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• Has the emerging generation of programmers got the wrong idea about design patterns? [closed]

  - by MattDavey

  Over the years I've noticed a shift in attitude towards design patterns, particularly amongst the emerging generation of developers. There seems to be a notion these days that design patterns are silver bullets that instantly cure any problem, a proliferating idea that advancing as a software engineer simply means learning and applying more and more patterns. When confronted with a problem, developers no longer strive to truly understand the issue and design a solution - instead they simply pick a design pattern which seems to be a close fit, and try to brute-force it. You can see evidence of this by the many, many questions on Stack Overflow that begin with the phrase "what pattern should I use to...". I fall into a slightly more mature category of developers (5-10 years experience) and I have a very different viewpoint on patterns - simply as a communication tool to enhance clarity. I find this perspective of design patterns being lego bricks (collected like pokemon cards) a little disconcerting. Will developers lose this attitude as they gain more experience in software engineering? Or could these notions perhaps steer the direction of our craft in years to come? Did the older generation of developers have any similar concerns about us? (perhaps about OO design or similar...). if so, how did we turn out?

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• How/when to hire new programmers, and how to integrate them?

  - by Shaul

  Hiring new programmers, especially in a small company, can often present a Catch-22 situation. We have too much work to do, so we need to hire new programmers. But we can't hire new programmers now, because they will need mentoring and several months of learning curve in your industry/product/environment before they're useful, and none of the programmers has time to be a mentor to a new programmer, because they're all completely swamped with the current work load. That may be a slightly frivolous way of describing the situation, but nevertheless, it's difficult for a small company on a tight budget to justify hiring someone who is not only going to be unproductive for a long time, but will also take away from the performance of the current programmers. How have you dealt with this kind of situation? When is the best time to hire someone? What are the best tasks to assign to a new team member so that they can learn their way around your code base and start getting their hands dirty as quickly as possible? How do you get the new guy useful without bogging your existing programmers down in too much mentoring? Any comments & suggestions you have are much appreciated!

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• What attracts software developers such as yourselves to choose to program for the Android mobile platform?

  - by Hasnan Karim

  Dear programmers, as part of my final year university project, I am conducting research into what makes programmers prefer to program for Android as opposed to other mobile operating systems. The description does not need to be detailed however, I am trying to find patterns between programmers to determine what properties (other than money) a software company such as Android must have in order to attract programmers and therefore grow.

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• Testing Git competence

  - by David

  I hire a lot of programmers for tiny tasks. I very clearly specify that the tasks can only be completed by making a pull request on GitHub. Unfortunatelly, so many programmers do not know Git and often the programmers cannot complete the project due to not understanding/being willing to learn Git, even after they have undertaken the programming of the task. This is bad both for me and for the programmers. Sometimes I end up arguing for why it is inefficient that they just send me a zip file containing the code. Therefore, I am looking for an online service to certify that the programmers know how to make a pull request so I do not waste their nor my time. The certificate should be free for the coders, but may cost me. It is important that the course just focuses on exactly what is needed to make a clean pull request so it should not take more than 5 minutes to go through. Does such a thing exist?

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• Administrators vs Programmers: Who's got more people Interaction / Working hours?

  - by sanksjaya

  Well, I've heard programmers get to interact with other programmers quiet a lot. But, who gets to meet a lot of new people on a daily basis at work without getting the feeling "Goosh! I'm stuck with him/this for another year :(" - Admins or Coders? And what kind of people domain do each get to interact with? Secondly, I've had this myth for a long time that unlike programmers, Network/System/Security Admins get locked-up in a den and juiced up late nights and early mornings. Most of the time they had to slip out of work without being noticed. But recently one of my seniors from my grad school told he had to work late and on weekends for a product release. How true and often does this happen with programmers and admins?

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• How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer?

  - by Kristopher Johnson

  Like most people, I think of myself as being a bit above average in my field. I get paid well, I've gotten promotions, and I've never had a real problem getting good references or getting a job. But I've been around enough to notice that many of the worst programmers I've worked with thought they were some of the best. Bad programmers who are surrounded by other bad programmers seem to be the most self-deluded. I'm certainly not perfect. I do make mistakes. I do miss deadlines. But I think I make about the same number of bonehead moves that "other good programmers" do. The problem is that I define "other good programmers" to mean "people who are like me." So, I wonder, is there any way a programmer can make some sort of reasonable self-evaluation? How do we know whether we are good or bad at our jobs? Or, if terms like good and bad are too ill-defined, how can programmers honestly identify their own strengths and weaknesses, so that they can take advantage of the former and work to improve the latter?

