Tavern on the Meta

I read a very interesting article by Uncle Bob Martin yesterday where he raves about his newly found appreciation for Clojure specifically (and functional programming by inference). I've really only been exposed to OOP in my career (with a dash of VB6 in the beginning) and my only experience wit...

Michael Mrozek

Unless someone is claiming psychic powers, "Is functional programming the future?" pretty much has to be subjective

Benjol

@MichaelMrozek, and subjective is universally bad? I know there are strong feelings about that, but ...

Here's an example of another question for which you need psychic powers but which seems perfectly valid (to me):

0

Q: Desktop Application Longevity

Say if you had to develop a huge windows desktop app what language/technology you believe will be supported longer by MS (or by its manufacturer if not MS product)? What language/framework would give the app greater longevity without the need to be adapted or rewritten in order to run on newer v...

windows desktop lifecycle

Diago

6:43 AM

@Benjol Subjective has become the biggest argument on the Trilogy to be honest. As far as SO is concerned yes it is

If it requires a discussion, and it's not about the Trilogy itself, it belongs on a forum.

And it's rare for discussions not to be subjective

Benjol

hm, tough call then. The way I see it, this is the biggest community of developers on the planet (right?), so even if I do want an opinion on something subjective (and useful, I hasten to add), it's the natural/logical place to come...

Diago

I am not going to get caught in this one :) It's been widely debated on meta but I have to agree with the consensus that the SE engine is not designed for this.

Nor was it ever intended to be.

Benjol

OK, but it wasn't designed with meta or chat to start with... and as they say, if you can't beat them, join them. Maybe there should be a fourth place ;)

Michael Mrozek

area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related

Benjol

@MichaelMrozek, but if Diago says "the SE engine is not designed for this", doesn't that that apply to all sites? (I don't think it does..., but that would seem to be the logical conclusion.)

Michael Mrozek

6:56 AM

It does, but if people want to abuse it there's nothing stopping them; I'd just prefer they not do it on SO. If they want to make a separate SE site that does so, they can feel free

Benjol

@Diago Sorry if I'm rehashing an old debate, I wasn't around much for that one (or don't remember it any more...)

OK, I'll just play devil's advocate, and then shut up. If we follow this train of thought, then the logical conclusion is that each question should only have One Right Answer (TM), in which case, the should we be going round deleting all the 'superfluous' answers?

Michael Mrozek

It's not so much that the question needs to have one right answer as it needs to have a finite number of right answers. Questions where every answer is "right" because there is no right answer don't work on SO, because one of the essential parts of SO (voting) has no meaning

Benjol

But a subjective question can have a 'best' answer, even if it doesn't have a right one...

Ami

7:14 AM

By a objective question the best answer is the most useful answer. By a subjective question the best answer is something totally different...possibly the most informative, well researched or something like that...they're both called "best" but they're the best for very different reasons.

i.e.: "Is Functional Programming The Future?" The best answer to this question would be a well researched and well sourced 200 page manifesto on the philosophy, culture and trends of CS and information technology. Thats not why I come to SO.

Benjol

OK, but we are blurring two arguments, one is "we don't want subjective questions on SO", the other is "subjective questions can't work on SO".

I can accept the first, but I disagree with the second.

Lasse V. Karlsen

Hi, good morning

Benjol

Hi @Lasse

Ami

@Benjol I plead ignorance on the second. I'm looking forward to the launch of "Not Programming Related" to find out.

Lasse V. Karlsen

I just love emergencies! Come in to work to find out that our build process no longer embeds licenses for controls into the assemblies :(

Benjol

7:21 AM

@LasseVKarlsen, I take it the emergency is resolved if you're here now ;)

Lasse V. Karlsen

Not yet, waiting for build right now. License is embedded when I build locally, build server doesn't do it. Have logged on via remote and doing a manual build now. For all I know there's something finicky about the TeamCity setup that kills that step.

Benjol

Morning @MarcGravell

Lasse V. Karlsen

Of course, it doesn't help that this particular project/solution has about 1200 warnings due to some generated code that is lacking xml documentation. I bet there is a line in there saying "You idiot! This won't work!"

Marc Gravell

heya

Benjol

@LasseVKarlsen, #pragma warning disable 1591

Lasse V. Karlsen

7:25 AM

Yeah, I know

Argh, Reflector download link doesn't work

Marc Gravell

meh, just read the IL in hex, then.... <g>

Lasse V. Karlsen

Ok, manual build adds the license, so that's not it, but not when built through TeamCity. Very nice, NOT :(

Aaaand, it turns out to be my fault! Lovely!

