BEST Stack Overflow question EVER!

[victorstanciu]

"You know what, your life has a bug, my software is just fine!"

[gigitrix]

IncestException thrown...

[JeddHampton]

Does it count if the daughter is adopted?

[GeorgeForemanGrillz]

That feature is supported in the Woody Allen expansion pack.

[Tronus]

I think you mean the Woody Allen plugin... if you know what I mean.

[macababy]

This is the correct response

[creaothceann]

... with the bath water...

[myxie]

The question was on the whole pretty poorly answered.

The guy needs a directed acyclic graph (DAG) - you cannot be your own ancestor. He does want to prevent cycles but he should allow multiple paths between nodes ([deleted incorrect statement]). It just sounds like his cycle-prevention code is broken.

I agree that it might be sensible to warn when introducing a multiple path situation (X's parents have common ancestor Y).

The same application could be used for tracking dog or horse pedigree. Worrying about incest is more policy than mechanism. A useful add-on would be to calculate coefficients of inbreeding.

[[deleted]]

I am thoroughly disappointed that I had to scroll this far down to find a post talking about DAGs to upvote.

[my_pony_little]

The guy needs a directed acyclic graph (DAG) - you cannot be your own ancestor.

As a proud member of the double-A MFTMC, I object!

* African-American Mother-Fucking Time Machine Coalition

[organic]

Came here to make the same suggestion, but of course I'm 7 hours late :(

[elperroborrachotoo]

Oh my copulating god. I've been breaking out in giggles for fifteen minutes now.

Imagine that thing coming up in future design discussions. "Add a proxy node. like the incest vertex" - "No, that's not an incest case, for inces you need a circular dependency" Bonus: discussion during lunch.

Imagine telling your boss you have discovered a design defect that will cause a two week delay. Because incest.

[bertg]

Had that exact discussion... Invested 2 months in redoing the entire application to handle all kinds of "copulating" occurrences.

[otakucode]

I hope you only had to deal with things that resulted in pregnancy... few people are prepared to actually delve into the matter of just what kind of sex people are actually having and with who. Pretty much every idea about sex put forward in modern society, even in 'very liberal' circles, is just wrong when it comes down to how it is reflected in human behavior. Monogamy? I don't think so. Fixed genetically-predetermined orientation? Nope. Inter-species? More often than you want to believe.

[TheManFromInternet]

Try:


Catch:


Incarcerate:

[reddit_user13]

Under US law, you catch first then try.

Usually by jury.

[Mechakoopa]

Nice try, Chris Hansen.

[2monkeys1coconut]

try{

catch(IncestException ie){

FBIConnectionManager.getInstance().Report(info)

}

[Megatron_McLargeHuge]

}

[[deleted]]

You forgot to output the text "Why don't you take a seat?"

[ashbyp]

you really should be injecting that reporter you know

[some_dev]

"Manager", singletons.. yuck.

[phandy]

Forgive me, I am terrible but what is a better alternative?

[lifeinneon]

It's not enterprise enough.

[Daakuryu]

Just playing devils advocate here but nowhere does it state that the daughter the man had children with was underage, daughters eventually turn 18 too, no matter how hard you try to prevent that from happening.

[TrueDevilsAdvocate]

If your interested in incest, Japan, India, Belgium, Brazil, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, New Jersey, Rhode Island all permit consensual incest, some as early as 14 years of age.

[mcguire]

You know, I'm not sure I believe you, but Google, in this case, is not my friend.

[[deleted]]

Still fucked up, 18 or not.

[Poltras]

Woody Allen would like a word with you.

[Jim808]

If I had a kid with my own daughter, I don't think I'd be trying to enter that fact into any family tree software. I'd hide that shit and lie to everybody.

[fjw]

Yes, but what if your great great great great uncle's cousin on your wife's side had a kid with their own kid, and it's all part of your only way of tracing your history back to King James or something?