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• I can't program because the code I am using uses old coding styles. Is this normal to programmers? [closed]

  - by Renato Dinhani Conceição

  I'm in my first real job as programmer, but I can't solve any problems because of the coding style used. The code here: Does not have comments Does not have functions (50, 100, 200, 300 or more lines executed in sequence) Uses a lot of if statements with a lot of paths Has variables that make no sense (eg.: cf_cfop, CF_Natop, lnom, r_procod) Uses an old language (Visual FoxPro 8 from 2002), but there are new releases from 2007. I feel like I have gone back to 1970. Is it normal for a programmer familiar with OOP, clean-code, design patterns, etc. to have trouble with coding in this old-fashion way? EDIT: All the answers are very good. For my (un)hope, appears that there are a lot of this kind of code bases around the world. A point mentioned to all answers is refactor the code. Yeah, I really like to do it. In my personal project, I always do this, but... I can't refactor the code. Programmers are only allowed to change the files in the task that they are designed for. Every change in old code must be keep commented in the code (even with Subversion as version control), plus meta informations (date, programmer, task) related to that change (this became a mess, there are code with 3 used lines and 50 old lines commented). I'm thinking that is not only a code problem, but a management of software development problem.

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• Before and After the Programmer Life [closed]

  - by Gio Borje

  How were people before and after becoming programmers through a black box? In a black box, the implementation is irrelevant; therefore, we focus on the input and output: High School Nerd -> becomeProgrammer() -> Manager (Person Before) -> (Person as Programmer) -> (New Person) (Person Before) -> (Person as Programmer) How are the typical lives of people before they became programmers? Why do people pursue life as a programmer? (Person as Programmer) -> (New Person) How has becoming a programmer changed people afterwards? Why quit being a programmer? Anecdotes would be nice. If many programmers have similar backgrounds and fates, do you think that there is some sort of stereotypical person that are destined to become programmers?

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• I don't know C. And why should I learn it?

  - by Stephen

  My first programming language was PHP (gasp). After that I started working with JavaScript. I've recently done work in C#. I've never once looked at low or mid level languages like C. The general consensus in the programming-community-at-large is that "a programmer who hasn't learned something like C, frankly, just can't handle programming concepts like pointers, data types, passing values by reference, etc." I do not agree. I argue that: Because high level languages are easily accessible, more "non-programmers" dive in and make a mess, and In order to really get anything done in a high level language, one needs to understand the same similar concepts that most proponents of "learn-low-level-first" evangelize about. Some people need to know C. Those people have jobs that require them to write low to mid-level code. I'm sure C is awesome. I'm sure there are a few bad programmers who know C. My question is, why the bias? As a good, honest, hungry programmer, if I had to learn C (for some unforeseen reason), I would learn C. Considering the multitude of languages out there, shouldn't good programmers focus on learning what advances us? Shouldn't we learn what interests us? Should we not utilize our finite time moving forward? Why do some programmers disagree with this? I believe that striving for excellence in what you do is the fundamental deterministic trait between good programmers and bad ones. Does anyone have any real world examples of how something written in a high level language--say Java, Pascal, PHP, or Javascript--truely benefitted from a prior knowledge of C? Examples would be most appreciated. (revised to better coincide with the six guidelines.)

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• Why C++ is an abomination [closed]

  - by Chander Shivdasani

  Possible Duplicate: Why do so many people dislike C++? I was reading the blog by Peter Seibel (Author of Coders at Work) where brilliant programmers like Ken Thompson, Joshua Bloch and Guy Steele have despised c++ to no end. What is it in C++ that people hate so much? And despite so much hate towards it, companies like Google are still using it, and some of the programmers who snubbed C++ have worked or are already working at Google. So, what is it in the language that despite so much hate from top programmers, it's still used at most of the places? I haven't really used C++ beyond academic projects, so i don't know much about the disadvantages of the language. What do programmers here think about it? --Chander

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• I don't know C. And why should I learn it?

  - by Stephen

  My first programming language was PHP (gasp). After that I started working with JavaScript. I've recently done work in C#. I've never once looked at low or mid level languages like C. The general consensus in the programming-community-at-large is that "a programmer who hasn't learned something like C, frankly, just can't handle programming concepts like pointers, data types, passing values by reference, etc." I do not agree. I argue that: Because high level languages are easily accessible, more "non-programmers" dive in and make a mess In order to really get anything done in a high level language, one needs to understand the same similar concepts that most proponents of "learn-low-level-first" evangelize about. Some people need to know C; those people have jobs that require them to write low to mid-level code. I'm sure C is awesome, and I'm sure there are a few bad programmers who know C. Why the bias? As a good, honest, hungry programmer, if I had to learn C (for some unforeseen reason), I would learn C. Considering the multitude of languages out there, shouldn't good programmers focus on learning what advances us? Shouldn't we learn what interests us? Should we not utilize our finite time moving forward? Why do some programmers disagree with this? I believe that striving for excellence in what you do is the fundamental deterministic trait between good programmers and bad ones. Does anyone have any real world examples of how something written in a high level language—say Java, Pascal, PHP, or Javascript—truely benefitted from a prior knowledge of C? Examples would be most appreciated.

