Article on Herbert Schildt, author of C Unleashed, repaired on wikipedia
spinoza1111
writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
and wikipedia. In particular, a wikipedia article was, apparently,
created by his enemies (some of whom appear to have been motivated by
commercial gain) solely for the purpose of "damning by faint praise",
although it's higly unusual for computer authors to be profiled in
wikipedia, and primarily for the purpose of pointing to jejune web
pages and the false "definitions" of childish neologisms,
The wikipedia article has been repaired by a non-anonymous editor to
conform to wikipedia's own policies concerning the biographies of
living persons and neutral point-of-view, owing to my initial
modifications and discussion of same, in the way, in 2006, the
wikipedia "definition" of a childish neologism formed from my surname
was removed on my request.
The systematic persecution of Schildt in 2000 was a prototype for the
harassment of Java author Kathy Sierra in 2006 which included rape and
death threats, responsibility for which was disavowed by its enablers
who said, like children, like nasty youths, that they were "merely
mocking" Sierra and not responsible for unleashing a Fascist campaign.
The era of use of electronic media for malign, systematic harassment
and bullying of people seems to be drawing to a close.
I have made an exception to my policy of not posting to wikipedia
until I have finished the object-oriented regex which will establish,
once and for all, the Ugliness, and not the Beauty, of hounding good
programmers to mindlessly assemble snippets of code to bring you this
news.
Edward G. Nilges
Phlip
> The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher
Note the trolling technique - to appear needy, and victimized, then to
project that onto another, to play the heroic defender.
You are not worthy to lick H. Schildt's left nut.
--
Phlip
Chris McDonald
>The era of use of electronic media for malign, systematic harassment
>and bullying of people seems to be drawing to a close.
Really? Any yet you've been continuing your attempt at it here for over
2 weeks.
Given the increased use of electronic communication in nearly every field
of endeavour, with its increased ability to do so anonymously, why do
you so firmly believe that the use of electronic media for harassment
will not track that of non-digital society?
>I have made an exception to my policy of not posting to wikipedia
>until I have finished the object-oriented regex which will establish,
>once and for all, the Ugliness, and not the Beauty, of hounding good
>programmers to mindlessly assemble snippets of code to bring you this
>news.
And how will you be doing this? By maligning, systematically arrassing,
and bullying those whose code you, subjectively, do not find beautiful?
You commenced your most recent splurge with a vehement request that 2
regular members of this newsgroup simply leave the newsgroup because you,
and seemingly no-one else, found their contributions not to your liking.
How will you respond if more than one member of this newsgroup simply
asks you to leave because your contributions are not to our liking?
--
Chris.
Ben Pfaff
> Subject: Article on Herbert Schildt, author of C Unleashed, repaired on wikipedia
C Unleashed has several authors, but Herbert Schildt is not one
of them.
--
"But hey, the fact that I have better taste than anybody else in the
universe is just something I have to live with. It's not easy being
me."
--Linus Torvalds
Ben Pfaff
> spinoza1111 wrote:
>
>> The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher
>
> You are not worthy to lick H. Schildt's left nut.
Hmm? Herbert Schildt wrote a number of very inaccurate books on
the C programming language. That's not being a good teacher.
--
Ben Pfaff
http://benpfaff.org
Phlip
>>> The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher
>>
>> You are not worthy to lick H. Schildt's left nut.
>
> Hmm?
You snipped the setup.
> Herbert Schildt wrote a number of very inaccurate books on
> the C programming language. That's not being a good teacher.
Please adjust your humor detector.
(Tip: At least HS is not a clueless troll who can't even write...)
--
Phlip
spinoza1111
Note the foul abuse and the filthy mind.
spinoza1111
The "innaccuracy" was wildly exagerrated by Richard Heathfield et al.
to promote the sales of Heathfield's book C Unleashed.
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
> >The era of use of electronic media for malign, systematic harassment
> >and bullying of people seems to be drawing to a close.
>
> Really? Any yet you've been continuing your attempt at it here for over
> 2 weeks.
>
> Given the increased use of electronic communication in nearly every field
> of endeavour, with its increased ability to do so anonymously, why do
> you so firmly believe that the use of electronic media for harassment
> will not track that of non-digital society?
>
> >I have made an exception to my policy of not posting to wikipedia
> >until I have finished the object-oriented regex which will establish,
> >once and for all, the Ugliness, and not the Beauty, of hounding good
> >programmers to mindlessly assemble snippets of code to bring you this
> >news.
>
> And how will you be doing this? By maligning, systematically arrassing,
> and bullying those whose code you, subjectively, do not find beautiful?
I'm neither maligning, systematically harassing, nor bullying Brian
Kernighan or Rob Pike.
The first thread posted was titled "Brian Kernighan, maybe I'm not
worthy, maybe I'm scum" and started with my meeting BK in 1987, and my
admiration for him.
It would be rather difficult for me to harass him because he doesn't
visit this ng. He does not do so because it is dominated by bullies,
criminals and thugs.
I am criticising his interpretation of Rob Pike's work and by example
demonstrating the difference between the conduct of a thug and bully
(who maligns the target as a person) and a critic (who criticises the
work or affections of another). Kernighan is of course no bully: I
demonstrate instead the difference between myself, and personalities
like Heathfield and Howard, and the people who chime in with cheap
shots that mostly demonstrate stupidity.
And, unlike bullies, who have a cruel authoritarian streak and whose
activities are used by society to enforce micropower, I criticise
someone with high status as opposed to seeking out the easy mark.
>
> You commenced your most recent splurge with a vehement request that 2
> regular members of this newsgroup simply leave the newsgroup because you,
> and seemingly no-one else, found their contributions not to your liking.
I've seen plenty of posts over time that have decried Heathfield's
domination of this ng, and because of his conduct, yes, I would ask
him to leave, after apologizing for misusing his free speech for
commercial gain in direct violations of the rules. As to Randy Howard,
he has a clear problem in anger management and should also for this
reason leave.
>
> How will you respond if more than one member of this newsgroup simply
> asks you to leave because your contributions are not to our liking?
I won't leave, that much is certain. Votes don't decide issues
although they do show what a group as a group feels in the mathematics
of the least common denominator and meaninglessly small numbers of
people who express their opinions. Prior to any vote, it became clear
to me that usenet in general is dominated by the personality Leon
Trotsky called the *wildgewordene kleinburger*, the lower middle class
individual, soured by true miseries and maddened by false promises
(here, the theses that "you will get rich as a mere programmer" and
"buying a house will make you richer") who becomes a micro Fascist in
personal relations and a macro Fascist as soon as a Leader, like Ron
Paul, appears.
Elites shrink in horror from the content of wikipedia articles, Amazon
reviews, and usenet posts while silently enabling them to be used for
Brownshirt-style domination of informed criticism and dissent in the
same way German elites enabled Hitler and Rohm. They act as if the
prevelance of bullying was an eternal verity when in fact it arose
directly from culture and was only technically enabled. I have shown
how to end this bullying today by getting the wikipedia attack on
Schildt revised by an official editor, and you people, who are
ineffective and impotent in your personal lives, can't stand the very
idea.
That's it for now. I'll return with more numbers and software on the
original Kernighan issue.
>
> --
> Chris.
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
> > Subject: Article on Herbert Schildt, author of C Unleashed, repaired on wikipedia
>
> C Unleashed has several authors, but Herbert Schildt is not one
> of them.
Ben, the literal mind. OK, Heathfield was the editor who still stood
to profit by deliberately trashing Herb's sales in 2000 by starting,
with malign intent, a whispering campaign about such "errors" as
telling students that negative numbers are [usually] represented twos-
complement, and following the rules of the widely-implemented
traditional and sequential C virtual-abstract machine to untangle the
pathological use of post or pre increment in an assignment expression
where the lValue is the same as the post/pre increment. OK, Heathfield
can't write, and he hates Schildt because Schildt can. Ben, we knew
that.
Chris McDonald
>The first thread posted was titled "Brian Kernighan, maybe I'm not
>worthy, maybe I'm scum" and started with my meeting BK in 1987, and my
>admiration for him.
>It would be rather difficult for me to harass him because he doesn't
>visit this ng. He does not do so because it is dominated by bullies,
>criminals and thugs.
Please clarify this for me.
Brian Kernighan has spoken to you and stated that he does not read this
newsgroup because it is dominated by bullies, criminals and thugs?
He actually stated this to you? Yes, or no?
Or do you have authority to speak for him,
or are you projecting your own opinions onto his decision making?
How do you know that he doesn't read the newsgroup and not contribute
to it? Did he also tell you this?
>I've seen plenty of posts over time that have decried Heathfield's
>domination of this ng, and because of his conduct, yes, I would ask
>him to leave, after apologizing for misusing his free speech for
>commercial gain in direct violations of the rules. As to Randy Howard,
>he has a clear problem in anger management and should also for this
>reason leave.
I read this newsgroup, contribute occassionally, read Heathfield's
articles, and have not felt compelled to purchase his book because of
his comments here. So why do you place yourself above me, and thousands
of others, in having additional rights to ask people to leave?
And what are these rules of which you speak?
Nothing that Bernstein wrote in 1994 mentions anything about commercialism.
Or are these some rules that you made up, something just for you?
I ask you to leave, and to leave the rest of us to discussing programming.
>I won't leave, that much is certain. Votes don't decide issues...
Votes don't decide issues? Yeah, right. Living in China?
Only your opinion is correct, so there's no need for votes or for
others to express their opinions. Amazing.
>Elites shrink in horror from the content of wikipedia articles, Amazon
>reviews, and usenet posts while silently enabling them to be used for
>Brownshirt-style domination of informed criticism and dissent in the
>same way German elites enabled Hitler and Rohm. They act as if the
>prevelance of bullying was an eternal verity when in fact it arose
>directly from culture and was only technically enabled. I have shown
>how to end this bullying today by getting the wikipedia attack on
>Schildt revised by an official editor, and you people, who are
>ineffective and impotent in your personal lives, can't stand the very
>idea.
OK, that's it. You've mentioned Hitler; Godwin's Law is in effect.
--
Chris.
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 8, 1:22 pm, Ben Pfaff <b...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
>> > Subject: Article on Herbert Schildt, author of C Unleashed, repaired
>> > on wikipedia
>>
>> C Unleashed has several authors, but Herbert Schildt is not one
>> of them.
>
> Ben, the literal mind. OK, Heathfield was the editor who still stood
> to profit by deliberately trashing Herb's sales in 2000 by starting,
> with malign intent, a whispering campaign about such "errors" as
For those who are more interested in fact than in this bizarre
conspiratorial fantasy concocted by Mr Nilges: I first posted about
Herbert Schildt to comp.lang.c on 18 Feb 1999, in which I said of "C - The
Complete Reference":
"I have that book. [...] Perhaps I should read it. I've heard
a lot of criticism about Schildt, but I think I'd like to check it out for
myself when I get some spare time(!)."
Sounds pretty neutral, doesn't it? But by 3 May, I had formed the following
opinion, based on actually reading the book:
"I think it's fair to say that Schildt gets most of his stuff right. I am
using the word 'most' to mean more than 50%. This is probably the kindest
thing you will read about Schildt in this newsgroup. Consider: do you
really want to learn from a guy who is most kindly described as 'right
more than half the time'? Or would you rather learn from authors who are
(so nearly as makes no odds) always right?"
This was still several months *before* Sams asked me to be the lead author
on "C Unleashed".
By 14 June 1999 (this is *still* before the approach by Sams), I responded
to a request for learning material recommendations as follows:
"This is a list of references I have stolen from someone here in
comp.lang.c (apologies - I forget from whom I stole the booklist) who
quite possibly stole them from someone else who stole them from... etc.
Please note the complete absence of any mention of any book by Herbert
Schildt. He may be the world's foremost authority on C (eat your heart
out, Dennis Ritchie), but he doesn't seem to know C very well. Avoid."
So it's clear that, well before Sams approached me, I had already
established and begun to promulgate my opinion of Schildt's C works.
And I wasn't the only one. Here's a teensy-weensy sample of a vast body of
negative comments about Schildt's C writings that already existed well
before Sams asked me to lead the CU writing...
"Whatever you do, avoid all books by Herbert Schildt" - Erik Naggum, 1991
"I posted to comp.std.c the first example program by Schildt that I
happened to study; it contained no less than three grave errors." - Lars
Wirzenius, 1993
"the fact that the C standard with comments by Herbert Schildt is less
expensive than the same standard without his comments, should tell you how
much his comments are worth" - Hans Mulder, 1994
"Anything (about C) written by Herbert Schildt is rated as (almost)
garbage. Instead of learning C, you're learning what Schildt thinks C is,
and his ideas about C are quite often wrong." - Dan Pop, 1996
"For an excellent source of buggy code to practice on, just pick up any
book by Herbert Schildt that comes with a code diskette.." - Bob Stout,
1997
"Unfortunately this book is hopelessly inaccurate wuich rules it out on the
"helpful" criterion." - Lawrence Kirby (here writing about Schildt's "C -
The Complete Reference"), 1998
--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Richard Heathfield
bwk's Usenet-reading habits, which certainly saves me a job. I have
nothing to add to that particular discussion, so I've snipped the
reference.]
Chris McDonald said:
> spinoza1111 <spino...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>>I've seen plenty of posts over time that have decried Heathfield's
>>domination of this ng, and because of his conduct, yes, I would ask
>>him to leave, after apologizing for misusing his free speech for
>>commercial gain in direct violations of the rules. As to Randy Howard,
>>he has a clear problem in anger management and should also for this
>>reason leave.
>
> I read this newsgroup, contribute occassionally, read Heathfield's
> articles, and have not felt compelled to purchase his book because of
> his comments here. So why do you place yourself above me, and thousands
> of others, in having additional rights to ask people to leave?
>
> And what are these rules of which you speak?
> Nothing that Bernstein wrote in 1994 mentions anything about
> commercialism. Or are these some rules that you made up, something just
> for you?
I think it's generally accepted amongst techie groups that they're supposed
to be techie groups, not advertisement lists, so spinoza1111 is not making
up rules here. But if he thinks I'm using this group for commercial
purposes, undoubtedly he will back up that claim with some message IDs for
those suspicious-minded people such as me who don't believe a word he
says.
> I ask you to leave, and to leave the rest of us to discussing
> programming.
You're expecting him to be logical and consistent. It ain't gonna work. :-)
<snip>
>>Elites shrink in horror from the content of wikipedia articles, Amazon
>>reviews, and usenet posts while silently enabling them to be used for
>>Brownshirt-style domination of informed criticism and dissent in the
>>same way German elites enabled Hitler and Rohm. They act as if the
>>prevelance of bullying was an eternal verity when in fact it arose
>>directly from culture and was only technically enabled. I have shown
>>how to end this bullying today by getting the wikipedia attack on
>>Schildt revised by an official editor, and you people, who are
>>ineffective and impotent in your personal lives, can't stand the very
>>idea.
>
> OK, that's it. You've mentioned Hitler; Godwin's Law is in effect.
Strictly speaking, a mere mention isn't enough. It has to be a comparison,
a claim that someone-or-other is in some way /like/ Hitler or the Nazis.
The above quote does this, so yes, you're right - but don't expect
spinoza1111 to observe Usenet norms such as Godwin's Law. He's not
interested in any cultural norms that don't favour him.
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> The "innaccuracy" [of Schildt's writing] was wildly exagerrated by
> Richard Heathfield et al.
> to promote the sales of Heathfield's book C Unleashed.
Demonstrate this. Firstly, demonstrate the exaggeration. Then demonstrate
why this promoted sales of my book. Thirdly, explain why this "wild
exaggeration" pre-dated the writing of my book by many years. Fourthly,
explain why this "exaggeration" has been undertaken by a great many
people, some of them quite a few years before I first posted to Usenet in
1998.
If your claim is to be believed, not only am I guilty of setting up a
conspiracy, but I am also in possession of a time machine.
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 8, 12:06 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 wrote:
>> > The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher
>>
>> Note the trolling technique - to appear needy, and victimized, then to
>> project that onto another, to play the heroic defender.
>>
>> You are not worthy to lick H. Schildt's left nut.
>
> Note the foul abuse and the filthy mind.
A perusal of your posting history will reveal to the curious that you are
being hypocritical here. If necessary, I can demonstrate this.
Randy Howard
[Nilgewater erupts again. Since the main point of it this time seems
to be lying about Heathfield's motives with respect to an author who is
almost universally reviled, and since that has already been dealt
with...]
On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 01:06:55 -0600, spinoza1111 wrote
(in article
<613e9e16-e031-4171...@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com>):
> As to Randy Howard, he has a clear problem in anger management
> and should also for this reason leave.
I am not, and have not been angry during any of these posts. Given
your repeated and I dare say predictable outbursts of profanity, lewd
aspersions and inappropriate comments toward myself and others, I'd say
that is yet another example of your unlimited hypocrisy.
Note that being a hypocrite seems to be the primary skill you possess,
along with being pretty adroit at convincing people that you are
insane.
So, if none of those is sufficient reason for you to leave, I fail to
see how your armchair shrink games should convince me to do so either.
--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw
Randy Howard
(in article <0001HW.C3A8E856...@news.verizon.net>):
>
> [Nilgewater erupts again. Since the main point of it this time seems
> to be lying about Heathfield's motives with respect to an author who is
> almost universally reviled, and since that has already been dealt
> with...]
>
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 01:06:55 -0600, spinoza1111 wrote
> (in article
> <613e9e16-e031-4171...@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com>):
>
>> As to Randy Howard, he has a clear problem in anger management
>> and should also for this reason leave.
>
> I am not, and have not been angry during any of these posts. Given
> your repeated and I dare say predictable outbursts of profanity, lewd
> aspersions and inappropriate comments toward myself and others, I'd say
> that is yet another example of your unlimited hypocrisy.
>
> Note that being a hypocrite seems to be the primary skill you possess,
> along with being pretty adroit at convincing people that you are
> insane.
>
> So, if none of those is sufficient reason for you to leave, I fail to
> see how your armchair shrink games should convince me to do so either.
BTW, I'm so used to Nilgie's subject titles being nonsense, I just
realized the subject on this thread is yet another case of nilgewater
making no sense...
"Re: Article on Herbert Schildt, author of C Unleashed, repaired on
wikipedia"
Who wrote C Unleashed again Nilges? Who is Herbert Schildt?
Richard Heathfield
> The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
> writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
> and wikipedia.
This is patently false, not least because Schildt is widely recognised to
be a poor teacher who does not understand his subject.
> In particular, a wikipedia article was, apparently,
> created by his enemies
I've looked at the article you vandalised, and it seemed reasonably
well-balanced to me; if anything, it seemed a little too unwilling to
criticise patently broken books, but it did at least mention what is
unquestionably the case - i.e. that his books contain serious errors that
betray a fundamental misunderstanding of his subject. Your vandalism has
removed the few crits that existed, and has thus adequately demonstrated
the fundamental problem with Wikipedia, which is that any fool can edit it
and many fools do.
> (some of whom appear to have been motivated by
> commercial gain)
Which "enemies" do you think composed the article, and how do you think
they figured on making commercial gains from doing so?
