The problem with homework questions

Posted by on January 23, 2012 3 comments

I came upon what is probably the laziest homework question ever asked on Stack Overflow recently. Instead of typing a question, the user just uploaded a scan of their textbook to a file hosting site and asked a question that pointed to the link. You can see it here if you have 10k+ reputation on Stack Overflow.

It’s also conceivable that the student was trying to evade their teacher running searches on Stack Overflow to find students getting other people to do their homework for them. I suspect both.

Homework has always been a problematic tag, way beyond it being a meta tag. It’s a problem because: Read more »

Four slots, three votes

Posted by on November 21, 2011 4 comments

The second 2011 moderator election is closing in a couple of days, if you have not yet voted and are eligible to do so, please do so. Interestingly, I’m in the same dilemma that I found myself in earlier this year. My first vote was easy, the other two are costing quite a bit of thought.

I strongly feel that one of the candidates should have been elected as a result of the last election. I’ve watched as they voted and flagged in favor of the same action that I would take literally hundreds of times over the last nine months and I’d be very happy if they could just go about maintaining the site without needing to ask for our help. I’m not naming the candidate directly, but I will after the election.

What’s different is that I don’t need to discount half serious or outright joke nominations this year. Additionally, there are quite a few solid candidates from many backgrounds and reputation levels who decided they had enough fun answering lots of questions and would rather work on keeping the site healthy. Every single one of these candidates in my opinion would do a fine job as a moderator. At this point, the whole question of who would make a good moderator? has been answered, everyone running would. I almost feel like I’m now selecting based solely on who I want to work with the most, and I find that extremely difficult. Read more »

Keeping my hands untied

Posted by on August 19, 2011 No comments

I love getting paid, but I hate contracts. I hate reading them, I hate the trepidation that I feel when I sign them because I always feel like I might have missed something and most of all I hate it when a document comes back to haunt me. Sometimes I wonder if lawyers boast the growth they achieved during puberty by the number of indecipherable paragraphs they can write.

I love challenges, so long as I’m not forced to meet them in solitary confinement. I was recently approached with a very interesting opportunity that will put every ounce of knowledge and experience that I have to the test. Accepting this offer would ultimately show me if I’m worth my salt as a systems programmer. I can’t say too much about it other than the fact that I’d be starting with the Linux kernel and not much else, while building a very task specific operating system.

The problem is the non-disclosure agreement, which is on the order of centimeters thicker than anything I’ve ever signed before. The agreement would effectively alienate resources like Stack Overflow while I try to meet a very awesome challenge in a very short amount of time. I’m just not comfortable with that. Read more »

How to become a tolerant person

Posted by on June 16, 2011 3 comments

I don’t make a big secret out of being a Zen Buddhist. I’m not always a good Buddhist and I tend to refuse to follow things in some doctrine that I think won’t work, but for the most part the term sufficiently describes me.

This isn’t strictly inspired from my bird’s eye view of Stack Overflow, or even Meta – it’s something I’ve been noticing for quite some time at many places and the wisdom to articulate it just hit me, so I’m writing this. I could be completely wrong, I might have failed to follow this very advice in the past and perhaps my frequent travels to far away and strange places might be providing some insight that simply can’t be obtained elsewhere.

What I see, is People seem to be growing increasingly intolerant and that is a major problem.

What I know is, tolerant people are generally happy, productive peaceful people who get every ounce of joy that they can out of life. They love waking up early, they love doing whatever it is that they do, from programming to waxing a floor. They smile when you accidentally bump into them and they give you a few bucks at the cashier if they notice you are holding up the line and tossing your pockets.

They don’t honk their horns in anger when stuck in traffic, they make a serious effort to be pleasant even when they would really rather pull out their hair and they love the satisfaction that they receive by making someone else’s day or life just a little bit better. They aren’t too quick to judge and they seldom interrupt you even when you might be wrong.

Read more »

An Internet competency test?

Posted by on June 16, 2011 No comments

I’ve finally found a few minutes to sit down with the last Stack Exchange podcast and something that was discussed has really tickled my brain. How do you determine if a job applicant is a competent Internet user? I’m not speaking of a test to determine how well someone could use Google spreadsheet, Producteev or other web applications, I’m talking about testing someone’s ability to use the Internet successfully and safely.

What, precisely would define “successful” net use? That’s simple – getting exactly what you need quickly. That might be easy for someone who wants to find a recipe for biscuits, but have a look at the following scenarios and you’ll realize that there is an art to getting things done:

Read more »

Why quality matters – keeping the bar high

Posted by on June 14, 2011 No comments

A site such as Stack Overflow is only as good as its contributions. There have been a number of discussions regarding the quality of contributions, which caused me to spend some time reflecting on my own personal experiences with the site and community. This brought back memories of my own experiences at being on the low side of the quality fence while conversing face to face in places where I did not speak the local language.

