Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Coding Horrors: You can gather all your technical debt into one easy framework!

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FamDav: Mar 29, 2008

Soricidus posted:

loving neo-colonialist euros demonstrating their disrespect for the ancient cultures of the east by ... going out of their way to make sure unicode supports round-trip conversions with every bad decision ever made in the dbcs era?

Yep thanks for spelling it out

# ? Mar 4, 2016 20:20

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# ? May 17, 2024 19:04

CPColin: Sep 9, 2003; Big ol' smile.

canis minor posted:

Are there any resources on this I can read explaining "why"? I'd have thought that even if a character set had Ⅻ as one singular character, translating it to Unicode should have become XII. If translating XII from Unicode to that character set, it would go back to Ⅻ, but I guess it's naive of me to think so (or I guess there's a roman sentence where IV should stay IV instead of Ⅳ)

I wouldn't want character conversions to be responsible for my friend 6 having to go to the hospital to get an 4 drip.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 20:37

Sinestro: Oct 31, 2010; The perfect day needs the perfect set of wheels.

The smart way to do it would be to add marker characters for the round-tripping cases, so you'd have some code point that meant that the remainder of the grapheme is to be displayed in roman form, so Ⅻ would be the three "<roman numeral mark>12", which would still display with the correct meaning even if it was a font that didn't include the Roman alphabet.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 20:58

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

My name contains a roman numeral and every system has a delightful way to mangle it. I had to go in person to a GA DMV office because the form stopped at IV, most systems think me and my father are the same person (on a domestic flight in India we were assigned to the same seat, luckily "like George Bush and George W Bush" made it clear), and I dropped it entirely when I moved to CA. The best ones are where a human intervened to fix it up and they end up mucking up my last name too.

People always ask if I would name a child JawnV7. I can't imagine how cruel a person would have to be to inflict that onto a child.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 21:17

canis minor: May 4, 2011

My name doesn't contain any roman numerals, but it contains ł, which provides me with a broad range of translations - most of the times I see it as �, though I'll also see it as � or plain ☐, and while it wasn't a problem for me so far, for some time on my credit card there was a t where ł should be

# ? Mar 4, 2016 21:25

VikingofRock: Aug 24, 2008

Volte posted:

you never know when pi might be a vector

You joke, but I'm ~90% sure that I've seen 𝝿 used as an energy-momentum 4-vector before.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 21:29

Plorkyeran: Mar 22, 2007; To Escape The Shackles Of The Old Forums, We Must Reject The Tribal Negativity He Endorsed

JawnV6 posted:

People always ask if I would name a child JawnV7. I can't imagine how cruel a person would have to be to inflict that onto a child.

Child abusers do tend to be people who were themselves abused as children.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 22:12

nielsm: Jun 1, 2009

Sinestro posted:

The smart way to do it would be to add marker characters for the round-tripping cases, so you'd have some code point that meant that the remainder of the grapheme is to be displayed in roman form, so Ⅻ would be the three "<roman numeral mark>12", which would still display with the correct meaning even if it was a font that didn't include the Roman alphabet.

Requiring state for text handling kind of sucks. Yes Unicode does have the BiDi marker characters, but nobody really likes those.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 22:15

Bognar: Aug 4, 2011; I am the queen of France; Hot Rope Guy

JawnV6 posted:

People always ask if I would name a child JawnV7. I can't imagine how cruel a person would have to be to inflict that onto a child.

I always thought naming a child after yourself was a bad idea, simply in the case of having multiple children. It's like you love your first child so much that you gave them your own name, but then the second child comes along and they get... uh, well... some other name I guess, who cares you're child number 2.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 22:16

CPColin: Sep 9, 2003; Big ol' smile.

That was one of Andy's better stories on The Office. He was originally named Walter, Jr., until his little brother came along and his parents liked him better.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 22:19

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Bognar posted:

I always thought naming a child after yourself was a bad idea, simply in the case of having multiple children. It's like you love your first child so much that you gave them your own name, but then the second child comes along and they get... uh, well... some other name I guess, who cares you're child number 2.

You could just give your 2+ child your name as well. Or you could give them all a UUID. I'm sure doing that wouldn't break any systems they'll need to put their names in.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 22:21

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

It's already solved, the first one is MySon Junior, the other one is MySon Junior the second.

Though usually "the second" is for the third generation but I think it works for siblings too.

And apparently if someone dies, you can move up the ladder and shed your 'junior' or roman numeral status. Live long enough and you get to be the senior!

xzzy fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Mar 4, 2016

# ? Mar 4, 2016 22:28

HappyHippo: Nov 19, 2003; Do you have an Air Miles Card?

canis minor posted:

I agree that such distinction makes sense for alephs, but for pi it is still a mystery for me. I don't think there's a distinction (in meaning) between MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL PI and MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL PI, but to me this should be a singular character (MATHEMATICAL SMALL PI) that's handled by font transformation, instead of by encoding. Unless we're talking here about times, when font transformations weren't there yet?