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• Social-network, online community, company and job reviews, salaries statistics and much more.. Do we have it? Do we need it?

  - by Vlad Lazarenko

  I have many friends from Ukraine who are programmers. So I found out that they have a web site that collects, organizes and analyzing information about IT companies, which includes location, feedbacks, company reviews from current and former employees etc. They also collect programming salaries and organize them by language, region etc. That web site is ran by programmers and for programmers, all information is absolutely public and free. Plus, web site has forums, and people can discuss (more or less social than specific programming stuff) things, publish articles, news etc. I personally think that is useful, especially for those who are new in this industry. For example, you may do a small research and find out that, for example, Java programmers getting paid more than PHP programmers but demand is lower. Or you get an offer from the company, is about to accept it, but read reviews and find out that they don't even provide internet access at work and if you need to download something, you have to ask your manager to do it for you, and managers share a single computer that has internet connection to get that stuff for you (there is only one such company in Kiev, Ukraine, called SMK, for Software Mac Kiev, a big shame). So the question is - do we have something like it in US? Or at least, say, for New York region? Or state? All information I managed to find online is inaccurate or not full. Forums are very specific. If we don't have it, would you be interested in creating such a portal? Thanks!

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• Consultant in a firm that doesn't understand the tech!

  - by techsjs2012

  I got the job as a Consultant in a firm that has 3 other programmers. My job is to rewrite all the old system in Java, Spring etc but the staff programmers only know perl and the manager does not know any programming. I am trying to get them to understand that I have 6 projects to rewrite here but no one has design docs or spec. the staff programmers never had to write any documents. Plus I cant get the manager to understand the new java tech stuff.. he keeps asking some of the staff for views on things but the staff don't know it or understand it. Where do I go from here to make the manager understand that the staff programmers or someone has to write a design document so I know what to build. or if I have to write the documents how do I get the information?

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• Is there an SCM tool made for solo programmers with key logging built in?

  - by pokstad

  Are there any Source Code Management (SCM) tools made specifically for solo programmers or small groups of programmers that tracks every small change made to source code in real time? This would require all key strokes to be tracked, and any other small changes like GUI UI editing. This seems like it would be a very useful tool for a programmer trying to remember a fix he did an hour ago that they didn't manually commit.

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• How Linux programmers create GUI application without using IDE?

  - by CMW

  Hi, I have read some comments in some forums saying that Linux programmers usually do not use any IDE. They prefer to use Vim and Emacs to do their programming. If I'm not mistaken, Vim and Emacs are just text editors, similar to notepad, but with syntax highlighting. I just want to know how Linux programmers create complicated GUI application without using any IDE. Thanks.

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• How to teach Django to non-web programmers? [closed]

  - by Greg

  I've been tasked with providing a workshop for my co-workers to teach them Django. They're all good programmers but they've never done any web programming. I was thinking to just go through the Django tutorial with them, but are there things in there that wouldn't make sense to non-web programmers? Do they need any kind of webdev background first? Any thoughts on a good way to provide the basics so that Django will make sense?

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• What would you write in a consitution (law book) for a programmers' country?

  - by Developer Art

  After we have got our great place to talk about professional matters and sozialize online - on SO, I believe the next logical step would be to found our own country! I invite you all to participate and bring together your available resources. We will buy an island, better even a group of island so that we could establish states like .NET territories, Java land, Linux republic etc. We will build a society of programmers (girls - we need you too). To the organizational side, we're going to need some constitution or a law book. I suggest we write it together. I make it a wiki as it should be a cooperative effort. I'll open the work. Section 1. Programmers' rights. Every citizen has a right to an Internet connection 24/7. Every citizen can freely choose the field of interest Section 2. Programmers' obligations. Every citizen must embrace the changing nature of the profession and constanly educate himself Section 3. Law enforcement. Code duplication when can be avoided is punished by limiting the bandwith speed to 64Kbit for a period of one week. Using ugly hacks instead of refactoring code is punished by cutting the Internet connection for a period of one month. Usage of technologies older than 5/10 years is punished by restricting the web access to the sites last updated 5/10 years ago for a period of one month. Please feel free to modify and extend the list. We'll need to have it ready before we proceed formally with the country foundation. A purchase fund will be established shortly. Everyone is invited to participate.

