The Whiteboard

1:29 PM

It is disappointing that this was accepted as the answer. — Andres F. 5 mins ago

2:57 PM

it turned out not too disappointing after I figured that question managed to collect four value judgements in one title: "cryptic", "short", "still", "so common". No wonder it "...will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion"

Rachel

4:29 PM

@YannisRizos The new Quick Start guide for Programmers will likely make things much worse for this site unless something is done to clearly point out the site scope at the very beginning of it instead of over halfway down the page

0

A: We're rolling out a new "Quick Start" guide to help new users learn the basics

Could something be added near the top mentioning that each site has a specific scope defining what kinds of questions are allowed, and pointing out what that scope is? I was looking at the Programmers page and realized the site scope is very easy to miss for new users. I didn't see any mention...

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel You mean worse than the ~~current~~ old about page that starts by claiming that Programmers is part forum?

@Rachel Also see my comment in your answer there, I'm confused, isn't "Programmers is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. With your help, we're building a library of detailed answers to every question about software development." at the top of the page enough to communicate the site's scope?

Rachel

@YannisRizos As I said here, I think it's easy to assume text there is just part of the "header" area and ignore it (I know I did). Something in the actual content area specifying that the site does have a specific scope or focus, and pointing out what it is, would probably be a big help to new users

@YannisRizos Also unless I'm mistaken, we don't drive users to our /about page, however we will be driving them to our "New User" page

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel You're mistaken ;)

The page we are talking about is the about page, and it replaces the old about page with the forum - wiki - blah blah diagram.

New users were pointed at the old about page, the same will happen with the new one.

I'm not saying there's no room for improvement, there is, but it's vastly superior to the old one, the old one was damn confusing (the so version referred to reputation as "karma" for example).

Rachel

4:49 PM

@YannisRizos Hrrmmm I never knew new users were directed to the old /about page at all. I always thought they were directed to the FAQ, and have personally had problems finding the about page before since I have over 10k rep and the link doesn't show up for me anymore at the top

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel That's why you need a sock puppet.

Smelly Sock, Thessaloniki, Greece

1 1

user41796

5:26 PM

@Rachel - I see what you're saying with the description about Programmers blending into the header. I don't fully agree, but I understand your point. I also acknowledge my bias in looking at the site having seen it so many times. Hard to look at it as a newcomer. The solution may be to remove the <hr> between "We're a little bit different from other sites. Here's how: " and "Ask questions, get answers, no distractions"

Rachel

5:49 PM

@GlenH7 I'm very good at looking at things with "idiot-glasses" on :)

iCanLearn

6:57 PM

So, I started reading Code Complete today. In the first few chapters, there are a few things which kind of irritated me. First is that it pretends that only OO languages exist. Second is that it explains the difference between algorithms and heuristics in a kind of dumbed down and inprecise way... Heuristics ARE algorithms, just a different kind of algorithms than exact algorithms or approximation algorithms.

But that's not the real problem. The real problem are the concepts which I don't know about and which may be explained in the book in a way that's simpler to understand at first but too inaccurate and confusing in the long term. I'm not sure about the point of this rant, I guess I'm looking for a different perspective (or maybe confirmation of my fears).

psr

@iCanLearn - I wasn't that impressed with that book either. I think maybe people like it if they read it early in their career, because it's pretty comprehensive and has all those checklists, and addresses the "apparently I'm supposed to start producing professional software now" panic.

I didn't feel it offered actively bad advice, though on controversial topics I didn't always agree.

user20683

@iCanLearn @psr I think it's a good read for the lousy programmer. If you are a good programmer, then you're already doing most of that stuff as "common sense".

user20683

Still nice as a reinforcement, I consider it more of a reminder book than a "teacher" book

iCanLearn

7:19 PM

@psr @WorldEngineer Thanks. I guess I'll skim through it then and maybe read the chapters which seem interesting to me more carefully. I am pretty fresh, but I do read SO, Programmers SE, programming blogs etc., so I guess I'm not as clueless as an average fresher.

user20683

@iCanLearn it's very much like Essential Java, I don't think it's meant to be read straight through per se

user20683

as far as the lack of language support, remember that it was published in 2004

user20683

Ruby on Rails was completely new

user20683

Scala was totally new

user20683

Facebook didn't exist as such

user20683

7:23 PM

Haskell was still unknown more or less

user20683

Javascript wasn't really on the map again yet because Ajax was still obscure]

user20683

the list goes on

Yannis Rizos

@WorldEngineer 2004?

How did I manage to first read (but not understand) the book in 1994 then? ;P

user20683

@YannisRizos 1st edition

user20683

2nd was 2004

user20683

7:29 PM

considering what I bought it for, I consider it an excellent deal

user20683

Well, time to head to class.

Yannis Rizos

I missed the second edition when it was first published and only skimmed through it fairly recently (a year or two ago)... It's one of the more enjoyable books I've read, certainly an excellent deal.

gnat

7:54 PM

2

A: Must a programmer learn text editors like Emacs and Vim? How important are they?

Nowadays popularity of various kinds editor worship most likely comes from Pragmatic Programmer book, or, to be precise, from readers who mindlessly crammed Chapter 3 Basic Tools -> Power Editing -> One Editor but totally missed the key (pragmatic!) takeaway laid out in Preface chapter: Ther...

@iCanLearn Code Complete "recipes" are better to read with Pragmatic Programmers in mind, or, to be precise with their key quote...

