The Whiteboard

7:02 PM

@JimmyHoffa I've started to notice that a lot of our 1 rep questions are from people that share IPs. I think a significant portion of the March question spike may be students facing their first assignments of the semester...

We've probably made it in a computer lab (or two).

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Aha! An explanation! I love it!

We'll see if that bears out, but if so that could make for an interesting long-term result if 5 years from now all of those folks are in industry and still plodding around in P.SE

user55340

One those "hmm... I wonder" things... what if we were able to associate an attribute of question quality, or difficulty of question, or perceived level of person asking the question with a question and then were able to plot that information over time.

Jimmy Hoffa

The last metric is altogether doable

that's just rep

look at average question-poster-rep over time

user55340

One can ask good basic level questions that get a high rep.

user55340

I was more thinking "Highschool" vs "early college" vs "late college" vs "jr. professional" vs "sr. professional"

Jimmy Hoffa

7:11 PM

Q's posted by users with reps of [300,30,1200,20,44...] in the month of X, average that

Eh.. I would say there's a definite barrier where user's won't reach particular rep levels without crossing some of the thresholds you mentioned

user20683

@MichaelT you'd need to take language and home culture into account as well. A great many of our bad questions come from ESL speakers.

Jimmy Hoffa

Though I would suspect it's mostly gradual with only 1 barrier really (highschool->jr professional really isn't that far to move, jr -> sr is however where I think you'd find a separator)

user20683

They have a reasonable question under layers of highly suspect verbage

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I know I'll learn more in the first 6 months then in all my years at school

user55340

The ESL aspect of it has several possible sources. One is that in school you get verbal lectures - these can be challenging for an ESL student to follow. And thus, after the lecture, they ask here (where written communication doesn't have a speed of comprehension issue).

Jimmy Hoffa

7:15 PM

@WorldEngineer and yet at that increased rate of learning it'll still take 10 years in industry to be a Sr.

give or take

user55340

It takes 10 years to be good at anything.

user55340

This has significant implications for how long Ground Hog day lasts.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT if you never programmed in industry, it would take more than 10 years

in industry your learning rate is significantly accelerated over that in academia (for most, there's some people who given very little information extrapolate tons accurately and therefore need minimal experience to have the same results as others with more experience)

user55340

> According to Stephen Tobolowsky, Ramis told him that the entire progress of Groundhog Day covered 10,000 years. "I always thought that there were nine days represented [in the film], and Danny Rubin, the writer, said that he felt something like 23 days were represented in the movie, [but they lasted] over 10,000 years."[4]

user20683

@JimmyHoffa CS programs from what I can tell don't do a great job prepping people outside theory.

user55340

7:18 PM

Nope, it doesn't... and to an extent, it can't. Outside theory, the world changes too fast.

user20683

@MichaelT yeah

Jimmy Hoffa

which is why java schools are bad news, they're trying to dip their toe into the real world

by the time those people graduate though java may no longer matter, and those engineers are screwed

user55340

Think of how fast we have to keep on top of spring 2.5 vs spring 3 and hibernate whatever... - picture having to change the syllabus ever time the framework changes... and keep up with the research that you (the professor) has to do.

user20683

mine teachs Java but the textbook is from 1999

user55340

There are other perils to Java schools... and Java (and theory) can be taught without having to go into the frameworks.

user20683

7:20 PM

I just think they should teach Lisp and C and call it a day.

user20683

maybe Python

user55340

The issue that I have with Java schools is they don't teach the reasons behind the implementations - why chose an ArrayList vs a LinkedList. What is a HashMap vs a TreeMap and how each is implemented.

user55340

And so we get people who use ArrayList and HashMap for everything.

user20683

you'd choose array list when you want constant lookups but linked when you need to frequently add things if I remember correctly because ArrayList periodically doubles in size

user55340

And then when they want a collection to be sorted, they get the keyset of the collection (HashMap), sort that (each time) and iterate over that... rather than using a TreeMap in the first place.