<snip>
> The wikipedia article has been repaired
No, that's wrong. It has been vandalised. But don't worry - it isn't the
first time an idiot has updated the Wiki, and it won't be the last. That's
why nobody with a brain trusts its contents to be correct. (That isn't to
say they are not correct, of course. But do you feel lucky?)
<snip>
Randy Howard
(in article <R8CdnZ7imqF...@bt.com>):
> spinoza1111 said:
>> In particular, a wikipedia article was, apparently,
>> created by his enemies
>
> I've looked at the article you vandalised, and it seemed reasonably
> well-balanced to me; if anything, it seemed a little too unwilling to
> criticise patently broken books, but it did at least mention what is
> unquestionably the case - i.e. that his books contain serious errors that
> betray a fundamental misunderstanding of his subject. Your vandalism has
> removed the few crits that existed, and has thus adequately demonstrated
> the fundamental problem with Wikipedia, which is that any fool can edit it
> and many fools do.
This is the fundamental flaw with wikipedia of course. A single raving
lunatic can manage to get something truthful elided. Note that he
thought the article was fine when he first posted a reference to it
here. It wasn't until I pointed out to him that the truth was
accidentally contained in this article which he /thought/ supported him
that he went off and mangled it, or had it mangled on his behalf.
Yet another demonstration of why you can safely ignore anyone that
thinks that wikipedia pages are a supporting argument for their claims.
>> (some of whom appear to have been motivated by
>> commercial gain)
>
> Which "enemies" do you think composed the article, and how do you think
> they figured on making commercial gains from doing so?
Obviously MI5 did it behind the scenes to prop up your cover story.
Is Kim Philby really dead, or could Nilges be him living secretly in
China? Or perhaps Nilges is one of the other Cambridge Five. Sounds
like we need a 22 SAS Sabre squadrion mission into China to learn the
truth. Do be a good man and set that up for us please, Richard.
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> Is Kim Philby really dead, or could Nilges be him living secretly in
> China?
What makes you think he's living in China?
Stephen Howe
> writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
> and wikipedia.
EXCUSE ME.
I HAVE TOLD YOU that ISO C AND C++ committee members have expressed
reservations on Herbert Schildt.
That is it. End of story. Their opinion takes preference to yours as they
are the authors of the ISO C and C++ standards
So it is not "2000 persecution"
And he is not a good teacher if he propagates error, which he does.
Ultimately this is Edward G. Nilges versus ISO C AND C++ committee members.
When they say something on C or C++ it is practically like the Oracle at
Delphi.
I expect nothing but a grovelling apology from you for maligning the opinion
of ISO C AND C++ committee members.
Stephen Howe
Stephen Howe
Programmer's Reference 2ed." on ACCU. Francis has represented the UK on both
ISO C and C++ committees:
See
http://www.accu.org/index.php/book_reviews?url=view.xqy?review=c002217&term=Schildt
>>>>>
Perhaps I am getting kind in my dotage. I swore to leave this author's work
to others to review and critique. I glanced through this book when it
arrived on my desk and decided that it might be worth a mildly critical
review.
The first problem I have with the book is that the author is attempting to
cover both C and C++ in the same book. When I thought a little further I
decided that that might not be such a bad thing if it were done properly.
Next, I started to look at critical areas where the languages are different.
An obvious candidate for the more knowledgeable is const. I looked in the
index and followed up all the references. The author never mentions the
major differences; the linkage of const declared global objects and that
const values are compile time constants in C++ though not in C.
As another example of the lack of completeness of this book, look at the
entry for virtual. The author never mentions virtual base classes.
This lack of attention to detail and completeness permeates the whole book.
However it is exactly this kind of detail that a reasonably competent
programmer needs when s/he looks it up in a reference book.
If there is to be a third edition, the book should be rewritten as a pure
reference book. All those tips can go for a start, reference books should
not attempt to be tutorials on any aspect of programming. Examples to
clarify meaning are fine, but tips and tricks belong elsewhere. Then the
author should work through every entry and check that the detail is both
there and correct.
As it is, this book is on the right tracks but falls short of what is
needed. Getting better but still to weak to be recommended. I will hang onto
my copy though because it can jog my memory and I will usually spot the
things that it forgets.
>>>>>
Stephen Howe
Randy Howard
(in article <TYadnbqdpqa-Bx7a...@bt.com>):
> Randy Howard said:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Is Kim Philby really dead, or could Nilges be him living secretly in
>> China?
>
> What makes you think he's living in China?
I don't "think he is living in China", I make reference to Nilge's
claims that he is teaching people over there. Whether it is true or
not I can't say, and frankly don't care.
spinoza1111
> > The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
> > writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
> > and wikipedia.
>
> EXCUSE ME.
>
> I HAVE TOLD YOU that ISO C AND C++ committee members have expressed
> reservations on Herbert Schildt.
> That is it. End of story. Their opinion takes preference to yours as they
I'm going to take time now to reply to this shit.
No, that's not the end of story. Instead, it's technical Fascism at
its finest. Why should I believe the committee members? Maybe they
need to get out more.
> are the authors of the ISO C and C++ standards
>
> So it is not "2000 persecution"
> And he is not a good teacher if he propagates error, which he does.
That's Fascist talk. Even in science and technical realms, teachers
have to have by virtue of their position some minimal opportunity to
simplify and interpret a difficult subject, and in fact they are given
this authority. As soon as you start syllogistically saying, primus,
he is not a good teacher who propagates error, secundus, he who
propagates error should be liquidated (whether as teacher or
physically) you sure as hell sound to me like a thug and a fascist.
The ISO standardization committee for C has no more and no less
standing than Schildt, because they are not doing natural science.
Instead, their existence is based on what is itself a highly dubious
proposition: that C, a notation for enabling low-level, non-
deterministic, and machine dependent code to take advantage of local
conditions in a fine grained way, should be standardized as opposed to
eliminated...as unsafe for most applications.
But note that I here avoid, perhaps at the cost of what you may be
pleased to call verbosity, the Fascist language "the standardization
committee propagates error". I avoid this sort of behaviorism which
focuses on personalities rather than issues, and produces nasty
bullying campaigns. Not to put too fine a point on it, I give a fuck.
The little members of the little committee can jerk themselves off all
they want "standardizing" a language which can't be standardized.
> Ultimately this is Edward G. Nilges versus ISO C AND C++ committee members.
Oooooo I'm so scared. Part of the attraction of a little known
scientific or technical field, whether linguistics for Chomsky in the
1950s or programming for me in 1973, was the absence of authoritarian
thugs who decide scientific and technical questions by appeals to
prestige.
> When they say something on C or C++ it is practically like the Oracle at
> Delphi.
This is the (negative) dialectic of enlightenment. Everything gets
soooo fucking complicated for the usual practitioner that indeed he
runs towards Oracles and Gurus rather than taking the human risk of
figuring it out on his own in a library, using authority indeed, but
not to force other people to shut up.
> I expect nothing but a grovelling apology from you for maligning the opinion
> of ISO C AND C++ committee members.
This is getting pretty kinky. What, you going to hire Ilse, She Wolf
of the SS, Tigress of Siberia, and Harem Mistress of the Oil Sheiks,
to extract an apology from me? That might be kinda wild, but basically
you can forget it, and take your Fascist, authoritarian, content-free,
technology-free, knowledge-free and brutal shit elsewhere, Mr. Stephen
Howe.
Edward G. Nilges
>
> Stephen Howe
spinoza1111
> This is Francis Glassborow's review on Herbert Schildt's, "C/C++
> Programmer's Reference 2ed." on ACCU. Francis has represented the UK on both
> ISO C and C++ committees:
>
>
>
>
> Perhaps I am getting kind in my dotage. I swore to leave this author's work
> to others to review and critique. I glanced through this book when it
> arrived on my desk and decided that it might be worth a mildly critical
> review.
> The first problem I have with the book is that the author is attempting to
> cover both C and C++ in the same book. When I thought a little further I
> decided that that might not be such a bad thing if it were done properly.
>
> Next, I started to look at critical areas where the languages are different.
> An obvious candidate for the more knowledgeable is const. I looked in the
> index and followed up all the references. The author never mentions the
> major differences; the linkage of const declared global objects and that
> const values are compile time constants in C++ though not in C.
This sounds like a mistake. One that does not justify a persecution
campaign.
>
> As another example of the lack of completeness of this book, look at the
> entry for virtual. The author never mentions virtual base classes.
>
> This lack of attention to detail and completeness permeates the whole book.
The book does sound deficient in some regards. However, this
deficiency attached to a book, not a person. You have taken along with
others then step of concluding that Herb should be made the target
despite his prior contributions to the field.
> However it is exactly this kind of detail that a reasonably competent
> programmer needs when s/he looks it up in a reference book.
>
> If there is to be a third edition, the book should be rewritten as a pure
> reference book. All those tips can go for a start, reference books should
> not attempt to be tutorials on any aspect of programming. Examples to
So you say. Other people feel differently. This is not a matter for
you to decide, and *a fortiori* it does not justify the attacks on
Schildt as a person.
From the tone of the attacks and their mostly jejune examples of
Herb's mistakes, I clearly discern that his attackers don't care about
C. They care about bringing Herb down.
> clarify meaning are fine, but tips and tricks belong elsewhere. Then the
> author should work through every entry and check that the detail is both
> there and correct.
>
> As it is, this book is on the right tracks but falls short of what is
> needed. Getting better but still to weak to be recommended. I will hang onto
"Getting better but still to [sic] weak to be recommended" does not
justify personal attacks on the author.
Richard Heathfield
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 09:47:03 -0600, Richard Heathfield wrote
> (in article <TYadnbqdpqa-Bx7a...@bt.com>):
>
>> Randy Howard said:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> Is Kim Philby really dead, or could Nilges be him living secretly in
>>> China?
>>
>> What makes you think he's living in China?
>
> I don't "think he is living in China", I make reference to Nilge's
> claims that he is teaching people over there. Whether it is true or
> not I can't say, and frankly don't care.
Oh well. I guess MI5 (or, more properly, MI6) can find out easily enough.
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111 said:
>
> > The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
> > writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
> > and wikipedia.
>
> This is patently false, not least because Schildt is widely recognised to
> be a poor teacher who does not understand his subject.
This is a lie tantamount to libel, because his enemies on their web
pages are forced to admit he's a good teacher and writer who made some
errors in one book. Richard, you and your butt buddy Howard are going
to land in court, because you have posted reams of shit that make
unwarranted conclusions about people based on technical matters that
can be far better resolved by friendly discussion.
>
> > In particular, a wikipedia article was, apparently,
> > created by his enemies
>
> I've looked at the article you vandalised, and it seemed reasonably
> well-balanced to me; if anything, it seemed a little too unwilling to
> criticise patently broken books, but it did at least mention what is
> unquestionably the case - i.e. that his books contain serious errors that
> betray a fundamental misunderstanding of his subject. Your vandalism has
> removed the few crits that existed, and has thus adequately demonstrated
> the fundamental problem with Wikipedia, which is that any fool can edit it
> and many fools do.
Blow me, Heathfield. A non-anonymous wikipedia editor has listened to
my complaints on the bios of living persons page, and removed ALL of
the libelous material per my observation as regards the original
article, which was created by Vandals, to vandalize Schildt.
>
> > (some of whom appear to have been motivated by
> > commercial gain)
>
> Which "enemies" do you think composed the article, and how do you think
> they figured on making commercial gains from doing so?
Based on what you were posting in 2000, I believe you were the source
of the campaign against Schildt because you and a team produced an
inferior book as the same time as C++: The Complete Reference. I
believe you and your friends pioneered the use of usenet, wikipedia,
amazon, and the internet in general not to teach, not to mentor, and
not to share, but to take people down for commercial gain.
I first got a taste of your shit in 2000 when I posted a well-received
book review and you and your friends did your best to vandalize the
thread, because I can write and you cannot, and you were motivated by
jealousy. I have observed your conduct over time, and I visited your
bizarre and cult-like organization's web site, and I conclude that you
are the problem person here.
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111 said:
>
> > On Jan 8, 12:06 pm, Phlip <phlip2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> spinoza1111 wrote:
> >> > The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher
>
> >> Note the trolling technique - to appear needy, and victimized, then to
> >> project that onto another, to play the heroic defender.
>
> >> You are not worthy to lick H. Schildt's left nut.
>
> > Note the foul abuse and the filthy mind.
>
> A perusal of your posting history will reveal to the curious that you are
> being hypocritical here. If necessary, I can demonstrate this.
The difference being, as always, a context to which you have blinded
yourself. There's all the difference in the world, Dickwad, to being
pushed over months and years by two bullies, and responding, finally,
in the only way they understand, and entering a thread, having only
the ability to talk trash.
You don't understand anything else, in the final analysis. I spoke to
you respectfully in 2000, and was met with a dull stare,
metaphorically: you didn't understand that C is not usable anymore,
you didn't understand what a fool you sounded when you pronounced so
pompously that "comp.programming is not about programmers", and you
didn't understand how narrow, uncultured, and by virtue of that how
unqualified, you sounded when you hit the chicken switch labeled "make
an offtopic flame" whenever anything was inserted into a discussion
about which you, with your limited formal education, and your limited
self-education, did not understand.
You emotionally manipulated programmer dude and Randy Howard into a
bullying campaign which included letter-writing to my publisher,
asking them to break their contract with me, letters that no doubt
ended in the circular file.
So at this point, I will communicate to you in words you understand,
Mister Richard dick-wad Heathfield.
It's a deep problem (as I turn away from you and speak to the
audience). You have used this medium to distort the truth consistently
because you are misusing comp.programming to promote, as a greedy
consultant, an out of date, now-useless and now-perncious programming
language for general use. A Kantian "critique of cynical reason" would
entail, that a lie is different from the truth because a lie asks for
the privilege of truth and destroys the subsequent chance for truth to
re-emerge, having made the community cynical about the chance of
truth. This is what has happened here.
Which means that truth has to emerge from its corner using the
rhetorical methods of the lie to some extent, including as needed foul
language, the only language you seem to understand.
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 8, 11:46 pm, "Stephen Howe" <sjhoweATdialDOTpipexDOTcom> wrote:
>> > The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
>> > writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
>> > and wikipedia.
>>
>> EXCUSE ME.
>>
>> I HAVE TOLD YOU that ISO C AND C++ committee members have expressed
>> reservations on Herbert Schildt.
>> That is it. End of story. Their opinion takes preference to yours as
>> they
>
> I'm going to take time now to reply to this shit.
Interesting cross-reference:
<ac494326-e384-415c...@1g2000hsl.googlegroups.com>
> No, that's not the end of story. Instead, it's technical Fascism at
> its finest. Why should I believe the committee members?
Because they wrote the language definition. They, more than anyone, ought
to know what's in it.
> Maybe they need to get out more.
Perhaps. Nevertheless, with regard to the C and C++ languages, the ISO C
and C++ committee members tend to speak with genuine knowledge and
experience. I say "tend to" for two reasons - firstly, everyone is
fallible, which is why the ISO C and C++ committees have to issue the
occasional TC, and secondly, Herbert Schildt once laid claim to being a
member of the ANSI C committee (although AFAIK only one other committee
member remembers seeing him at a meeting, and that was just the one
meeting, and he was in any case only a self-appointed "observing member" -
anyone can do this - who had no voting rights). Nothing's ever simple, is
it? Even so, when it comes to correctness in C and C++, the views of ISO C
and C++ committee members should be taken seriously.
>> are the authors of the ISO C and C++ standards
>>
>> So it is not "2000 persecution"
>> And he is not a good teacher if he propagates error, which he does.
>
> That's Fascist talk. Even in science and technical realms, teachers
> have to have by virtue of their position some minimal opportunity to
> simplify and interpret a difficult subject, and in fact they are given
> this authority. As soon as you start syllogistically saying, primus,
> he is not a good teacher who propagates error, secundus, he who
> propagates error should be liquidated (whether as teacher or
> physically) you sure as hell sound to me like a thug and a fascist.
Everyone makes mistakes. The problem with Schildt's mistakes is that they
are structural - he makes the same mistakes over and over again, without
seeming to recognise that they /are/ mistakes. And they are serious
mistakes, too - examples available on request.
Computer science is not sociology. It really does have such things as right
answers and wrong answers. Like Schildt, you are adept at selecting wrong
answers, and your decision to select them does *not* make them right.
> The ISO standardization committee for C has no more and no less
> standing than Schildt, because they are not doing natural science.
They have more standing than Schildt precisely *because* they are not doing
natural science, but are instead defining the legal syntax and semantics
of a language. I say "legal" because ISO standards are internationally
recognised and can form a part of legal contracts. In natural science,
only God gets to choose the rules, and no scientist can say "I'm right
because I say so" and expect to be treated seriously. For C and C++,
however, ISO get to choose the (internationally recognised) rules, and so
"because I say so" takes on some serious weight.
> Instead, their existence is based on what is itself a highly dubious
> proposition: that C, a notation for enabling low-level, non-
> deterministic, and machine dependent code to take advantage of local
> conditions in a fine grained way, should be standardized as opposed to
> eliminated...as unsafe for most applications.
Your opinion regarding C is well-known. I might take it more seriously if I
thought you knew how to write good C.
> But note that I here avoid, perhaps at the cost of what you may be
> pleased to call verbosity, the Fascist language "the standardization
> committee propagates error". I avoid this sort of behaviorism which
> focuses on personalities rather than issues,
Rubbish. You systematically attack anyone who has the temerity to disagree
with you, taking care to ignore the reams of posted evidence that
demonstrates exactly why you're wrong.
> and produces nasty
> bullying campaigns. Not to put too fine a point on it, I give a fuck.
Here's that cross-reference again:
<ac494326-e384-415c...@1g2000hsl.googlegroups.com>
> The little members of the little committee can jerk themselves off all
> they want
And again:
<ac494326-e384-415c...@1g2000hsl.googlegroups.com>
> "standardizing" a language which can't be standardized.
Both C and C++ *have* been standardised. Deal with it.
>
>
>> Ultimately this is Edward G. Nilges versus ISO C AND C++ committee
>> members.
>
> Oooooo I'm so scared. Part of the attraction of a little known
> scientific or technical field, whether linguistics for Chomsky in the
> 1950s or programming for me in 1973, was the absence of authoritarian
> thugs who decide scientific and technical questions by appeals to
> prestige.
So you don't think it's anything to do with the lack of proliferation of
expertise in such fields, making it easier for you to cultivate the
*appearance* of expertise?
>
>> When they say something on C or C++ it is practically like the Oracle at
>> Delphi.
>
> This is the (negative) dialectic of enlightenment. Everything gets
> soooo fucking complicated for the usual practitioner
And *again*:
<ac494326-e384-415c...@1g2000hsl.googlegroups.com>
> that indeed he
> runs towards Oracles and Gurus rather than taking the human risk of
> figuring it out on his own in a library, using authority indeed, but
> not to force other people to shut up.
Nobody here is forcing anyone to shut up. If you figure it out on your own
in a library, you have no way to know that you got it right - and if your
library's C reference is written by Schildt, it's highly likely that you
got it wrong instead.
>> I expect nothing but a grovelling apology from you for maligning the
>> opinion of ISO C AND C++ committee members.
