The Whiteboard

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This trip will require you to ski 10.5-miles from Badger Pass to Glacier Point on intermediate rolling terrain while carrying a backpack with your gear at over 7,000 feet in elevation. We groom the road, but not every day, and the ski conditions vary with the weather. Hopefully the tracks will be perfect for your trip, but when the weather does not cooperate it can be icy or you may have to break trail. The average intermediate skier in good condition should allow 4 to 5 hours of skiing each way in good conditions.

user55340

I'll tell you, skiing at 7k feet for 10 miles with a significant bit of up and down is... not trivial for someone who was accustomed to sea level.

user55340

If I had to do it again, I'd probably snow shoe it the entire way instead.

user55340

Its more of a "I can do 10 miles" - but I'm not a fan of the "down hill with cliff on the side"

enderland

I got snow shoes two years ago and we have not even been able to go snowshoeing since then

this year was a bit better as we actually got snow, last year was just cold

user55340

For the 5(?) weekends prior to that I went to Royal Gorge in Tahoe to work on my altitude endurance.

user55340

12:21 AM

royalgorge.com/home

user55340

Largest cross country skip park in the US.

user55340

sugar3.sugarbowl.com/tahoe/178/site/graphics/royalgorge/pdfs/…

user55340

I stayed at Ice Lakes Lodge (now closed) which was at the spot where the Reindeer trail touches Serene Lakes.

user55340

yelp.com/biz/ice-lakes-lodge-soda-springs

enderland

sometime I want to take a sabbatical and just go do stuff like that

user55340

12:26 AM

When I was there, it was great - I was a pseudo-regular at the bar there (when you're there two weekends in a row, they get to know your name).

user55340

There was a night that I was a bit slow getting up there because of a storm... so I got there late. After check in was supposedly done. The front door had an envelope on it with my name. Opened it up, it had the room key. Went to the room, on the dresser was a glass of brandy.

enderland

@MichaelT I love places like that

user55340

At the bar heard stories from the trail groomers... about some of the crazy trails they did back in the day.

user55340

Things like one guy would just go and groom a trail... even if there wasn't one before.

user55340

He would occasionally take two other people with him to scout out a train track so the trail groomer could groom a trail across the tracks.

user55340

12:28 AM

(trail groomers move much slower than trains)

user55340

Another time he was going out in an area (remember, at night) where it was 'oh, this is a nice view'. Got a bit lost. Decided to step out of the cabin to see if he could get his bearings as to where he was. Went knee deep through some ice... he was grooming onto a frozen stream... that wasn't quite frozen.

enderland

yikes

user55340

Ahh... so that's where they've extended it... ok... (looking at the map and getting my bearings too...). They went out to Sugar Bowl (down hill) which has a lodge.

user55340

My typical route when I was there was Reindeer to Big Ben, to Summit (lunch) and then out on Yuba, or Emigrant or Wells Fargo out to the Stage Coach and back along Palisade or similar to hook back into Reindeer. I do recall doing Switchback once...

Duga

The programmers.stackexchange.com could be a better fit, but this may be too broad there, too. — Gassa 18 secs ago

user55340

12:36 AM

Anyways... it was a good time there. I enjoyed skiing in that park and staying there.

user55340

0

Q: how to make code more readable that uses containers

Often I find myself reading or writing code that uses containers, usually maps and pairs and find the code becomes hard to read, with code like it -> second.second.first Etc What guidelines can be used to make the code easier to understand ?

c++

user55340

sigh

Aaron Hall

what's the word for incompetence, but on purpose?

user55340

@AaronHall dereliction?

enderland

@AaronHall management?

@AaronHall I think normally "willful incompetence" or something like that

Aaron Hall

12:39 AM

So is it the heights of willful incompetence or the depths of willful incompetence?

I think depths...

Peter Scott

It could both be characterised as excelling in a character defect or failing in a character virtue.

Aaron Hall

I'm looking for a handy retort to a comment on an answer of mine that does a performance analysis - the comment alludes to Knuth's statement that "premature optimization is the root of all evil" c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrematureOptimization

user55340

@AaronHall Standard retort is the full quote:

user55340

> Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%."

Aaron Hall

extremum

user55340

12:50 AM

Also, if you aren't going out of your way to write it "premature optimized" but rather writing idiomatic code and paying attention to the static analysis warnings that lint kicks up... thats just good coding practice.