user20683

7:22 PM

though at some point you should just switch to a tree if that's the case

user20683

@MichaelT I'm still trying to figure out how to use Van Emde Boas Trees in a real world scenario

user55340

The thing is, people don't think about this because they haven't thought of the implementations - it wasn't taught to them in school. If you are doing C, you have to write them yourself and think about them.

user20683

@MichaelT they banned outside frameworks for the Software Engineering class

user20683

our lead programmer rolled a server from scratch

user55340

That was likely a good thing and an indication of a good java school that I doubt Joel would complain about.

user20683

7:24 PM

@MichaelT it's a proper CS program as it were

user20683

they are bringing back C++ as well

Jimmy Hoffa

Nice

user55340

The worst ones are the vocational leaning programming schools.

user20683

mostly so students will survive Parallel Computing and the networking class

Jimmy Hoffa

Though I agree with your initial suggestion, LISP and C is all you need. No uni even begins to teach OO correctly anyway so any time they try is wasted anyways

user55340

7:25 PM

Where its "here is how to use the framework of the day and write the xml for it... and you're out of school in a year and into the work force with no prep other than a framework that is a year old."

user20683

@JimmyHoffa they need to use Objective C to do it imo

Jimmy Hoffa

They can however do a find job of teaching FP as it falls in line with how they've been teaching math for years

user20683

or Smalltalk

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer trust me, you'll get a job writing OO code at some point and realize why those are both terrible ideas

user55340

Objective C would be an interesting approach to teaching OO. One starts with C, and then adds on small bits of OO on top of it slowly.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:25 PM

I like message passing OO, but it is absolutely nothing like the OO in industry

user55340

When learning C++, we started with struts and then went to classes and methods.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa yeah but it made me understand what inheritance really is and why multiple inheritance is tricky

user20683

I've tried to talk them into using C# but they are virulently anti MS

user55340

The flip side of the java school issue, is that while a CS department teaches theory, if one comes out of college only knowing lisp and C and get dumped into the industry... you would have a harder time interviewing.

Jimmy Hoffa

tons are, java's fine too though for all the OO stuff

@MichaelT I can see that, but then how well do fresh grads do on any OO questions in an interview right now anyway? Pretty piss poor likely

Probably all kinds of wrong-headed ideas where the guy who comes out with nothing but C and LISP training just says "Dunno, but I'm sure I can figure it out."

user20683

7:29 PM

@JimmyHoffa one idea I had for a code sample was to write Fizz Buzz in all the languages I have on my resume and in as many ways as I can think of

user55340

@JimmyHoffa fresh grads do poorly on all questions in an interview no matter if they learned Java, C++, or Lisp.

Jimmy Hoffa

All the more reason your argument is kind of void heh

user55340

@WorldEngineer Github it.

user20683

@MichaelT that's the plan

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer euler would be better

user20683

7:29 PM

@JimmyHoffa no

Jimmy Hoffa

haha, why no?

user55340

I've got a private Euler project on GitHub.

user20683

you aren't supposed to share Euler solutions

Jimmy Hoffa

oh

user20683

I want to live to that spirit

user55340

7:30 PM

(note the "private" part)

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer well fizzbuzz is pretty laughable, something a little more perhaps

user20683

@JimmyHoffa obviously

Jimmy Hoffa

...nobody look at my github then... (unless they want half-baked euler solutions that don't work anyway lol)

user55340

I'm slowly working on a rosetta code like site for a single problem that lets each language show its true ideals (not playing code golf)... the poker comparison problem seems to be a good choice.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT exactly what I was going to suggest

poker is classic

But it's a little much on the other end of the spectrum

user55340

7:32 PM

Moreso than classic, it also has a number of problems in it that each programing language can be used in its own ideal way.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa projecteuler.net/problem=54

Jimmy Hoffa

Maybe just a program that shuffles a deck and deals the hands but has no ruleset for evaluating a game

