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Activity for Olin Lathropâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Email alerts for notifications Look more closely: (more) |
— | about 2 months ago |
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A: What does "namespace" mean? A namespace is a category of names within which they must all be unique. This also means that names do not need to be unique between namespaces. For example, states of the USA is a different namespace from countries of the world. "Georgia" has a completely different meaning in these two namespac... (more) |
— | 5 months ago |
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A: What are disadvantages of static functions (ie functions with internal linkage) in C? There is basically only one reason not to use static functions in C, as opposed to functions with global scope. That's if you want to access the function from outside the module. Otherwise, if the function is only used in the specific module, then it's beneficial to not export it to the whole wor... (more) |
— | 10 months ago |
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A: Library that is platform-specific via selective compilation? The general mechanism you describe has been in use since there were cross-compilers and libraries that were meant to provide the same application interface on different platforms. Your specific example using XML is newer of course. Any competent build system has the ability to switch include file... (more) |
— | 11 months ago |
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A: memcmp(3) memory containing invalid values MEMCMP simply compares the memory bits between two locations. This has nothing to do with whatever those bits might mean. Your first example, on the other hand, compares the contents of variable X with the value 0. Doing a MEMCMP with an area of memory with all bits 0 is the same thing, only if ... (more) |
— | about 1 year ago |
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A: Deciding if a concept can be materialized to a tag The sole purpose of tags should be to help classify posts into what they are roughly about. Being able to easily get the broad topic of posts is obviously useful in searches, but may also be useful for statistics in the future. For example, if a large fraction of posts are about a particular lang... (more) |
— | over 1 year ago |
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A: Should we allow answers generated by ChatGPT? Now that we've had a few of these answers, I really don't like them. It seems there are three separate problems with the ChatGPT answers we have seen: Quote-only. Just like we don't allow link-only answers, we shouldn't allow quote-only answers. Someone answering here needs to provide insight... (more) |
— | over 1 year ago |
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A: How to proportionally convert a number in the range of -1 and 1 to a number in the range of 0 and 319 You want to scale from one linear range to another. That can always be done with y = mx + b where X is the input value and Y the output value. M is the scale factor, and B the offset. You want to map (-1 .. 1) to (0 .. 319). The scale factor therefore has to be 319/2 = 159.... (more) |
— | over 1 year ago |
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A: Are questions about language design on-topic? This is a good question. It depends on how much this site is about getting language X to do Y versus the higher level concepts of software design and computer science that should largely transcend specific languages. We seem to mostly get the first kind of question here. As a result, I think tha... (more) |
— | over 1 year ago |
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A: How would I go about chunk loading around player in a 3 dimensional cartesian coordinate space It seems I'm missing something since the answer should really be obvious. Nonetheless, I'll answer what you appear to be asking to get the obvious case out of the way. The method has already "fallen apart" due to the extra axis of 2D. In 1D it's nice and simple. You grab N behind and N in f... (more) |
— | over 1 year ago |
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A: C naming convention, module trigrams? Personally, I don't like the first form (initCanDriver) at all. The routine name is supposed to present some information as to where/how the routine fits into the larger software world. Information is best presented in global to local context order. This is because the local information often ma... (more) |
— | over 1 year ago |
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A: Explaining the result of an arithmetic expression in JavaScript Now, (x != 42) which is false yields 0 OK so far. so I have expected to get in console "-42" No. As you say, the expression evolves: (x == 42) -1 + (x != 42) x (1) -1 + (0) x -1 + 0 Negative one plus zero is negative one. (more) |
— | about 2 years ago |
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A: Should I check if pointer parameters are null pointers? As with most everything in engineering, how much call arguments to a subroutine should be validated is a tradeoff. There is no single universal right answer. Note that checking for null pointers is only one instance of validating information from elsewhere before acting on it. Advantages of data... (more) |
— | about 2 years ago |
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A: Measuring arithmetic overflow checking overhead in C# Most general purpose computing operating systems can't be counted on for accurate timing as short at 1 to 2 ms. Any test case should run for a few seconds at least. Those runs should then be repeated a few times to get a sense for how much noise is on the data. Either increase the complexity of ... (more) |
— | about 2 years ago |
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A: Why object-oriented instead of class-oriented? Object and Class aren't necessarily the same thing. Back in the 1980's when object oriented programming started to be talked about by practicing software engineers writing real production code, the word "class" didn't come up much. That got popularized by C++ and Java, where class actually has a sp... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
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A: Conditionally ignore files in git I'm not familiar with Latex, but it seems the PDFs are generated from the Latex files. It then seems the real problem is that you are trying to keep source and objects derived from that source in the GIT repository. Ideally, a GIT repository is only for the actual source files (those directly edi... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
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A: Behavior of Pointer Arithmetic on the Stack I'm able to access a, since b is below a on the stack. No, it's not! You have no guarantee in what order the compiler allocates temporary variables on the stack, and even whether it does so at all. You don't even have a guarantee which way (towards high or low addresses) the stack grows. Diff... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
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A: Questions easily answered by studying a beginner-level book Downvote them for now. If it becomes a common problem, then create a close reason of no-research, and close them. Such questions should not be "answered" in comments. First, comments aren't for content. Using a comment to answer subverts the peer-review process. Real information on this site s... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
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A: Why is it considered bad practice to use float for representing currency? I see that Klutt has explained why integers should be used, but there is more that the programmer must keep in mind. Consider the number of bits the integer needs. For US currency, you'd use cents (1/100 of a dollar). On many machines, integers are only 32 bits wide unless you specifically ask f... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
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How to set text-align for whole column of HTML table? To start off, here is the complete HTML of a simple example table: <html lang="en-US"> <head> <title>Title</title> <style> table { width: 20em; table-layout: fixed; border-collapse: collapse; text-align: center; } ... (more) |
— | almost 3 years ago |
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A: Interpreted language: What is its benefit for being written in that way ? Some additional advantages of interpreted languages: Interpreted programs are basically scripts run by the interpreter. The interpreter can be embedded into other applications that want to provide some user-defined logic. As long as this is not expected to get large or require high speed, then i... (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
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A: How can I make --reset-author the default? Here's the problem: Wednesday I make the changes, git commit --amend them Just do a normal commit. You are trying to re-write, or cover up, history. That's generally bad. The record should reflect what really happened: You submitted a patch, it was rejected for xxx reason, you changed the ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: Importing Selected Q&A? Just mass-importing from elsewhere is generally bad. Look at the mess this has made of the Outdoors and Scientific Speculation sites, for example. Bringing over your own content is a bit different. I did this in a few cases to get the EE site going. However, don't just copy the whole Q&A. Here... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |