much in an apartment with a small balcony :( )

user41796

They are slower and lower growing plants. I suspect the tomatoes on either side crowded them out

user114359

We had a bunch of jalapenos this year. They were pretty hot.

user41796

But for reference, I'll devour commercial / jarred "hot" jalapenos without even blinking. A little sliver out of the one I grew lit my mouth on fire.

user114359

My wife also planted approximately 4,000 tomato plants in about a 4' x 6' box, I call it "the jungle"

user114359

6:16 PM

@GlenH7 jarred jalapenos stored in vinegar are weak

user41796

One thing I've learned is that tomatoes really need their space

user41796

@Snowman I don't think it was vinegar they used for the canning process, but I could be wrong. The acid from the vinegar will cut down the heat with time

user114359

@GlenH7 I thought it was vinegar, but whatever liquid it is dilutes them

ʞɔᴉN

Do I have to be a mod to be here

enderland

@ʞɔᴉN no

user41796

6:20 PM

Most home canning uses some amount of vinegar in order to increase the acidity of what's being canned. Higher levels of acidity means bacteria have less of a chance to survive.

enderland

can you freeze them instead?

user41796

Commercial canning has other options as they can use higher pressures / temperatures when processing

user41796

@enderland I dunno... Never tried freezing peppers

user41796

Generally have never had enough to make that worth considering

enderland

I know you can freeze green peppers, I assume you could jalepenos too?

Jimmy Hoffa

6:26 PM

@GlenH7 pickling lime as well; after all canning for preservation is the whole point to pickling. Pretty easy to do as well, helped a friend do it one time. Was relatively straight forward. The trick is with those mason jars you boil them so when you close them up they cool and vacuum seal

enderland

@JimmyHoffa yup. it's a pretty straightforward and interesting process to can things :)

Johan Larsson

Storing the jar upside down is good also, makes sure no oxygen enters.

Jimmy Hoffa

interesting. It seems the real trick from what I've heard/seen is making something palatable; the preservation itself is relatively easy. Making it so it has a flavor you'd care for 3 months later on the other hand..

enderland

@JimmyHoffa ... unless it's chokecherry jam/syrup :P then it's easy :)

Jimmy Hoffa

Don't know anybody who's done it and come away with something particularly tasty

@enderland ah yeah, kind of hard to screw up fruit preservatives I s'posin.

user114359

6:30 PM

I use vacuum sealing and freezing to preserve stuff. For anything requiring canning or jarring I buy it from the store. If I try it, I will end up with botulism.

enderland

I don't generally liked canned vegetables/etc though, freezing is so much better quality

even for jams,,,,

Robert Harvey

So it seems as if this regex comparator is accepting the actual string within the regex.

So now I need a regex that matches the first n actual characters of the string.

Johan Larsson

I had dried rowans once, was pretty good.

Robert Harvey

Is it [Actual String]{n} ?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Snowman the paralysis is temporary. (It's the death that's permanent)

@RobertHarvey I believe [] is for character parsing

Johan Larsson

6:33 PM

@RobertHarvey That would be just Act

user114359

@RobertHarvey No, [...] defines a character group

Jimmy Hoffa

perhaps Actual String{n} ?

user114359

You need .{n}

Robert Harvey

I need to pass the string within the regex as "expected."

user41796

@JimmyHoffa You don't know anyone who has canned something tasty? I do so almost every summer when I can salsa

Robert Harvey

6:34 PM

I only have two parameters to the comparator: expected and actual.

enderland

@GlenH7 freeze it instead!

user114359

Oh, I also dehydrate food. That is brain-dead easy though.