>
> This is getting pretty kinky. What, you going to hire Ilse, She Wolf
> of the SS, Tigress of Siberia, and Harem Mistress of the Oil Sheiks,
> to extract an apology from me?
I think he's relying on your behaving reasonably. Such naivete!
> That might be kinda wild, but basically
> you can forget it, and take your Fascist, authoritarian, content-free,
> technology-free, knowledge-free and brutal shit elsewhere, Mr. Stephen
> Howe.
And yet again:
<ac494326-e384-415c...@1g2000hsl.googlegroups.com>
Can you even /spell/ "hypocrisy"?
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 8, 11:57 pm, "Stephen Howe" <sjhoweATdialDOTpipexDOTcom> wrote:
[quoting from Francis Glassborow's review of Schildt's "C/C++ Programmer's
Reference 2ed."
>> Next, I started to look at critical areas where the languages are
>> different. An obvious candidate for the more knowledgeable is const. I
>> looked in the index and followed up all the references. The author never
>> mentions the major differences; the linkage of const declared global
>> objects and that const values are compile time constants in C++ though
>> not in C.
>
> This sounds like a mistake.
Indeed it is a mistake.
> One that does not justify a persecution campaign.
Nobody is persecuting Herbert Schildt. All they (or "we", for I have done
so myself) have done is to point out that Herbert Schildt's books are far
more error-prone than ought to be the case - not least in the hope that he
will correct these errors in future books. In a few - all too few - cases,
that hope has proved justified, because he /has/ taken on board a very
small amount of the copious amounts of advice he has been given.
>> As another example of the lack of completeness of this book, look at the
>> entry for virtual. The author never mentions virtual base classes.
>>
>> This lack of attention to detail and completeness permeates the whole
>> book.
>
> The book does sound deficient in some regards. However, this
> deficiency attached to a book, not a person.
Absolutely right. The criticism is not of Schildt himself, but of his books
and his attitude to corrections, which is rather reminiscent of your own.
> You have taken along with
> others then step of concluding that Herb should be made the target
> despite his prior contributions to the field.
No, he is not the target. Correctness is the target. Schildt misses the
target with monotonous regularity. As for "prior contributions to the
field", I'd be fascinated to hear what you think they are.
>> However it is exactly this kind of detail that a reasonably competent
>> programmer needs when s/he looks it up in a reference book.
>>
>> If there is to be a third edition, the book should be rewritten as a
>> pure reference book. All those tips can go for a start, reference books
>> should not attempt to be tutorials on any aspect of programming.
>> Examples to
>
> So you say.
No - so Francis Glassborow says. Stephen is quoting. Do pay attention.
> Other people feel differently. This is not a matter for
> you to decide, and *a fortiori* it does not justify the attacks on
> Schildt as a person.
No sensible person is attacking "Schildt as a person". What they are
attacking is the many mistakes in his many books.
> From the tone of the attacks and their mostly jejune examples of
> Herb's mistakes,
A code fragment from "C - The Complete Reference":
void enter(void)
{
char s[256], *p;
do {
printf("enter appointment %d: ", spos+1);
gets(s);
if(*s==0) break; /* no entry */
p = malloc(strlen(s));
if(!p) {
printf("out of memory.\n");
return;
}
strcpy(p, s);
if(*s) qstore(p);
}while(*s);
}
(He provides the code for qstore() a few pages earlier.)
Count the bugs. (I should first point out that appropriate header
inclusions *are* provided (albeit using "" rather than <>), so the
prototypes are *not* missing.)
> I clearly discern that his attackers don't care about
> C. They care about bringing Herb down.
It is precisely because his detractors *do* care about C that they cannot
bring themselves to recommend Schildt's books about C; his books about C
are a disservice to the language, encouraging as they do these deeply
erroneous programming techniques.
>> clarify meaning are fine, but tips and tricks belong elsewhere. Then the
>> author should work through every entry and check that the detail is both
>> there and correct.
>>
>> As it is, this book is on the right tracks but falls short of what is
>> needed. Getting better but still to weak to be recommended. I will hang
>> onto
>
> "Getting better but still to [sic] weak to be recommended" does not
> justify personal attacks on the author.
What personal attacks? Are you seriously claiming that the mild-mannered
Francis Glassborow would make a personal attack of any kind?
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111 said:
>
> <snip>
>
> > The "innaccuracy" [of Schildt's writing] was wildly exagerrated by
> > Richard Heathfield et al.
> > to promote the sales of Heathfield's book C Unleashed.
>
> Demonstrate this. Firstly, demonstrate the exaggeration. Then demonstrate
I've already done so. I've already pointed out that it is nonsense to
call a person incompetent if he as a writer/mentor says the truth,
eg., that most negative numbers use twos-complement, in fact, it would
be bad practice for a computer science professor to conceal this fact
in an introductory class based on C merely because the standard does
not require it.
You're asking me for a "demonstration" because you started in on
Schildt here and elsewhere in bad faith, knowing full well that real C
programmers don't normally use standards-conformant compilers for the
very good reason that C is so unsafe that today, it is used to code
highly idiomatic code for embedded systems and OS kernels. You know,
or should know, that in this kind of coding "adhering to the standard"
is mostly impossible, and that it is reasonably safe to depart, since
the code is maintained not be generalists but by specialists.
> why this promoted sales of my book. Thirdly, explain why this "wild
A review at Schildt's book's Amazon site entitled "Stay away from
Schildt" is criminal libel, because it is an unwarranted
generalization from his interpretive presentation of C to ANYTHING he
might say now or in future.
It is childish and uncollegial, resembling what childhood bullies do:
attempt to discredit the mark on behalf of group cohesion by ensuring
that the mark is 100% discredited, even though in real working groups,
managers have long realized that everybody contributes in their own
way.
Based on your track record here, I seriously doubt you could have
developed a tiny-C interpreter. I don't think you have the skills.
Therefore, in either posting, authorising, or merely through a
negative whispering campaign enabling the post of an Amazon review
titled "stay away from Schildt" you are either speaking outside your
competence, or authorizing, enabling such speech.
Look at the reviews of my book. There are reviews by people who really
like my book...and highly negative reviews, one labeled "mediocre
book". But they DON'T say "stay away from Nilges", although you've
been doing that here, and as such they are within the Pale of decency
and a valid exercise of free speech...an exercise that more or less
forces the mark to respond in kind to preserve his access to free
speech.
[P.S.: if you are inspired to post such a review by this
exchange...forget it, for if you pull that shit, I will relate the
circumstances to Amazon, and they will delete it. I'm not an impotent
wannabe who throws his weight around comp.programming because he can't
get things done when it's a matter of sending literate requests for
action, whether to Amazon or to wikipedia. I got the Schildt material
cleaned up, and I've gotten clearly abusive material removed from my
booksite by making courteous requests. I'm the real norm: you are the
deviant.]
[Your cynicism about wikipedia's falsity is selective. You WEREN'T
cynical about its authority when you and your butt buddies added
Nilgewater...only to see it pulled when I got on the horn to
wikipedia. When you don't get your infantile way, you're cynical: but
for you, pompous Web sites that make a big deal out of Schildt's
errors are Holy Writ.]
[I am now going to sign offat the end of this post. I've had it up to
here with your abuse of comp.programming and hope not to see you when
I return with the code, demonstrating that a C Sharp engineered
version of regex is the only Beautiful solution to regular expression
parsing, as opposed to one written in an out of date and pernicious
language. Yeah, I broke a committment not to post until this code was
ready. The committment was made for my own comfort and convenience and
not yours. I hereby remake it and will break it again should the whim
strike me.]
> exaggeration" pre-dated the writing of my book by many years. Fourthly,
> explain why this "exaggeration" has been undertaken by a great many
> people, some of them quite a few years before I first posted to Usenet in
> 1998.
You're lying. Schildt published C++: The Complete Reference in 1999
and the attacks on him were based on this book. Prior to 1999, he was
not harassed. You started attacking him here in 1999. You did so
because you wanted to promote C Unleashed. This conduct was unethical,
uncollegially, quite possibly tortious, and, it showed a deep lack of
self-confidence and self esteem, characteristic of the petty bourgeois
run amok: Trotsky's *wildgewordene kleinburger".
Randy Howard
(in article
<36877efb-16b9-4f45...@z17g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>):
> On Jan 8, 11:16 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 said:
>>
>>> The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
>>> writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
>>> and wikipedia.
>>
>> This is patently false, not least because Schildt is widely recognised to
>> be a poor teacher who does not understand his subject.
>
> This is a lie tantamount to libel, because his enemies on their web
> pages are forced to admit he's a good teacher and writer who made some
> errors in one book.
Nobody credible has claimed that his errors are confined to a single
book. If you have proof of the existence of such a claim -- and no,
you are not a credible source yourself -- show it.
> Richard, you and your butt buddy Howard are going
> to land in court, because you have posted reams of shit that make
> unwarranted conclusions about people based on technical matters that
> can be far better resolved by friendly discussion.
If you want friendly discussion, then why are you not friendly?
And now we jump back in time four years to when you claimed that you
were going to sue people for disagreeing with you. The broken record
is acting up again. Somebody drop a penny on the tonearm.
>>> In particular, a wikipedia article was, apparently,
>>> created by his enemies
>>
>> I've looked at the article you vandalised, and it seemed reasonably
>> well-balanced to me; if anything, it seemed a little too unwilling to
>> criticise patently broken books, but it did at least mention what is
>> unquestionably the case - i.e. that his books contain serious errors that
>> betray a fundamental misunderstanding of his subject. Your vandalism has
>> removed the few crits that existed, and has thus adequately demonstrated
>> the fundamental problem with Wikipedia, which is that any fool can edit it
>> and many fools do.
>
> Blow me, Heathfield.
Yet another example of Nilges having a "friendly discussion" and being
"collegial".
> A non-anonymous wikipedia editor has listened to
> my complaints on the bios of living persons page, and removed ALL of
> the libelous material per my observation as regards the original
> article, which was created by Vandals, to vandalize Schildt.
It's not libel, it's common opinion, and opinion that is held extremely
widely amongst those that know about such things.
You seem to think getting a "non-anonymous wikipedia editor" to do your
bidding is proof of something more than that you simply managed to get
the page changed. It appears to be proof of nothing /but/ that, and a
further indictment as to the worthlessness for wikipedia to describe
anything better than "mob rule opinion" on various subjects.
>>> (some of whom appear to have been motivated by
>>> commercial gain)
>>
>> Which "enemies" do you think composed the article, and how do you think
>> they figured on making commercial gains from doing so?
>
> Based on what you were posting in 2000, I believe you were the source
> of the campaign against Schildt because you and a team produced an
> inferior book as the same time as C++: The Complete Reference.
Again demonstrating your cluelessness. Schildt was reviled years
before Heathfield's book (et al) came about. It is still, and by
people with no financial interest in that book. You just weren't aware
of it, as you remain unaware of many aspects of computing.
> I
> believe you and your friends pioneered the use of usenet, wikipedia,
> amazon, and the internet in general not to teach, not to mentor, and
> not to share, but to take people down for commercial gain.
Gee, that sounds like exactly the sort of thing that you claim is
"actionable libel". Are you trying to land yourself in court?
<insert guffaw here>
> I first got a taste of your shit in 2000
That seems very unfortunate. No wonder you are upset.
> I posted a well-received book review
Who received it well?
> and you and your friends did your best to vandalize the
> thread, because I can write and you cannot, and you were motivated by
> jealousy.
You can type a lot of words, relatively quickly. That doesn't mean you
"can write". It means you can spew. Hence the highly descriptive
jargon for your so-called writing: nilgewater.
> I have observed your conduct over time, and I visited your
> bizarre and cult-like organization's web site, and I conclude that you
> are the problem person here.
Richard, you have a bizarre cult-like organization? And you kept it
all to yourself? That hardly seems fair. Clearly Nilges wants to be a
card-carrying member, and is feeling left out. On the surface, it
appears that he would easily qualify for membership in any organization
for bizarre people. Unless it is for those that are bizarre, yet
competent programmers, in which case I can understand why he has been
excluded.
Randy Howard
(in article
<d51086de-3152-40fd...@t1g2000pra.googlegroups.com>):
> On Jan 8, 11:46 pm, "Stephen Howe" <sjhoweATdialDOTpipexDOTcom> wrote:
>>> The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
>>> writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
>>> and wikipedia.
>>
>> EXCUSE ME.
>>
>> I HAVE TOLD YOU that ISO C AND C++ committee members have expressed
>> reservations on Herbert Schildt.
>> That is it. End of story. Their opinion takes preference to yours as they
>
> I'm going to take time now to reply to this shit.
But yet you are, right here. You seem /very/ confused, even about your
own actions.
> No, that's not the end of story.
That's what really scares you eh, your "story" coming to an end?
> Instead, it's technical Fascism at its finest.
Sure it is. Now go back to sleep, you obviously need your rest.
> Why should I believe the committee members? Maybe they
> need to get out more.
You shouldn't believe them. It would make sense if you were to
actually listen to and "believe" the opinions of recognized experts in
the field, and that would make you appear rational. In order to
perpetuate your trolling and insanity, you need to do the exact
opposite of what a rational, credible person would do, and continue on
as you have been for years. Namely, continue to be the raving lunatic
we all have come to know by your posts.
>> are the authors of the ISO C and C++ standards
>>
>> So it is not "2000 persecution"
>> And he is not a good teacher if he propagates error, which he does.
>
> That's Fascist talk.
When you call anyone and anything fascist if it disagrees with your
opinion it demonstrates that you have a really week grasp on the
language and how to employ it to make a point in a believable fashion.
> The ISO standardization committee for C has no more and no less
> standing than Schildt
Ridiculous, by which I mean that you are behaving just exactly as
expected.
> The little members of the little committee can jerk themselves off all
> they want "standardizing" a language which can't be standardized.
You are being so friendly and collegial now, and writing so well, I
won't comment further on that little quote, other than to note that
it'll probably make it into "Nilgewater's Greatest Hypocritical Hits,
Volume 23".
> This is getting pretty kinky. What, you going to hire Ilse, She Wolf
> of the SS, Tigress of Siberia, and Harem Mistress of the Oil Sheiks,
> to extract an apology from me?
And this will go into the companion series: "Reasons for Believing
Nilges is Certifiable, Volume 1053".
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 8, 11:16 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 said:
>>
>> > The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
>> > writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
>> > and wikipedia.
>>
>> This is patently false, not least because Schildt is widely recognised
>> to be a poor teacher who does not understand his subject.
>
> This is a lie tantamount to libel,
No, it isn't.
> because his enemies on their web
> pages are forced to admit he's a good teacher and writer who made some
> errors in one book.
Wrong. He has made many errors in many books. If you think he's a good
teacher, you set a low standard for teachers. I will agree, however, that
he is a good writer in the sense that he writes clearly and engagingly.
But so does Terry Pratchett write clearly and engagingly. That doesn't
mean I'd buy a Terry Pratchett C tutorial. (Well, all right, I would, but
not on technical merit!) The ability to write clearly does not equate to
the ability to teach C properly.
It is not a question of being "forced to admit" anything. When Schildt's
detractors agree that he does at least write clearly, this is an
indication (not a proof! but merely an indication) that they are
attempting to be objective despite great provocation.
> Richard, you and your butt buddy Howard are going
> to land in court,
I've heard it all before. You've been sounding off about libel lawsuits for
years and years. If you want to sue me, sue me. If you don't want to sue
me, don't sue me. I don't care either way. But if you do sue me, you'll be
laughed out of court.
> because you have posted reams of shit that make
> unwarranted conclusions about people based on technical matters that
> can be far better resolved by friendly discussion.
People who read these discussions draw their own conclusions from what I
post, and from what you post, and from what other people post. I am
perfectly happy about that. Are you?
>> > In particular, a wikipedia article was, apparently,
>> > created by his enemies
>>
>> I've looked at the article you vandalised, and it seemed reasonably
>> well-balanced to me; if anything, it seemed a little too unwilling to
>> criticise patently broken books, but it did at least mention what is
>> unquestionably the case - i.e. that his books contain serious errors
>> that betray a fundamental misunderstanding of his subject. Your
>> vandalism has removed the few crits that existed, and has thus
>> adequately demonstrated the fundamental problem with Wikipedia, which is
>> that any fool can edit it and many fools do.
>
> Blow me, Heathfield. A non-anonymous wikipedia editor has listened to
> my complaints on the bios of living persons page, and removed ALL of
> the libelous material per my observation as regards the original
> article, which was created by Vandals, to vandalize Schildt.
A Wikipedia article's usefulness depends entirely on the last person to
edit it. The article on Schildt has been damaged by the removal of
material that describes the deeply flawed nature of his books. You seem to
place great store by the technical judgement of this "non-anonymous
wikipedia editor". I do not.
>> > (some of whom appear to have been motivated by
>> > commercial gain)
>>
>> Which "enemies" do you think composed the article, and how do you think
>> they figured on making commercial gains from doing so?
>
> Based on what you were posting in 2000, I believe you were the source
> of the campaign against Schildt
Your beliefs are of no particular consequence. The truth is that Schildt's
books were the subject of astonished derision for many years before 2000.
> because you and a team produced an
> inferior book as the same time as C++: The Complete Reference.
"C Unleashed" is not a perfect book; it certainly has faults, as the Errata
page amply demonstrates. Nevertheless, a claim that it is "inferior" to
"C++: The Complete Reference" is of no value without some indication of
why it is inferior.
> I
> believe you and your friends pioneered the use of usenet, wikipedia,
> amazon, and the internet in general not to teach, not to mentor, and
> not to share, but to take people down for commercial gain.
Do you also believe in the Easter Bunny?
> I first got a taste of your shit in 2000 when I posted a well-received
> book review and you and your friends did your best to vandalize the
> thread,
Not this old chestnut *again*? If anyone wants to look this up for
themselves, the thread title was: "Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE
GOLD RUSH". I've just re-read a tiny fraction of that 623-article monster
thread. My first contribution to it, as near as I can make out, was
article #65 in that thread. It seems pretty mild-mannered to me, making a
few points politely and reasonably.
> because I can write and you cannot
Again, I am content to let other people draw their own conclusions about
which of us is the better writer.
> , and you were motivated by jealousy.
Funny.
> I have observed your conduct over time, and I visited your
> bizarre and cult-like organization's web site,
My Web site is indeed a little bizarre: comprises some rather sophomoric
observations on mathematics, a couple of MIDI downloads, a bit of
interesting-to-me fractal stuff, a few pages of possible interest to
churchy people, a few pages of possible interest to churchy political
people, and quite a few pages about programming in general and C in
particular.
> and I conclude that you are the problem person here.
I don't doubt that you conclude that. Whether it is a useful conclusion is
for others to think about for themselves.
Walter Banks
spinoza1111 wrote:
> The ISO standardization committee for C has no more and no less
> standing than Schildt, because they are not doing natural science.
On C they are the authorities on the language. Schildt from time
has reported on their work.
w..
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 8, 10:00 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 said:
>>
<snip>
>>
>> > Note the foul abuse and the filthy mind.
>>
>> A perusal of your posting history will reveal to the curious that you
>> are being hypocritical here. If necessary, I can demonstrate this.
>
> The difference being, as always, a context to which you have blinded
> yourself.
What context can possibly justify foul abuse?