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• What would you write in a Constitution (law book) for a programmers' country? [closed]

  - by Developer Art

  After we have got our great place to talk about professional matters and sozialize online - on SO, I believe the next logical step would be to found our own country! I invite you all to participate and bring together your available resources. We will buy an island, better even a group of islands so that we could establish states like .NET territories, Java land, Linux republic etc. We will build a society of programmers (girls - we need you too). To the organizational side, we're going to need some sort of a Constitution or a law book. I suggest we write it together. I make it a wiki as it should be a cooperative effort. I'll open the work. Section 1. Programmers' rights. Every citizen has a right to an Internet connection 24/7. Every citizen can freely choose the field of interest Section 2. Programmers' obligations. Every citizen must embrace the changing nature of the profession and constanly educate himself Section 3. Law enforcement. Code duplication when can be avoided is punished by limiting the bandwith speed to 64Kbit for a period of one week. Using ugly hacks instead of refactoring code is punished by cutting the Internet connection for a period of one month. Usage of technologies older than 5/10 years is punished by restricting the web access to the sites last updated 5/10 years ago for a period of one month. Please feel free to modify and extend the list. We'll need to have it ready before we proceed formally with the country foundation. A purchase fund will be established shortly. Everyone is invited to participate.

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• Hey, Programmers! We Got No Theory!

  Good software looks different than bad software Business - Technology - Retailers - Accounting - Industry-Specific

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• What is a good programming language for testers who are not great programmers?

  - by Brian T Hannan

  We would like to create some simple automated tests that will be created and maintained by testers. Right now we have a tester who can code in any language, but in the future we might want any tester with a limited knowledge of programming to be able to add or modify the tests. What is a good programming language for testers who are not great programmers, or programmers at all? Someone suggested LUA, but I looked into LUA and it might be more complicated that another language would be. Preferably, the language will be interpreted and not be compiled. Let me know what you think.

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• How can programmers get the quiet working environment they need? [closed]

  - by Richard

  We have an open plan office with all our programmers, web designers and client service team. Problem is my programmer team has to put up with dance music and wailing guitars all day due to the fact that designers and client services team think this makes the office a better environment. When I turn it off (by blocking the streaming of music on the router, he-he-he) they complain that its so quiet and dull. How do I explain to them that programmers need a calm quiet environment without coming across like a really annoying geek? Any other thoughts or ideas appreciated.

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• Is inconsistent formatting a sign of a sloppy programmer?

  - by dreza

  I understand that everyone has their own style of programming and that you should be able to read other people's styles and accept it for what it is. However, would one be considered a sloppy programmer if one's style of coding was inconsistent across whatever standard they were working against? Some example of inconsistencies might be: Sometimes naming private variables with _ and sometimes not Sometimes having varying indentations within code blocks Not aligning braces up i.e. same column if using start using new line style Spacing not always consistent around operators i.e. p=p+1, p+=1 vs other times p =p+1 or p = p + 1 etc Is this even something that as a programmer I should be concerned with addressing? Or is it such a minor nit picking thing that at the end of the day I should just not worry about it and worry about what the end user sees and whether the code works rather than how it looks while working? Is it sloppy programming or just over obsessive nit picking? EDIT: After some excellent comments I realized I may have left out some information in my question. This question came about after reviewing another colleagues code check-in and noticing some of these things and then realizing that I've seen these kind of in-consistencies in previous check-ins. It then got me thinking about my code and whether I do the same things and noticed that I typically don't etc I'm not suggesting his technique is either bad or good in this question or whether his way of doing things is right or wrong. EDIT: To answer some queries to some more good feed back. The specific instance this review occurred in was using Visual Studio 2010 and programming in c# so I don't think the editor would cause any issues. In fact it should only help I would hope. Sorry if I left that piece of info out and it effects any current answers. I was trying to be a bit more generic in understanding if this would be considered sloppy etc. And to add an even more specific example of a code piece I saw during reading of the check-in: foreach(var block in Blocks) { // .. some other code in here foreach(var movement in movements) { movement.Moved.Zero(); } // the un-formatted brace } Such a minor thing I know, but many small things add up(???), and I did have to double glance at the code at the time to see where everything lined up I guess. Please note this code was formatted appropriately before this check-in. EDIT: After reading some great answers and varying thoughts, the summary I've taken from this was. It's not necessarily a sign of a sloppy programmer however as programmers we have a duty (to ourselves and other programmers) to make the code as readable as possible to assist in further ongoing development. However it can hint at inadequacies which is something that is only possible to review on a case by case (person by person) basis. There are many reasons why this might occur. They should be taken in context and worked through with the person/people involved if reasonable. We have a duty to try and help all programmers become better programmers! In the good old days when development was done using good old notepad (or other simple text editing tool) this occurred much more frequently. However we have the assistance of modern IDE's now so although we shouldn't necessarily become OTT about this, it should still probably be addressed to some degree. We as programmers vary in our standards, styles and approaches to solutions. However it seems that in general we all take PRIDE in our work and as a trait it is something that can stand programmers apart. Making something to the best of our abilities both internal (code) and external (end user result) goes along way to giving us that big fat pat on the back that we may not go looking for but swells our heart with pride. And finally to quote CrazyEddie from his post below. Don't sweat the small stuff