MetaFight

Fine, you program in your fancy ivory tower. I live in the real world. — ekolis 11 hours ago

It's not that fancy.

enderland

@MetaFight you monster

user55340

@MetaFight has 2x 20k delete votes on it already.

MetaFight

@MichaelT not surprised.

I'm trying to ignore an annoying conversation happening in the (physical) room I'm currently in. This is helping nicely:

Dream Theater - The Dance Of Eternity

►

Peter Scott

Does programming in the "real-world" mean "don't think, just write; some of it's bound to stick"? If so, the ivory tower is probably better, at least it keeps one's feet above the proverbial.

Ampt

12:58 AM

Programming in the real world means that you don't always have the budget to build an ivory tower, so this stack of cardboard boxes is going to have to do, oh, and it needs to stay up 99.999999% of the time for the next 16 years for legal reasons.

It's less about ignoring high level theories and more about working around the ridiculous constraints provided to you

Peter Scott

True that you have to meet the requirements given to you (and these might be hopelessly untenable)

Doesn't really excuse willful neglect though

user55340

For complex breakpoints... just put it in an if statement, put a print statement in the block and then breakpoint that.

Ampt

The problem is that while ingenious solutions often are created in the "real world", they are so specific that they can't ever hoped to be broadened to the rest of software in the same way that a new sorting algorithm might

@PeterScott could you link me what you're talking about?

You say willful neglect, I say the previous dev abandoned it because he found a new employer who has 401k matching

but without context, who knows

Peter Scott

@Ampt programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/310969/…

user55340

.titanic {
   float: none;
}

Ampt

1:01 AM

@PeterScott eh, he's being bitter because we pointed out a code smell

anyone who tries harder than you at maintaining clean code works in an ivory tower, anyone who doesn't care as much as you is a friggin wanna-be

Aaron Hall

Yes and purposefully choosing the known problematic/demonstrably less performant over idiomatic is the extremum of wilful incompetence. Knuth's entire quote: "Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%." — Aaron Hall 8 mins ago

Ampt

welcome to the world and everyone's perception of everyone else!

enderland

oh come on, obviously :P

Ampt

ok, I can sleep easy tonight

yikes

enderland

but

I love what I do now, so meh :)

Ampt

1:05 AM

thats a dicey proposition, but gotta factor in that happiness factor too, right?

get out of my head bodyless yellow face!

enderland

yeah. I'll take doing a job I love for a nominal pay cut vs being bored out of my mind and unengaged

Ampt

I need to find a new job with better pay - I feel undervalued currently

user55340

@Ampt join the public sector.

Aaron Hall

Is that to cure how he used to feel?

Peter Scott

@MichaelT History in code, nice.

Aaron Hall

1:07 AM

What chance does a blue sock have in a civil service exam, anyways?

user55340

@AaronHall Wisconsin... no more exams come July.

Aaron Hall

How egalitarian.

user55340

nbc15.com/home/headlines/…

Peter Scott

class Hindenberg {
private flying=true;
public ignite() { this.flying=false; }
}

user55340

> The changes include eliminating job applicant exams, centralizing hiring decisions within the governor's administration, and tossing layoff protections for more senior workers. The bill also defines what amounts to just cause for discipline and lists infractions that would result in immediate firing.

Aaron Hall

1:10 AM

Bernie says "We're going to increase the block size, and make more of them. Everyone should be able to mine a block."

Peter Scott

You can probably just close this now; if he was going to derive any illumination from the answer then he probably would have done so when he first read it. programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/311141/…

Aaron Hall

Well I think it's funny.

"centralizing hiring decisions within the governor's administration" - more patronage? To the victor goes the spoils. Think government wasn't crooked before?

Robert Harvey

1:26 AM

@MetaFight Dense.

Pretty good music, though. They're considered Prog, I suppose?

God. So much compression.

MetaFight

1:43 AM

@RobertHarvey I always used to like calling them "prog metal" but nobody else seemed to agree. Maybe that was just my circle of friends though.

I went to see them live and it wasn't much fun. It was just too much of everything. That album seems to strike a nice balance though.

Peter Scott

What would you suggest I remove or change? — Spud91 35 secs ago

In the giving a man a fish / teaching how to fish paradigm... I appear to be on the wrong side.