> There's all the difference in the world, Dickwad,
More of the same. It only damages your case (such as it is).
> to being pushed over months and years
Look back to the "After the gold rush" thread for more examples of your
invective, which was well under way before I posted even my first article
to that thread.
<lots of silliness snipped>
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 8, 9:58 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 said:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> > The "innaccuracy" [of Schildt's writing] was wildly exagerrated by
>> > Richard Heathfield et al.
>> > to promote the sales of Heathfield's book C Unleashed.
>>
>> Demonstrate this. Firstly, demonstrate the exaggeration. Then
>> demonstrate
>
> I've already done so.
No, you haven't. I have already shown elsethread an example of Schildt's
poor C teaching, and I can find plenty of other examples if need be. For
you to demonstrate that the inaccuracy of Schildt's writing has been
exaggerated, you need to show that we (i.e. those who have criticised
Schildt's writing) have claimed inaccuracy where inaccuracy was not
present. If we have only showed the inaccuracy that actually exists, that
isn't exaggeration, but a mere reporting of the facts.
> I've already pointed out that it is nonsense to
> call a person incompetent if he as a writer/mentor says the truth,
> eg., that most negative numbers use twos-complement, in fact, it would
> be bad practice for a computer science professor to conceal this fact
> in an introductory class based on C merely because the standard does
> not require it.
You're flannelling. If you have demonstrable facts, let's see them.
> You're asking me for a "demonstration" because you started in on
> Schildt here and elsewhere in bad faith,
No, I'm asking you to put some facts where your mouth is for a change.
> knowing full well that real C
> programmers don't normally use standards-conformant compilers
That's simply false. Many C programmers use compilers that conform to
ISO/IEC 9899:1990.
> for the very good reason that C is so unsafe that today,
> it is used to code highly idiomatic code for embedded systems
> and OS kernels.
C is a sharp tool. If you cut yourself, don't blame the tool. Your claim
(quoted above: "for the very good reason that...") that C is used
/because/ it is unsafe is simply bizarre.
> You know,
> or should know, that in this kind of coding "adhering to the standard"
> is mostly impossible,
If you are correct that writing standard-conforming code is mostly
impossible, then I do the mostly impossible on a daily basis.
> and that it is reasonably safe to depart, since
> the code is maintained not be generalists but by specialists.
>
>> why this promoted sales of my book. Thirdly, explain why this "wild
>
> A review at Schildt's book's Amazon site entitled "Stay away from
> Schildt" is criminal libel, because it is an unwarranted
> generalization from his interpretive presentation of C to ANYTHING he
> might say now or in future.
(a) I didn't write that review, and neither do I know the person who wrote
it;
(b) I have now read it, and it seems pretty accurate to me. If truth is a
defence against libel, it is not libellous.
> It is childish and uncollegial, resembling what childhood bullies do:
> attempt to discredit the mark on behalf of group cohesion by ensuring
> that the mark is 100% discredited, even though in real working groups,
> managers have long realized that everybody contributes in their own
> way.
It is not Schildt who is being discredited, but his *flawed books*. If he
writes a good book, great, I'll be happy to recommend it. But I'm not
holding my breath.
> Based on your track record here, I seriously doubt you could have
> developed a tiny-C interpreter. I don't think you have the skills.
Your opinion of my C skills is entirely your concern.
> Therefore, in either posting, authorising, or merely through a
> negative whispering campaign enabling the post of an Amazon review
> titled "stay away from Schildt" you are either speaking outside your
> competence, or authorizing, enabling such speech.
I did not post the review. I did not authorise it (I do not have either the
power or the desire to give or withhold permission for people to post
reviews on Amazon). I did not start or contribute to any negative
whispering campaign against Schildt. I *have*, however, stated on Usenet
my opinion that his books on C are deeply flawed.
> Look at the reviews of my book.
What's the point? They're *Amazon* reviews! They're written by J Random
Reader, whose ability to judge books we are not able to assess. Anyone who
takes an Amazon review seriously is seriously lacking in good judgement.
> There are reviews by people who really
> like my book...and highly negative reviews, one labeled "mediocre
> book". But they DON'T say "stay away from Nilges", although you've
> been doing that here,
No, I haven't. If people want to read your book, that's up to them. Same
goes for Schildt. If people want to read Schildt, that's up to them too.
> and as such they are within the Pale of decency
> and a valid exercise of free speech...an exercise that more or less
> forces the mark to respond in kind to preserve his access to free
> speech.
>
> [P.S.: if you are inspired to post such a review by this
> exchange...
Don't be ridiculous. I don't post Amazon reviews. If you wish me to review
your book, get your publisher to send me a review copy. I have no desire
to fund your inanities by buying a copy.
> forget it, for if you pull that shit, I will relate the
> circumstances to Amazon, and they will delete it.
It happened to me, actually - someone took exception to being corrected,
and posted a negative and indeed inflammatory review on my own book (which
they clearly had not read). I didn't bother to tell Amazon about the
circumstances. Why should I? Nobody with any sense takes Amazon reviews
seriously, after all.
> I'm not an impotent
> wannabe who throws his weight around comp.programming because he can't
> get things done
What weight?
> when it's a matter of sending literate requests for
> action, whether to Amazon or to wikipedia. I got the Schildt material
> cleaned up,
No, you didn't. I think I can accept that you *believe* you did. What you
actually did was make the Wikipedia article less informative. You are not
the first to have achieved this, and you will not be the last.
> and I've gotten clearly abusive material removed from my
> booksite by making courteous requests. I'm the real norm: you are the
> deviant.]
If you are the real norm, heaven help civilisation.
> [Your cynicism about wikipedia's falsity is selective.
No, it isn't.
> You WEREN'T
> cynical about its authority when you and your butt buddies added
> Nilgewater...
I had nothing to do with that episode. I do not expect you to believe me,
of course, but it is still proper for me to point out the truth, whether
or not you can accept the truth.
> [I am now going to sign offat the end of this post. I've had it up to
> here with your abuse of comp.programming and hope not to see you when
> I return with the code,
If you don't want to read my articles, use a killfile.
> demonstrating that a C Sharp engineered
> version of regex is the only Beautiful solution to regular expression
> parsing, as opposed to one written in an out of date and pernicious
> language. Yeah, I broke a committment not to post until this code was
> ready. The committment was made for my own comfort and convenience and
> not yours. I hereby remake it and will break it again should the whim
> strike me.]
Don't worry - I doubt very much whether anyone believed you.
>
>> exaggeration" pre-dated the writing of my book by many years. Fourthly,
>> explain why this "exaggeration" has been undertaken by a great many
>> people, some of them quite a few years before I first posted to Usenet
>> in 1998.
>
> You're lying.
No, I'm not.
> Schildt published C++: The Complete Reference in 1999
> and the attacks on him were based on this book.
I have right here a copy of "C - The Complete Reference", printed in 1990,
nine years before the date you specify. It's packed to the gunwales with
errors. I have posted a representative sample from the book, elsethread.
> Prior to 1999, he was not harassed.
He has never been harassed. In the text you snipped, I showed several
examples of pre-1999 complaints about Schildt's books, posted on Usenet by
other people. Complaints about technical errors do not constitute
harassment.
> You started attacking him here in 1999.
Wrong. I started criticising his books on Usenet in 1999. To criticise a
person's book is not the same thing as attacking the person. The
distinction is a crucial one.
> You did so because you wanted to promote C Unleashed.
Ah, we're back to this time machine theory again, are we?
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> Richard, you have a bizarre cult-like organization?
Nope. Sorry. Are you disappointed?
> And you kept it all to yourself? That hardly seems fair.
Ah, you *are* disappointed. Well, okay, I'll help you out here: why not
join the J++ User Group? By doing so, you will probably double the
membership!
(WELL? Does *anyone* remember J++?)
Randy Howard
(in article <uoedncXsibU...@bt.com>):
> Randy Howard said:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Richard, you have a bizarre cult-like organization?
>
> Nope. Sorry. Are you disappointed?
Not personally, no.
>> And you kept it all to yourself? That hardly seems fair.
>
> Ah, you *are* disappointed.
As I implied in the part you snipped, I was concerned for Nilges'
welfare and hurt feelings.
> Well, okay, I'll help you out here: why not
> join the J++ User Group? By doing so, you will probably double the
> membership!
>
>
>
> (WELL? Does *anyone* remember J++?)
As in Visual J++?
Richard Harter
<r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>spinoza1111 said:
>
>> On Jan 8, 10:00 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>>> spinoza1111 said:
>>>
><snip>
>>>
>>> > Note the foul abuse and the filthy mind.
>>>
>>> A perusal of your posting history will reveal to the curious that you
>>> are being hypocritical here. If necessary, I can demonstrate this.
>>
>> The difference being, as always, a context to which you have blinded
>> yourself.
>
>What context can possibly justify foul abuse?
>
>> There's all the difference in the world, Dickwad,
>
>More of the same. It only damages your case (such as it is).
>
>> to being pushed over months and years
>
>Look back to the "After the gold rush" thread for more examples of your
>invective, which was well under way before I posted even my first article
>to that thread.
>
><lots of silliness snipped>
I wish to thank you and Randy for responding to Nilges. His
responses have been quite entertaining, albeit not, perhaps, in
the way he intended. Are you really sure, though, that you
should waste your time in this fashion?
Stephen Howe
>>> to
>>>> be a poor teacher who does not understand his subject.
>>>
>This is a lie tantamount to libel, because his enemies on their web
>pages are forced to admit he's a good teacher and writer who made some
>errors in one book.
That is nonsense.
You seem to be under that opinion that Schildt is being maligned for 1 book.
Far from it.
ACCU has been around for at least 20 years and they have been doing book
reviews.
Schildt has published book-after-book on C and C++.
And he has a very long reputation for producing bad books on C and C++.
The article I mentioned here by Clive Feather (on ISO C)
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/schildt.html
dates back to 1995, 12 years ago
And you might like to look here where alledgedly Schildt says on the front
cover of one of his books that he was on ISO C++ Standardisation committee
and a ISO C++ member reveals that he had Observer status for 1995-1997, not
an active member.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/32myta
I can find references on the moderated newsgroup :
comp.lang.c.moderated
going back to 1995 warning against learning from Herbert Schildt's books
See Peter Seebach's comments and others here
http://preview.tinyurl.com/39emf4
> Richard, you and your butt buddy Howard are going
> to land in court, because you have posted reams of shit that make
> unwarranted conclusions about people based on technical matters that
> can be far better resolved by friendly discussion.
Your jumping to conclusions. Nothing to do with Richard's book.
Herbert Schildts bad odour has been around since the early 1990's, long
before Richards book was ever published.
> > In particular, a wikipedia article was, apparently,
> > created by his enemies
Not really. Wiki was correct, you have just vandalised it.
And an unwitting Wiki editor has made a change that does not reflect the
odium of Herbert Schildts inaccurate books.
You dont feel like correcting Bill Clintons entry on Wiki concerning Monica
Lewinsky, all those enemies of Bill Clinton (after all he did say he never
had sex with that woman).
Try here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewinsky_scandal
> > Based on what you were posting in 2000, I believe you were the source
> > of the campaign against Schildt because you and a team produced an
> > inferior book as the same time as C++: The Complete Reference. I
> > believe you and your friends pioneered the use of usenet, wikipedia,
> > amazon, and the internet in general not to teach, not to mentor, and
> > not to share, but to take people down for commercial gain.
<lol> Total fantasy.
A small bit of Googling will reveal that Herbert Schildt had a very bad name
in 1995 at the very least, _LONG BEFORE_ Richards book appeared.
Look at the URL references above. NOTE THE DATES.
Are you now going to claim that Richard had tampered with Google's history?
Perhaps Google is in cahoots with Richard and gets a small percentage on the
book for producing fake history.
Any other fantasy you want to claim?
Stephen Howe
Randy Howard
(in article <4783d16a....@news.sbtc.net>):
> I wish to thank you and Randy for responding to Nilges. His
> responses have been quite entertaining, albeit not, perhaps, in
> the way he intended.
I was wondering when someone would point out that he seems to be
proving exactly the opposite of his stated goal at every turn.
Perhaps it was just too obvious and nobody felt the need to do so.
> Are you really sure, though, that you
> should waste your time in this fashion?
Probably not, but it is entertaining, after a fashion, as you say.
It's okay, he'll get put back in solitary soon and disappear for a few
more months or years until they let him out again.
Randy Howard
(in article <gbSdnReghKDASR7a...@pipex.net>):
>>>> This is patently false, not least because Schildt is widely recognised
>>>> to
>>>>> be a poor teacher who does not understand his subject.
>>>>
>> This is a lie tantamount to libel, because his enemies on their web
>> pages are forced to admit he's a good teacher and writer who made some
>> errors in one book.
>
> That is nonsense.
> You seem to be under that opinion that Schildt is being maligned for 1 book.
> Far from it.
> ACCU has been around for at least 20 years and they have been doing book
> reviews.
> Schildt has published book-after-book on C and C++.
> And he has a very long reputation for producing bad books on C and C++.
The problem here, is Nilges can't tell the difference between good and
bad C, or C++. This makes it very difficult for him to evaluate these
things, and he loves to take on any contrarian position that will
guarantee an uproar.
> Are you now going to claim that Richard had tampered with Google's history?
> Perhaps Google is in cahoots with Richard and gets a small percentage on the
> book for producing fake history.
It is because MI5 has infiltrated Google in order to further the cover
story for Richard Heathfield's secret agent activities. Didn't you get
the memo?
Stephen Howe
>>> different.
>>> An obvious candidate for the more knowledgeable is const. I looked in
>>> the
>>> index and followed up all the references. The author never mentions the
>>> major differences; the linkage of const declared global objects and that
>>> const values are compile time constants in C++ though not in C.
>This sounds like a mistake. One that does not justify a persecution
>campaign.
What persecution campaign? This is just 1 book review by Francis Glassborow.
Plenty of other books of Herbert Schildt have been reviewed.
He has improved over years but the damage is he has churned out numerous
inaccurate books on C and C++.
Each book stands or falls on its own merits, not because the author is
"Herbert Schildt".
I know and have met Francis.
I am sure he would like review a book by Schildt where it is evident that he
had made an effort to get everything right.
Francis does not like shoddy inaccurate technical books. Neither do I.
>>> As another example of the lack of completeness of this book, look at the
>>> entry for virtual. The author never mentions virtual base classes.
>>>
>>> This lack of attention to detail and completeness permeates the whole
>>> book.
>The book does sound deficient in some regards. However, this
>deficiency attached to a book, not a person.
Compete bollocks on your part.
I have read hundreds of reviews in C Vu, the ACCU magazine by Francis. I am
reasonably certain you cannot say the same.
I can assure you he has total professional detachment.
There is not a private vendatta to get "Schultz".
> You have taken along with
> others then step of concluding that Herb should be made the target
> despite his prior contributions to the field.
Not at all. If Herb had written 1 bad book but all the rest are good, fair
enough.
But he has written many. So it is not unreasonable not to recommend him.
Pehaps he is just looking forward to his next pay check?
>>> If there is to be a third edition, the book should be rewritten as a
>>> pure
>>> reference book. All those tips can go for a start, reference books
>>> should
>>> not attempt to be tutorials on any aspect of programming. Examples to
> So you say.
CAN YOU READ? That is Francis Glassborow's comments not mine.
> From the tone of the attacks and their mostly jejune examples of
> Herb's mistakes, I clearly discern that his attackers don't care about
> C. They care about bringing Herb down.
Total and utter fantasy on your part.
And it seems like your prone to making snap judgements on just a few
sentences.
Francis being part of ISO C & C++ committees, does care.
He has had 20 years doing book reviews PRECISELY because he does care about
the next generation of programmers.
>"Getting better but still to [sic] weak to be recommended" does not
>justify personal attacks on the author.
What personal attacks? This is trenchant criticism on his books.
On a case-by-case his books are examined and the question is asked, "Would
this be a good book on C (or C++)?"
And frequently the answer is no.
Stephen Howe
CBFalconer
> Phlip <phli...@gmail.com> writes:
>> spinoza1111 wrote:
>>
>>> The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher
>>
>
> the C programming language. That's not being a good teacher.
However: badness(spinoza1111)
-------------------- >= 10
badness(H_Schildt)
--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
Try the download section.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Mike
> This is getting pretty kinky. What, you going to hire Ilse, She Wolf
> of the SS, Tigress of Siberia, and Harem Mistress of the Oil Sheiks,
> to extract an apology from me? That might be kinda wild, but basically
> you can forget it, and take your Fascist, authoritarian, content-free,
> technology-free, knowledge-free and brutal shit elsewhere, Mr. Stephen
> Howe.
>
> Edward G. Nilges
>
And once again, in less than 24 hours Mr Nilges adds over two and a half thousand words (signifying nothing) to
comp.programming.
Mike
Randy Howard
(in article <MPG.21eebba0d...@news.fx.net.nz>):
You could maybe use it as an entropy source.
CBFalconer
>
... snip ...
>
> If your claim is to be believed, not only am I guilty of setting
> up a conspiracy, but I am also in possession of a time machine.
Since the Spinozan veracity is unassailed, you obviously possess
the aforesaid time machine. Under what conditions do you rent it
out? What are its limitations?
CBFalconer
> spino...@yahoo.com says:
>
>> This is getting pretty kinky. What, you going to hire Ilse, She
>> Wolf of the SS, Tigress of Siberia, and Harem Mistress of the
>> Oil Sheiks, to extract an apology from me? That might be kinda
>> wild, but basically you can forget it, and take your Fascist,
>> authoritarian, content-free, technology-free, knowledge-free
>> and brutal shit elsewhere, Mr. Stephen Howe.
>
> a half thousand words (signifying nothing) to comp.programming.
Not everywhere. Note the efficiency of a PLONK, which manages to
encase anything he says in leading '>' quote characters. With a
decent reader, it also entirely prevents the transmission of the
original.
user923005
This is the guy who pans Kernighan and Pike and praises Herbert
Schildt.
Observe his keen debating style -- dodging every salient point and
inserting plenty of ad-hominems.
Do you expect anything to come from dialog with this miscreant?
I have found that when we discover five pounds of stupid crammed into
a four pound can, it is not sensible to attempt dialog with said
container.
From Dilbert's Rules of Order: "10. Never argue with an idiot. They
drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience."
OK, OK. Once in a while I simply can't resist a few swings at the old
punching bag myself.
Mike
> Mike wrote:
> > spino...@yahoo.com says:
> >
> >> This is getting pretty kinky. What, you going to hire Ilse, She
> >> Wolf of the SS, Tigress of Siberia, and Harem Mistress of the
> >> Oil Sheiks, to extract an apology from me? That might be kinda
> >> wild, but basically you can forget it, and take your Fascist,
> >> authoritarian, content-free, technology-free, knowledge-free
> >> and brutal shit elsewhere, Mr. Stephen Howe.
> >
> > And once again, in less than 24 hours Mr Nilges adds over two and
> > a half thousand words (signifying nothing) to comp.programming.
>
> Not everywhere. Note the efficiency of a PLONK, which manages to
> encase anything he says in leading '>' quote characters. With a
> decent reader, it also entirely prevents the transmission of the
> original.
>
bin" filter just timed out. But it is entertaining for a few days...