@MichaelT yeah, it has data modeling, statefulness, and algorithms which are the keys to most any program and languages often do a ton to address one or two of those but few try to address them all

user55340

My father and a professor (originally phd adviser and later colleague) worked on a program to deal specific bridge hands. Originally written in Fortran... later ported to Pascal.

user20683

I've got a project to implement a clone of Chiral

user20683

but it's not close to ready yet

user20683

7:35 PM

soon it will be githubed along with my version of Langton's Ant (because I like Cellular Automata) and a program that takes a random text file and tries to compile it to Piet (because I'm crazy)

user55340

Back to the euler on the resume... one could do have it hosted private (yes, it costs $) and then add the account of the person interviewing upon request to that repository.

user20683

@MichaelT I have a Kiln account I can use

user55340

I've got a github account... my private repositories are euler, an idle game I work on in my idle time, and my great idea for a bug tracker.

user55340

-1

Q: error message when unpacking MineCraft

I'm downloading MineCraft for the first time on a Mac OS 10.6. Keep getting error message: "File corrupted, do you want to move to trash" Has happened 5 straight times...Anyone have a suggestion? Many thanks, Ken

learning

user20683

@MichaelT on it

user55340

7:43 PM

I saw you get it.

user55340

Just one of those o_O moments.

user20683

it might be appropriate for Arqade except that it needs way more detail and isn't really a system question

user20683

it's an issue with the download itself not installation

user55340

If its on topic anywhere, its arcade... though I'm not sure they like support questions any more than we do.

user20683

@MichaelT in theory Ask Different as well but that's spurious at best

Jimmy Hoffa

7:58 PM

@MichaelT SuperUser to my eyes

How many sys admin scripts have been written to deal with downloading something necessary and handling the scenario where the download may be unstable

but terribly written

@MichaelT what kind of game is it? Zork 3!?!?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Mac OS 10.6, Ask Different would be better than SuperUser... but again, I suspect this is a support issue that is off topic everywhere.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa You've never seen/heard of MineCraft?(?!?!)

Jimmy Hoffa

No, I was referring to your game on github

I played minecraft. Pondered making it my first go at graphics programming since it's a gag people like to reimplement, but I just never have been able to care about graphics programming

It should interest me, but it really doesn't

Zork was originally written in a LISP. Who knew.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa so was Jak and Daxter oddly enough

Yannis Rizos

@JimG. The problem with NPR wasn't really questions like that. Yes, it's NC and should stay closed, but the real problem was that the more relaxed culture meant people were feeling comfortable enough to post crap like this:

Jimmy Hoffa

8:12 PM

Yeah, that definitely doesn't belong..

Yannis Rizos

And it might not look bad, but it has a +13 answer. Which means that a user got the privilege to downvote by suggesting a name for someone's cat.

Jimmy Hoffa

basically anywhere. Reddit I guess, but even there I think it would be downvoted (though I don't know reddit culture..)

user20683

@JimmyHoffa not on Reddit, it has a cat in it. Granted it's an ugly cat but it's still a cat

Jimmy Hoffa

Does reddit have a rule against cats? What some kind of allergen restriction, not allowed to ask about peanuts either?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa no, it'd get crazy upvotes due to cats

Jimmy Hoffa

8:15 PM

Learn something new every day, apparently reddit's in love with cats

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Cats are to Redditors what catnip is to cats.

user20683

8:34 PM

?

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Re that question that was cross posted on CR: It turns out that the flags were automatically dismissed. I did get the timestamps wrong and the user had crossposted before they flagged, but it wouldn't matter if they had done it right. Which is extremely counter productive, I'd hate newer users doing stuff right and getting ignored by something that's apparently a "feature".

34

Q: Don't auto dismiss custom flags on close

I understand auto-dismissing off-topic flags as helpful on close, since those become obsolete. But for custom flags that's rather annoying, since those are often used for an issue that goes beyond closing. In my case it's typically a migration or merge request. What's particularly bad about thi...

feature-request flagging closed-questions flags

Yannis Rizos

@WorldEngineer A chat message that's just --- creates a transcript separator. It's a good thing to do when you were the last one who talked in chat and you now want to talk about something else.