Johan Larsson

^abc matches strings starting with abc

enderland

@Snowman how expensive was your dehydrator? I looked into buying one since I like dried pineapple but it's really expensive to buy directly

user41796

@enderland I think that messes up the texture of the tomatoes. Canning does to, but I'd think freezing might be worse. Have never tried though

enderland

6:35 PM

@GlenH7 ah, you like chunkier salsa :)

user41796

Yep. It's closer to pico de gallo than what most consider as "salsa"

user15026

@GlenH7 Yeah, freezing does weird stuff to chunky salsa.

user15026

At least, it does stuff I find weird.

user41796

If you could put it in a squeeze packet and get it from toxic hell, then no, it ain't salsa. :-)

Robert Harvey

        bool IResultComparer.Execute(string left, string right)
        {
            var regex = new Regex(right, RegexOptions.None);

            return left!= null && regex.IsMatch(left))
        }

user41796

6:36 PM

@AshleyNunn I don't like how canning breaks down the texture so freezing isn't going to work for me then

user41796

But I'm used to using garden fresh tomatoes for my salsa

user114359

@enderland I spent around $100 on mine, plus some extra trays. Definitely get one with a strong heater and motor, you get what you pay for. Also keep in mind that most food has a ton of water in it, and you can at least triple the price per unit of anything you dehydrate.

Robert Harvey

Mmm.... Garden fresh tomatoes.

enderland

also for people who are wannabe athletes (from previous conversation) and want to be farmers.... espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/13416240/…

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 nah, I've known a couple folks who tried and came away with soggy vegetables months later

Johan Larsson

6:37 PM

@RobertHarvey Use the static Regex.IsMatch() it caches iirc

user15026

@GlenH7 I love garden fresh tomatoes. Right now most of my dinners are tomato sandwiches because my mom gave me some from her garden :)

enderland

@Snowman yeah. I think with pineapple this weird phenomenon happens that they have to import it, and has so much extra waste/water, that it is nearly cheaper to buy them deyhdrated than do it yourself :(

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn which is gross, but we'll forgive you

user41796

@JimmyHoffa definitely have to be selective in what you can

user114359

@enderland for example, I can buy meat for beef jerky at around $10/pound. The finished product shrinks and the price is more like $25/pound. still more expensive than store-bought, but a ton better quality.

user41796

6:38 PM

@JimmyHoffa I was going to say that sounded awesome

enderland

homegrown tomatoes are basically a different food

Robert Harvey

@JohanLarsson That's cool, but how do I pass in the actual string with the regex?

user41796

Get some nice full bodied dark bread and some mozzarella and that's a tasty sandwich

user15026

@JimmyHoffa No man. Toasted homemade sourdough from a local farmer, mayo, tomatoes, salt, pepper. :D

Robert Harvey

Gah. I really need to learn regex.

user41796

6:39 PM

Thrown on some brown mustard or maybe some dijon instead

user15026

@enderland So true.

Johan Larsson

@RobertHarvey What is the spec for the thing you are doing again?

Robert Harvey

In this particular case "Expected matches the first two characters of Actual".

Johan Larsson

and it must be regex?

Robert Harvey

It would seem that if I want to match the first two characters of actual, I can just pass in the first two characters of expected (assuming those two characters don't exist anywhere else in the string) as the regex.

user114359

6:42 PM

@RobertHarvey It sounds like you have to deal not only with regex, but the additional layer of the class you are using that performs the actual comparison. Is there no way you can do the comparison yourself? Do you have access to the source code that actually does the comparison?

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn you forgot the fried egg; then I'd be with you all the way

Robert Harvey

@Snowman Yes, but it's insulated from me by all of these definition tables.

Table-based development.

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn hey you were a nursey thing; aye? Know anything about a cardiac stress test?

Johan Larsson

expected.Contains(actual.Substring(2));

^ does not work for you?

Robert Harvey

That will match anywhere in the string.

It has to be a left match.