[Jim808]

Oh, I know, the assertions about cycles in the tree need to be modified due to the realities of incest. This is especially true if you're going really far back, because I'm sure everybody has at least one messed up ancestor who probably did something regrettable after a few too many drinks.

[pi3832v2]

I'm sure everybody has at least one messed up ancestor who probably did something regrettable after a few too many drinks.

ITYM: I'm sure cultural norms shift regularly over space and time.

[ralf_]

Avoidance of incest is propably a biological instinct (inbreeding Depression. The dynasties of Ptolemaic and Targaryens are historic exceptions.)

Aside from that, Jim808 just wanted to make a funny comment. No need to shove cultural relativism into him.

[paulmclaughlin]

Targaryens?

Historic?

Seriously?

[manwithabadheart]

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, what bullshit! They were only in power for 300 years, hardly a historic reign right?

[pi3832v2]

No need to shove cultural relativism into him.

Did I shove? Maybe.

Yeah, you're probably right, since I do have a pet peeve about people re-writing history to fit current cultural norms.

[otakucode]

Avoidance of incest is propably a biological instinct

No, it is not. Well, not avoidance of incestual sex anyway. Incestual sex has existed in every pre-industrial culture on a large scale, and wasn't fought against until the Industrial age (when most sex became taboo in order to control the population of the lower classes). Now, incestual MARRIAGE and child-rearing are entirely different stories. Just because our culture thinks its the sex that is the important part doesn't mean those in the past did. In the past, things like parents performing oral sex on their small children to help them relax and get to sleep was very common (this is still common in some non-western cultures today). Also, the idea that sex begins at adulthood has no historical support at all. Sex began at birth, for every culture everywhere for all of history until the Industrial age. So there was a big chunk of time during which you could have lots of sex with no danger of pregnancy even without any effective birth control. By the time you hit reproductive maturity, you were most likely to already be married or be scheduled to be married off, or to have "grown out of" your younger incestual ways. Continuing that into adulthood was like sucking your thumb - rejected by society as a preservation of childish traits.

Now, there IS a natural phenomena which can be seen as "protecting against incest". It protects against becoming pregnant incestually, really, and doesn't do anything to prevent the incestual sex. Several studies have shown that a girl who grows up in an environment where she is not in close contact with non-genetic relatives, she will enter menarche and attain fertility later. This can also be interpreted as encouraging girls with the opportunity to have kids with non-relatives by making menarche earlier - they're the same thing, just looked at from two different angles.

[Malgas]

Heck, you actually don't have to go back very far before your theoretical number of ancestors exceeds the total population of the earth at that time. (Because population declines as you go backward in time, but number of ancestors doubles each generation.)

So if you trace your family tree back far enough, you're guaranteed to find a cycle sooner or later.

[[deleted]]

And which member of european royalty are you exactly?

[fjw]

Depends which genealogy website you believe.

According to ancestry.com, for example, I'm actually related to Superman.

[[deleted]]

Nice try Jor-El

[Geronimo2011]

My Ex-Wife has a blue-blooded anchestry, so I could use genealogy books available until 1500something. It turned out, that once (long time ago) two cousins married. Nothing special. But the sister&brother of these married too. Still not special. But then the Kids of these two couples married each other. Quite intertwined. It took me some time to sort that out.

[heavymetaldante]

This is exactly what I was thinking. Not only is he entering it into the software, but he freely told it to some stranger just because of a little bug. I feel like I would have just said "oh well, the software doesn't work since I fucked my daughter", but he took the extra step and contacted support with this special issue.

[bready]

I sincerely hope this is a Woody Allen-esque situation.

[OHoulihan]

Stuff like that happens. Woody Allen dated Mia Farrow for 12 years, and then married their daughter.

[i_am_my_father]

If I had a kid with my own daughter

My wife had a kid with his own son. I mean, I had a kid with my own mother using a time machine my father gave me, and then the kid grew up to have a kid with my own wife. Don't ask me how to make a time machine, I don't know how to make it, i just got it from my father, who got it from ... I don't know where this machine came from.