Did you read the quote?

quote:

Semantic Distinctions. Mathematical notation requires a number of Latin and Greek alphabets that initially appear to be mere font variations of one another. The letter H can appear as plain or upright (H), bold (H), italic (H), as well as script, Fraktur, and other styles. However, in any given document, these characters have distinct, and usually unrelated, mathematical semantics. For example, a normal H represents a different variable from a bold H, and so on. If these attributes are dropped in plain text, the distinctions are lost and the meaning of the text is altered.

Things like "boldness" and other styles can often be stripped out when text is moved around, which can significantly alter the meaning when it comes to math. Making it part of the letter preserves that meaning.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 22:49

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

xzzy posted:

It's already solved, the first one is MySon Junior, the other one is MySon Junior the second.

Though usually "the second" is for the third generation but I think it works for siblings too.

And apparently if someone dies, you can move up the ladder and shed your 'junior' or roman numeral status. Live long enough and you get to be the senior!

I don't know where you're getting this from, but there's no formal enforcement whatsoever. It's supposed to go senior, junior/2nd, esquire/third/"trey", fourth, but nobody at the hospital is going to double check you or slap the pen away. Mine skipped a generation, there's a "Stanley" in there.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 23:02

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

I never implied there was a formal procedure. But there are common patterns that genealogists have noticed and documented.

# ? Mar 4, 2016 23:10

canis minor: May 4, 2011

HappyHippo posted:

Did you read the quote?

Things like "boldness" and other styles can often be stripped out when text is moved around, which can significantly alter the meaning when it comes to math. Making it part of the letter preserves that meaning.

Yes, I understand that H has different meaning than 𝐇 - but, as humans, we also have context that allows us to understand that even if author wrote a⇾∞ it still means the same as if he wrote a→∞ On the other hand, if there's vagueness at any point, because my editor dropped font formatting, I'd get pretty irritated.

I guess you've got a point when it comes down to plain text; I've not considered displays where there's no font formatting - but in those scenarios, would MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL PI would look that much different from MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD SMALL PI?

# ? Mar 4, 2016 23:29

Blinkz0rz: May 27, 2001; MY CONTEMPT FOR MY OWN EMPLOYEES IS ONLY MATCHED BY MY LOVE FOR TOM BRADY'S SWEATY MAGA BALLS

JawnV6 posted:

I don't know where you're getting this from, but there's no formal enforcement whatsoever. It's supposed to go senior, junior/2nd, esquire/third/"trey", fourth, but nobody at the hospital is going to double check you or slap the pen away. Mine skipped a generation, there's a "Stanley" in there.

esquire is for lawyers :eng101:

# ? Mar 5, 2016 00:28

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

Blinkz0rz posted:

esquire is for lawyers

Its use is not protected and it traditionally was meant as a title for the educated or otherwise influential people who did not hold a proper title. :eng101:

# ? Mar 5, 2016 00:37

qntm: Jun 17, 2009

If you don't name your fifth son Quintus I don't know what to tell you.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 00:43

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

JawnV6 posted:

I don't know where you're getting this from, but there's no formal enforcement whatsoever. It's supposed to go senior, junior/2nd, esquire/third/"trey", fourth, but nobody at the hospital is going to double check you or slap the pen away. Mine skipped a generation, there's a "Stanley" in there.

In that case I'm changing my name and appending "the 87th" just for kicks.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 01:07

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Blinkz0rz posted:

esquire is for lawyers

Bill S. Preston Esq.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 01:33

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

canis minor posted:

Yes, I understand that H has different meaning than 𝐇 - but, as humans, we also have context that allows us to understand that even if author wrote a⇾∞ it still means the same as if he wrote a→∞ On the other hand, if there's vagueness at any point, because my editor dropped font formatting, I'd get pretty irritated.

I guess you've got a point when it comes down to plain text; I've not considered displays where there's no font formatting - but in those scenarios, would MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL PI would look that much different from MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD SMALL PI?

There's a reason Knuth discovered TeX.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 01:34

Hollow Talk: Feb 2, 2014

fritz posted:

There's a reason Knuth discovered TeX.

That sounds like he found TeX inscribed onto some stone tablets in the desert. Granted, that would explain a lot.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 01:39

HappyHippo: Nov 19, 2003; Do you have an Air Miles Card?

canis minor posted:

Yes, I understand that H has different meaning than 𝐇 - but, as humans, we also have context that allows us to understand that even if author wrote a⇾∞ it still means the same as if he wrote a→∞ On the other hand, if there's vagueness at any point, because my editor dropped font formatting, I'd get pretty irritated.

I guess you've got a point when it comes down to plain text; I've not considered displays where there's no font formatting - but in those scenarios, would MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL PI would look that much different from MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD SMALL PI?

Sometimes text is copied through various mediums. The underlying unicode characters will survive the process much better than any formatting applied to them.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 01:41

ninjeff: Jan 19, 2004

canis minor posted:

Yes, I understand that H has different meaning than 𝐇 - but, as humans, we also have context that allows us to understand that even if author wrote a⇾∞ it still means the same as if he wrote a→∞

You're missing (part of) the point - in some fields it's common to find both a letter and its bold version (or some other variant) used for different meanings in the same document, in identical or very similar contexts.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 03:08

ShimaTetsuo: Sep 9, 2001; Maximus Quietus

As a random example, from a book:

Here X is the vector random variable (X_1, ..., X_T) (and X^(-t) is the same but with X_t deleted), whereas x is the corresponding realization of this vector random variable, and x that of X_t. If all X_t had the same distribution, you might even see X used as a generic stand-in for any of them.

Both the case and the boldness of "x" have a specific meaning here and this is not uncommon. Also, people often use p or pi for probabilities (either as scalars or vectors), so yes we really do need like 8 kinds, but I couldn't comment on how that should be implemented.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 03:32

TooMuchAbstraction: Oct 14, 2012; I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.; Fun Shoe

Pi is also used as an iterative multiplication, the way sigma is used for iterative addition. It doesn't come up very often, I will grant.

Basically mathematicians started programming centuries before we had style rules like "use descriptive variable names", so they decided they have to use a single symbol (or at most a symbol plus a subscript) to represent every single distinct variable in their programs.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 05:08

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Basically mathematicians started programming centuries before we had style rules like "use descriptive variable names", so they decided they have to use a single symbol (or at most a symbol plus a subscript) to represent every single distinct variable in their programs.

It's called DRY.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 06:18

Cuntpunch: Oct 3, 2003; A monkey in a long line of kings

Corollary I have come to as part of this refactoring project I'm doing: If you are using descriptive names for a Class or Member, and the name includes 'Or', please rethink your design choices.

The amount of these that I see:

code:

public void DoFooOrBar(Foo foo, Bar bar, out int result1, out int result2)
{
	if(foo == null)
	{
		if(bar != null)
		{
			result2 = DoBarThing(bar);
		}
	}
	else
	{
		if(foo != null)
		{
			result1 = DoFooThing(foo);
		}
	}
}

You can imagine the logic that wraps these calls~

# ? Mar 5, 2016 06:28

Linear Zoetrope: Nov 28, 2011; A hero must cook

VikingofRock posted:

You joke, but I'm ~90% sure that I've seen 𝝿 used as an energy-momentum 4-vector before.

In planning domains, pi is usually used for the policy function, and sometimes if you have a bunch of candidate policies you're evaluating, you may, in fact, have a pi vector.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 08:31

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

# ? Mar 5, 2016 10:59

Space Kablooey: May 6, 2009

Carbon dioxide posted:

This chart proves that Waterfall is better at code golf.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 14:18

Evil_Greven: Feb 20, 2007; Whadda I got to,
whadda I got to do
to wake ya up?

To shake ya up,
to break the structure up!?

Carbon dioxide posted:

This chart supports removing the first three sprints, using Waterfall to get to the progress attained by sprint 3.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 14:43

ErIog: Jul 11, 2001

Carbon dioxide posted:

How man of those scrum stages are there because the client's expectations change from meeting to meeting to delivery?

# ? Mar 5, 2016 14:58

fritz: Jul 26, 2003

Carbon dioxide posted:

What's the total length of the blue line tho?

# ? Mar 5, 2016 15:13

Malcolm XML: Aug 8, 2009; I always knew it would end like ｔｈｉｓ．

Carbon dioxide posted:

pfft u need conjugate scrum to get REAL convergence

# ? Mar 5, 2016 15:15

Volmarias: Dec 31, 2002; EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Where's the graph where the bullseye zigzags erratically, like a UFO made of unrealistic expectations and hubris?

# ? Mar 5, 2016 15:21

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

Blinkz0rz posted:

esquire is for lawyers

Also this only applies to yanks.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 15:38

kloa: Feb 14, 2007

Carbon dioxide posted:

how does one acquire the yellow circle??

# ? Mar 5, 2016 15:45

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# ? May 17, 2024 19:04

M31: Jun 12, 2012

One of our national IT projects had in it it's specifications that dates should be in 'CCYY-MM-DD' format (century, year, month, day). Some genius decided that since 2000 is the 21st century that would mean that today would be '2116-03-05' and they would need lots of money to change this.

Which is why you should not do agile if you want to make a lot of money.

# ? Mar 5, 2016 15:47

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