We are using TX Text, but due to the fact that we hosts the .NET runtime from a Delphi program, all required licenses has to be part of the very first .NET assembly we load from Delphi, otherwise they're apparently not found.

But! TX Text is a costly license, so we can't install that for every developer, so we have a pre-build build step on one project to embed the license, on my machine, and the build machines, which we have licenses for.

And recently we set up two new teamcity build agents, of course with new names, so the build script probably only embedded the license on the main build agent, not on the other two. Probably why the support case has the words "seemingly random between versions" in it :P

Ok, working again

Lasse V. Karlsen

8:00 AM

Of course, now I have to find out why I messed up, why didn't I follow procedure when changing the build machine names :(

Benjol

8:53 AM

@LasseVKarlsen, FWIW, your profile still points to your 'old' blog...

Lasse V. Karlsen

@Benjol, thanks

Is there a way in this chat-system to quickly set focus to the textbox?

Benjol

not apart from mouse click, I think

0

Q: How to display pressed keyboard shortcuts on screen during presentations or screencasts?

There are tools that monitor what keyboard shortcuts you just pressed and display them on screen. That is very handy during presentations or screencasts. To see an example, have a look at these Mac OS Quick Tip videos or this video (hardly visible black box in the right bottom corner of the scree...

tools keyboard-shortcuts presentation screencast

(Just in case you wondered what I was doing on your blog)

Lasse V. Karlsen

Ok :)

Benjol

"if anyone wants to use the program" :) that problem does kind of kill your motivation...

Lasse V. Karlsen

Yeah, you're right, changed it.

Benjol

9:08 AM

@LasseVKarlsen, I didn't mean that it would discourage anyone from using it (though I guess it might), I meant that as a developer, not having any users (or any feedback) is a real bummer

Lasse V. Karlsen

Yeah, you're right, it is

But, I have used it plenty myself, and I almost always get questions after a session how I did that

So people are interested, just not that interested

Benjol

10:13 AM

Reading this, I wonder if some manager didn't come across this :)

Lasse V. Karlsen

@Benjol, Reading what?

Benjol

Sorry @LasseVKarlsen, the two "this" in my post are hyperlinks, you can't see

I forgot

Lasse V. Karlsen

I must install the chrome extension again

Benjol

you want to take that up with Marc...

Lasse V. Karlsen

I have, it's not high on the current priority list (which I agree it shouldn't be)

Yeah, but he's noted my inability to see the links as well

Benjol

10:17 AM

@LasseVKarlsen, wasn't that just for stars?

Lasse V. Karlsen

At least I understood it that way, I'll ask him later to make sure

There, now I can see the links on this machine as well :)

Granted, the extension removes background colors, but it's a small price to pay for now

Benjol

I'd just greasemonkey the css of the links to be underlined...

Lasse V. Karlsen

I have very little experience with greasemonkey, except for installing scripts into it

Perhaps I should look into that

Migrating my ScreenKeys app to Kiln now, have 2-3 cases I should fix that I've postponed, perhaps it's a good time to do this this weekend

Benjol

Well, I got you one user, apparently. It's a start :)

Lasse V. Karlsen

It's a 100% improvement (first user was me)

So yeah :)

You've effectively doubled the user-base in one go :)

Benjol

10:24 AM

Very quiet in here today

Nick Craver

shhhh we're sleeping

Benjol

Oh sorry, I thought you were just in a drunken stupor slumped on the bar...

Nick Craver

don't judge me!

Benjol

Well, you were drooling... :)

►

(posted blind, yt blocked here, I think it's that scene)

Marc Gravell

bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller? bueller?

Benjol

10:32 AM

@MarcGravell, one of my all-time favourites :)

@MarcGravell, as you're here, have you noticed that the code which takes out the post numbers in the starred list also seems to remove @names (see 15h ago by balpha - currently 8th in the list)

Marc Gravell

Actually, those names aren't really there ;p It simply doesn't add them ;p

(this only applies to explicit replies)

Benjol

ok, yeah I wondered, but I couldn't tell from the transcript if it was implicit or explicit (I think)

@MarcGravell @MarcGravell, can the script be smart enough not to add the name if I already typed it?