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• Should programmers use boolean variables to "document" their code?

  - by froadie

  I'm reading McConell's Code Complete, and he discusses using boolean variables to document your code. For example, instead of: if((elementIndex < 0) || (MAX_ELEMENTS < elementIndex) || (elementIndex == lastElementIndex)){ ... } He suggests: finished = ((elementIndex < 0) || (MAX_ELEMENTS < elementIndex)); repeatedEntry = (elementIndex == lastElementIndex); if(finished || repeatedEntry){ ... } This strikes me as logical, good practice, and very self-documenting. However, I'm hesitant to start using this technique regularly as I've almost never come across it; and perhaps it would be confusing just by virtue of being rare. However, my experience is not very vast yet, so I'm interested in hearing programmers' opinion of this technique, and I'd be curious to know if anyone uses this technique regularly or has seen it often when reading code. Is this a worthwhile convention/style/technique to adopt? Will other programmers understand and appreciate it, or consider it strange?

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• Do you think that exposure to BASIC can mutilate your mind? [closed]

  - by bigown

  It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration -- Edsger W. Dijkstra I have deep respect to Dijkstra but I don't agree with everything he said/wrote. I disagree specially with this quote on linked paper wrote 35 years ago about the Dartmouth BASIC implementation. Many of my coworkers or friends programmers started with BASIC, questions below have answers that indicate many programmers had their first experience on programming at BASIC. AFAIK many good programmers started at BASIC programming. I'm not talking about Visual Basic or other "modern" dialects of BASIC running on machines full of resources. I'm talking about old times BASIC running on "toy" computer, that the programmer had to worry about saving small numbers that need not be calculated as a string to save a measly byte because the computer had only a few hundreds of them, or have to use computed goto for lack of a more powerful feature, and many other things which require the programmer to think much before doing something and forcing the programmer to be creative. If you had experience with old time BASIC on a machine with limited resources (have in mind that a simple micro-controller today has much more resources than a computer in 1975, do you think that BASIC help your mind to find better solutions, to think like an engineer or BASIC drag you to dark side of programming and mutilated you mentally? Is good to learn a programming language running on a computer full of resources where the novice programmer can do all wrong and the program runs without big problems? Or is it better to learn where the programmer can't go wrong? What can you say about the BASIC have helped you to be a better/worse programmer? Would you teach old BASIC running on a 2KB (virtual) machine to a coming programmer? Sure, only exposure to BASIC is bad. Maybe you share my opinion that modern BASIC doesn't help too much because modern BASIC, as long other programming languages, gives facilities which allow the programmer doesn't think deeper. Additional information: Why BASIC?

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• Estimating cost of labor for a controlled experiment

  - by Lorin Hochstein

  Let's say you are a software engineering researcher and you are designing a controlled experiment to compare two software technologies or techniques (e.g., TDD vs. non-TDD, Python vs. Go) with respect to some qualities of interest (e.g., quality of resulting code, programmer productivity). According to your study design, participants will work alone to implement a non-trivial software system. You estimate it should take about six months for a single programmer to complete the task. You also estimate via power analysis that you will need around sixty study participants to obtain statistically significant results, assuming the technologies actually do yield different outcomes. To maximize external validity, you want to use professional programmers as study participants. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to find professional programmers who can volunteer for several months to work full-time on implementing a software system. You decide to go the simplest route and contract with a large IT consulting firm to obtain access to programmers to participate in the study. What is a reasonable estimate of the cost range, per person-month, for the programming labor? Assume you are constrained to work with a U.S.-based firm, but it doesn't matter where in the U.S. the firm itself or the programmers or located. Note: I'm looking for a reasonable order-of-magnitude range suitable for back-of-the-envelope calculations so that when people say "Why doesn't somebody just do a study to measure X", I can say, "Because running that study properly would cost $Y", and have a reasonable argument for the value of $Y.

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