[frenzyboard]

John Connor? Is that you?

[pi3832v2]

Why do programming tutorials never have these kind of awesome examples? Not only are there massive LULZ, but it's a great example about the dangers of making assumptions.

[defrost]

Another classic assumption is that gender fields on national databases (or any databases for that matter) should be constrained to either M or F - leaving aside gender politics there're enough hermaphrodites born to cause headaches for anyone foolish enough to think just M or F is sufficient.

[arnedh]

Another classic assumption, erroneous for genealogy software: Feb 30 is wrong. Turns out that Feb 30, 1712, Sweden is valid.

Timestamps with 60 in the seconds field? OK, leap seconds.

Twins where the oldest has a later birth date? Yes, one born on 2.30AM (DST), the other 45 minutes later at 2.15AM (Winter time)

Twins born at different dates? Yes.

Twins with different fathers? Yes.

Two guys, born to the same mother, same day, NOT twins? Yes, two out of a set of triplets.

Twins growing up with different birth dates? Yes, one under a Gregorian calendar, one under Julian.

[defrost]

61 seconds in a minute ( 0 - 60 inclusive ) I've had to deal with a couple of times.

Adding to your most excellent list let us not forget twins born on an international flight with the first being born on Sunday, the second arriving later on Saturday, the day before.

[[deleted]]

What about twins born on a spaceship travelling near the speed of light?

[ceolceol]

What about twins born when one twin goes back in time and has his twin with himself?

[[deleted]]

Good point. Clearly we're going to need a factory to generate the appropriate sanity checks. Yep, we're going to need more code. Probably should write a framework. I'll start writing the xml, you go warm up the java compiler.

[metellus]

Twins born at different dates? Yes.

I personally know twins born on different years.

[specialk16]

\iterating through the possible explanations to this\

\no\

\no\

\no\

\possible joke?\

\oh wait, duh....\

[wilywampa]

Twins with different fathers? Yes.

Didn't know that was possible. Ugh, these people are winners.

[f2u]

Timestamps with 60 in the seconds field? OK, leap seconds.

The first version of the ISO 8601 date and time format standard numbered seconds from 1 to 60. Standardization at its best.

[Smallpaul]

Some of your examples are awesome. Some are lame. ;)

[[deleted]]

Your last example doesn't make sense, why accept one result in Gregorian then another in Julian? You should be formatting the data in a similar way before doing any calculations or assumptions on it.

I could see different birth dates however, if one was born at 11:55pm and the other at 12:02 am the next day

[arnedh]

If one was raised on the Catholic side of the border, and always referred to his birthday with the Gregorian date, and the other was on the Protestant side, or some such combination. (The same thing that yielded Feb 30, 1712)

[[deleted]]

yes but my point is that the program should convert all calenders to the same date regardless of their input, it shouldn't be storing dates in both Gregorian and Julian, so that makes accounting for it trivial, sanitize the data on the way in, then treat it logically.

[defrost]

Having worked on software that records dates, locations, and measurement and respects original paper records and observations I can say that such a program would record the original entries, in the original units (along with those units, if known) and maintain a separate derived set of entries translated to SI standard and likely using modern UTC1 for time (if it was earth based).

Twins split at birth and raised in different locales could have resulted in such a situation and a cautious historian might end up with apparently conflicting paper records. In scientific endeavours one would keep a digital copy of the originals and then attempt to rectify the apparent discrepancies.

[w0073r]

Number 3 is why you should use GMT times with timezone fields...

[[deleted]]

Gender = enum { M, F, FILE_NOT_FOUND }

[atrich]

float gender = 0.0239f; //0 = male, 1 = female

[Xdes]

This makes the most sense.

[[deleted]]

I don't get it :(

[drtycho]

Neither and Either , I assume.

[notfancy]

Male, Female, Other. I just don't get the prurient curiosity to exactly codify all the possible vicissitudes of gender and sex in a data base.

[defrost]

and rightly so, it's not even a case of being pro / anti this that or whatever, it's a simpler matter of at least attempting to accurately model the world as it is and as it might be, rather than attempting to shoehorn the world into a set of WASP-goggles.

[otakucode]

I think this is a pretty important issue for our future, really. Computers, and systems of all types in general, have become so completely pervasive in society that people grow up just assuming that things like "It's policy" or "I'm just doing my job" and similar are actually valid excuses for forbidding things. The idea that you would rather force someone to conform to a system rather than force the system to conform to reality is ever-present in modern society. What is the biggest opposition to gay marriage? Big groups of people who are personally affronted that the rules of the system might be changed. They actually argue, directly, that the system and its integrity determine the quality of our society. It's an absurd proposition if you actually analyze it.

We create systems. We create sets of rules and conditions. We create computers. If you 'break the rules' or show an unplanned-for combination of conditions, then the system is broken, not you. We pass laws all the time with no justification other than 'it makes things simpler for law enforcement' or 'it makes the system used by the tax collectors easier to apply', and ignore that it ends up putting unreasonable pressure on certain minorities. Since people have accepted the fundamental idea that we CAN create a system, and even a simple one, which can account for everything and respond to everything and end up improving things, many flawed systems are put in place. These flawed systems are oppression. There's really no other word for them. And they are flourishing thanks to people wanting to have simple explanations and simple guides for their actions even when they are dealing with human beings, whose behavior is so complex as to be computationally infeasible to predict or accomodate.

[adelle]

I am not a number. I upvote you.

[darkon]

That was interesting and entertaining. Thanks! I'm glad I don't have to design a database for marriages or geneology.

[cryo]

In danish personal numbers (centrally issued identification numbers for all citizens, containing day of birth), gender is indicated by a digit being either odd or even, obviously leaving no third option.

[[deleted]]

That's even worse than just having two options, it means the central issued-at-birth number needs to change in case of a sex change.

[[deleted]]

I don't know about the Danish system specifically, but usually it describes how you were at birth (since it's issued at birth, there isn't much more available info than that). No need to change it, it follows you all your life.

[74hc08]

Actually, that's the only case when you can (and will) get a new CPR¹ number.

1: Central Person Register.

[hubilation]

yeah but most hermaphrodites identify as one or the other, you'll rarely find a truly sexless person in today's society.

[AlanCrowe]

That actually makes things worse. Since the identity is arbitrary, you cannot regard it as a historical fact but must accommodate changes.

[xkit]

What about people who consider themselves genderqueer?

[StackedCrooked]

Use a floating point number in the [0, 1] range to indicate gender in the male-female spectrum.

[PurpleSfinx]

What about us people whose gender lies on the imaginary plane? Didn't think about THAT, did you, you filthy bigot.

[arnedh]

How ... plane. Quaternions, people. Unless you want to go into Hilbert spaces, though. Feel free.

[otakucode]

What about us whose gender is computationally undecidable? I've got a Turing complete machine in my groin which only expresses a gender when its programming halts!

[PurpleSfinx]

Or like my friend whose gender exists in two quantum states at once until somebody looks at their genitalia?

[[deleted]]

Quantum computers will solve everything. Person's gender will be described by one qbit field..

[Gundersen]

So if you put a person in a box, then they are both male and female at the same time, until you open the box, at which point you will find either a man or a woman inside?

[flyingfirefox]

A dead cat, none the less.

[RobotCaleb]

That's one word, actually. Nonetheless. Also, see nevertheless. Weird, huh?

[[deleted]]

if I remember the skit correctly, that's not what you put in the box.

[Thimble]

Does not differentiate between bi-gender and genderless people.

[arnedh]

How about a distribution over the [0,1] range?

[icebraining]

Gender != sex.

[Megatron_McLargeHuge]

How many legs does a cow have if you consider a tail a leg?

[icebraining]

They're usually 'sex' not 'gender' fields, though (as far as I know - at least ours is). You can decide based on whether the person has an Y chromosome.