I’m sharing this not just to provide advice and insight, but also to show why having users that are willing to help people become better communicators is essential to maintain the quality of a growing community.

The background

About two and a half years ago, I finally got up the nerve to become a registered user on Stack Overflow and start participating by asking and answering questions. I had been lurking for a while – I found Stack Overflow through some obscure searches and learned about the buzz Jeff and Joel were building around it later. The first thing that struck me was how intimidating the site really was.

It wasn’t all of the numbers, arrows, tags and buttons. Most of that stuff instantly made sense to me. What intimidated me the most out of everything was the sheer quality of the questions and answers there. If I was going to make any use out of this resource, I would need to dust off my writing skills and work on my problem a little harder so I could really show people where I was stuck.

My first few attempts went over like a lead balloon, but I quickly caught on. I could now pick the brains of people who had been working with C much longer than me, and build up my own reputation by answering questions that I could. It was helpful, it was fun and I was hooked. I remember thinking to myself “How do they keep the quality bar so high here?”, coming from a mess of forums the difference was absolutely amazing.

Read more »

Are programmers financially stupid?

Posted by on April 27, 2011 1 comment

I had an opportunity to speak with some old friends over the past few weeks. When I say old, I mean that I met these people when RIP was the new rage. Needless to say, I’ve known these people for quite a while and feel quite comfortable asking questions that a lesser acquaintance might consider rude.

These ‘catching up’ conversations inevitably lead to a very interesting question — “So, how are you doing?” In other words, we want to know if we’ve done better or worse in life (otherwise, and financially) than the people who were with us when we started our professional journey.  After a long dance of innuendo, egregious embellishment and tales of large fish that got away, we arrive at the truth. The truth, in this case (sorry, guys) is that not one out of all of them have any savings to speak of.  Not one. But, they all have at least three monitors, the latest and greatest camera that Nikon or Canon has to offer along with every older model, several ‘pads’, cars they really can’t afford, kids they really can’t afford and a mountain of debt.  Some of them also have houses they can’t afford.

What part of pay yourself first is so difficult to grasp? Just because you get a great job doesn’t mean you can spend as if you don’t have student loans. When you have debt, there is no surplus. By not having at least a year’s worth of expenses in the bank (and hopefully more set aside for when you soak your teeth in a cup) you are actually alienating interesting opportunities.  Read more »

alertfalse.com sub domains available

Posted by on April 25, 2011 No comments

Did you think I’d hog this uniquely geeky domain all to myself? Ever since I registered it, I’ve been wanting to do something with it that would be fun and constructive for all Stack Overflow users. I couldn’t come up with anything, and then it dawned on me. Give people sub domains or hosted blogs.

Possible uses for this would be:

  • Project sites for people using the Stack Exchange API
  • Blogs for people who feel like writing
  • A cool dynamic DNS service for those who love hosting servers in their living room
  • Many others

I’m extending this to any Stack Overflow / Meta Stack Overflow user in good standing with at least 2,000 reputation points or moderator status. Why 2000? Because at that level the community trusts you and it looks like you’re going to stick around for a while. I want to completely avoid needing to police content, so that trust is important. Setting these up is a manual process for now, I’d rather do that only for people that actually intend to make use of it.

A few issues need to be resolved first, but within the week you’ll be able to claim your domain and host or point it freely.

Some details:  Read more »

Blogging on moderation

Posted by on April 25, 2011 No comments

Being elected as a moderator on Stack Overflow solidified my desire to blog again, this time more seriously and predictably. I tried this before, but could not keep myself from digressing into rants instead of stuff that people actually see as valuable instead of simply entertaining. Sure, I blogged about a few interesting compiler quirks, issues facing the programming industry as a whole and other stuff that people found interesting, but I got way too scattered to maintain any kind of persistent audience.

I’m not doing that again. I’m restricting myself to the following scope:

  • Stuff about programming and programmers
  • My adventures as a new CTO
  • Moderation and community building

I may throw in the occasional gadget or a post commenting about something in the news, but for the most part, you can hold me to the list above. In fact, I have more to talk about regarding community  building than I ever thought I would. Additionally, participating in Programmers SE has led me to believe that younger programmers really do want career path guidance from their older peers, minus the anecdotal COBOL war stories.

If you are curious about the name of this blog, it was purely accidental.  I plan to post twice weekly on predictable days, as much as possible.  Suggestions are welcome, send them to tinkertim@gmail.com.