Mike
Ant
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 13:43:18 -0600, Richard Harter wrote
> (in article <4783d16a....@news.sbtc.net>):
>
>> I wish to thank you and Randy for responding to Nilges. His
>> responses have been quite entertaining, albeit not, perhaps, in
>> the way he intended.
>
> I was wondering when someone would point out that he seems to be
> proving exactly the opposite of his stated goal at every turn.
>
> Perhaps it was just too obvious and nobody felt the need to do so.
As someone who reads this group but seldom posts, it's obvious to me
that Nilgewater (what an appropriate nickname!) is a ko0k.
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> A code fragment from "C - The Complete Reference":
>
> void enter(void)
> {
> char s[256], *p;
>
> do {
> printf("enter appointment %d: ", spos+1);
> gets(s);
> if(*s==0) break; /* no entry */
> p = malloc(strlen(s));
> if(!p) {
> printf("out of memory.\n");
> return;
> }
> strcpy(p, s);
> if(*s) qstore(p);
> }while(*s);
> }
>
This code really went into a book on programming in C ? Not as an
example of what not to do ? I feel ill!
> (He provides the code for qstore() a few pages earlier.)
I presume the global spos gets incremented in qstore - this is
*nasty* as well as buggy. I'd hate to maintain anything big written by
someone who codes like this.
> Count the bugs. (I should first point out that appropriate header
I think it is less than one per line.
--
C:>WIN | Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins. | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects. | licences available see
| http://www.sohara.org/
Richard Heathfield
> On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:30:15 +0000
> Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>
>> A code fragment from "C - The Complete Reference":
>>
>> void enter(void)
>> {
>> char s[256], *p;
>>
>> do {
>> printf("enter appointment %d: ", spos+1);
>> gets(s);
>> if(*s==0) break; /* no entry */
>> p = malloc(strlen(s));
>> if(!p) {
>> printf("out of memory.\n");
>> return;
>> }
>> strcpy(p, s);
>> if(*s) qstore(p);
>> }while(*s);
>> }
>>
>
> This code really went into a book on programming in C ?
Yes, sir.
> Not as an example of what not to do ?
No, sir.
> I feel ill!
Three bags full.
CBFalconer
> "Randy Howard" wrote:
>> Richard Harter wrote
>>
>>> I wish to thank you and Randy for responding to Nilges. His
>>> responses have been quite entertaining, albeit not, perhaps, in
>>> the way he intended.
>>
>> I was wondering when someone would point out that he seems to be
>> proving exactly the opposite of his stated goal at every turn.
>>
>> Perhaps it was just too obvious and nobody felt the need to do so.
>
> As someone who reads this group but seldom posts, it's obvious to me
> that Nilgewater (what an appropriate nickname!) is a ko0k.
Just to keep the record straight, Nilgewater is the product of
Nilges, not a nickname. I am quite proud of that creation (naming
the product) a year or two or three ago during an earlier
infestation.
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> Just to keep the record straight, Nilgewater is the product of
> Nilges, not a nickname. I am quite proud of that creation (naming
> the product) a year or two or three ago during an earlier
> infestation.
Don't be, even if for no other reason than the fact that you were beaten to
it, some time in the early 1990s (1992, I think).
Walter Banks
user923005 wrote:
> From Dilbert's Rules of Order: "10. Never argue with an idiot. They
> drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience."
Got a smile even before my second cup of coffee
w..
gw7...@aol.com
> A code fragment from "C - The Complete Reference":
> (He provides the code for qstore() a few pages earlier.)
>
> Count the bugs. (I should first point out that appropriate header
> inclusions *are* provided (albeit using "" rather than <>), so the
> prototypes are *not* missing.)
OK, I'll bite... I'll assume that qstore and spos are defined
suitably.
> void enter(void)
> {
> char s[256], *p;
>
> do {
> printf("enter appointment %d: ", spos+1);
This will, on some systems, not print the message before asking for
input. But on some systems it will, and is the easiest way to put the
prompt on the same line as the string to be entered.
Probably spos is supposed to be incremented. But it is possible that
this is not required, and also possible that it's done in qstore.
> gets(s);
gets is unsafe, of course, but it is being used here as it is intended
to be used.
> if(*s==0) break; /* no entry */
> p = malloc(strlen(s));
Aha! A bug. You need a +1 here to get the whole string, plus its
terminating zero, in.
> if(!p) {
> printf("out of memory.\n");
printf is not ideal for error messages. Still, not an actual bug as
such.
> return;
> }
> strcpy(p, s);
> if(*s) qstore(p);
The "if" is unnecessary here, I think - we wouldn't get here if the
string were empty - but not an actual bug.
> }while(*s);
Likewise, the test is unnecessary here. while(1) would do. But again
not an actual bug.
>
Some people like to see a "return;" here. I'm not sure whether it's
required.
> }
Or is there more to it than I've spotted?
Paul.
Phlip
> OK, I'll bite... I'll assume that qstore and spos are defined
> suitably.
And that our revulsion for using a global variable inside a low-level method is
only matched by our horror how C makes the attempt much more risky than other
languages...
>> void enter(void)
>> {
>> char s[256], *p;
I'd park a NULL in that p, just (at least) for clean crashes if I then abused it.
>> do {
>> printf("enter appointment %d: ", spos+1);
>
> This will, on some systems, not print the message before asking for
> input. But on some systems it will, and is the easiest way to put the
> prompt on the same line as the string to be entered.
It's been a while, but I suspect we mean printf _won't_ flush its line _unless_
<stdio.h> sees a \n on the end of its string.
But either way I wouldn't tempt fate, and would flush.
> Probably spos is supposed to be incremented. But it is possible that
> this is not required, and also possible that it's done in qstore.
>
>> gets(s);
>
> gets is unsafe, of course, but it is being used here as it is intended
> to be used.
Could the s[256] at least have been set to some huge constant extent, such as a
"MAX_GETS", to make it slightly less unsafe?
(Heck - at least it's not that defined-behavior destroyer, scanf!)
>> if(*s==0) break; /* no entry */
>> p = malloc(strlen(s));
>
> Aha! A bug. You need a +1 here to get the whole string, plus its
> terminating zero, in.
Hence, you _will_ get memory corruption (undefined behavior), and you
_might_not_ get a clear crash. You might crash later, in suspicious circumstances.
Next, malloc might return natural padding, system-dependently, so the crash
might _not_ occur on some platforms.
>
>> if(!p) {
>> printf("out of memory.\n");
>
> printf is not ideal for error messages. Still, not an actual bug as
> such.
>
>> return;
But you are okay with the return leaking everything? (-;
>> }
>> strcpy(p, s);
Boom.
>> if(*s) qstore(p);
>
> The "if" is unnecessary here, I think - we wouldn't get here if the
> string were empty - but not an actual bug.
>
>> }while(*s);
>
> Likewise, the test is unnecessary here. while(1) would do. But again
> not an actual bug.
>
>
> Some people like to see a "return;" here. I'm not sure whether it's
> required.
>
>> }
>
> Or is there more to it than I've spotted?
I only caught one more item than you - the malloc() totally leaks, once per
loop, unless if something in qstore() manages 'p's lifetime.
--
Phlip
gw7...@aol.com
> gw7...@aol.com wrote:
(snip)
> >> printf("enter appointment %d: ", spos+1);
>
> > This will, on some systems, not print the message before asking for
> > input. But on some systems it will, and is the easiest way to put the
> > prompt on the same line as the string to be entered.
>
> It's been a while, but I suspect we mean printf _won't_ flush its line _unless_
> <stdio.h> sees a \n on the end of its string.
A quick test shows it working fine in DOS. Prints the prompt, then
asks for input.
(snip)
> But you are okay with the return leaking everything? (-;
> I only caught one more item than you - the malloc() totally leaks, once per
> loop, unless if something in qstore() manages 'p's lifetime.
I was assuming that qstore was storing the pointer passed to it -
otherwise, there is no need for enter to be doing the copy at all.
Phlip
>> It's been a while, but I suspect we mean printf _won't_ flush its line _unless_
>> <stdio.h> sees a \n on the end of its string.
>
> A quick test shows it working fine in DOS. Prints the prompt, then
> asks for input.
(Are you channeling Herb S now?;)
If by "DOS" you mean the Command Prompt in WindowsXP, that follows the same
console model as DOS Classic. On a Unix terminal, such as Linux's BASH, you
might get different "turnaround". Or you might not! Thanks for doing the
experiment, but you can never judge well-behaved programs just by experimenting!
The point is printf is not well-defined to flush reliably. Its definition allows
it to rely on a platform that does not flush its strings, as an optimization.
> I was assuming that qstore was storing the pointer passed to it -
> otherwise, there is no need for enter to be doing the copy at all.
Yup. And, architecturally, you get cleaner C by stuffing strings with
well-defined extents into an array of structs. Then - for tutorial-level code -
the array can be safely global, without dynamic string mucking.
--
Phlip
Stephen Howe
>> asks for input.
But that is implementation defined.
To _GUARANTEE_ the right results, you could
(i) switch off buffering for stdout with setvbuf()
(ii) call fflush() for stdout
Stephen Howe
kwikius
> On Jan 8, 11:46 pm, "Stephen Howe" <sjhoweATdialDOTpipexDOTcom> wrote:
>
> > > The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
> > > writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
> > > and wikipedia.
>
> > EXCUSE ME.
>
> > I HAVE TOLD YOU that ISO C AND C++ committee members have expressed
> > reservations on Herbert Schildt.
> > That is it. End of story. Their opinion takes preference to yours as they
>
> I'm going to take time now to reply to this shit.
<...>
Go !!! Spinoza ;-)
I've been watching this thread from time to time.
These guys f*cked comp.lang.c. :
I guess that now they are done they feel like moving on...
regards
Andy Little
spinoza1111
Thanks, Andy. It certainly appears to me that Richard Heathfield is
the problem here and in comp.lang.c. I believe he is using both groups
to appear as an authority, yet he seldom shares insights or strictly
speaking mentors people.
Instead, he at best makes it sound like the issue was resolved a long
time ago in his favor and at worst is overfond of identifying problem
personalities. He enables others to do his dirty work for him when a
poster actually talks back; this has usually been Randy Howard, whose
theme has been my failure to use shibboleths such as overly short
identifiers, no hungarian, and precomputing invariants for trivial
loops.
A favorite stunt of Heathfield has been destructive teaching, by which
I mean the teacher's use of nondeterminism and uncertainty to imply
that the newbie doesn't know what the newbie, or in my case a person
with an order of magnitude more experience in a broader register,
"thinks he knows".
Of course, a good teacher builds upon the student's knowledge, whereas
bad teachers world wide like to pretend that the field of which they
are the self-appointed gatekeepers is open only to people who join
their cult, and first empty their minds so that the Perfect Master can
instill his brand of wisdom.
[In this connection, Richard's company seems to be some weird amalgam
of Christian fundamentalism and computing, and perhaps a cult.]
The C standard as such is a godsend to Richard, because he doesn't
understand language standardization, nor does he comprehend that C
should be retired, like Fortran, and not standardized: far more
important would be an effort to describe actual compilers and their
varorium behavior.
As such, the nondeterminism in the standard as applied, for example,
to strictly pathological cases of pre- and post-increment operators to
an assigned variable is one way in which Richard can provide, not
Knowledge, but instead "raise the cup on which the word Mystery is
written", like Dosteoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, a self-appointed Master
in The Brothers Karamazov who's set himself the task of setting Jesus
straight.
Unlike Schildt, who used his knowledge in 1989 of interpreters and
recursive descent to write The Tiny-C Interpreter, Richard manifests
no real programmer's awareness that despite necessary indeterminism in
the language, a virtual machine model of execution can be constructed
which yields determinate results when the same variable is pre or post
incremented multiple times and the rhs is assigned to the same
variable. In fact, that seems to be what Herb was doing when he made a
boner with respect to the standard: teaching about the real world.
The problem being, of course, that the C standardizers, being as small
bourgeois worshippers of machines find the very idea of a virtual
machine either incomprehensible or anathema.
They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a "standard"
for a language in which code (such as Rob Pike's code presented by
Kernighan) mindlessly or deliberately forgets all sorts of realities
while remembering architectural quirks, such as the fact that some
machines store strings in byte arrays to this day. But standardization
is really only for the pure of heart (cf. the Revised Report on Algol
60) who have set aside childish things, such as infantile affection
for hardware.
Richard spreads ignorance, and he does so for commercial gain.
Malcolm McLean
>
>Instead, their existence is based on what is itself a highly dubious
>proposition: that C, a notation for enabling low-level, non-
>deterministic, and machine dependent code to take advantage of local
>conditions in a fine grained way, should be standardized as opposed to
>eliminated...as unsafe for most applications.
>
>The little members of the little committee can jerk themselves off all
>they want "standardizing" a language which can't be standardized.
>
Here we actaully have something worth saying. I'm not saying I necessarily
agree with it, but there is certainly a case that C inherently cannot be
standardised because it is designed to take advantage of processor
instructions in a fine-grained way, and therefore the ISO committee is
wasting its time.
But firstly if you fling schoolboy-level sexual insults at the committee,
they are unlikley to give you opinion much more weight than that of a
schoolboy. Secondly, I've read two whole threads before finding something
which I consider to be worth replying to - OK, it takes two to tango, but
you should consider that you are degrading the quality of the ng.
Actually I disagree. There is a need for a simple language that allows one
to shuffle bytes about in the computer's memory and do arithmetical
calculations, and which produces efficient code. C and Fortran 77 both fit
the bill. However it is easier to make C modules more reusable, because of
structures and pointers. It is also easier to make a mess of a C program,
for the same reason.
It is difficult not to make a mess of a C++ or Java program, unless you have
a fairly considerable level of experience.
--
Free games and programming goodies.
http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~bgy1mm
gw7...@aol.com
> gw7...@aol.com wrote:
> >> It's been a while, but I suspect we mean printf _won't_ flush its line _unless_
> >> <stdio.h> sees a \n on the end of its string.
>
> > A quick test shows it working fine in DOS. Prints the prompt, then
> > asks for input.
>
> (Are you channeling Herb S now?;)
>
> If by "DOS" you mean the Command Prompt in WindowsXP, that follows the same
> console model as DOS Classic. On a Unix terminal, such as Linux's BASH, you
> might get different "turnaround". Or you might not! Thanks for doing the
> experiment, but you can never judge well-behaved programs just by experimenting!
I think we're talking at cross purposes here. I took your comment (at
the top of this post) to mean that printf was guaranteed not to print
its output unless it came across a \n. This was contrary to how I
remembered it working under DOS, and a quick test (admittedly this
time under the Windows XP command prompt, as you guessed correctly)
bore this out. Of course this is no guarantee that it will work the
same way on different systems (or even the same system) but it refutes
what I thought you'd said.
Paul.
kwikius
> On Jan 10, 9:13 am, kwikius <a...@servocomm.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jan 8, 4:33 pm, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jan 8, 11:46 pm, "Stephen Howe" <sjhoweATdialDOTpipexDOTcom> wrote:
>
> > > > > The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
> > > > > writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
> > > > > and wikipedia.
>
> > > > EXCUSE ME.
>
> > > > I HAVE TOLD YOU that ISO C AND C++ committee members have expressed
> > > > reservations on Herbert Schildt.
> > > > That is it. End of story. Their opinion takes preference to yours as they
<...>
> The problem being, of course, that the C standardizers, being as small
> bourgeois worshippers of machines find the very idea of a virtual
> machine either incomprehensible or anathema.
>
> They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a "standard"
> for a language in which code (such as Rob Pike's code presented by
> Kernighan) mindlessly or deliberately forgets all sorts of realities
> while remembering architectural quirks, such as the fact that some
> machines store strings in byte arrays to this day. But standardization
> is really only for the pure of heart (cf. the Revised Report on Algol
> 60) who have set aside childish things, such as infantile affection
> for hardware.
<...>
The concept of a virtual machine is very powerful. I am not sure how
old it is but I guess that it was Java that popularised it in a
dramatic fashion.
Prior to that I think that the general idea was that you had to
programme to some specific hardware. IOW hardware manufacturers were
in a strong position and programers were in a weak position, tearing
their hair out. That is the way things grew up. Hardware machine code
gradually evolved into ever higher level software programming
languages.
It is also worth noting that hardware manufacturers have responded,
both by providing coprocessors and other add ons and by making new
designs more programmer friendly and less quirky.
Its simple really. If you make your hardware easy to programme at a
high level then you will sell more hardware. ( Microchip for example)
You also (Theoretically !) should get less bugs from happy
programmers.
Of course C and therefore C++ are pre "virtual machine revolution",
and in particular to C++, Java and C# were seen as a threat. The make
up of the C and C++ standardisation commitees probably reflects this,
though AFAIK the C++ committee have looked at Java ( e.g mechanisms
for implementing threads). (IMO both Java and C# have their own
problems, for example imposing a strict OOP programming style.)
In both C and C++ newsgroups a large amount of time is spent
discussing the semantics of fundamental types, implicit conversion
from double to bool, semantics of signed + unsigned and so on.
In C there is little that can be done, but in C++ (which is my
favourite language) I do believe that there are all the mechanisms
there (operator overloading, and in C++0x, Concept based overloading
to seriously address the issue of a virtual machine.
As an example the int type in C++. Currently it has a wide range of
behaviours depending on the hardware. There is no theoretical reason
why one couldnt request that int is 32 bits or 16 bits or 24 bits,
that you want twos's complement addition semantics, that you want
overflow to throw an exception in debug mode etc, etc. IOW the basis
of a C++ virtual machine.
I hope that, long term, programming languages will be designed in
terms of an underlying virtual machine, as will hardware. Its just a
more sensible way to design, from documentation, to semantics, to
abstraction away from one particular hardware.
regards
Andy Little
Richard Heathfield
<snip>
> The concept of a virtual machine is very powerful. I am not sure how
> old it is
Over forty years. IBM were mucking about with them in 1966 or so.
> but I guess that it was Java that popularised it in a
> dramatic fashion.
...if you don't count several major IBM operating systems, of course. :-)
<snip>
> Of course C and therefore C++ are pre "virtual machine revolution",
Both languages are defined in terms of an abstract machine, which is almost
(but not quite) the same thing.
<snip>
kwikius
> <snip>
>
> > Of course C and therefore C++ are pre "virtual machine revolution",
>
> Both languages are defined in terms of an abstract machine, which is almost
> (but not quite) the same thing.
It would be interesting to annotate some differences (in relation to
software programming languages ), and I may be using the term
wrongly. I understand the term virtual machine to mean 'a layer away
from the hardware', IOW an abstraction that programmers can use
without needing to concern themselves with hardware details.
As far as I understand the term 'abstract machine' as applied to C,
the language designers took a set of various hardware and then left
the language definition vague enough that the software could run on
any of the set, with a large factor in C's design being that the
language should be 'close to the machine'. Ultimately the hardware was
in charge of the programmer
It is easy to criticise the guy whose shoulders you are standing on,
and there is no doubt that this design was very successful, but it
means that the programmer has to deal manually with a large amount of
uncertainty, continually, repetitively, when dealing with the
fundamental types, because their specification is so loose.