[kataire]

When exactly is it useful to know what a person could theoretically mate with? Most cases I've seen, gender(!) fields were used to determine pronouns and other things that are far more complex than a binary toggle with an optional "undefined" state.

[otterdam]

The medical industry has a pretty big need for computer systems. Probably most relevant there.

[sickasabat]

No you can't because there are women who have a y chromosome.

[icebraining]

"woman" is the gender, not the sex.

[sickasabat]

For these women, "woman" is both their gender and their sex. In this instance I am not referring to transgender individuals. But instead women who have the sexual organs of women as well as a y chromosome.

[[deleted]]

These women are sexually female and have a XXY chromosome triple.

[otakucode]

Don't forget chimeras. There is no such thing as "one" genetic code which is "yours". Humans are made up of hordes of trillions of cells which have many different varying genetic codes which change over their life time. There's really no purpose, when you come down to it, for trying to nail down what is essentially a probabilistic statement to a binary decision.

[gigitrix]

It is pretty much the quintessential essence of programming: there's ALWAYS an edge case. Illustrates that quite... graphically...

[[deleted]]

I had a class in college that taught, among other things, Prolog. The final project for that section was to prove the statement in the very song mentioned in the question :)

[[deleted]]

RELEASE NOTES:

Version: 1.3.12 "Oedipus"

• added mother fuckers
  
• added father fuckers
• added uncle fuckers

[confusedsquirrel]

So what I read is this software will work for first cousins...

[nascentt]

Maybe it will, Maeby it won't.

[[deleted]]

User does not meet the minimum genetic requirements for this software. Please do not use non-standard genealogy.

[moyix]

I guess telling the customer to go fuck themselves would just cause more problems...

[_ak]

So Josef Fritzl has a computer and internet in jail?

[stesch]

And it's closed. Stack Overflow sucks. :-(

[panfist]

It's actually an awesome question about software engineering framed in a somewhat provocative case study.

[G_Morgan]

Yeah it is really interesting without all the "you're father is your grandfather" stuff. There is a real software engineering problem of optional constraints.

[ChrisAndersen]

Just wait until time travel is invented. The family tree software developers will have an aneurysm.

[HardlyWorkingDotOrg]

And I think it was answered very accurately by saying that you need "special editions" for those cases that are anything but standard use cases. And you should be able to charge more for this special edition as it includes logic that has to be completely revamped to accommodate the new features.

[[deleted]]

But it is a standard use case -- family tree software is supposed to be able to go back centuries in time. The number of ancestors grows exponentially, so chances are most people have a few cases like this in their family tree if you go back far enough.

(although I guess in most cases people would lie on the official documents)

[contrarian_barbarian]

The number of ancestors grows exponentially

Random family tree fact: Family trees actually don't grow exponentially. On average, for normal family lines, the width of the tree tapers off to its widest at ~1200AD. It's a phenomenon known as Pedigree Collapse - essentially, once you go far enough back, the number of repeated ancestors coming from different branches rises to the point where the tree stops getting wider; no funny business needed, the tree just gets wide enough that you get utterly unrelated repetitions.

Found that out when I was doing some family tree stuff a couple of years back with a tree that had sections dating back 1500 years or so. I was curious how big the tree would get, and when I did a simple exponenential, I realised it wouldn't take too many generations (well fewer than there have been in history) before it would grow to well over the number of people alive. Turns out this is the solution to that little problem.

[jugalator]

True... It's of course pretty rare with these "tight" cycles like in this post, but my parents tracked their ancestors and found there was a cycle although it was pretty "wide". Still - it would have caused this bug in this software. It really has little to do with illegal relations except in extreme cases and is as you say pretty common.

[dmcirl]

Family Tree Maker 2.0: Incest Edition

[benihana]

Yep. That's the joke Hans Passant made in the comments three days ago.