And it doesn't show up in the actual transcript, messages just get separated instead of bubbled together. Check for example the transcript here.

user20683

interesting

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Ahh... an idle game is a game that plays itself while you are idle and with minimal interaction. Progress quest is the early example of it.

Omega

Hey guys, what's the best online-programming-challenge-solving site you know? Like CoderByte, where you code with a language to solve a problem and earn points. I want to find a nice site to play on my free time =D

user55340

8:45 PM

@JimmyHoffa Btw, that as a sphynx cat, which has no hair, and is often sought after because it doesn't trigger allergies (multiple things, still might have some allergies... but not all of them).

user20683

@Omega Project Euler

user20683

@MichaelT They do, however, require daily baths or they start to leave oil stains.

user55340

@Omega I'll second the Euler.

user20683

Euler will occasionally break your brain

user20683

but it's worth it

user55340

8:47 PM

After problem 50 one's brain hurts... the first 50 are the "you should be able to do these"

user55340

Btw, this is actually an easy one - projecteuler.net/problem=315

Omega

Ok, thanks! I'll take a look at it

user55340

Omega

Huh, so it is about typing the answer and done? Not the prettiest interface ever, but heck, there are lots of problems here! :0

user55340

Yep. It doesn't matter how you did it. My father did two of the early ones completely with pen and paper.

user20683

8:51 PM

yeah I've done a few in my head

user55340

(looking... they were problems #1 and #6)

user55340

I did problem #15 in linux dc.

Omega

Is Euler the best there is?

user55340

Depends on how you define "best"

Omega

Looks really awesome, but dunno if there are prettier interfaces XD

@MichaelT: Lots of problems with a pretty interface :P

Sorry, I'm all about shiny buttons.

user55340

8:55 PM

Euler is well known and respected - showing someone that you wrote the code to 100 project Euler problems is something that would impress them.

user20683

Codecademy has points and the like but it's a learning site rather than a challenge site

Omega

Fair enough

user55340

When you dig into it, there are also badges, though not quite as visible.

user55340

As Easy As Pi
Solve problems 3, 14, 15, 92, 65, 35, 89, 79, 32, 38, and 46

user55340

On The Ball
Solve the most recent problem

user55340

8:57 PM

(that one is hard)

user20683

yeah the upper level problems are made of crazy

user20683

anyway, time to go to my ACM meeting

user55340

I was able to get the On the Ball for problem #381 - projecteuler.net/problem=381

Robert Harvey

9:17 PM

@YannisRizos: Aw, you're no fun.

I think we should answer all "Gorilla vs Shark" questions with a GoogleFight.

Yannis Rizos

@RobertHarvey I wasn't going to delete your comment at first, but the OP's response was less than enthusiastic and - in typical fashion - I just purged the whole thread.

Robert Harvey

Oh, I see.

user55340

Btw, we've got the related question answer count thing now.

Yannis Rizos

@RobertHarvey There was another comment after yours that might irked the OP a bit, or perhaps it was the closure he was responding too. Anyway, comments are too insignificant, if I sense trouble, I purge.

@MichaelT Crap, that's ugly.

Robert Harvey

I've been looking at new languages to study. On the list: Haskell, Javascript, C or C++ and some flavor of Scheme.

Yannis Rizos

9:22 PM

Time to write a userscript to tone it down / completely remove it.

Robert Harvey

Boo looks interesting too, as well as Nemerle (the "kitchen sink" of languages).

Yannis Rizos

@RobertHarvey You should write a Scheme interpreter in Haskell.

Robert Harvey

>_<

Lua was on the list, until I saw its performance profile. It's worse than Python.