Marc Gravell

it isn't really a question of smarts - it is the edge cases; for example, does it only apply for an exact duplicate? What if you did a reply starting @Marc? And what if there was another Marc in the room? Normally both would get a notification of a possible mentione, etc.

Benjol

I'm sure there'll be plenty more edge cases :)

Nick Craver

@Marc - thanks for changing the new message color, red was harsh on the eyes

Benjol

10:45 AM

:108316, like this, for example :)

Nick Craver

green = lovely

Marc Gravell

wasn't me...

Nick Craver

whatever

take credit and like it!

Marc Gravell

@Benjol if you backspace, all bets are off ;p

Nick Craver

and if you backspace outside the message box, all chat is off too

Benjol

10:46 AM

@MarcGravell, your regex detects backspaces? wow! ;)

Marc Gravell

@Nick - not if you have an unsent message, it isn't...

Nick Craver

oooo tricky!

well played sir

Lasse V. Karlsen

11:13 AM

25 new cases with work for ScreenKeys, totalling 32 hours of work

Benjol

@LasseVKarlsen, 16 hours per user :)

as we say in the UK: "don't give up your day job" ;)

Lasse V. Karlsen

It's too easy adding cases in FogBugz :P

Nick Craver

Someone has this site in a question I was helping with: dev.resihop.nu

view source on that....I don't....what the?

Lasse V. Karlsen

wth is that?

Nick Craver

I have no idea, the browser correctly loads the .xsl and transforms it...but in 10 years I've never seen that

Lasse V. Karlsen

11:40 AM

Got my first support-case in my new FogBugz account at fogbugz on-demand :) wohoo!

hgulyan

12:10 PM

Hi there

Is gender boolean?

Lasse V. Karlsen

In what context?

hgulyan

Should I make it bit in sql table or nor?

not*

If so, is man true and woman false?:)

Lasse V. Karlsen

Well, if it was me, I would do one of two things

either rename it to: GenderMale

or make it a CHAR and use M or F as values

hgulyan

I would store a list of genders and make the column tinyint :)

Lasse V. Karlsen

You could do that as well

Then you could store things like Hermaphrodite and Transgender or whatnot

hgulyan

12:12 PM

Maybe in future we'll other genders too :D

Lasse V. Karlsen

And when the aliens land, your software is already ready to use

hgulyan

some ufo's

yeah, right :D

maybe I should make it bigint?

Lasse V. Karlsen

It is never a good idea to get on the wrong footing with our new overlords

No, actually it is not

Benjol

The transgender thing is not a joke...

And I'm not being politically correct

Lasse V. Karlsen

You could argue that you could register it as NULL (ie. unknown), but you'd damn better present it better in the GUI if you ever show it to someone

Benjol

12:16 PM

In some contexts it is really important (sporting categories for example)

hgulyan

Actually I was talkin about alians

Lasse V. Karlsen

"He's a male, she's a female and I don't know what the hell you are", not good

Yeah, but you might want to consider an int and a type-list, or a CHAR and F, M, T or whatnot

Benjol

Google "Caster Semenya"

hgulyan

char isn't good enough, if I want to use it in where condition

Who's Caster Semenya?

Benjol

Androgen insensitivity syndrome

Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), also referred to as androgen resistance syndrome, is a set of disorders of sex development caused by mutations of the gene encoding the androgen receptor. The set of resulting disorders varies according to the structure and sensitivity of the abnormal receptor. Most forms of AIS involve a variable degree of undervirilization and/or infertility in XY persons of any gender. A person with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) has a female external appearance despite a 46XY karyotype and undescended testes, a condition once called "testicular...

hgulyan

12:18 PM

My co-workers would laugh, but I'm creating table for list of genders

Benjol

Caster Semenya

}} Mokgadi Caster Semenya (born 7 January 1991) is a South African middle-distance runner and world champion. Semenya won gold in the women's 800 metres at the 2009 World Championships with a time of 1:55.45 in the final. Following her victory at the 2009 World Championships questions were raised about Semenya's gender. She was withdrawn from international competition until 6 July 2010 when the IAAF cleared her to return to competition. Early life and education Semenya was born in Ga-Masehlong, a village in South Africa near Polokwane and grew up in the village of Fairlie, "deep in ...