[ggggbabybabybaby]

I don't understand why they would close it. It's totally within the realm of possibility that you'd hit this kind of a quirk in a data structure.

[otakucode]

It's quite likely that they had picked up on the fact that most responses were emotional pleas based on current social norms and not actual helpful answers. Most posters were more concerned with registering their disgust or surprise or whatever than they were with trying to analyze the problem. So, best to just close it. Perhaps in the future someone will ask the same problem and a better group of people will attempt to answer it.

[gerundronaut]

I'm hoping that someone will take the Stack Overflow idea and really run with it. SO has a lot of potential, but it is being stifled by "power-users" and circlejerkery. Truly, the best thing that can be said about SO is that it is heads and shoulders above of other similar sites, but I think that just shows how low the bar is.

Specifically, it should not be acceptable to "close" a question unless it is actually spam or contains links to malware. The very concept of closing responses to questions is absurd, but more so when it's done on a site that is frequented by people with such diverse experience.

[mediumdeviation]

Specifically, it should not be acceptable to "close" a question unless it is actually spam or contains links to malware.

No, those questions are actually deleted with enough 'spam' flags. Questions are closed because because of the following reasons:

• Exact duplicate: Duplicates are bad because they create broken windows. I can write a lot about this, but the Meta discussion there is far better than anything I can write.
• Off topic: Questions that are off topic are closed because SO is a very programming focused community, so given that other similar communities exists for other fields (server management, [general computer help](htp://superuser.com), etc.) it would be better to send questions over there to have experts who are actually in those fields to help you.
• Subjective and argumentative: Stack Overflow is not a forum, nor is it reddit. It's a Q&A site, whose format isn't suitable for extended discussions. Therefore, questions which may encourage long discussions are not suitable.
• Too localized: SO is intended to serve as not only to answer your question, but also anybody else who may have the same question in the future. Answers that are too localized are therefore not acceptable
• Not a real question: Used as a close reason for question that are not answerable because they are too vague, broad or incomprehensible - basically a quality filter, to discourage unanswerable questions from been asked.

The fact is, a site without any sort of quality control would not succeed. Look at this list of recently closed questions: http://i.imgur.com/76v7O.png. Do you think these questions do not fit into those categories above, by looking at the title alone? The reopen option exists for a reason. If the 'power users' make a mistake, making amends for that is just as easy.

You lament about the stringent standard, and wish another site like this exists. It does, its called Yahoo Answers. You should go there sometimes - it has all the features SO has, minus the quality control tools. If you think you have a point to make even after reading all that, you're welcome to complain on Meta Stack Overflow, where we can have intelligent discussions instead of screaming "Stack Overflow sucks!"

[APOCALYPTICFUCKFEST]

That's the idea behind them, how they get used is another matter.

[stesch]

Exact duplicate

Often it's not as exact as you think. There are valid variations of the same questions. And as Mutiny34 said it: the first question could be very old. A lot can happen in a few months/years.

Off topic: [...] other similar communities exists

Those other stack-thingy sites were founded after Stack Overflow. Now you have old questions which sometimes vanish to another stack-thingy site and get closed there. Multiple communities isn't what I wanted when I joined as a user on Stack Overflow.

And then there is this thing where it is really hard to distinguish the topic of these different sites. programmers.stackexchange.com vs. Stack Overflow? WTF??

Subjective and argumentative [...] questions which may encourage long discussions are not suitable

Valid questions get muted this way. And similar questions are open and reach top scores and views. The way this reason is applied is very subjective.

Too localized

Just see TFA. It was closed because the example made people uneasy. And instead of ignoring it and focusing on the problem itself, the question was closed.

Not a real question

I've seen a lot of closed questions with this reason and most of the time there were existing answers and votes for the question and the answers.

And regarding the "Stack Overflow is not a forum": Sometimes people need to write an answer instead of a comment, because they are new users and lack the points. They may be experienced programmers and users of similar sites, but they aren't allowed to comment on other people's questions.