Hey, I can learn Scheme in 48 hours. en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Write_Yourself_a_Scheme_in_48_Hours

Yannis Rizos

Yeap, that's what I had in mind. Assuming you're already comfortable with Lisp.

user55340

I'd lean to clojure as more practical than scheme.

Robert Harvey

9:26 PM

I've been learning Lisp/Scheme/Clojure five minutes at a time over the past year.

user55340

Also, glance at lighttable.com for clojure ide.

Yannis Rizos

@RobertHarvey PHP will soon get a baked in Lua interpreter, so learning Lua might be a great step towards your life long ambition of mastering PHP. ;P

Stack Exchange

Blog - Stack Exchange: Podcast #46 – The Podcast That Sounds Dirty But Isn’t

Alex Miller on March 27, 2013

Our guest this week (after she joins a bit late) is Zuly Gonzalez – Stack Exchange moderator and power user. As usual, we also have David Fullerton, Jay Hanlon, Joel Spolsky and (Fake) Producer Alex!

Things are a mess over here, not just because we have to remember to stop masticating long enough to talk about podcast things. We’re moving offices! The office is full of crates into which we have to pack all our stuff before we move.

The new office is going to be awesome. It has hexagonal offices, and we don’t remember if we’ve talked about this before. …

user55340

hexagonal offices?

Robert Harvey

Because real programmers need six walls to lean against, not four.

user55340

9:34 PM

But four is such a nice round number... its even 2^2. Six isn't nice.

user55340

Now, octagonal offices with a square between them... thats another story.

user55340

Though it would have to be on another story if one was putting it in a building... hexagons and octagons don't tile the story the same way.

user55340

(I wonder if anyone has ever done Cairo tiling for offices...)

user55340

Cairo pentagonal tiling

In geometry, the Cairo pentagonal tiling is a dual semiregular tiling of the Euclidean plane. It is given its name because several streets in Cairo are paved in this design. It is one of 14 known isohedral pentagon tilings. Conway calls it a 4-fold pentille. This tiling can be seen as the union of two flattened perpendicular hexagonal tilings. Each hexagon is divided into four pentagons. These are not regular pentagons: their sides are not equal, and their angles in sequence are 120°, 120°, 90°, 120°, 90°. Dual tiling It is the dual of the snub square tiling, made of two squares and th...

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Six is an awesome number. It's the number of sides of a cube, it's the first number in the collection of natural numbers with two factors, and if you double it, you get the first number with four possible factors (2, 3, 4, 6). If you double it again, you get a number with six possible factors (2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12).

Einsteins Grandson

9:40 PM

Anybody here?

Java gurus?

;-)

Robert Harvey

I know C# and a little Java.

I drink it for breakfast.

Shog9

I now know what the underscore does in Java, so I consider myself an expert.

Yannis Rizos

@Shog9 btw did you actually know that before that question showed up?

Robert Harvey

I guess I'm not an expert then. >_<

Shog9

@YannisRizos No. I would've assumed it, given it's special only by convention in C/C++... The difference now is, I almost care.

user55340

9:45 PM

@RobertHarvey Most awesome number - 2100010006

user55340

(its a positive number, that's a dash not a minus)

user55340

@EinsteinsGrandson so anyways... yes, there are people here who are familiar with Java at various levels of expertise.

Yannis Rizos

There was a time that I thought I knew Java. Now... I'm not so sure...

@CaptainGiraffe Yeah, but in this case the identifier is just the underscore. I've been coding in Java for... ever, and I had no idea that was legal. Well, I probably did back when I was learning the language, but that's 200 bottles of tequila ago. — Yannis 23 hours ago

user55340

@YannisRizos I still want to make a class pile of poo ... or use it as a prefix to all vendor code.

Einsteins Grandson

10:19 PM

BTW, when class A implements interface B and interface C at the same time.... and there are two methods with the same name in B and C.... When I now have a method with the same name in A... how will it be clear which method I am overriding? A method from B or method from C?

Or this situation is impossible?

