The Whiteboard

12:02 AM

@JimmyHoffa Could be handy for some things.

1:25 AM

@JimmyHoffa It's not an observer, it's a different approach. The main benefit, as you've already guessed, is that you have a central owner. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing, kinda depends on what you're building. My thingy there is just for illustration purposes, but I've already sneaked it in a pet project. Also calling it "Event Mediator" is a bit pompous (I'm trolling the CR crowd), it's a dump hook system.

Essentially it's a central registry of subjects. The subjects share a common interface, they have a name and a trigger. The mediator decides what subjects to trigger based on certain conditions (just the name in my dumbed down implementation), and pulls the trigger. That's all it does, everything else is up to each subject. If that's a violation of the SRP... I couldn't care less ;)

psr

@YannisRizos - What kind of feedback are you looking for?

Yannis Rizos

@psr It's code review, I'd welcome any kind of feedback ;) If you have an account on CR, go for it.

If you've found a design flaw, that would be awesome.

Jim G.

1:50 AM

1

Q: please tell me how to delete my P.SE account

I would like to delete only my P.SE account only, but I can't find the directions anywhere.

^^^ Interesting. Somebody just deleted my comment.

Yannis Rizos

@JimG. > Who just deleted themself??

That's unanswerable, the comment is obsolete.

Jim G.

Yeah. I wanted to know if we lost another @Pierre303.

It's unanswerable?

Yannis Rizos

Yeah, no way of knowing who it was after the deletion.

Jim G.

Oh OK.

Does anyone have an opinion about Jeff Atwood's latest adventure? Discourse.org?

Yannis Rizos

Unless of course you stumble upon one of their posts you've read in the past and remember who it was. Still, that's not really something that should be on Meta, when a user decides to have their account removed, we kinda have to respect that they don't want to be associated with the site anymore and stop talking about them.

Jim G.

1:54 AM

@YannisRizos: OK. Got it.

Yannis Rizos

I've played around with discourse but I really don't see the point.

Jim G.

If implemented correctly, Discourse.org seems like it could kill off some of the weaker *.SE sites.

But I'm not sure it is implemented correctly.

Yannis Rizos

I think the one thing that might differentiate it from a ton of similar services is its API.

Jim G.

@YannisRizos: I'm fascinated by the prospect of "forums done right". My current issue with Discourse.org is that it doesn't look half as impressive or as engaging as stackoverflow.com did when it originally launched.

It just seems very raw right now; and to be honest, given all of the venture capital that they've already accepted, I expected much more out of that group.

But perhaps they will rapidly iterate.

Yannis Rizos

Yeah, it's still a bit rough around the edges.

Jim G.

2:01 AM

Here's how raw it is: I tried to authenticate with my OpenID, and it wouldn't let me in.

Yannis Rizos

It's early beta, lots of bugs.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos psst

Does this make sense: Mediator has a list of objects who hold subscriptions (not just the list of callbacks) so that you can maintain the setting an object's mediator within the mediator (through property injection on the object it attaches to) and removal of it also there?

My main objection (other than the race conditions in the way you're using the callbacks) is that the mediator is known around a bunch of different various places, but there's no way to say Mediator.destroy() in a way that removes the references to it from all those places, so one of those places may still try firing something through it when it's got.

s/got/gone/l

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa EventfulTrait::detachEventMediator()

Jimmy Hoffa

that's on each individual object though

there's no way to remove all references to the mediator

if the mediator knew everyone who referenced him, he could detachEventMediator() on all of them if it wants to implode

Yannis Rizos

Why would that be useful?

Jimmy Hoffa

2:14 AM

It just feels...leaky that the references are strewn about without a central list of who's referencing what is essentially supposed to act like a global object

Dunno, just makes my spidey sense tingle. Nothing bad about it though, if you need to swap mediators out at some point you'll implement it then

@YannisRizos you do see the race conditions right? Or does PHP multithreading not behave like I would expect?

Yannis Rizos

Heh, bug on MSO (right now) allows you to see deleted posts on user profiles. Mod vision for everyone!

6

Q: I see deleted posts!

I just found out that I can see all my deleted answers on my profile page here on Meta. Excited about the change, I visited another user's profile page. I can see his deleted questions and answers as well: Is this a new feature or is it a bug? (Please let it be a feature.)

bug profile-page deleted-questions deleted-answers

@JimmyHoffa It's a bit leaky, I suppose, but it's not a big deal. Everything dies at the end of the script anyway.