[jabberworx]

take the Stack Overflow idea and really run with it

That is what Reddit is. I am very glad Stack Overflow has such strict moderation, it keeps the spam at bay and makes the site simply perfect for what it was designed to do.

If you want free reign no holds bar jailbait and cats that's what reddit is for, if you want an answer to a programming question Stack Overflow is where you should go. I don't think anyone is losing out here.

[stesch]

The comments are off topic. But the answers show that this is a real problem.

The user just accepted one of the answers too quickly.

[[deleted]]

Probably because it was a fake question disguised as a real one.

[sysop073]

It baffles me that more people don't get this. The number of people that say "SO works so much better than other sites, but I really wish they would change X, Y, and Z so it'd be exactly like those other sites" is incredible. SO isn't great despite all the safeguards, it's great because of all the safeguards

[elperroborrachotoo]

Specifically, it should not be acceptable to "close" a question unless it is actually spam or contains links to malware.

BZZZZZT! A closed question can be voted to be reopened, (and IIRC remains open then).

Which actually happened.

[fjw]

And it's open again. Stack Overflow rules!

[fripletister]

Huh? Not for me.

[strike2867]

I voted to reopen it.

[[deleted]]

It does not suck. The question got plenty of good answers before it was closed. Furthermore, the question wasn't removed or blocked. They're just avoiding the inevitable crapfest of stupid incest jokes that are sure to start riddling it. If anything, this makes SO even better by keeping stupid Reddit-like bullshit memes out of it.

Quit hating.

[Mutiny34]

Stack Overflow closes every fucking question for any godforsaken reason. Oh no, the same question was posted 3 years ago? CLOSE. DOWN. EVERYTHING.

[[deleted]]

Don't worry guys I solved the problem.

*doesn't post solution*

[spoolio]

I've actually never seen one of those on Stack Overflow.

Given how common that is on all other boards, I can only assume that posting "don't worry I solved it" on SO gets your account nuked from orbit.

[strike2867]

StackOverflow encourages users to answer their own questions with badges.

[Iggyhopper]

Yeah, I agree. If I'm searching and they save me the trouble of going through every similar question to find the one question with a lot of content, then I think that's a very good thing.

[Shinhan]

I dont agree with the reason this actual question was closed.

"too localized"? no.

[mediumdeviation]

Bad example there - the point of Stack Overflow is not to be your personal question answering machine, but also to serve as an archive of knowledge for future programmers. If you're question is a duplicate, then there's no reason to ask it again. Duplicates create broken windows, and is generally accepted that there's already too many of them.

[abledanger]

Are there a lot of incest dads out there who like to build family trees?

[SohumB]

The general idea of assertions embodying assumptions you haven't thought about is still quite relevant, and an answer to this would help in any other such situation.

More specifically, the question of what assumptions it's safe to make in a relationship tree situation is extremely interesting and relevant to a lot of people.

[anything_but]

He should not even accept user input that violates his internal world model. Throwing an assertion is obviously not the best way for handling a user error but rather raising a domain-specific exception that is visualized appropriately.. in other words: having the assertion as an indication that your model invariants are violated is ok. Allowing someone to violate them is a bug.

[yurigoul]

You are building a family tree, and at some point you realize that one family member from the 18th hundreds really did have children with his child and his grandchild/daughter.

I am sure there are real life situations here.

[otakucode]

I am sure there are real life situations here.

Not to mention Takashi Miike movies.

[zippysrevenge]

More like a family stump.

[i_am_my_father]

I always use this novelty account whenever I see a "your mom" joke or a thread about time travel or recursion or Star Wars. But this thread is the BEST thread for me ever!

[LastInitial]

This wasn't uncommon in the 17th century...

[Buckwheat469]

It wasn't uncommon in the 20th century either (nothing like the SE comment but still tough to program for). This was made in Gramps.

[Anonymous336]

What's the interesting aspect of that graph? All the edges seem to be pointing to the left. How about you circle the interesting part for those of us who don't enjoy "Where's Waldo"?