The design of more modern languages such as Java, moved away from that
approach to *try to* provide a more exact specification as to the
behaviour of the fundamental types, at the expense of hardware
compatibility.
From the perspective of C, this approach should have resulted in
failure of Java, but in practise it was taken to so well by
programmers (even with all the practical problems), that Java and its
approach have now also had an effect on the way hardware is designed.
As far as modern C++ is concerned there doesnt need to be one virtual
machine, there could be any number of virtual machine sub-components,
which can be combined to get the combination ( performance versus
range checking, hardware int types and/or user specified int types
etc) that is desired, which offers the possibility of having the best
of both idealogies.
regards
Andy Little
Randy Howard
(in article
<1b3db33e-e4ef-4dac...@j78g2000hsd.googlegroups.com>):
The problem is that using what DOS or Windows "does" to extrapolate
what will happen everywhere isn't that useful. In fact, it has let a
great many programmers into making assumptions that turn out not to be
true in general.
A lot of Windows programmers that have moved to Linux, OS X, and other
lesser known platforms have been struck by the sudden realization that
code that "just worked" under MS platforms didn't work anymore.
Of course, after getting the appropriate changes in, they wind up with
code that will work on all the platforms, including Windows. If they
had been exposed to multiple platforms when they were first starting
out, some of those lessons would have come naturally, instead of having
to unlearn habits that were only valid with MS compilers and libraries.
Phlip
> Of course, after getting the appropriate changes in, they wind up with
> code that will work on all the platforms, including Windows. If they
> had been exposed to multiple platforms when they were first starting
> out...
Or if they had read a programming book by an author who felt secure enough
to occasionally sacrifice warm fuzzies in favor of hard cold boring
technical details...
--
Phlip
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510657/
^ assert_xpath
spinoza1111
wrote:> <1b3db33e-e4ef-4dac-9de6-841a6d092...@j78g2000hsd.googlegroups.com>):
This is an ugly behaviorism.
All too often, the corporation substitutes "training" and "learning
and unlearning your habits" for education and the very idea that
people are or could be human knowers and subjects.
A great deal of ink has been spilled over the years which treats the
programmer not as a human being but as some sort of glorified machine
explained by an (outdated) behaviorism in which management, in a
putatively superior wisdom, appoints itself wearily to the task of
making sure people have and do not have habits.
Don't make me think! Who moved my cheese?
Imposed on a language whose effective use requires nonbehavioral
thought, the language of the management songbook, in which we must
"unlearn" rather than generalize, in which you announce pretty much
without argument the thesis that Microsoft operating systems are
wildly different from others in some unspecified way, sets language in
conflict with itself.
In the little self-help books, the adult is confronted in a secular
perversion of religious language with the curious proposition that his
biography will not, in the secular realm, consist of additive growth,
but of steadily diminishing returns, as, say, he gets religion, and
accepts that from the beginning of Time, strings could not hold Nul
characters and that C supports strings.
It's really impossible to program gesturally and out of habit no
matter how stupid you are, Randy. That is, anybody who's sober is
going to have SOME sort of mental model and this mental model explains
his choices, not habit and not behavioral psychology.
Entirely too much corporate training sets itself to the military goal
of breaking the recruit and ensuring that his prior knowledge is
viewed not as part of a larger and more explanatory paradigm, but as
"the old way".
The purpose is to break any sort of proletarian consciousness and the
activity is self-fulfilling, for once you brainwash a person into
thinking that one set of limited mechanisms is way inferior to another
set of mechanisms with new powers, new limitations, and new idiocies,
then he becomes self moronized in fact, having lost self-confidence,
and set into an exhausting and futile competition, not to add to
lifetime knowledge, but to find scapegoats and get rid of the
deadwood.
No, my dear Randy, they DON'T wind up with code "that will work on all
platforms". This is managerial and sales talk which is contradicted by
the mission of C and, according to Stroustrup, C++: to give the
programmer the "freedom" to fine-tune the code to take advantage of
local conditions in a fine-grained way.
They wind up with code that works, sort of, on the fashionable
platform du jour.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Ordinary people are described by the management class and their thugs
as being blinkered and blinded by the skills (not the habits) they
acquire at proletarian jobs whilst management insists on viewing the
world through laissez-faire spectacles of the appropriate rose tint.
>
> --
> Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
> "The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
> who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
spinoza1111
IBM implemented a Virtual Machine OS on mainframes in the 1970s. You
could test new versions of VM/CMS by bootstrap loading them into
underlying older versions. I did so when modifying an OS at Standard
Oil.
>
> Prior to that I think that the general idea was that you had to
> programme to some specific hardware. IOW hardware manufacturers were
> in a strong position and programers were in a weak position, tearing
> their hair out. That is the way things grew up. Hardware machine code
> gradually evolved into ever higher level software programming
> languages.
>
> It is also worth noting that hardware manufacturers have responded,
> both by providing coprocessors and other add ons and by making new
> designs more programmer friendly and less quirky.
>
> Its simple really. If you make your hardware easy to programme at a
> high level then you will sell more hardware. ( Microchip for example)
> You also (Theoretically !) should get less bugs from happy
> programmers.
>
> Of course C and therefore C++ are pre "virtual machine revolution",
> and in particular to C++, Java and C# were seen as a threat. The make
> up of the C and C++ standardisation commitees probably reflects this,
> though AFAIK the C++ committee have looked at Java ( e.g mechanisms
> for implementing threads). (IMO both Java and C# have their own
> problems, for example imposing a strict OOP programming style.)
Nothing wrong with that in my book.
>
> In both C and C++ newsgroups a large amount of time is spent
> discussing the semantics of fundamental types, implicit conversion
> from double to bool, semantics of signed + unsigned and so on.
>
> In C there is little that can be done, but in C++ (which is my
> favourite language) I do believe that there are all the mechanisms
> there (operator overloading, and in C++0x, Concept based overloading
> to seriously address the issue of a virtual machine.
>
> As an example the int type in C++. Currently it has a wide range of
> behaviours depending on the hardware. There is no theoretical reason
> why one couldnt request that int is 32 bits or 16 bits or 24 bits,
> that you want twos's complement addition semantics, that you want
> overflow to throw an exception in debug mode etc, etc. IOW the basis
> of a C++ virtual machine.
>
> I hope that, long term, programming languages will be designed in
> terms of an underlying virtual machine, as will hardware. Its just a
> more sensible way to design, from documentation, to semantics, to
> abstraction away from one particular hardware.
>
> regards
> Andy Little- Hide quoted text -
Steve O'Hara-Smith
kwikius <an...@servocomm.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> The concept of a virtual machine is very powerful. I am not sure how
> old it is but I guess that it was Java that popularised it in a
> dramatic fashion.
Pascal P code, BCPL Intcode and probably many others came well
before Java.
kwikius
> On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 05:28:47 -0800 (PST)
>
> > The concept of a virtual machine is very powerful. I am not sure how
> > old it is but I guess that it was Java that popularised it in a
> > dramatic fashion.
>
> Pascal P code, BCPL Intcode and probably many others came well
> before Java.
The BCPL part is very interesting. (Gleaned from Wikipedia on BCPL),
it appears that the design of C in relation to sizes of fundamental
types was based very much on that in BCPL (specifically the integer or
'word' in BCPL terminology).
The family tree from BCPL --> C-- > C++ shows how far that design
decison has percolated! I guess it was probably the only solution give
a high raw speed performance requirement. Pascal p-code (again from
Wikipedia) decided to go the other way, hang performance, and provide
an abstract spec.
IIRC around the time Java appeared, was the time when it was
recommended to buy a new PC every month or so, because the new one
would be twice as fast and the old one worthless, IOW hardware
performance increment was making interpreted languages much more
viable.
And of course the quest continues both in eg CLI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Specification
, and elesewhere e.g. LLVM:
http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html#abstract
regards
Andy Little
spinoza1111
> The 2000 persecution of Herbert Schildt for being a good teacher and
> writer by people who can neither teach nor write used usenet, Amazon,
> created by his enemies (some of whom appear to have been motivated by
> commercial gain) solely for the purpose of "damning by faint praise",
> although it's higly unusual for computer authors to be profiled in
> wikipedia, and primarily for the purpose of pointing to jejune web
> pages and the false "definitions" of childish neologisms,
>
> The wikipedia article has been repaired by a non-anonymous editor to
> conform to wikipedia's own policies concerning the biographies of
> living persons and neutral point-of-view, owing to my initial
> modifications and discussion of same, in the way, in 2006, the
> wikipedia "definition" of a childish neologism formed from my surname
> was removed on my request.
>
> The systematic persecution of Schildt in 2000 was a prototype for the
> harassment of Java author Kathy Sierra in 2006 which included rape and
> death threats, responsibility for which was disavowed by its enablers
> who said, like children, like nasty youths, that they were "merely
> mocking" Sierra and not responsible for unleashing a Fascist campaign.
>
> The era of use of electronic media for malign, systematic harassment
> and bullying of people seems to be drawing to a close.
>
> I have made an exception to my policy of not posting to wikipedia
> until I have finished the object-oriented regex which will establish,
> once and for all, the Ugliness, and not the Beauty, of hounding good
> programmers to mindlessly assemble snippets of code to bring you this
> news.
>
> Edward G. Nilges
Erratum
The starter article in this thread misidentified Herbert Schildt as
the author of C Unleashed.
This was an error.
Herbert Schildt, of course, is the author of The Complete C++
Reference (http://www.amazon.com/C%2B%2B-Complete-Reference-Herbert-
Schildt/dp/0072226803/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200228785&sr=8-1) and a number of other well-
received books. The Complete C++ Reference, although published in
2000, is today #6 in books on C.
C Unleashed is an out of print book by Richard Heathfield (et al.)
who, it appears, has no other books to his credit.
As was described in the original post, a systematic campaign of abuse
appears to have been "Unleashed", quite possibly by Heathfield, in
2000 by Heathfield in what appears to have been a systematic campaign
of harassment similar to campaigns engaged-in by Richard Heathfield
here.
It appears from the status of C Unleashed that this campaign has
failed.
My sincere apologies for this error. However, it would have been
corrected immediately in the kind of newsgroup we need here, one in
which thread vandals do not immediately pounce upon unpopular
personalities and subject their information to a malign data smog.
In the kind of newsgroup that is needed here, the first respondent
would have pointed out the error clearly.
I've just noticed the error. I can't remove and re-add the post, so
this will have to do.
Edward G. Nilges
spinoza1111
> "spinoza1111" <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote
>
> >Instead, their existence is based on what is itself a highly dubious
> >proposition: that C, a notation for enabling low-level, non-
> >deterministic, and machine dependent code to take advantage of local
> >conditions in a fine grained way, should be standardized as opposed to
> >eliminated...as unsafe for most applications.
>
> >The little members of the little committee can jerk themselves off all
> >they want "standardizing" a language which can't be standardized.
>
> Here we actaully have something worth saying. I'm not saying I necessarily
> agree with it, but there is certainly a case that C inherently cannot be
> standardised because it is designed to take advantage of processor
> instructions in a fine-grained way, and therefore the ISO committee is
> wasting its time.
>
> But firstly if you fling schoolboy-level sexual insults at the committee,
> they are unlikley to give you opinion much more weight than that of a
> schoolboy. Secondly, I've read two whole threads before finding something
> which I consider to be worth replying to - OK, it takes two to tango, but
> you should consider that you are degrading the quality of the ng.
The person whose threads and contributions are vandalized, Malcolm,
will be at the bottom of the rugby scrum, and as such will only appear
responsible for the bad behavior of t'other wankers. I had this same
experience at the placeblog www.lamma.com.HK, in which pub loudmouths
deliberately trashed the newsgroup of which I was moderator. I fought
back, and this caused your petty bourgeois, who prefer people to take
their punishment backstairs, to complain about me.
You can put me down, Malcolm, as fed up. I was absolutely shocked and
appalled at the simple absence of collegiality or decency in posts to
the early internet at Princeton in 1987, and I have fought that
phenomenon for years with some success.
As to "schoolboy insults", I would say when in Rome. You've got people
who don't understand anything else.
>
> Actually I disagree. There is a need for a simple language that allows one
> to shuffle bytes about in the computer's memory and do arithmetical
> calculations, and which produces efficient code. C and Fortran 77 both fit
> the bill. However it is easier to make C modules more reusable, because of
> structures and pointers. It is also easier to make a mess of a C program,
> for the same reason.
>
> It is difficult not to make a mess of a C++ or Java program, unless you have
> a fairly considerable level of experience.
I took a risk to start a dialogue. As to "experience", my experience
happens to be in applied computer science, but not in C++, which I
avoid like C having seen that C is inadequate for OO development,
which I use in my book to show that a compiler can be constructed
clearly.
My experience in fact is that after approximately two or three weeks
in a new language, I can master all the tics of which programmers with
years of experience are inordinately proud...while not (as in the case
of the nonsense written elsethread by Richard Heathfield and Randy
Howard about the pathological expressions in the Spark Notes test)
even being able to imaginatively reconstruct virtual machine language
based on a pathological expression.
The problem is that I learn (or in the case of C, re-learn) those tics
and those crotchets with a sense of disgust. Oh yes, Pike can go one
beyond the end of a string. Oh no, don't put Nuls in the data. Oh, the
humanity.
Ant
>The starter article in this thread misidentified Herbert Schildt as
>the author of C Unleashed.
>My sincere apologies for this error. However, it would have been
>corrected immediately in the kind of newsgroup we need here
It was clearly noted by Ben Pfaff on the same day the article was
posted. You even replied to his correction...
>I've just noticed the error.
...but you were so preoccupied with ranting against other contributors
here that you didn't see it.
Richard Heathfield
Let's have some graciousness here. His error was spotted and reported
within just over a couple of hours of his posting it, and it only took him
five more days to acknowledge and apologise for it (albeit in a singularly
ungracious manner). That has to be some kind of personal best.
In the kind of newsgroup we need here here, though, regular contributors
would acknowledge and - where appropriate - apologise for reported errors
much quicker than that. And, indeed, mostly we have that kind of
newsgroup. This "spinoza1111" complains that the error wasn't corrected
immediately, but Ben's two hours 24 minutes is actually pretty good.
In the kind of newsgroup we *need* here, people would take responsibility
for their own articles, and would respond appropriately to reports of
errors within those articles. And indeed, mostly we have that kind of
newsgroup. This "spinoza1111" complains that others in this group "subject
his information to a malign data smog". This appears to be a reference to
corrections to other articles he has posted here. If he continually
attacks those who seek to correct his errors, he should not be surprised
at a 2 hour 24 minute delay before someone with the necessary temerity
notices the error. If, instead, he responded professionally to reports of
errors, he'd find himself much better received by the truly professional
programmers in whose circles he tries to move and whom he continually
insults. (He has yet to apologise for calling *every* reader of this group
"mindless" - yes, folks, he means *you*.)
When he can learn to stop attacking individuals (myself, Chris Sonnack, Ben
Bacarisse, Randy Howard, and even Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike) and focus
on technical matters, he will learn much more about programming, much more
quickly. And if only he can learn to write economically, his learning rate
will increase all the more.
spinoza1111
> "spinoza1111" wrote:
> >The starter article in this thread misidentified Herbert Schildt as
> >the author of C Unleashed.
> >My sincere apologies for this error. However, it would have been
> >corrected immediately in the kind of newsgroup we need here
>
> It was clearly noted by Ben Pfaff on the same day the article was
> posted. You even replied to his correction...
Erroneously. I didn't realize that he was correcting the subject line.
>
> >I've just noticed the error.
>
> ...but you were so preoccupied with ranting against other contributors
> here that you didn't see it.
If you prefer it that way. In fact, I was stressed-out by the wrong
you did, which was thread vandalism.
spinoza1111
> Ant said:
>
> > "spinoza1111" wrote:
>
> >>The starter article in this thread misidentified Herbert Schildt as
> >>the author of C Unleashed.
>
> >>My sincere apologies for this error. However, it would have been
> >>corrected immediately in the kind of newsgroup we need here
>
> > It was clearly noted by Ben Pfaff on the same day the article was
> > posted. You even replied to his correction...
>
> >>I've just noticed the error.
>
> > ...but you were so preoccupied with ranting against other contributors
> > here that you didn't see it.
>
> Let's have some graciousness here. His error was spotted and reported
> within just over a couple of hours of his posting it, and it only took him
> five more days to acknowledge and apologise for it (albeit in a singularly
> ungracious manner). That has to be some kind of personal best.
Aw gee you say the sweetist things.
>
> In the kind of newsgroup we need here here, though, regular contributors
> would acknowledge and - where appropriate - apologise for reported errors
> much quicker than that. And, indeed, mostly we have that kind of
> newsgroup. This "spinoza1111" complains that the error wasn't corrected
> immediately, but Ben's two hours 24 minutes is actually pretty good.
Ben only ran the code. I explained the error.
As the TARGET of the vandalism, I was under a great deal of stress.
But I've followed up on every error that has come to my attention. You
have not.
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 14, 1:09 am, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
<snip>
>> This "spinoza1111" complains that the error wasn't corrected
>> immediately, but Ben's two hours 24 minutes is actually pretty good.
>
> Ben only ran the code. I explained the error.
Wrong. Ben pointed out the error under discussion - the misattribution of
"C Unleashed" to Herbert Schildt - five days before you even noticed the
error, and it does seem to an outside observer such as myself that you
only noticed it at all because people continued to refer to it, sometimes
going to the length of quoting message IDs, while you continued to deny
that such an error had been made and to accuse other people of getting it
wrong... until the weight of observations finally persuaded you to take
the tiny amount of time it took to check their facts.
And indeed this seems to be your modus operandi when people report your
errors to you - deny it, accuse the reporter of "no due diligence" and
being a "bully", put your hands over your ears, and start reeling off
sociology.
Wouldn't it be a lot simpler if, when people reported your errors, you
checked carefully to see whether they were right? And, if it appeared that
they were not, you could perhaps explain that you can't find the error,
and maybe they're mistaken or maybe you're missing something - this is
what you've done to look for the error, are you looking in the wrong
place? That sort of thing. You'd be amazed how far a little objectivity
and humility go in this group. Well, okay, maybe you won't, because just
maybe you've burned your bridges. But it's got to be worth a try, hasn't
it?
> As the TARGET of the vandalism, I was under a great deal of stress.
You Are Not A Target. Your errors are perfectly targets, but that's a
*good* thing - a professional programmer welcomes the correction of any
errors, but especially his own.
> But I've followed up on every error that has come to my attention.
If that is true, then you only read a tiny fraction of the articles posted
in reply to your own.
> You have not.
Right. You make way too many errors for that to be possible or desirable.
But have no fear - others here also appear willing to correct some of your
errors. Of course, it would help if you didn't make so many, and didn't
hide them in pages and pages of pages and pages.
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111 said:
>
> > On Jan 14, 1:09 am, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >> This "spinoza1111" complains that the error wasn't corrected
> >> immediately, but Ben's two hours 24 minutes is actually pretty good.
>
> > Ben only ran the code. I explained the error.
>
> Wrong. Ben pointed out the error under discussion - the misattribution of
> "C Unleashed" to Herbert Schildt - five days before you even noticed the
> error, and it does seem to an outside observer such as myself that you
> only noticed it at all because people continued to refer to it, sometimes
> going to the length of quoting message IDs, while you continued to deny
> that such an error had been made and to accuse other people of getting it
> wrong... until the weight of observations finally persuaded you to take
> the tiny amount of time it took to check their facts.