Jimmy Hoffa

heh not used to thinking of things as "scripts", just attaching that word yeah I can see leakiness matters a good bit less

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Yes, you kinda have to think about this in a PHP way. There's no shared memory, objects created in one request, live for exactly that request.

Jimmy Hoffa

gotcha

You have more rep than me on codereview, lame

actually not surprising I guess, it seems PHP comprises a large portion of the CR crowd

@YannisRizos not a fan of how PHP closure's get variables enclosed if I understand correctly how you're using it, anytime you want to enclose a variable in a closure you have to specify it at the top of the closure?

Yannis Rizos

2:36 AM

@JimmyHoffa Yes. PHP's notion of scope is... eccentric.

...also I should be passing references instead of copies in my example code, but it's just for illustration purposes.

Deco

3:02 AM

@JimmyHoffa @YannisRizos is CR.SE a decent thing to get involved in?

I've never looked at it, but have referred some SO posts there

Yannis Rizos

@Deco It's... weird. For one, all questions are too localized.

Deco

@YannisRizos I assume they aren't all closed for that reason though? :P

Yannis Rizos

Heh, no. CR and Code Golf were (and I guess still are) experimental. I'm not seeing either graduating any time soon, but also I don't see any reason to close them.

CR especially has a few high reps that don't really participate in other SE sites. That's a good thing, the site has it's own crowd.

Deco

Yeah that's good - I might have to check it out later

Jimmy Hoffa

@Deco it's worth getting involved in if: you generally like reviewing code. Can be fun, but it's a small crowd and there's not a lot of posts there in my langs, lots of PHP/javascript though. Often times though people posting Qs are from people of such low skill as to not understand critiques you might often give

Deco

3:11 AM

That meta post I was drafting happened to be posted for me this morning anyway

@JimmyHoffa shudder... I don't do PHP :P

Although @YannisRizos did convince me yesterday to perhaps look at it again... Java and .NET are my passions though

Yannis Rizos

At some point I wanted to have "review my design" questions on Programmers - I was shot down on Meta (too localized).

Deco

Perhaps we could raise it on meta again? Sometimes looking at other peoples designs helps you out

Unless of course, that sorta thing already exists on CR

Yannis Rizos

It was asked again, and was shot down again ;)

Deco

Oh :<

Yannis Rizos

No CR is strictly for code.

Deco

3:13 AM

Code Golf might be interesting... I could put some ABAP answers in there just to throw people >:)

Yannis Rizos

I asked on their Meta if they would consider "review my design" questions and... they pointed me at Programmers ;)

Deco

Brilliant!

IMO design questions are a lot of fun to answer

Yannis Rizos

Yeah, but they are a bit useless to everyone but the asker.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos I think asking review my design questions on P.SE is actually really easy, you just have to structure the question with choices, and high level enough verbiage as to generalize the design to a conceptual purpose

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Sure, if you generalize it it would be perfectly on topic.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:17 AM

and designs should be general enough for it not to take much of a leap

I think the key people might miss is asking "Which of these choices" rather than "Is just this choice good"

"Is this good" becomes pollish

Yannis Rizos

0

Q: Review my class hierarchy

I have created a class hierarchy for an inventory system for a book/magazine. Here's the picture: Will it do? I know there's no magazine class yet but I was wondering if anyone could suggest a better idea.

uml class-design class-diagram

@JimmyHoffa This ^^^ is more what I have in mind as a "review my design" question.

Jimmy Hoffa

Yeah that belongs on CR.SE

sans the UML

though even with UML it would probably stand over there

CR is a small enough crowd they seem to stay super lax with standards

Yannis Rizos

Nope, CR didn't like it.

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah

If he put it in code they would have taken it you figure?

Yannis Rizos

Yes, probably.

11

Q: Should design questions be on-topic here?

Design questions are ones that deal with architecture, package layout, object hierarchies, etc., but do not necessarily include code. We already deal with this sort of question on a daily basis at programmers. While a certain amount of overlap is inevitable (and desirable, see this StackExchange...

discussion on-topic

Jimmy Hoffa

3:55 AM

I really dislike that guys gravatar, please delete your message so he'll stop staring at me

...or shouting at me..

Deco

lol i missed it :(

Stephen

4:17 AM

Hi guys.

Deco

/wave Hi

Stephen

Anyone here develop in javascript primarily?

Jimmy Hoffa

...I don't primarily but have I got a library for you!

lol

What's up @Stephen

I know some javascript ok

Stephen

haha.

:)

I was looking for developer input on a new lib I open sourced. Trying to see if it's a good idea.

