The Whiteboard

12:44 AM

@MichaelT Rough man. I just don't have the mental fortitude to stand those places. If I absolutely needed a job, and worked in a place like that, I would lose it anyway; I just literally don't have the ability to put up with it. Sucks, my last job was terrible; 6 months there and my wife suffered for it the entire time because it makes me crazy. I don't know your situation but if you were willing to move I'd be happy to pass you along somewhere if you wanted, though presuming you're settled

user20683

1:33 AM

@Dynamic Why is that an issue? Of course someone's done it before unless it's cutting edge research.

user20683

pick something and do it. Use the time honored nerd method to choose if need be.

user20683

Roll some dice.

user20683

code up a dice rolling program if you feel extra nerdy

user55340

1:55 AM

@JimmyHoffa Thank you. I've got a house that I've put some work into (moving is even more of a pain than interviewing). I do have some contacts about if I need them (the first one's I'd tap are my old director and manager - I used to work at Network Appliance and they've moved up a bit from director and manager...) - it was under them I was given the latitude to work on neat things (that lead to that patent).

user55340

And I've already heard back from HR at the company I applied to, and need to figure out a time for an interview (I don't have outlook on my phone so I can't see my meeting schedule for next week and I'd rather not force those to get to be rescheduled). The one that I applied for is a GIS company that turns out to be local - might see me get active on that SE if I get it.

user20683

@MichaelT @JimmyHoffa sebastiansylvan.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/…

user20683

thoughts on this thing?

user55340

Though, given my hobbies... you have no idea how tempting it would be to get a job in the mountain west...

user55340

(and as an aside, one of my co-workers used to have a job as a snow plow driver in Aspen... his uncle owns the UPS store in Glenwood Springs, his sister is a ski bum/instructor in Aspen...)

user55340

2:04 AM

@WorldEngineer reading...

user55340

Poke around store.shagiephoto.com and you will see that I kind of like the mountains.

user55340

@WorldEngineer Rather opinionated (butt hen, whats a good blog post if not opinionated). I disagree with it - that I don't think anything is a deal breaker, and certainly not dynamic typing. Its great to know the intricacies of c++, but if that is the only tool in your toolbox you are missing out on a lot.

user20683

@MichaelT that's what I figured

user20683

and to be fair, there's a reason that Lisp remains a tool of the very best

user55340

There are three times (as in how long...) when programming. And its a trade off. There is the time it takes to develop code, the time it takes to run it, and the time it takes to maintain it.

user20683

2:11 AM

all of which can be fouled up by morons regardless of the languages used.

user55340

C++ can be very fast, and if done right (ha! You can write awful code in any language) it can have some maintainable features. That said, one could just as easily say that a preprocessor is a deal breaker.

user20683

I was never fond of them

user55340

The speed I write perl astonishes my co-workers. It was funny, one guy had the idea and needed it implemented. So I sat down with him, pulled up vim (he my hands never left the keyboard after that) and just started writing what he described. We got about 200-300 lines of code written rather quickly, tested in the next hour to find the bugs and its done. The same code would have taken much longer in any other language. We were done in a few hours what he thought would take a week.

user55340

Why? I don't have to worry about types or "great windows support" - I have the code in my head and I write it.

user20683

yeah

user20683

2:15 AM

I need to get to that point

user20683

though I can do pretty well in python

user20683

I had a horribly obnoxious classmate who was very into statically typed languages.

user55340

The code was fast to write, it had acceptable performance (opening up .zip files, comparing a file, computing md5 checksums and moving files around - not number crunching), and is rather straight forward in its design.

user20683

was always ranting about javascript

user20683

loved Ada

user55340

2:17 AM

I'm glad he works for Lockheed now... right?

user20683

no idea

user20683

I don't keep in touch

user55340

Its the only place I can think of off the top of my head that has ada coders.

user20683

Boeing I think might too

user55340

Fair 'nuff... its more the "you are limited to the military contractor jobs if you insist on language purity and decide ada is the right one"

user20683

2:19 AM

yeah

user20683

I don't tend to care what language I have to use

user20683

people are like "what is your favorite OS?" and I'm like "They all kind of suck but I'll work with whatever"

user55340

linuxmafia.com/cabal/os-suck.html

user20683

youngins: "Java sucks!!!"