I can't have 2 methods with the same name in 2 interfaces that are both implemented in 1 class ?

user55340

Does it matter? Should it matter?

user55340

Lets say I have an interface Square that defines a method "area()" and an interface Shape that defines a method "area". I've got an object that implements both. It just needs to implement area. It doesn't (shouldn't!) matter where the area was defined.

user55340

29

Q: Method name collision in interface implementation - Java

If I have two interfaces , both quite different in their purposes , but with same method signature , how do I make a class implement both without being forced to write a single method that serves for the both the interfaces and writing some convoluted logic in the method implementation that check...

java interface multiple-inheritance composition

user55340

5

A: Method name collision in interface implementation - Java

If you are encountering this problem, it is most likely because you are using inheritance where you should be using delegation. If you need to provide two different, albeit similar, interfaces for the same underlying model of data, then you should use a view to cheaply provide access to the data ...

Jimmy Hoffa

10:46 PM

@RobertHarvey I implemented a monadic state machine in C# just the other day; just demoed it to coworkers today, they loved it. It's just a total ripoff from Haskell and nobody who hadn't worked with haskell at least in a cursory level would have ever thought to put something together like this.

@RobertHarvey as if I haven't already encouraged you to learn haskell enough :)

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa Did you use yield return? Or is it something else entirely?

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey a monad is a context that can have actions executed against it in sequence, but giving you the ability to put some behavior known as a "monadic effect" between each of the actions you sequence. The effect I put in was a try/catch that caches the exception and halts the rest of the sequence

yield return wasn't a part of it

Robert Harvey

Sounds like a hack. :)

Is it a real error that it's catching, or just a side-effect of a side-effect?

Jimmy Hoffa

nah, it's nice, if you have something that may fail you can:

somethingThatMightFail.then(cacheTheResult).Otherwise(retrieveFromCache).then(updateUsers)

Yannis Rizos

Jan 31 at 18:40, by Yannis Rizos

I officially declare that monads aren't real structures, they are an elaborate hoax FP aficionados designed to make the rest of us feel dumb.

Jimmy Hoffa

10:51 PM

it executes each of those in a try/catch, and the otherwise will backtrack if there was a failure

Robert Harvey

I'd love to see the code. Is it on Github somewhere?

Jimmy Hoffa

Nah, this is actually a part of the product

But if you want to see the code, go learn haskell and read the Exception monad ;)

It's a straight transliteration of that from Haskell

well, almost.. I took some liberties

Robert Harvey

5

Q: Exception or Either monad in C#

I am trying to grok get a preliminary understanding of monads. I have a data layer call whose result I would like to return monadically either as a result eg no of rows updated/dataset etc, or an exception. I figure I need to use the Exception monad which I could see as a special case of the E...

c# monads

Isn't it interesting that the Functional folks always write such good answers?

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey I saw his implementation and I like a slightly different style but it's more or less the same

Robert Harvey

Yours is more of a Fluent Interface, no?

Jimmy Hoffa

10:57 PM

Moral of the story, if you learn Haskell you can come up with solutions like that too, as the dude who wrote that Q there illuminated, basically all the knowledge on that stuff resides in haskell and mostly only in haskell

@RobertHarvey yes. also I use more composition

the result in mine is a function, if you know javascript I did github a javascript version that you could imagine translating to C#:
https://github.com/JimmyHoffa/Machinad

Robert Harvey

Thanks!

user55340

11:28 PM

@JimmyHoffa The "understanding functional programming concepts makes for better designs in other languages" is one of the best reasons to learn functional. Perl's "@list = map {} sort {} map{} @list" is right out of lisp if one knows where to look.

Jimmy Hoffa

11:47 PM

@RobertHarvey also I had mentioned LYAH before and still suggest it as a comprehensive entry to Haskell, but there's this new "School of Haskell" at HTTP://www.fpcomplete.com which is considerably less time investment that @psr found effective

For getting moving. It has a built in Haskell evaluation in the tutorials pages

Transcript for