Or, rather, if it might seem useful

github.com/zumba/middleman.js

Jimmy Hoffa

4:37 AM

@Stephen what's the purpose?

Yannis Rizos

@Stephen Hm... Overloading is useful, but also hacky and confusing. If you're hijacking Tony's code, you better be absolutely certain you know what you're doing.

Stephen

I got the idea looking at jQuery's $.ajaxSetup method. It lets you setup defaults for an ajax request that can be overwritten by the actual call, and I wanted something that would let you jump in after a call and change some settings.

Yannis Rizos

...and of course, couple of years in the future you'll look back at that code and have absolutely no idea what version of ThirdPartyLibrary.doSomethingCool you are using and where

Stephen

I plan to add a registery to Middleman that lets you easily inspect what was overloaded.

Also, I think I need better examples that don't show me "helping tony"

Because the lib could be used for a lot better reasons.

Jimmy Hoffa

I agree with @YannisRizos this looks like a dangerous-like-goto type thing

Yannis Rizos

4:42 AM

I can see the appeal. You just got to be extra careful and disciplined.

@JimmyHoffa I love goto ;)

Jimmy Hoffa

you're also a php developer

:P

Stephen

I also think I might add some internal checking that will emit a console log if you're trying to overload Javascript core objects like String or Array.

:)

The danger component is a confirmation. Thanks for that insight.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Stephen I mean, dangerous-like-goto, as in when you think it's a good idea, it's not; every time

It's a clever idea I can appreciate, but the key is that it isn't an override, it's hiding, totally different

Stephen

Prefiltering isn't dangerous, per se, though.

Jimmy Hoffa

That's not the dangerous part

As soon as you make it return a new object that's wrapped or give access to the wrapped object by a dictionary great, but as long as it's replacing the functionality actually on the lib you hand to it, it's hiding that functionality, that is making it inaccessible

that's the dangerous-like-goto part

Stephen

4:47 AM

Solid point.

I wish there was a way to alert the dev that things have been overloaded.

In general, I see lots of issues wrapping a String.prototype method, but way less issue wrapping an Underscore.js lib, for instance.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Stephen make them access the overload through middleMan.wraps[whatever]

like middleMan.wraps[_] where all of underscore lives with the few overloads that have been applied (and any new ones applied)

Stephen

Right, make them call a middleman method instead of the original method.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos hey look, I think I just suggested a mediator ;P

who's the GoF master now

Stephen

@JimmyHoffa The question really comes down to Monkey patching, and if you're okay with it, I think.

Thanks for the input, though! Really appriciate it.

Might update the lib to be less dangerous.

kaoD

5:33 AM

hi! I read a story some time ago about a computer that had skewed randonmess and produced random numbers always within 12 (or so) planes... can anybody remember the name of the computer or some tip? I'm having a hard time googling it

Sudhi

6:12 AM

@JimmyHoffa thanks @JimmyHoffa . My colleague is account/administration manager of our company. And as such he constantly deals with numbers and certain characteristic datasets. I thought MS Access would be suitable for his needs as it doesn't involve lot of coding in the traditional sense. I was not aware of dreamincode.net forums and other online resources. Thanks for pointing.

@JimmyHoffa My specific question was related to MS Access. I passed on MSDN links (getting started with MS Access etc. articles) to him and I will point him to the dreamincode.net forums for more help. If you know any specific/trusted/good links/URIs to learn MS Access, please let me know. Again, thanks for your help

Jimmy Hoffa

Wow... I really truly did not intend to help somebody end up in MS Access... forgive me, I knew not what I had done..

Sudhi

@JimmyHoffa hehe, MS Access is not that bad. I just want to help him get his work done efficiency and accuracy thats all

user55340

3:33 PM

@Sudhi MS Access is a pellet gun with no safety. It is enough of a tool that you can hurt yourself, and rarely set up correctly with the proper access... and frustrating for those who are familiar with "real" tools to use that they want to stay away from it when the business person (invariably) has a problem down the road.

user41796

@maple_shaft, @ThomasOwens, @YannisRizos - is there a way to find out which mod declined a flag so I can explain why it was flagged? There was some context behind the flag that the system didn't carry through.

user55340

In the mean time, when someone needs a real database tool that MS Access doesn’t scale to, the business person often has difficulty understanding why something better is needed (after all, MS Access has a check mark to all the features that is being asked for...).