user55340

Back in my sysadmin days, I was active on alt.sysadmin.recovery - those names at the bottom bring back some nostalgia.

user20683

2:21 AM

me: java doesn't suck, you just don't want to have to wear a tie to work. Get a bow tie and an english cut suit, you'll be fine

user20683

or a bolo tie and a cowboy hat and go to Texas

user20683

or better yet wear a cravate

user55340

(Looking through my old photos... here's a photo for the day which isn't quite over...)

user55340

user55340

2:42 AM

Ok, pulled up Aperture... haven't done too much with that for awhile... But yea, I kind of like the mountains...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa that last one is the Maroon Bells, though it was overcast while I had the window of being there and fall colors... so they aren't that maroon.

4:58 AM

@MichaelT This is exactly how I feel about C#; it's just how I think and I translating thoughts-to-code is nought but a typing exercise anymore. I think this is the way anytime you truly know a language

@MichaelT Nice, I need to get around the mountains more myself, I've been all over everything within spitting distance of Denver, need to start planning trips to see stuff like that further out. So hard when with no plans I can always shoot an hour up and be on any of countless trails, the motivation to plan becomes limited heh

@MichaelT I have always hated the concept of preprocessors, and it's easily one of the most annoying things whenever I try reading any C/C++ code how effing much those people use it. Though perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, I'm quite fine with lisp macros, but I think that might be because they're in the same language where other preprocessor languages are a separate language.. either way being picky about languages is well and good, but when it comes to task A, one should never throw away

the best known language for task A no matter what it's pain points are

right tool for the job rule trumps all others. So long as you abide that rule, be as nitpicky as you want. I mostly agree with the guy, but the dynamic thing is the most meh part to me, I think that's more a gripe of experience. Being used to data modeling LISP annoys me in that I don't get to model my objects when thinking about how to do stuff because, surprise surprise, it doesn't have data types. Not really. But I'm not stupid; I know that annoyance is purely based on my overexperience in C#

so it is for dynamic typing, he only gripes because he's used to static typing and not being able to create a strong static model is an annoyance when you're used to it.

@MichaelT Awesome mountains are something to behold, I went to Peru a few years back and hiked the Andes, they turned my head around as growing up here loving the mountains then seeing the Andes put the Rockies to shame, to behold something of a size you can't even comprehend, and that's likely what some folks think when they travel here. So yeah, mountains are pretty spectacular.

I hear it's hard to get good photos out here though because the ridiculous brightness of the sun; I've heard professional landscape photographers always need these tinting window things to stop the picture from being totally washed out here

user55340

1:51 PM

@JimmyHoffa it's a graduated neutral density filter. The best brand is Singh-Ray. I have a set of them.

2:11 PM

yeah that thing heh, you would love it here I'm sure given that hobby, I've pondered picking that up but it's too expensive for my tight-wad blood, much though I love hiking, if you want something photogenic, next time you're out here have a hike to hanging lake, it's a short ~45 minute hike straight up to a lake on a cliff that's just a cistern for a small waterfall down the cliff thus the name 'hanging lake'

though Wisconsin is as well I imagine got plenty of gorgeous outdoors places

2:38 PM

How do you suppose you pronounce piet? like piety? pie-eht? peet? pite?

thorsten müller

@JimmyHoffa piet as in the name Piet?

Esoteric programming language

An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a programming language designed to test the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, or as a joke. The use of ' distinguishes these languages from programming languages that working developers use to write software. Usually, an esolang's creators do not intend the language to be used for mainstream programming, although some esoteric features, such as visuospatial syntax, have inspired practical applications in the arts. Such languages are often popular among hackers and hobbyists. ...

Piet was named after the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian

@thorstenmüller So yeah, I guess the name piet

thorsten müller

Yes, then it's peet like Peter without the -er

ah ok

thorsten müller

the ee maybe slightly stretched

Thomas Owens

2:52 PM

I've been pronouncing it wrong. I thought it was more like the name Piotr.