Anyway, it still means I have to write a comparator that takes n as a paramter.

user15026

6:44 PM

@JimmyHoffa What do you wanna know about it, specifically? (If I don't remember, my currently-a-nurse sister might have the info)

Robert Harvey

Not sure how to do that in this system.

user41796

There's a regex option to say match only at the beginning

Johan Larsson

Regex.IsMatch(expected, actual.Substring(2))

guess ^would be the regex way

user15026

@JimmyHoffa I'd likely do poached because I like excuses for poached

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey tactile development is preferable; or put another way: Someone needs a

Johan Larsson

6:45 PM

@RobertHarvey startswith

Robert Harvey

OK, but the actual regex (including the string I'm searching for) would be...

stringImSearchingFor

?

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn I don't know what poaching is, I cook mine in an apfelkuchen pan which gives more or less the effect I'm going for oft

Johan Larsson

expected.StartsWith(actual.Substring(2)); // prolly orders of magnitude better perf
Regex.IsMatch(expected, @"^" + actual.Substring(2));

Robert Harvey

10 mins ago, by Robert Harvey

        bool IResultComparer.Execute(string left, string right)
        {
            var regex = new Regex(right, RegexOptions.None);

            return left!= null && regex.IsMatch(left))
        }

I can't change this code, and all of the comparators seem to take the same two parameters.

user114359

@RobertHarvey I remember that now, that is simple enough. I just have a ton of different threads going through my brain now.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:47 PM

@AshleyNunn is not reaching the target heart rate indicative? How far from it I wonder?

user114359

If you want to see if a string starts with a substring using regex, do this: ^Stuff to match

Robert Harvey

So if left is "string I'm comparing with string", then right would be "^string"?

user114359

yes

Robert Harvey

Perfect.

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Simmer in water, so white is soft but solid and yolk is a runny mess inside :D

user114359

6:49 PM

^ is "start of string" then you add literals that do not have special meaning in regex

user15026

@JimmyHoffa That I'm not sure of, and it is going to depend on any comorbid conditions, etc.

user114359

Pretty much as long as you are only trying to match alphanumeric and spaces you are fine

user114359

Otherwise, you need to \escape them

Johan Larsson

 bool Execute(string left, string right)
{
    if (left == null)
    {
        return false;
    }
    //left.StartsWith(right.Substring(2));
    return Regex.IsMatch(left, @"^" + right.Substring(2)); // allocation fest
}

user15026

Like if they are "standard healthy person" targets and then they have conditions x y and z that already are affecting that, its going to be different.

Johan Larsson

6:50 PM

Throw some testcases at ^

Also do the null check before allocating imo

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn I know; was just curious if it's generally indicative, or if it takes some uncommon scenario or is never indicative. Google-fuing such is a pain and we won't get chance to sit with the doc for a while yet anyway. I presume it's indicative; though a trend may be more so, but my wife didn't even do the tread-mill and went straight to the drug-induced stress test so it probably doesn't even relate as that's liable to have a significantly different THR effect than the standard 220-age*85%

user114359

Could we please do something with this homework question?

user114359

-1

Q: What are the main advantages and disadvantages of LALR(1) over LR(1) parsing?

Most parser generators use LALR(1), not LR(1). What are the main advantages and disadvantages of LALR(1) over LR(1) parsing?

compiler comparison

Jimmy Hoffa

@AshleyNunn ah yeah; I achieve this by using the apfelkuchen pan, and turning the heat way up so it cooks the outside white so fast I can spoon it out before it cooks the yolk

though once or twice I got distracted and didn't get it out in time- and the yolk cooked through and literally burst up and out of the white because of the compression from the pan...nothing like hearing a pop and watching egg yolk shoot across your kitchen.

Johan Larsson

The Frying Pan

Sometimes hot, always heavy. (cooking.stackexchange.com)

3

Duga

6:59 PM

@user83178 If it's pseudo-code, and you are looking for ideas on the algorithm, perhaps Programmers.SE could help you. If you have a real, concrete example, then Code Review is the place to be. :) — EBrown 1 min ago

durron597

@Snowman @MichaelT @GlenH7 @gnat @Ixrec @RobertHarvey @enderland FYI I just created Programmers CV-Please

The Frying Pan

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