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Mike Nakis

 Discussion on question by INPU: Could…

Imported from a comment discussion on worldbuilding.stackexcha...
Mike Nakis
Nov 25, 2022 22:22
We are already living in such a society. Oh wait, you are probably talking about the social acceptability of indiscriminate killing of humans, as opposed to other live creatures.
 

 The Whiteboard

General Discussion for softwareengineering.stackexchange.com P...
Mike Nakis
Aug 26, 2022 02:39
Are there any tools for visual software design and automatic deployment? I posted this question here: softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/440634/… but it may be closed as off-topic. I also posted it here: dev.to/mikenakis/… feel free to comment at dev.to
Mike Nakis
Apr 23, 2015 10:09
@YannisRizos C-:= C-:= C-:=
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 12:18
Okay, I shall heed your advice!
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 12:04
Oh, @Telastyn and @AshleyNunn do you think there may be a way to reword it so as to keep the distinction between engineering and essay writing while making it non-dismissive for English majors? C-:=
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 12:02
Okay @Telastyn and @AshleyNunn, thank you!
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 11:26
Help! I need second, third, Nth opinions on this: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29433/…
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:38
nah, it does not need to be private. Public will do.
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:17
I see, thanks. I guess Yannis is not here, so I have to wait.
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:12
@YannisRizos how do we start a private chat?
Mike Nakis
Feb 10, 2015 09:41
question answered elsewhere, please ignore.
Mike Nakis
Feb 10, 2015 09:37
I have an answer on "programmers" which was upvoted and accepted at some point yesterday, and today it is not accepted anymore, another answer is accepted. It is not that I mind, but I just want to know how the site works. So, is it possible to accept one answer and then change your mind and accept another?
Mike Nakis
Feb 10, 2015 09:35
Hello, guys! I have a quick question which is probably answered in some FAQ, but it is not easy to find. Would anyone be so kind as to help?
MikeNakis
Jan 5, 2012 21:24
Oh, OK. Have fun!
MikeNakis
Jan 5, 2012 21:23
@YannisRizos come to the other room?
MikeNakis
Jan 5, 2012 21:23
C-:=
 

 Programmers CV-Please

Room for cleaning up crap, including close / delete / downvote...
Mike Nakis
Dec 5, 2015 23:13
@gnat you are so mean. That was my magnum opus. (Though I had the sneaky suspicion that I was writing it in vain, so I tried to keep my magnum opus short.)
 

 Discussion on answer by Mike Nakis: I…

Imported from a comment discussion on programmers.stackexchang...
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@BenAaronson a trivial situation where you would want to do this: suppose you have all the members of a class in a collection, and you just want to print their definitions.
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@BenAaronson the visitor pattern is one way to go, but it is a hassle. I mean, by that token, instanceof-and-cast is also a way to go, and even less of a hassle than the visitor pattern. We did not suggest that the self-casting mechanism achieves something which cannot be achieved otherwise, we are only proposing a means of reducing hassle.
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@ThomasJunk the fact that the creators of the java runtime and the C# runtime independently arrived at the same design is a very strong indication that there is no better design, or that a design which would look better in the eyes of a few purists would in fact be worse in the eyes of the far more people who would actually have to use it. Yeah, pragmatism is a bitch.
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@ThomasJunk no, it is more like someone using a perfectly good solution to a rarely occurring but well defined problem, and everyone laughing at them because they have never seen such a thing before.
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@Doval I did not say "A lot of people do it", nor "Famous person does it". I said "look here, a real world scenario right under your nose that has a demonstrably workable solution using precisely such a construct". Actually, two manifestations of the same construct in two different languages.
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@SJuan76 and yes, java.lang.Class does not have getMembers(), but we do often need to put all members in a list. And in C# System.Reflection.MemberInfo has MemberInfo[] GetMembers(), MemberInfo[] FindMembers(), etc.
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@SJuan76 yes, Member is an interface. The common base class is AccessibleObject. Same thing. And in C# System.Reflection.MemberInfo is an actual class, not an interface.
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@Doval C# has an equivalent hierarchy starting with System.Reflection.MemberInfo which is extended by FieldInfo, MethodInfo, etc. I think it is highly unlikely that the creators of C# made the same bad decisions.
Mike Nakis
Apr 30, 2015 08:50
@Dunk I just showed that the need for such a mechanism exists for example in the java.lang.reflection.Member hierarchy. The creators of the java runtime got in this type of situation, I don't suppose you would say they designed themselves into a box, or blame them for not following some kind of best practices? So, the point I am making here is that once you have this type of situation this mechanism is a good way to improve things.
 