No, you're wrong. I spent very little time on this rather
insignificant matter, because Randy Howard was wasting my time at the
time with far more serious allegations.
The rhetorical trick you're using in the absence of a case is focus on
the trivial. You did this to Schildt over the issue of "what main()
returns" (something that the starter programmer does not need to know,
as opposed to "how [most] negative numbers are represented", an issue
over which you attack him).
>
> And indeed this seems to be your modus operandi when people report your
> errors to you - deny it, accuse the reporter of "no due diligence" and
> being a "bully", put your hands over your ears, and start reeling off
> sociology.
You're lying. As soon as I realized (around 5:00 PM Sunday January 13
China time) that the entire thread was mislabeled, something which I
would have seen had you not created, deliberately and with malign and
commercial intent, a data smog of thread vandalism, I posted a
correction.
I accuse people of "no due diligence" not in cases like this. I accuse
them of it when they deliberately change the subject from technical
and mathematical issues to personalities because as unqualified
programmers who freeze up on the difference between && and ||, for
example, they feel more comfortable when attacking people.
You are ignoring the thread in which I ask, what is the BNF of Pike's
so-called "regular expressions"? You probably don't know Backus-Naur
Form, and it was very well for you to refrain. So did everybody else,
and, as was the case when I had to be the one with the knowledge and
professionalism to explain the error Ben merely found by
experimentation, I had to correct my own error...in not realising that
a string of "any" character can be terminated by dot asterisk.
You post conventional wisdom, a conventional wisdom which is known to
produce non-working and unmaintainable systems, because you do not
feel qualified to do the background math, and you are afraid that if
errors were found in your math, you would lose what authority you
have.
>
> Wouldn't it be a lot simpler if, when people reported your errors, you
> checked carefully to see whether they were right? And, if it appeared that
That's what I do. I discovered that the so-called "error" of
calculating an invariant expression in a C (or C sharp, or Java, or C+
+) for loop is a matter of pico-efficiency versus exhibiting intent in
a language family that preserves a mistake (the for limit should be
calculated ONCE as it is in Visual Basic). I discovered that the error
that Ben only found reveals that Pike inelegantly, but correctly,
exploits the fact that in C, when processing "strings" that aren't
even strings, you can be off by one.
You failed to even TRY to think how a simple stack virtual machine
would process the pathological increment expressions in the Spark
Notes test, substituting the ignorance of your Standard for knowledge
of what real compilers have to do when bozos write code (push i, push
i, push i, increment i, store in i, add, store in i).
This is to be collegial. This is to advance knowledge. What you want
is instead an auto da fe in which I kow tow to the initial error
finder and project the false and petty bourgeois *ersatz* for
Dijkstra's "humble programmer", a nasty little personality about whom
Dijkstra was NOT speaking in his 1972 Turing award lecture who makes
only a good little "humble" servant, not with humility but with Uriah
Heep's cringing servility, of mega-corporations.
> they were not, you could perhaps explain that you can't find the error,
> and maybe they're mistaken or maybe you're missing something - this is
> what you've done to look for the error, are you looking in the wrong
> place? That sort of thing. You'd be amazed how far a little objectivity
> and humility go in this group. Well, okay, maybe you won't, because just
> maybe you've burned your bridges. But it's got to be worth a try, hasn't
> it?
Don't you DARE, don't you DARE speak to me of humility. Dijkstra's
humility was perverted for corporate ends in the 1970s. I was there.
It was perverted into a servility to authority and slave morality
almost as soon as it was out of the box. Its ersatz is the most
powerful enabler of thugs and bullies like you. I am not going to
start enabling you.
Got it, mate?
>
> > As the TARGET of the vandalism, I was under a great deal of stress.
>
> You Are Not A Target. Your errors are perfectly targets, but that's a
> *good* thing - a professional programmer welcomes the correction of any
> errors, but especially his own.
You aren't even discussing my errors! You can't describe them
extempore! As an aide-memoir, you have to create secret Web pages on
the Planet Bnarg describing my errors, alongside your perverse
monuments to the redoubtable Schildt!
As in the case of anti-Semitism, which Theodore Adorno called "a rumor
about the Jews", your names refer to rumors and you enter painted full
of tongues, seeking to destroy!
Warkworth. Before the castle
Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues
RUMOUR
Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth:
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I speak of peace, while covert enmity
Under the smile of safety wounds the world:
And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters and prepared defence,
Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it. But what need I thus
My well-known body to anatomize
Among my household? Why is Rumour here?
I run before King Harry's victory;
Who in a bloody field by Shrewsbury
Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,
Quenching the flame of bold rebellion
Even with the rebel's blood. But what mean I
To speak so true at first? my office is
To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell
Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword,
And that the king before the Douglas' rage
Stoop'd his anointed head as low as death.
This have I rumour'd through the peasant towns
Between that royal field of Shrewsbury
And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,
Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland,
Lies crafty-sick: the posts come tiring on,
And not a man of them brings other news
Than they have learn'd of me: from Rumour's tongues
They bring smooth comforts false, worse than
true wrongs.
Having been corrupted by corporate relations, you transform all human
exchanges into the irrational "rationality" of the performance review,
wherein the company sets a secret target of improving its stock price
by telling frontline managers they *must* make 35% of their
programmers into layoff meat. In the transactions thus created,
"errors" and "missed deadlines" become things without evident referent
through moron quantification.
I think you were subject to this process, and I believe it has
corrupted you.
>
> > But I've followed up on every error that has come to my attention.
>
> If that is true, then you only read a tiny fraction of the articles posted
> in reply to your own.
You're lying.
>
> > You have not.
>
> Right. You make way too many errors for that to be possible or desirable.
> But have no fear - others here also appear willing to correct some of your
> errors. Of course, it would help if you didn't make so many, and didn't
> hide them in pages and pages of pages and pages.
My entry thesis was unrefuted by you. It is idiomatic, and fails to
teach computer science to (1) call a crude grep a "regular expression
processor", (2) use value parameters as work areas, (3) rely on Nul so
as not to be off by one, (4) claim you process strings when you don't,
etc.
You are trying to make this into a rerun of America's Next Top Model,
by transforming everything into the child's register of who makes the
"most" "errors". I'm not going to let you.
Trivially, I have the most fecund brain here, and produce not only the
most words but also the most new ideas, and that's been true since
2000 when you and your buddies vandalized my thread on Steve
McConnell. Trivially this large n implies nonzero, perhaps even
somewhat large e, where e is error count. Too bad: I am using usenet
as intended in a dialog as a whiteboard, whereas YOU are
inappropriately trying to use it for commercial gain.
[Yeah, suck on that. I'm the smartest person in the room. I'm not
happy about this. I think it's a bad sign. I think that one reason why
smart people avoid usenet is the way people like you abuse it.]
You make no errors because you're not man enough and you're not smart
enough to have ideas and to take risks.
Richard Heathfield
> On Jan 14, 3:34 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 said:
>>
>> > On Jan 14, 1:09 am, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> >> This "spinoza1111" complains that the error wasn't corrected
>> >> immediately, but Ben's two hours 24 minutes is actually pretty good.
>>
>> > Ben only ran the code. I explained the error.
>>
>> Wrong. Ben pointed out the error under discussion - the misattribution
>> of "C Unleashed" to Herbert Schildt - five days before you even noticed
>> the error, and it does seem to an outside observer such as myself that
>> you only noticed it at all because people continued to refer to it,
>> sometimes going to the length of quoting message IDs, while you
>> continued to deny that such an error had been made and to accuse other
>> people of getting it wrong... until the weight of observations finally
>> persuaded you to take the tiny amount of time it took to check their
>> facts.
>
> No, you're wrong.
Wake up and smell the correcting fluid.
<Junk snipped unread.>
Steve O'Hara-Smith
kwikius <an...@servocomm.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> The BCPL part is very interesting. (Gleaned from Wikipedia on BCPL),
> it appears that the design of C in relation to sizes of fundamental
> types was based very much on that in BCPL (specifically the integer or
> 'word' in BCPL terminology).
>
> The family tree from BCPL --> C-- > C++ shows how far that design
> decison has percolated! I guess it was probably the only solution give
> a high raw speed performance requirement.
AIUI the primary reason for BCPL having one and only one data type
(the word which must be large enough to hold the address of any word) was
to simplify implementation and minimize assumptions about the target rather
than to maximise performance. A primary goal of BCPL was to be highly
portable. At least this was the impression I retained from Martin Richard's
lectures on it.
Julienne Walker
> On Jan 13, 10:11 pm, "Ant" <n...@home.today> wrote:
>
> > "spinoza1111" wrote:
> > >The starter article in this thread misidentified Herbert Schildt as
> > >the author of C Unleashed.
> > >My sincere apologies for this error. However, it would have been
> > >corrected immediately in the kind of newsgroup we need here
>
> > It was clearly noted by Ben Pfaff on the same day the article was
> > posted. You even replied to his correction...
>
> Erroneously. I didn't realize that he was correcting the subject line.
No offense intended, but this is the whole of Ben's post:
"
> Subject: Article on Herbert Schildt, author of C Unleashed, repaired on wikipedia
C Unleashed has several authors, but Herbert Schildt is not one of
them.
"
He very clearly quoted what he was commenting on, and very clearly
stated that Herbert Schildt is not one of authors who contributed to
C Unleashed. It's possible and likely that I'm missing something, but
there's little (if any) chance for misunderstanding here. Given that
assumption (and I apologize in advance because this will sound rude),
how can I expect you to read a technical argument thoroughly when you
don't even take the time to comprehend this incredibly simple
correction? Being under stress isn't a good excuse unless by "under
stress" you mean paranoid to the point of hallucination. I say that
because this was your reply to Ben's correction:
"
Ben, the literal mind. OK, Heathfield was the editor who still stood
to profit by deliberately trashing Herb's sales in 2000 by starting,
with malign intent, a whispering campaign about such "errors" as
telling students that negative numbers are [usually] represented twos-
complement, and following the rules of the widely-implemented
traditional and sequential C virtual-abstract machine to untangle the
pathological use of post or pre increment in an assignment expression
where the lValue is the same as the post/pre increment. OK, Heathfield
can't write, and he hates Schildt because Schildt can. Ben, we knew
that.
"
I can't fathom what you were actually reading when you looked at Ben's
post because there's precisely zero connection between his words and
yours.
spinoza1111
> On Jan 14, 1:09 am, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 13, 10:11 pm, "Ant" <n...@home.today> wrote:
>
> > > "spinoza1111" wrote:
> > > >The starter article in this thread misidentified Herbert Schildt as
> > > >the author of C Unleashed.
> > > >My sincere apologies for this error. However, it would have been
> > > >corrected immediately in the kind of newsgroup we need here
>
> > > It was clearly noted by Ben Pfaff on the same day the article was
> > > posted. You even replied to his correction...
>
> > Erroneously. I didn't realize that he was correcting the subject line.
>
> No offense intended, but this is the whole of Ben's post:
>
> "
>
> > Subject: Article on Herbert Schildt, author of C Unleashed, repaired on wikipedia
>
> C Unleashed has several authors, but Herbert Schildt is not one of
> them.
> "
>
> He very clearly quoted what he was commenting on, and very clearly
> stated that Herbert Schildt is not one of authors who contributed to
> C Unleashed. It's possible and likely that I'm missing something, but
That is something of which I was aware when I made the original post.
Let's not propagate the effect of my error, which owing to usenet's
limitations cannot be repaired, by quibbling over it.
> there's little (if any) chance for misunderstanding here. Given that
> assumption (and I apologize in advance because this will sound rude),
> how can I expect you to read a technical argument thoroughly when you
The nature of the medium, Julienne, in which people do not in the main
post anything like halfway decent technical arguments, creates stress
and causes me to view rude replies with a jaundiced eye. Although I
read every word of every post to which I plan to reply, I thought Ben
was talking about something else, and at the time was engaged in
defending myself against the attacks of people, not including Ben, who
have made it their mission here to drown me out, as they made it their
mission to discredit Herb.
> don't even take the time to comprehend this incredibly simple
> correction? Being under stress isn't a good excuse unless by "under
> stress" you mean paranoid to the point of hallucination. I say that
> because this was your reply to Ben's correction:
>
> "
> Ben, the literal mind. OK, Heathfield was the editor who still stood
> to profit by deliberately trashing Herb's sales in 2000 by starting,
> with malign intent, a whispering campaign about such "errors" as
> telling students that negative numbers are [usually] represented twos-
> complement, and following the rules of the widely-implemented
> traditional and sequential C virtual-abstract machine to untangle the
> pathological use of post or pre increment in an assignment expression
> where the lValue is the same as the post/pre increment. OK, Heathfield
> can't write, and he hates Schildt because Schildt can. Ben, we knew
> that.
> "
>
> I can't fathom what you were actually reading when you looked at Ben's
> post because there's precisely zero connection between his words and
> yours.
I'm afraid that I needed there to bring Ben up to speed. The problem
is that people deliberately and with malign intent try to create
realities on usenet, realities not about programming but about
personalities, and I needed to explain my perception that Heathfield
targeted Herb as he targets me, thereby showing a pattern.
The prose is dense because I believe it's unethical to make references
"elsethread" to errors that you say a person makes. I believe I owed
it to Ben to state clearly what the Schildt campaign was based on: not
completely false statements, but instead his telling the reader that
"negative numbers are stored twos complement", something you'd expect
a normally competent CS teacher to say to help C students understand
why negative one is fox four.
In the second point, I was addressing Herb's statements concerning
certain unusual constructions by repeating my contention that despite
what the standard says, actual C compilers have a determined result
which can be determined, as I have shown elsewhere, if you know how to
paper-compile C instructions into paper instructions.
All this was expressed in a long sentence, inelegantly, and under
pressure. The pressure was created by the fact that I had had on-topic
concerns about code in a new O'Reilly book miscalled, in my opinion,
Beautiful, but my discussion was vandalized by Heathfield et al. with
claims about my competence, or lack thereof. I decided to go ahead and
try to do this ng a service by once and for all showing that
Heathfield conducts personal vendettas for personal gain, and NOT by
referring people to documentation elsewhere.
Julienne Walker
> On Jan 14, 11:26 pm, Julienne Walker <happyfro...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > He very clearly quoted what he was commenting on, and very clearly
> > stated that Herbert Schildt is not one of authors who contributed to
> > C Unleashed. It's possible and likely that I'm missing something, but
>
> That is something of which I was aware when I made the original post.
> Let's not propagate the effect of my error, which owing to usenet's
> limitations cannot be repaired, by quibbling over it.
The effect of your error was that you were jumped on by rabid dogs as
is the tradition in comp.lang.c, which I assume has moved to
comp.programming as well. If it could be repaired, I still wouldn't
want it to be because that would make some of the posts in the thread
nonsensical. It's also wise to leave errors out in the open so that
they can be discussed, understood, and avoided in the future.
That said, I wouldn't describe an indirect request for clarification
by pointing out inconsistencies to be "quibbling". Accuracy is just as
important to making a point as civility. Without questioning your
actions and/or state of mind, we're stuck with first impressions. If
the first impression isn't good, your point is lost along with your
credibility, and that defeats the purpose of trying to make a point in
the first place.
> > there's little (if any) chance for misunderstanding here. Given that
> > assumption (and I apologize in advance because this will sound rude),
> > how can I expect you to read a technical argument thoroughly when you
>
> The nature of the medium, Julienne, in which people do not in the main
> post anything like halfway decent technical arguments, creates stress
> and causes me to view rude replies with a jaundiced eye. Although I
> read every word of every post to which I plan to reply, I thought Ben
> was talking about something else, and at the time was engaged in
> defending myself against the attacks of people, not including Ben, who
> have made it their mission here to drown me out, as they made it their
> mission to discredit Herb.
There, see what I mean? Now instead of seeing you as a complete
nutter, I understand your mistake and can re-evaluate my opinion. If
we didn't "quibble" over the error, my perspective wouldn't have been
altered and your point would have been lost to me.
Ben Bacarisse
> On Jan 14, 3:34 pm, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 said:
>>
>> > On Jan 14, 1:09 am, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> >> This "spinoza1111" complains that the error wasn't corrected
>> >> immediately, but Ben's two hours 24 minutes is actually pretty good.
>>
>> > Ben only ran the code. I explained the error.
You may have noticed by now that you have confused two Bens (Ben
Pfaff and myself).
<snip>
>... So did everybody else,
> and, as was the case when I had to be the one with the knowledge and
> professionalism to explain the error Ben merely found by
> experimentation, I had to correct my own error...in not realising that
> a string of "any" character can be terminated by dot asterisk.
This is why I dropped out of the thread. I did what you asked -- to
address the technical issues -- but now you are berating me for
lacking the knowledge and professionalism to explain the errors to
you. I thought I had explained them (yes, plural) well enough. If
you did not understand, you could have asked for more clarification.
For the record, I reported two error cases, not one. The one you keep
talking about is rather trivial (an array bounds error when the
pattern ends with a *). The other is much more interesting and
directly relates to your trying to improve the code.
I will continue to post if you want to address these specific
technical matters -- the way in which your implementation breaks the
original algorithm -- but not if you continue to deride everyone here.
--
Ben.
kwikius
> On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:58:42 -0800 (PST)
>
> > The BCPL part is very interesting. (Gleaned from Wikipedia on BCPL),
> > it appears that the design of C in relation to sizes of fundamental
> > types was based very much on that in BCPL (specifically the integer or
> > 'word' in BCPL terminology).
>
> > The family tree from BCPL --> C-- > C++ shows how far that design
> > decison has percolated! I guess it was probably the only solution give
> > a high raw speed performance requirement.
>
> AIUI the primary reason for BCPL having one and only one data type
> (the word which must be large enough to hold the address of any word) was
> to simplify implementation and minimize assumptions about the target rather
> than to maximise performance. A primary goal of BCPL was to be highly
> portable. At least this was the impression I retained from Martin Richard's
> lectures on it.
From reading:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10/BCPL.html
and the associated pdf on BCPL, and re-reading K& R TCPL, its clear
that BCPL is actually a huge influence on C. ( It even has //
comments, whether modern or original I don't know)
From my limited reading on BCPL, which mainly relates to the current
version in the above link, it seems to be a strange hybrid. The one
data type, the word, is used also for pointers, but meanwhile,
essentially BCPL is an interpreted language. That design decision re
pointers seems important, because it absolutely ties the fundamental
integer type to the 'word' size of the underlying architecture. The
decision probably permeates the whole design of the language in subtle
ways, and AFAIKS remains in even the most modern variants ( a word is
32 bits on a 32 bit PC etc), even though modern variants of the
language could have implemented a software Virtual Machine ( IOW
emulatinq any size of word that the user requested, and in fact given
other features (e.g the global vector of allocated memory), it would
seem on the surface quite easy to do.
My guess is that the reason is that there is and always was a major
implicit high speed performance requirement( There is a large amount
of material re performance testing in the documentation). The
attention paid to speed performance also explains a lot of the success
of C, which is attractive in comparison to other languages, because
its fast, particularly when dealing with pointers.