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 VLQ?

user41796

@YannisRizos - yes.

user41796

It popped up in the /tools section as a serial closed question issue; so after reviewing, I flagged to agree that "yes, this is really low quality." However, I think the question had moved to closed by that time, which I wasn't aware of before flagging.

user41796

3:37 PM

I don't care about the "declined"; just wanted to make sure that the handling mod didn't think I was being a complete buffoon. Regular buffoon, yes. Complete, no. :-)

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Ok. First of all, that question doesn't qualify for VLQ.

VLQ == delete this disease before it kills us all!

If you can parse it, even barely, it's not VLQ.

user41796

@YannisRizos - agreed; more off-topic than anything else. However, I only had two options on the follow-up flag. VLQ or other. Should I have gone with "other" and added in that it was a good candidate for instant-close?

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 That's the weird part.

user41796

Nice def on VLQ; hadn't looked at it that way.

Yannis Rizos

The autogenerated flag should give you two options: agree/disagree.

user41796

3:40 PM

Yes, it wasn't worth typing much of a message about. I saw VLQ as meaning "this is crud and can't be salvaged."

user41796

Nope, it doesn't. I think the original flag I was agreeing with was actually a consecutive bad question flag. But the /tools follow-up doesn't provide an agree / disagree option. It's just a simplified version of the normal flag panel.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 No, I don't see an off topic flag. The flag was an auto-generated "consecutive closed questions" flag that pops up when a user had 3-4 questions closed in a short while.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT there's no reasoning with people who suggest using MS Access

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Or... Hm... Yes, there might have been an off topic flag that I can't see.

Thomas Owens

I think I declined that flag.

user41796

3:43 PM

@YannisRizos - no, you're right. I mistyped

user41796

it was a weird flag

Yannis Rizos

Off topic flags get cleared automatically when an off topic close vote is cast.

Thomas Owens

It wasn't a VLQ question, and given that flags go into the review queue for a honeypot, I've been more strict about declining flags.

Jimmy Hoffa

...reasoning people off of the access cliff is about as possible as reasoning them off the PHP cliff...

user41796

@ThomasOwens - if so, my apologies. Looks like there was a timing issue between my flagging to "agree" with the consecutive closed question flag

Thomas Owens

3:45 PM

I don't see all of that, and I don't know if I can. I just saw a question (which was edited at some point) and found that it wasn't VLQ.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Hm, you can't really agree with that flag, it's an auto generated flag, there's no equivalent user flag. In the future, just ignore it.

Thomas Owens

It may have been VLQ when the flag was cast, though.

user41796

That user definitely had a string of poor questions. I think the consecutive ... flag even linked to some of them, since I recall going through some of that users' deleted questions.

user41796

ironically, I was trying to make mod-life easier by agreeing and saying "yes, this ought to get closed pronto." I'm liking @YannisRizos's advice on ignore that particular flag in the future

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 Yes, it has three closed questions in the flag message. In any case, it's not a flag you can counter and it's silly that it appears for 10K users. Just ignore it next time.

Thomas Owens

3:48 PM

Perhaps report it's appearance on MSO?

It sounds like it probably shouldn't be visible.

Yannis Rizos

7

Q: Why are "consecutive closed questions" flags exposed to non-moderators?

The new flagged posts page is great, but I do wonder about the "Consecutive closed questions" comment that comes up, for example for this question: How to process credit card payments in ASP.net? There is the following comment (as reason for being flagged): Consecutive closed questions; stacko...

discussion bug flagging community-user

user41796

Interesting that the MSO Q's answer doesn't address whether non-mod 10k+ users should see that flag though. I'd vote "no, I shouldn't."

user41796

ChrisF's explanation for the flag is really good though.

user41796

user41796

@YannisRizos - that's typical of what I see when something pops up on /tools. I don't get a simple "agree" with option.

Yannis Rizos

3:56 PM

0

Q: Stop showing "consecutive closed questions" flag to 10K users

"consecutive closed questions" is an automatically generated flag that's raised when a user has... consecutive closed questions. The flag can only be actioned by moderators, there's no point in showing it to 10K+ users, as they can't do anything useful with it: Closing the question is not an op...

feature-request flags

user41796

I do have a close button available, so I could close for the same reason that the question was flagged.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 You couldn't close, the question was already closed.

The flag is only raised after the question is closed.

user41796

@YannisRizos - sorry, my last comment about having a close button was in reference to the NARQ flag that just came up and that I provided a screenshot of what I see with the "flag or disagree" button.

Yannis Rizos

@GlenH7 I need to get myself a 10K+ sock puppet, I have no idea what a 10K+ user sees :) (got elected with 8K, went straight to the mod flag interface).

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