Of course, for most purposes, you won't want to get into that level of detail

HoLyVieR

You can just put "Other"

Benjol

But sporting bodies are really going to have problems in the future with transgender stuff

hgulyan

I just want to have descriptions for gender id's

to know if 1 is man and 0 is woman

or smth like that

Benjol

or xx/xy ;)

hgulyan

12:22 PM

:)))

Benjol

Or you could have a sliding scale from one to the other, and let people choose

so maybe it should be a percentage :)

hgulyan

That's an interesting idea, they would kill me for that

:D:D:D

Piers Myers

I can see that working - "well I'm 80% male because I enjoy washing and ironing"

Benjol

bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml

Piers Myers

1:15 PM

phew, I passed that test and am mostly bloke

Benjol

Quite fun though, I did it a long time ago.

Michael Mrozek

2:30 PM

I'm quite intrigued by this:

Any idea if it's intended to become a public feature to separate poll questions from regular questions

spoulson

The poll feature has been shot down time and time again, I thought

Michael Mrozek

It has. It's possible it's just for the SO team to poll users, and it's not ever intended to be used by users, I was just curious if there's been a mention of it before that I never noticed

George Marian

@MichaelMrozek While it would be cool to have access to that, I could see all sorts of mediocre polls being created just because we can. :)

Michael Mrozek

@GeorgeMarian As opposed to creating mediocre polls in question form :)

George Marian

True, but those are discouraged and sometimes even closed.

At least those are open ended. I imagine a bunch of polls of the same type, just because someone didn't like the options in any of the other ones. "But my poll is better!" ;)

On a sidenote, it's rather freaky to get a notification before the message is even displayed on my screen.

Chacha102

3:23 PM

Attention Members of the Tavern

Currently Chat Feedback has 8.7k messages

We only have 8.4k.

Sam152

Time to amp shit up

Chacha102

I'm going to need you guys to make 500 messages so we can surpass them.

Lasse V. Karlsen

That's

Chacha102

Because the Tavern does not need to be on any particular topic, this should be easy for you.

Lasse V. Karlsen

not

going

Shog9

3:24 PM

just post some off-topic stuff in CF and hope Marc grabs a few extra posts while migrating...

Lasse V. Karlsen

to be

a problem

Sam152

►

Chacha102

I'm not going to try to surpass gaming.

Shog9

or just get devinb back here

Chacha102

They currently have 10k more messages than us.

I'm wondering what the heck is going on in there honestly..

Lasse V. Karlsen

3:25 PM

they're moderating

they're debating what kind of questions are valid and not, been going on every time I peak through the door on the gaming room

Chacha102

You know, in some ways I'm encouraged by that

In other ways, I think they should just find a policy and stop talking about it

Shog9

well, *that*'ll never happen

Lasse V. Karlsen

well, every time I've visited the room it seems they're trying to find a hard white and black line

ie. this question is good, this is not

Shog9

(MARC, YOUR REGEX SUCKS!)

George Marian

lol

Lasse V. Karlsen

3:27 PM

there doesn't seem to be any room for gray-area in the discussions, but perhaps they've changed by now

James

Sooo hows everyone doing on this wonderful friday?

Lasse V. Karlsen

Pretty good, Benjol doubled the user-base of my presentation software today by answering a question on Stack Overflow

Now I have to try to keep that user

Chacha102

@James Good

George Marian

@James Hypoglycemic, apparently. nom nom nom

Chacha102

@James We are trying to come up with 300 messages so we can pass the number of messages Chat Feedback has. Good thing this room is not based on a topic.

Sam152

3:30 PM

Meaning we can discuss creating messages in order to surpass another room.

George Marian

@Chacha102 More ale, sir! ;)

Chacha102

passes George a pint of Ale

We need a /me command...

balpha

Quick info for all: You now have a little "about me" field in your profile

will be displayed to anyone clicking your avatar

Chacha102

I don't see it!!!

George Marian

says something about it being after Noon...somewhere

@balpha And this be hidden where? ;)

James

3:32 PM

So, i typed sackoverflow.com today, realized what i did and closed it before anything bad happened.

4

George Marian

@James LOL

Chacha102

@James +1

James

Its even worse because i'm at work

albeit my last day

balpha

@GeorgeMarian Is it so hard to find?

(you don't even have all those buttons)

Shog9

yeah, look at all that crap

needz mor <blink>

George Marian

3:35 PM

@balpha Oh, hey ...look at that. "About (edit)"

I instinctively ignored that whole block and was expecting something under it. :)

Chacha102

@balpha More /me please

balpha

@Chacha102 no, we've got enough of /you already

Chacha102

/me Why doesn't this work!!!