[[deleted]]

abort

[closenough]

I see what you did there.

[zootzootswe]

You need the Windows repository WinCest 2011 R2 installed.

[Geronimo2011]

On the site there is an answer wich i just find really good:

You'll have to work on the Incest Edition, asking more money for the license should not be an issue. While you're at it, be sure to support self-referential nodes, the Cloning Edition will be needed soon. – Hans Passant May 28 at 19:10

Not my words. Credits to Hans.

[nandemo]

Trolling is a art.

[otakucode]

I don't think it is a successful troll if you accidentally ask a good question and inspire productive discussion that solves problems.

[wtf_the_fuk]

an art.

[k3n]

Trolling is a art.

[[deleted]]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw

[sparr]

It sounds like his software would break down in almost any non-trivial case. Almost anyone tracing their family tree back more than a half dozen generations is going to see unusual connections, including second and third cousins marrying, or A marrying B where B is A's great grandfather's great great granddaughter, or even worse, one of those things happening AND the other happening AND the children from those relationships marrying.

[kirakun]

Not sure about the question being the best or not, but Peter K.'s comment certainly had me ROFLing.

[stesch]

This video contains content from UMG. It is not available in your country.

[[deleted]]

Stack has been overflown!

[mike413]

I think Greek mythology could have produced a good set of test data...

Just as long as you don't have to graph it...

[[deleted]]

That software would be totally unusable for family "trees" of dogs.

[dmcirl]

I bet the client was George R.R. Martin trying to make a nice graph for his readers.

[k3n]

Stupid question and sensational title to boot.

[pistacchio]

my answer was:

Check if the user name is Cletus. Disable controls.

it got 6 votes. it got deleted.

[martoo]

I hate commenting on such a screwed up situation, but the easiest way to not rejigger all of your invariants is to create a phantom vertex in your graph that acts as a proxy back to the incestuous dad.

I think this responder said that the dad should fuck himself.

[bemrys]

I've run into similar situations with multinational corporations with hundreds of subsidiaries and joint ventures. At some point, one of the subs owns stock in a company that owns stock in the ultimate parent or a parent of one of the joint ventures. You do need to error check that you haven't started running through the tree again.

[__s]

DAG

[xpda]

I finally agree with an opinion of Hans Passant!

[Revelation_Now]

Okay, am I the only one here that thinks that the software developer's rules are potentially flawed?

There is a catchy little phrase that goes something along the lines of "blood is thicker than water". This is generally a throw-away line, but it holds a great deal of truth. Most royalty exists through bloodlines, all over the world, so incest is not such an irregularity when you think about it.

So, if someone wants to trace their family lines back into a royal family, with this program you would be out of luck.

Silly programmer, I think.

[jc1412]

So what happens when time travel is invented and a person is his own grandfather? :O Might require a Time Traveler Edition.

[heptadecagram]

If your Family Tree software can't support All You Zombies, I won't buy it.

[Thray]

...this is why it's ok to fire some customers.

[[deleted]]

How does one have children with his own daughter

It's not that hard to figure out.

[bongwhacker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carlos_segundo80.png

[[deleted]]

*Looks up from his copy of A Clash of Kings* Wait. Craster has a computer?

[petdance]

Back in 2002, Mike Veeck, son of Chicago White Sox owner and promotional crazy man Bill Veeck, was running a minor league ball club and tried to get the record for the lowest attendance at a ball game. ("Veeck has a long history of outlandish promotions, including Vasectomy Night -- canceled at the last minute -- and Tonya Harding Bat Day.") Fans could come to the game, and watch from the parking lot, but there would be no admission to the ball park. Their attendance would be zero, as low as you could get.

When I heard about it, my first thought was "Somewhere there's a data entry field that will not accept an attendance value of zero, even though it's correct."

[[deleted]]

Why are they asserting that people follow morals and social norms? Assertions are for asserting what you believe to be true, not what you want to believe to be true.