Robert Harvey

3:54 AM

There were some fairly insightful comments here that a moderator just unceremoniously dumped. — Robert Harvey 6 hours ago

Robert Harvey

5:27 AM

0

A: Any ideas why my question about programmatically finding details for a "certificate" object was closed?

Since some people seem to be conflating "What have you tried" with "Too Broad," some review might be in order. Too Broad is useful for two categories of questions: Questions which require a book (or the better part of a book chapter) to answer, and Questions that are polls, recommendations or ...

camilo.forero

6:34 AM

Good night. I hope there is someone around here this late at night?

If not I guess I will write what I have to write and hope for something tomorrow. I have a question related to leading a development team and it doesn't seem to be good enough to post on the main site so I will post it here (and if in the end it is not such a bad fit then please let me know, and thanks!)

I've coded alone for the past two years now, and so far so good. I have a year's experience using Django, which is also the framework I am using for my latest project. The problem: Next week there will be two more coders in my team. But I have no experience whatsoever leading a development team, and no mentor who does, and I am unsure where to begin. So the first one is rather straightforward: Is there a book or blog post or something that would give me something to get started on that...

And the second one is much more subjective: I have already written some code, which I see as "my" code, and I find myself unwilling to trust others to build on it and have good results. Especially because they don't know Django yet, so they might screw up. So any good heartfelt advice to help me get over that? Thanks!

Robert Harvey

6:50 AM

What makes you think you will be leading the devleopment team, having just one year of Django experience?

camilo.forero

Oh, I volunteer in a relatively small ONG (as they do) so we just take the best we can get and work with it :)

Robert Harvey

There are many blog posts on many topics, including leadership. Start with the first.

As to code being "your" code, most software of any significance is written by teams nowadays. Get used to it.

camilo.forero

I already have experience with leading teams in general. Leading a development team is what still stumps me. I know there are specific ways (Agile comes to mind) but they are too formal and I am looking for more general advice. I haven't been part of a development team either with a leader, so there are no role models or prior experience to build upon

Robert Harvey

Good questions are specific enough to be answerable. What is your specific question?

camilo.forero

I am looking for a good blog post or even a book that will give me good, general pointers on how to lead a development team. I know I can google it but I assume people here are more discerning than google on what is good and what is not

Robert Harvey

7:05 AM

I am discerning, but only because I take the time to evaluate what I find on the Internet and determine its suitability for my needs.

What I mean by specific is, you said that you already have leadership skills, but then you say you need guidance. So what specific kind of guidance do you need? Don't say "guidance in leadership skills;" you already said you have those.

camilo.forero

Ok, I think I see what you mean, thank you. So there are two specifics in my head

1) 1 year may not be that much but is still better than 0, and there is already an existing codebase. And the problem of getting new programmers up to date with a new technology and existing code so they can be productive must be a very common one, and has probably been solved well. There must be pointers, best practices. I'd like to know where to find them

2) no longer relevant, managed to put it into 1)

Robert Harvey

Ah, so your question is "How do I get new programmers up to date with an existing code base?"

camilo.forero

and technology, yes. Sorry for overextending

Robert Harvey

The information that I always find lacking in code bases that I encounter is "how do all the parts work together? How do these classes relate to each other. What is the structure and organization of the code, and why is it organized that way? What does the data flow look like? That sort of thing.

Most programmers worth their salt already know how to read code, so it's easy enough to know what a class does. It's harder to know what a class does in relation to all the other classes in a project.

A pattern language like the GOF helps, to a degree. Some codebases are slavish about such patterns, so if you know them, you already know the codebase, somewhat.

A fundamental architecture makes a difference. If I know it's MVC, I already know where to look.

camilo.forero

7:24 AM

That gives me several ideas, it's a good thing Django has a very specific pattern and I already have UMLs to explain the project as a whole.

Thank you Robert!

Duga

8:19 AM

Your question is too broad and subjective for Stack Overflow. Please consult the help center for guidance on asking questions on this site. You may find you question is more suitable for Programmers Stack Exchange. — McMath just now

Duga

9:06 AM

@kshitijsingh I think this post should be better at programmers.se — Garf365 21 secs ago

Duga

10:37 AM

This appears to be a homework question. Read this open letter on Programmers.SE and understand that this is not a code writing service. Also, have a look at this to help you in the future. — Jan Greve 26 secs ago

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