Shog9

/balpha because I said so

^^^^ implement that

Chacha102

lol

George Marian

3:39 PM

One you're considered inactive, does chat stop updating the title?

balpha

?

Chacha102

I love the GET OFF MY LAWN!!! room. It is so peaceful and cap-filled

Shog9

CAPS!

George Marian

@balpha I don't always see a message count in the other rooms (all in tabs).

balpha

maybe there are no new messages?

George Marian

3:41 PM

There's a bunch of new posts in chat feedback for which I didn't see a count.

Chacha102

HAHA! We've made 100 messages. Only 200 more to go!

Sam152

yawn

balpha

@GeorgeMarian how do you know there are new messages?

George Marian

Because I checked.

balpha

the number gets cleared as soon as you switch to that tab

George Marian

3:42 PM

Scrolled down and look at that, more messages.

Right, but I looked at the tab before checking.

balpha

is it possible that you opened that tab (via Ctrl-Click or the like) but never ever looked at it?

(until doing that checking)

George Marian

I don't think so. I've only been awake for a couple hours and had some errands deal with.

balpha

So you're sure you did have that very tab in the foreground previously?

George Marian

@balpha Say something in chat feedback, I'm still inactive in that room.

Chacha102

done

George Marian

3:45 PM

@balpha I'm pretty sure that I did not have it in the foreground before.

Shog9

I see "3"

but I'm pretty sure he posted more than three comments

balpha

@GeorgeMarian that explains it

George Marian

heh

Shog9

nope, nevermind

balpha

there is no way to reliably find out wether a tab has focus or not

Chacha102

3:46 PM

@balpha I'm guessing if you don't look at it once it never starts..

George Marian

@balpha Ok, please explain. As I did see (3) from Chacha102 test messages.

balpha

you can only know about a change

i.e. focus/blur event

so before any of those events occur, the page doesn't know if it's in the foreground

Chacha102

so you can't assume you're in the background?

balpha

since you never looked at the page, there wasn't a single focus or blur event that occured

Chacha102

because there is no 'onFocus' event triggered when a page is opened directly?

balpha

3:48 PM

@Chacha102 precisely -- until one of those events occurs, I have to guess

George Marian

@balpha Interesting, but that tab has been open for a while...from several days ago.

balpha

and since "hasfocus" is more probable than "isblurred" on pageload -- that's the guess I take

@GeorgeMarian so? if you never looked at it, it doesn't matter how long it has been open

George Marian

@balpha But, I have looked at it. That just hasn't happened in a while. Since sometime yesterday.

balpha

6 mins ago, by George Marian

@balpha I'm pretty sure that I did not have it in the foreground before.

what browser are you using?

George Marian

Right, as in today, since waking up and sitting at my computer.

This is in Chrome.

Chacha102

3:53 PM

@GeorgeMarian You sleep your computer?

balpha

Am I the only person who actually turns off their computer?

Chacha102

@GeorgeMarian Or just never turn it off?

George Marian

@balpha Probably.

Chacha102

@balpha Yes. Well, I turned it off during my week-long trip. But otherwise my computer just sleeps.

George Marian

@Chacha102 I never turn it off, no sleep. Just monitor power saving mode.

Chacha102

3:54 PM

Now the question arises if we want to cater to the power-consuming-non-computer-turny-offing population of America..

balpha

@GeorgeMarian this might also be related to a Chrome bug regarding tab title updates. I've put in a workaround that works most of the times, but not always

George Marian

lol

balpha

1

Q: Changing the window title when focussing the window doesn't work in Chrome

I'm (ab)using the document title as some kind of a notification area. If the tab/window in question doesn't have focus at the time I want to notify the user of something, I change the window title to include some notification. When the window/tab comes back into focus, I want to remove the notif...

javascript google-chrome focus

George Marian

I see, eeeenteresting

Chacha102

I have concluded that most traffic jams are caused by Prius owners..

George Marian

3:56 PM

WTF is up w/ hybrid drivers sucking at driving?

The Prius, especially.

Chacha102

It isn't that they suck at driving, it is that every few miles they have to pull over and hug a tree.

George Marian

lol

Quassnoi

@George: try to drive with your nose picked

George Marian

Seriously though, I keep having issues with Prius drivers causing problems on the high way. They're not the only ones, but they're the only ones I recognize specifically because of the car.

@Quassnoi Should I fling buggers at them?

Quassnoi

@George: sorry, the joke was lost in translation :)

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