@ThomasOwens I've been imagining it as pie-eht, if I had looked previously and seen it was a name I suppose I would have guessed it was a foreign variant on peter and pronounced it differently

3:09 PM

I suppose that's an inaccurate statement, peter is likely a foreign variant on piet which is a foreign variant on petra..

user55340

When I get home, I can upload the photo of "nah, not doing that in the rain" when I was in gleenwood canyon. I did go to rifle falls.

hah yeah, I wouldn't suggest it in the rain, it's not a long trail but it's a lot of vertical

Did you spend any time in the springs while you were there? I love glenwood springs, that's a locals favorite for a long weekend

Q: Is it ethical to read programming books on the clock?

3:47 PM

I think this question is going to be a very hot...

6

I have an issue that hasn't ever surfaced as a problem, but it's a question that's been bugging me internally a little bit for the last several years. I've worked at a few different places where they hadn't given me explicit permission to read programming books on the clock, but I've done it any...

and due to braindead bug in collider formula I expect it to run as usual,...

collecting hordes of hotness lemmings, ...

43

Q: Lots of not-always-useful but well-intentioned answers

In episode 42 of the Stack Exchange podcast Joel Spolsky mentioned something along the lines that some sites (for example, Travel Answers) suffer a little from questions that don't always get useful answers - even when someone has good intentions. So, for example, someone asks a question about g...

discussion stackexchange podcast answer-quality community-standards

...and quickly getting CW because everyone will be willing to share their "unique" opinion on this

...and every answer no matter how senseless will only add up to fake hotness score...

@gnat Iduno, I think it's a good question and that may be why; but at the same time you're right, there are two possible answers to the question and it will probably get a ton

"After the fire settled, what is left for future visitors of the question looks like a wasteland of low quality garbage..."

gee how I hate that bug

haha

@gnat a firebug? :)

Q: How are operators organized in memory

it has trashed so many good questions before and is going to trash and trash

@JimmyHoffa sort of

@JimmyHoffa yes that's a good question, this is what makes me sad knowing how it will probably end up and especially why it will end up so

user55340

4:12 PM

@jimmyhoffa more than I expected. I had a Honda civic hybrid, the ima battery died on me in snowmass. No good acceleration... Good thing that glenwood is all down hill from snowmass. Ultimately bought a new car there.

Karl Bielefeldt

Could a mod please check where all my referrals came from for

2

How are operators organized/saved in the memory in context of a programming language. Are they procedures/functions saved somewhere and compilers just manipulate things to call these procs whenever the operators are used in the program?

programming-languages compilers compiler

Not that I'm complaining, but I got a completely undeserved publicist badge for it.

4:29 PM

@MichaelT heh there's a solution at least.. my wife's old prius had a shit of a time getting up there

user55340

4:40 PM

I got an insight. Got the civic fixed (2 weeks to get the part - a $2k battery isn't standard stock), and then my parents took the train out, got the car and drove it back.

user55340

The civic, manual stick, once you drain the assist battery has almost no acceleration, and going up a mountain can't easily get the torque to do too much.

user55340

The insight is a CV transmission and can more easily get the mountain climbing torque. Furthermore, the civic was calibrated for sea level, while the insight was for mountains. I had to get a tune up to recalibrate when I got to Wisconsin.

You know, I never thought about that, but my wife bought her Prius in Alabama, maybe I should have had them do some jiggering to get the correct fuel air mixture for up here

Q: Is there any analytics information that moderators can access for individual questions?

5:53 PM

@KarlBielefeldt Unfortunately, we can't.

50

There are a number of questions on Programmers' that seem to be getting a lot of traffic: Do I need to go to a big-name university? How to be a zero-bug programmer? for example. I'm curious as to why these questions are getting lots of views, while others aren't. So I'd like to know if anyone...

feature-request questions moderator-tools analytics

6:12 PM

SubString or Substring?

@JimmyHoffa subString.

PHP really has rotted your brain hasn't it?

6:32 PM

@JimmyHoffa Tequila did that years before I met PHP.