> There are no easy answers. There is no such thing as a _best_ solution, be it a tool, a language, or an operating system. There can only be systems that are more appropriate in a particular set of circumstances.

This is where pragmatism comes in. You shouldn't be wedded to any particular technology, but have a broad enough background and experience base to allow you to choose good solutions in particular situations...

You adjust your approach to suit the current circumstances and environment. You judge the relative importance of all the factors affecting a project and use your experienc…

...meaning McConnell often lays out only one of the many possible ways to deal with stuff, picking one that to him appears to work better in more cases

If you keep in mind this, it'll likely to be easier to study

iCanLearn

@gnat: Thanks. I do agree with that quote, but I guess I should have it mind more often.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:16 PM

@iCanLearn when you say not only "OO" languages exist, what other language types are you thinking about off hand?

iCanLearn

@JimmyHoffa: Well, I was thinking about functional programming above all, but I've also been reading Stepanov's "Elements of Programming" lately, he dismisses OOP as a hoax and is all about generic programming / template metaprogramming / whatever. So that too.

That's "off hand", of course there are other paradigms too. I know, the majority of programmers probably don't need template metaprogramming, and functional programming isn't really mainstream (especially back then), but

user55340

@gnat It appears that that answer is gone now.

iCanLearn

it would have been nice if he just mentioned other possibilities. The problem is not that the book isn't about anything else than OO programming, it's that it pretends that those other things don't even exist. But that's just my impression after reading the first few chapters, I might be wrong.

gnat

8:47 PM

@MichaelT yeah, good to hear that.At some moment, it had "insufficient explanation" notice attached and was unaccepted. This kind of supports my "theory" that under 2K views, community is able to handle low quality answers :)

user55340

@gnat I wonder how much of this is a "not as much spare rep for downvotes" on programmers vs SO.

user55340

I'm trying to figure out how to word this to make it into a proper query that would have a meaningful interpretation. Downvote of answers per rep (for people who have casted a downvote in the last N days?)? Possibly grouped by total rep?

user55340

I'm trying to say that I am less likely to downvote an answer because I don't have as much rep as others. I know that when I had even less rep I was very hesitant to cast a downvote. Compare with ahem someone ( ;-) with nearly 10k rep and thousands of downvotes to his name.

user55340

I am amused by this comment (which kind of gets at my current downvote habits - approaching (slowly) the 3k boundry)

user55340

Will that behavior change when gnat clears the 10k reputation threshold? — GlenH7 Jan 10 at 17:11

gnat

9:02 PM

@MichaelT I thnk I am with you here. Despite **all of my bragging I feel pain every time I get -1 for DVing an answer. I fully understand that this is an "investment into site quality blah blah", but watching 5-10 rep going into the black hole of a regular hot garbage wave once or twice a week is still painful

@MichaelT here, we discuss not downvotes but whether deleted posts will be displayed to users above 10K :) I plan to continue DVing no matter how much it costs

@iCanLearn I just re-checked book preface, notes to Second Edition and "more info" chapter at the end, and it looks like your observation holds some ground; as opposed to Pragmatic Programmer (which is listed first at this chapter btw), there is indeed no explicit statement about exploring the options. Strange...

...but when I was reading this book, this didn't worry me much

...maybe because I just kept the no silver bullet axiom in my mind myself when reading it

ChrisF

9:54 PM

Anyone around?

-4

Q: Web programmer versus software programmer debate?

I think we all know where this is going ... is a web programmer a real programmer? Meaning that if I tell you I'm a "web designer" does that imply I'm a web programmer, or computer programmer? A person competent in javascript understands conditional based logic, structuring, data, etc. Would th...

programming-languages

Could do with some more community involvement.

gnat

10:18 PM

@ChrisF I took a look at "first question and I wonder would it go if..? 1) the title is changed to something like "Why could one be called a "professional programmer", as opposed to not?" and 2) two last sentences respectively to...

..."At this current standing, would I be labeled as a "professional programmer", or just an "amateur programmer"?

What draws the imaginary perceivable line between "not a professional yet" and "yes, a professional programmer" and why?

I can also try editing web-vs-software debate but that could take some time to figure the salvageable point in it

ChrisF

Go for it.

gnat

@ChrisF edited, revoked DV (need more time to figure if it is worth upvote though), voted reopen...

-3

Q: Why could one be called a "professional programmer", as opposed to not?

Is it simply a matter of being able to write and code a working program, somewhat? For example, I'm no C++ expert, but I do know how to write code and data, I know computer hardware beyond the elementary basics, and I do get the gist of the most of the basic procedures involved in what programmi...

terminology software-developer professionalism

ChrisF

Just checking for comments to clean up before reopening.

gnat

10:47 PM

4

A: Why are cryptic short identifiers still so common in low-level programming?

Zipf's Law You yourself can observe by looking at this very text that word length and frequency of usage are, in general, inversely related. Words that are used very frequently, like it, a, but, you, and and are very short, while words that are used less often like observe, comprehension, and ve...

guess my 10K will have to wait for a while. This answer deserves a bounty

Jimmy Hoffa

@iCanLearn I was just curious if you were one of those referring to procedural as the way things should have stayed who also claim things like OOP is a hoax. I'm a fan of FP myself, so when I hear people suggest procedural has it's place which is basically OOP with less abstractions I get the chills. Abstractions are the meat of programming, everything else is just filler.

user20683

@gnat on it

user20683

@dynamic qlblang.org

ChrisF

@gnat The question appears to be picking up close votes again. It may well be doomed.

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