 Discussion on answer by Mike Nakis: W…

Imported from a comment discussion on programmers.stackexchang...
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
The log file does not have to be binary. It can, possibly, be binary. The point I am making is that it needs to be thought of as a stream, into which exceptions can be serialized, which in turn serves to support the argument that exceptions do not have to create human-readable messages for storing in log files. So, if you have no security issues, the log file could be plain text xml, containing something like <exception className="IndexOutOfRangeException" index="-1" minValid="0" maxValid="5"><StackFrame/>...</exception>
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
@user119591 If your ServerException does not have a Cause which is some more specific exception, explaining precisely what went wrong, then your ServerException is as good as the proverbial "An unknown error occurred" message. Good luck with that.
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
@MichaelHampton the log files do not have to be binary; they may be binary if you want privacy and / or performance. I amended my answer to reflect that. It is just that with a binary log file serialization of exceptions comes practically for free. Also, I would not judge an entire methodology based on one or two possibly unfortunate implementations.
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
@jpmc26 the stream does not have to be binary, so I amended my answer to reflect that. The point I am trying to make is that if you don't want users to see it, then you have to encrypt it, meaning that you will need a tool to view it, in which case the pre-encryption stream might as well be binary, which would in turn be sufficient to prevent most users from seeing it, thus making encryption unnecessary.
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
@MasonWheeler of course, in many scenarios it is okay. But in this discussion (and in other answers) we are addressing the issue of what to do when it is not okay.
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
@gbjbaanb the difference is that in the case of class names, for the most part you already have them, you don't have to invest any rigour in coming up with new ones, and they are hierarchical (with inheritance) and extensible: you can write a new module which extends the exceptions of an existing module without having to modify the source code of the existing module.
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
@gbjbaanb I am afraid you misunderstood me: I was definitely not talking about error codes. I shall repeat myself: the message of the exception is the (fully qualified) class name of the exception.
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
@gbjbaanb well, by human-readable I meant user-readable. But of course yes, any fool knows we programmers are hardly human.
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
@ThomasOwens I amended my answer to address your concern.
Mike Nakis
Apr 15, 2015 02:38
Yeah, beats me. But luckily, this means that there is room for things to mature in the future.
 

 Discussion on answer by ratchet freak…

Imported from a comment discussion on programmers.stackexchang...
Mike Nakis
Feb 18, 2015 22:07
@usr This is so not only in java, but also in C#. I was trying to find an explanation for this weird decision, and I was thinking, could it be that the garbage collector needs it anyway, so it might as well be made available to all?
Mike Nakis
Feb 18, 2015 22:07
"ToString is only useful for debugging." I wish more people (including the designers of Java) understood this simple little fact.
 

 Room for Mike Nakis and Yannis Rizos

Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 15:16
Δηλαδή μόλις απάντησες στο programmers.se πρόσθεσες link προς την ερώτηση στο reddit ;
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 14:38
Aha, για να δω... (ευχαριστώ για τις απαντήσεις!)
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:55
Ναι, εννοώ κάποιο παράδειγμα ερώτησης που έκανες στο reddit, και πως συνδέεται με κάποια ανάρτηση που έγινε εδώ.
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:52
αυτό με το reddit δεν το έπιασα. Ένα παράδειγμα;
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:44
Ήθελα να σε ρωτήσω αν έχεις να δώσεις κάποιες συμβουλές σχετικά με τη βέλτιστη χρήση του stackoverflow για αύξηση του reputation (χωρίς ζαβολιές) ή αν έχεις υπόψιν σου κάποιο σύγγραμμα που να δίνει τέτοιες συμβουλές.
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:43
Βλέπω εσύ εν τω μεταξύ αύξησες πολύ το reputation σου και απέκτησες ΠΟΛΛΑ GOLD BADGES στο stackoverflow.
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:42
(Κοντά είμαι.)
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:42
Το χρησιμοποιούσα όταν είχα κάποια απορία, αλλά συνήθως δεν συμμετείχα. Τώρα τις τελευταίες μέρες συμμετέχω κάπως. Λέω να αυξήσω το reputation μου μέχρι 11k.
Mike Nakis
Feb 12, 2015 13:38
Hello, it's been a long time. Ελληνικά ή αγγλικά;
 

 The DMZ

A serious place where infosec is discussed PS we don't do hard...
3
Mike Nakis
Feb 10, 2015 09:41
@AviiiiiiiiiD thanx
Mike Nakis
Feb 10, 2015 09:39
Hello, guys! I have a quick question which is probably answered in some FAQ, but it is not easy to find. Would anyone be so kind as to help?
I have an answer on "programmers" which was upvoted and accepted at some point yesterday, and today it is not accepted anymore, another answer is accepted. It is not that I mind, but I just want to know how the site works. So, is it possible to accept one answer and then change your mind and accept another?
 

 Programmers Blog

Discussions about our blog: programmers.blogoverflow.com
Mike Nakis
Feb 10, 2012 07:32
@Yannis Rizos Congrats for your election as a PSE moderator!