7:05 PM

@YannisRizos Is tequila a greek cultural thing or is that just you?

much though the greeks drink and english as well, I know you didn't bring that back from england

@JimmyHoffa Drinking (from a very early age) is a Greek cultural thing (wine producing country and all that). Tequila happens to be my prefered poison.

Gotcha

Got my first taste of ouzo at age 6.

..and vomitted profusely; because ouzo is gross :P

Didn't vomit (or at least I don't remember it if I did), but yeah, ouzo isn't really my cup of tea. Conversely, neither is tea.

7:10 PM

I don't know how ouzo is anyone's cup of tea. yech. It's just clear jager to the best that my taste buds can divine

Stay away from tsipouro. It's ouzo on steroids.

8:00 PM

@gnat Yeah, it's collecting an answer pile now... that does stink.

@JimmyHoffa yeah I just flagged asking to protect the question, referring to what we just discussed

@gnat I wonder if I should decline that flag to encourage you to get to 15K rep and be able to protect questions on your own...

Q: Trial run of modified "hotness formula" for Programmers questions

9:22 PM

@YannisRizos You know, if it was "from outside", if high collider score was caused by some high number of views from outside reference, I wouldn't mind doing this janitorial stuff, discussing it in chat, voting, editing, flagging, whatever. If it became CW for getting too many low quality answers, I wouldn't worry much...

...We can't control outside stuff, we can only manually adjust for it, learn to live with it. If it was so, it would be fine. But it ain't so. All this crap is only a result of collider bug. It's just a mistake in formula that scores a question with 2 good answers as if it has 5-6...

...It is very disappointing to see that SE team doesn't give a shit about this. They don't even bother to try corrected formula on Programming questions. That... hurts

7

Could we please make a trial run of modified "hotness formula" for Programmers questions? Modification details are described in this MSO post as follows: As far as I can tell, substantial part of Qanswers in current formula is fake. (log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascor...

feature-request answer-quality hot-questions

answer scores: +25, +14, -1, -1, -1 and one deleted

all -1 answers contribute +5 to question score, how freaking fair

how freaking smart

> the sum(Ascores) are now included -- one assumes if there are lots of answers, there will be a lot more voting on the answers, too

yeah sure

-1's are a lot more voting, indicate hotness, who would think otherwise

9:46 PM

@gnat Easy solution: Annoy @shog9.

@YannisRizos did that already, didn't help :)

You're super-annoying but I love you anyway, @gnat. — Shog9 May 16 at 18:07

though I got a pretty decent review of my feature request along the way...

Success and failure criteria, @gnat. How do we judge the results of the test? You might also want to try your hand at a sede query that demonstrates your changes at work (vs what's there now) - that's what I'd do before trying to get any changes live anyway. Finally, I should note that we're in the middle of a fair bit of work on improving the "interesting" list right now, that (depending on the outcome) end up making this irrelevant anyway. — Shog9 May 16 at 20:38

made me do a couple updates to what I considered perfectly good before :)

@gnat Well, perhaps it's time to admit defeat. Lots of sensible feature requests never got the attention they deserved, it's not something to lose sleep over.

@gnat Although this is promising:

> Finally, I should note that we're in the middle of a fair bit of work on improving the "interesting" list right now, that (depending on the outcome) end up making this irrelevant anyway.

@YannisRizos well it is just a recurring pain, hard to skip over it. Very good questions are rare, and almost all of them are plagued by this bug, it's pretty difficult to ignore. And besides, there's no need to defeat since there is a guerilla option...

@Mysticial guerilla! :) You're reading my mind; I was thinking about it, too - even prepared legal justification for er "corrective voting". BTW regarding voting, per my observations even 3-4 coordinated DVs could make a substantial difference in hotness score; score sensitivity to manipulations like that is explained here - "Yet another indication of issues with current formula..." Interesting to note that neither "my" nor "your" variant of formula wouldn't be as sensitive to such tricks but oh well — gnat Mar 19 at 6:41

it's mostly amount of manual effort that's annoying. All this helter skelter around a simple bug

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