I'm not saying speed was a bad requirement ( :-) ) , but I believe it
was a major requirement of the design.
It will be interesting to see if I can find any bits and pieces of the
original type equivalence of pointers and other fundamental types in
BCPL still lying around in C++... :-)
regards
Andy Little
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Not really, when BCPL was used a lot (I spent several years using
it as a primary language) it was usually fully compiled. The Intcode system
was designed as a bootstrapping mechanism to port BCPL to a new
environment.
The approach would be to first write an intcode interpreter
for the new environment using whatever tools are easiest, efficiency is
totally unimportant.
Next run the Intcode version of the BCPL -> Intcode compiler on the
interpreter and test it by compiling itself.
Now write a code generator for the target machine in BCPL and thus
a native compiler for BCPL in BCPL, compile this to Intcode and run it on
the interpreter to compile itself to native code.
Now you have a native BCPL compiler.
> That design decision re
> pointers seems important, because it absolutely ties the fundamental
> integer type to the 'word' size of the underlying architecture.
Not really - there's nothing to stop you running 16 bit word BCPL
on a 64 bit machine, or vice-versa (you'll probably want some kind of
virtual memory support for the latter). Of course it is most efficient if
the BCPL word and the machine word are the same and this was the expected
way of doing things.
> My guess is that the reason is that there is and always was a major
> implicit high speed performance requirement( There is a large amount
> of material re performance testing in the documentation). The
> attention paid to speed performance also explains a lot of the success
> of C, which is attractive in comparison to other languages, because
> its fast, particularly when dealing with pointers.
>
> I'm not saying speed was a bad requirement ( :-) ) , but I believe it
> was a major requirement of the design.
Speed (or more accurately efficiency) was always important in those
days, consider the cost of CPU seconds and memory in 1967. However
simplicity and ease of porting were the major factors that differentiated
BCPL from other languages being developed at the time - consider the marked
contrast between the nearly contemporary BCPL and Algol68.
> It will be interesting to see if I can find any bits and pieces of the
> original type equivalence of pointers and other fundamental types in
> BCPL still lying around in C++... :-)
This type equivalence is probably primarily responsible for the
existence of pointer arithmetic in C and C++ which of course leads to
the iterator abstraction in C++ STL.
Another interesting thing to try and discover is what remains of
CPL. This is a subject where what I was told at Cambridge in 1979 differs
slightly from what I have read since. The relationship between BCPL and CPL
is AIUI that implementing CPL was proving impossible and Martin Richards
had the insight that the type mechanism was causing the trouble¹ and that
if there were only one type all the problems would go away and thus was
born Basic CPL - CPL with only one type. This was intended originally to be
a tool for getting CPL written but proved to be popular and useful while
CPL foundered as unimplementable.
As far as I can tell all information about CPL that's written up
comes from one paper:
"The main features of CPL" by D.W. Barron, J.N. Buxton, D.F. Hartley, E.
Nixon, and C. Strachey. The Computer Journal, volume 6, issue 2, pp.134-143
(1963).
I got the impression that the features and design of CPL shifted
like quicksand as they tried to find the compromises that would allow it to
be implemented.
¹ Here is where what I was told differs from what is written - what I was
told was that the C stood for Context and the compiler was supposed to
infer types from usage alone - what is written is that C stood for Combined
or Cambridge and the problem was the overall complexity of the language.
Given that Algol68 made it out of the door I think complexity alone is an
unlikely explanation.
spinoza1111
> On Jan 14, 11:38 am, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 14, 11:26 pm, Julienne Walker <happyfro...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > He very clearly quoted what he was commenting on, and very clearly
> > > stated that Herbert Schildt is not one of authors who contributed to
> > > C Unleashed. It's possible and likely that I'm missing something, but
>
> > That is something of which I was aware when I made the original post.
> > Let's not propagate the effect of my error, which owing to usenet's
> > limitations cannot be repaired, by quibbling over it.
>
> The effect of your error was that you were jumped on by rabid dogs as
> is the tradition in comp.lang.c, which I assume has moved to
Oh, so it's a tradition, and that makes it OK?
Boys will be boys?
Prison Planet, constructed by a deterministic view of male posters?
> comp.programming as well. If it could be repaired, I still wouldn't
> want it to be because that would make some of the posts in the thread
> nonsensical. It's also wise to leave errors out in the open so that
> they can be discussed, understood, and avoided in the future.
It wasn't an error. It was a typo, Julienne. When I typoed I knew what
Richard had written and what Herb had written.
>
> That said, I wouldn't describe an indirect request for clarification
> by pointing out inconsistencies to be "quibbling". Accuracy is just as
> important to making a point as civility. Without questioning your
> actions and/or state of mind, we're stuck with first impressions. If
Here comes the corporate-speak...who's we?
The Spanish Inquisition?
I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition!
Do me the courtesy, Julienne, of posting as a person and not some sort
of cabal. We're all individuals isolated behind machines and there is
NO community here in any sense of that word.
> the first impression isn't good, your point is lost along with your
> credibility, and that defeats the purpose of trying to make a point in
> the first place.
I'm not worried about my credibility, since in order to have what you
mean here, I would have to say only the most innocuous things, and
this is a waste of time. My credibility tends to grow over time
without me doing much of anything.
>
> > > there's little (if any) chance for misunderstanding here. Given that
> > > assumption (and I apologize in advance because this will sound rude),
> > > how can I expect you to read a technical argument thoroughly when you
>
> > The nature of the medium, Julienne, in which people do not in the main
> > post anything like halfway decent technical arguments, creates stress
> > and causes me to view rude replies with a jaundiced eye. Although I
> > read every word of every post to which I plan to reply, I thought Ben
> > was talking about something else, and at the time was engaged in
> > defending myself against the attacks of people, not including Ben, who
> > have made it their mission here to drown me out, as they made it their
> > mission to discredit Herb.
>
> There, see what I mean? Now instead of seeing you as a complete
> nutter, I understand your mistake and can re-evaluate my opinion. If
> we didn't "quibble" over the error, my perspective wouldn't have been
> altered and your point would have been lost to me.
It's not so much that we quibbled. It's that you (and this is only a
first or second impression) are light years more literate than most of
the knuckle heads here, perhaps because as a female in a technical
field you are of needs ten times as smart as they, and I write like a
girl...that is, I am comfortable with expressing things in a nuanced
and human fashion, and NOT as concerned, as are some of the chumps and
knuckle heads here, with being formalistically and exactly right when
using a prematurely formalized language meant by standards boards and
other assemblages of Dead Souls to stop thought in its tracks.
But I do find your style and willingness to metaphorically listen
unusual, and refreshing.
It wasn't an "error", but it was the mother of all typoes. since I was
trying to defend Herb and I went and made him the author of a Bad Book
on C. Your concerns are appropriate.
This medium an uncorrectable, for the most part, rough draft. Which
means that we have to as you say "quibble", but not as Heathfield
"quibbles", in order to create a list of personae non gratae (grata?
not sure) which make him look good, but to get to the truth, which was
your concern as well as Ben's. I take minor exception to the very
idea that I am in any way on trial, because this is a corporate
control device: to make the technical petty bourgeois always insecure
as if he's always a candidate for his own post, or something better
("all scientists are candidates for posts" - Adorno). I simply choose
not to be put in such a role because it's a loser's game.
There's just no point anymore, in a USA entering into a Depression,
where one in seven people don't have health insurance and with massive
hidden unemployment amongst "programmers", to playing games with
abstractions such as "credibility". The issue has changed to one of
telling the truth, "for let us not speak falsely now the hour is too
late" (Dylan, The Watchtower). All that is solid melts into air.
spinoza1111
I've not derided you. I did say that I was the one who explained the
error whereas you found it, which was the truth. If I am wrong, please
explain.
You ran the code, it failed. You left it to me to find the problem. I
ran the code, and .Net's runtime showed me the offending statement. I
almost threw up when I thought that Kernighan had published a code
that deliberately went one beyond the end of the string, but then I
realized that when you refuse to use str*** library functions, you
detect a null string by looking one beyond its end, which MUST (I
guess) have a Nul character which CANNOT occur in the string (I
suppose).
Now, the Urban Legend is that a programmer's thought is overdetermined
by a strong interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf thesis (language is
reality). This is untrue as soon as you learn language #2. Instead,
you are shocked BACK into the dark ages of computing by code which
Kernighan has a lot of nerve calling beautiful.
You weren't expecting the Spanish Inquisition, in other words.
(Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition).
It all comes flooding back like a stopped up drain.
Please explain how my efforts to improve the code caused the second
error case, and please just do so in response without making
backreferences to a thread that has been vandalized deliberately by
Randy Howard and Richard Heathfield.
>
> --
> Ben.
Ben Bacarisse
> On Jan 15, 1:47 am, Ben Bacarisse <ben.use...@bsb.me.uk> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
<snip>
>> >... So did everybody else,
>> > and, as was the case when I had to be the one with the knowledge and
>> > professionalism to explain the error Ben merely found by
>> > experimentation, I had to correct my own error...in not realising that
>> > a string of "any" character can be terminated by dot asterisk.
>>
>> This is why I dropped out of the thread. I did what you asked -- to
>> address the technical issues -- but now you are berating me for
>> lacking the knowledge and professionalism to explain the errors to
>> you. I thought I had explained them (yes, plural) well enough. If
>> you did not understand, you could have asked for more clarification.
>>
>> For the record, I reported two error cases, not one. The one you keep
>> talking about is rather trivial (an array bounds error when the
>> pattern ends with a *). The other is much more interesting and
>> directly relates to your trying to improve the code.
>>
>> I will continue to post if you want to address these specific
>> technical matters -- the way in which your implementation breaks the
>> original algorithm -- but not if you continue to deride everyone here.
>
> I've not derided you.
I said "everyone here" -- not me specifically.
Your phrase "So did everybody else, and, as was the case when I had to
be the one with the knowledge and professionalism to explain the
error" suggest that everyone else here was at fault for not explaining
your errors more fully.
(Adding "the error Ben merely found by experimentation" does seem to
be intended to be-little my intervention, but I'll take that on the
chin.)
> You ran the code, it failed.
No. I studied the code and concluded that I could not be right. I
posted two test cases that fail (which I did confirm by running the
code -- I always do that -- I am too error prone to do otherwise). I
would have said more if you had asked but the code is not complex and
I assumed you would be able to find the problems simply enough.
> You left it to me to find the problem. I
> ran the code, and .Net's runtime showed me the offending statement. I
> almost threw up when I thought that Kernighan had published a code
> that deliberately went one beyond the end of the string,
The published code is correct.
> Please explain how my efforts to improve the code caused the second
> error case
You wanted to improve the code by reporting where the match occurs.
To do this you changed a value parameter to a reference parameter and
this makes the recursion go wrong. It "goes wrong" differently with
the C++ and C# version.
For example, with the C# code, the pattern "aa*b" is reported to match
"aaab" with a string of length 1 at position 3 (zero-based) whereas
the C++ code gets the right answer (a match at 0 of length 4).
A related error occurs in the C++ code. Matching "a.*a" against
"aaaa" reports a match of length 2 at position 0 (same in the C#
code). This non-greedy meaning of * is quite valid, but is not what
you intended as can be seen by matching "a.*b" against "aaab" which
(correctly) reports a match of length 4 at position 0 (the non-greedy
meaning of * would have matched a string of length 2 at position 2).
--
Ben.
Chris McDonald
>I'm not worried about my credibility, ....
The most, and perhaps only, correct thing you've said here since Christmas.
(Oops, I've posted one line; that should lead to a 1049 word bullying)
--
Chris.
kwikius
> On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:34:02 -0800 (PST)
> kwikius <a...@servocomm.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
<...>
> > From my limited reading on BCPL, which mainly relates to the current
> > version in the above link, it seems to be a strange hybrid. The one
> > data type, the word, is used also for pointers, but meanwhile,
> > essentially BCPL is an interpreted language.
>
> Not really, when BCPL was used a lot (I spent several years using
> it as a primary language) it was usually fully compiled. The Intcode system
> was designed as a bootstrapping mechanism to port BCPL to a new
> environment.
>
> The approach would be to first write an intcode interpreter
> for the new environment using whatever tools are easiest, efficiency is
> totally unimportant.
>
> Next run the Intcode version of the BCPL -> Intcode compiler on the
> interpreter and test it by compiling itself.
>
> Now write a code generator for the target machine in BCPL and thus
> a native compiler for BCPL in BCPL, compile this to Intcode and run it on
> the interpreter to compile itself to native code.
>
> Now you have a native BCPL compiler.
OK. I did remember reading that this separation of the front end was
a factor in BCPL's success, and very innovative. gcc presumably has
something else to thank BCPL for.
> > That design decision re
> > pointers seems important, because it absolutely ties the fundamental
> > integer type to the 'word' size of the underlying architecture.
>
> Not really - there's nothing to stop you running 16 bit word BCPL
> on a 64 bit machine, or vice-versa (you'll probably want some kind of
> virtual memory support for the latter). Of course it is most efficient if
> the BCPL word and the machine word are the same and this was the expected
> way of doing things.
OK. It did seem that BCPL should work as an interpreted language, in
fact from what you say above it was both a compiled and interpreted
language.
> > My guess is that the reason is that there is and always was a major
> > implicit high speed performance requirement( There is a large amount
> > of material re performance testing in the documentation). The
> > attention paid to speed performance also explains a lot of the success
> > of C, which is attractive in comparison to other languages, because
> > its fast, particularly when dealing with pointers.
>
> > I'm not saying speed was a bad requirement ( :-) ) , but I believe it
> > was a major requirement of the design.
>
> Speed (or more accurately efficiency) was always important in those
> days, consider the cost of CPU seconds and memory in 1967. However
> simplicity and ease of porting were the major factors that differentiated
> BCPL from other languages being developed at the time - consider the marked
> contrast between the nearly contemporary BCPL and Algol68.
I can't claim to know anything about Algol, I'm afraid.
> > It will be interesting to see if I can find any bits and pieces of the
> > original type equivalence of pointers and other fundamental types in
> > BCPL still lying around in C++... :-)
>
> This type equivalence is probably primarily responsible for the
> existence of pointer arithmetic in C and C++ which of course leads to
> the iterator abstraction in C++ STL.
>
> Another interesting thing to try and discover is what remains of
> CPL. This is a subject where what I was told at Cambridge in 1979 differs
> slightly from what I have read since. The relationship between BCPL and CPL
> is AIUI that implementing CPL was proving impossible and Martin Richards
> had the insight that the type mechanism was causing the trouble¹ and that
> if there were only one type all the problems would go away and thus was
> born Basic CPL - CPL with only one type. This was intended originally to be
> a tool for getting CPL written but proved to be popular and useful while
> CPL foundered as unimplementable.
>
> As far as I can tell all information about CPL that's written up
> comes from one paper:
>
> "The main features of CPL" by D.W. Barron, J.N. Buxton, D.F. Hartley, E.
> Nixon, and C. Strachey. The Computer Journal, volume 6, issue 2, pp.134-143
> (1963).
>
> I got the impression that the features and design of CPL shifted
> like quicksand as they tried to find the compromises that would allow it to
> be implemented.
AS you say there doesnt seem to be much documented regarding CPL,
though apparently it had some features associate with functional
programming.
Anyway the part that most interests me about BCPL is nothing very
technical, but rather this issue of type equivalence of pointers and
integers, because it seems to be a very good explanation of the
semantics of integer types in C., as follows.
In BCPL a word stands in both for a C int and a C pointer. Pointers
presumably being unsigned. This is a very plausible explanation of why
the result type of any arithmetic op on an signed int and its unsigned
counterpart is an unsigned int in C. From a pragmatic viewpoint it is
much more expensive to screw up pointer arithmetic.
Of course C found that one integer type was not sufficient, but it is
possible to follow the thought processes of the semantics of ops
between all the int types in C, bearing in mind that there was
presumably a fair amount of legacy code around that was part C, part
BCPL, part B to contend with.
Finally the narrowing conversions and later in C++ the implicit
conversion of fundamental types to bool, can plausibly be seen to be a
logical requirement for backward compatibility with the BCPL type.
Anyway, thanks for providing the info regarding BCPL. I have always
found the C++ fundamental types and their semantics (inherited of
course from C), rather strange.
Of course I have no way of knowing if the above theory is correct, but
it does seem to be quite a plausible explanation of the C type system.
regards
Andy Little
spinoza1111
It wasn't intended to belittle your intervention or you yourself, Joe
Palooka.
Again, I have insisted that there is a DIFFERENCE between the personal
attack of the syntax "you fool" and the criticism of a person's
production or affections, and programmers seem to systematically fail
to realize this.
It was only to point out that you could have fixed the code for me and/
or saved me the trouble of explaining it.
>
> > You ran the code, it failed.
>
> No. I studied the code and concluded that I could not be right. I
I think you mean "it" not "I".
> posted two test cases that fail (which I did confirm by running the
> code -- I always do that -- I am too error prone to do otherwise). I
> would have said more if you had asked but the code is not complex and
> I assumed you would be able to find the problems simply enough.
Well, I understand that you don't want to say too much, unlike me who
says it all.
>
> > You left it to me to find the problem. I
> > ran the code, and .Net's runtime showed me the offending statement. I
> > almost threw up when I thought that Kernighan had published a code
> > that deliberately went one beyond the end of the string,
>
> The published code is correct.
I haven't found a single "bug" in it. I have found many errors,
starting with the error of claiming that it processes strings when all
it processes are arrays of bytes and continuing with its use of
idiomatic C to claim to teach anything at all about computer science.
Within its framework, which sucks, it is a correct program. Which
sucks insofar as to suck is hereditary.
[See? The program sucks. The artifact sucks. Things suck. People
don't. Not ever. The replacement of the idolatrous worship of
artifacts by a return to humanism.]
>
> > Please explain how my efforts to improve the code caused the second
> > error case
>
> You wanted to improve the code by reporting where the match occurs.
> To do this you changed a value parameter to a reference parameter and
> this makes the recursion go wrong. It "goes wrong" differently with
> the C++ and C# version.
Thanks!
Of course, it would have been nice if, in claiming to present
Beautiful code, where part of the Beauty would be Utility, the
Pikester could have returned these values, saving me the work of using
languages I seldom use, and messing up. Messing up is hard work!
I understand that if I pass the address for reference call, it's going
to always update the first parameter at the top of recursion UNLESS it
copies the address into a work area. But how is that a problem?
Can you explain how C++ and C differ in the handling of reference
parameters passed as &a?
>
> For example, with the C# code, the pattern "aa*b" is reported to match
> "aaab" with a string of length 1 at position 3 (zero-based) whereas
> the C++ code gets the right answer (a match at 0 of length 4).
>
> A related error occurs in the C++ code. Matching "a.*a" against
> "aaaa" reports a match of length 2 at position 0 (same in the C#
> code). This non-greedy meaning of * is quite valid, but is not what
> you intended as can be seen by matching "a.*b" against "aaab" which
> (correctly) reports a match of length 4 at position 0 (the non-greedy
> meaning of * would have matched a string of length 2 at position 2).
OK, it's my turn to mess around, and go back to the benchmark and fix
it based on these reports. Thanks again.
>
> --
> Ben.- Hide quoted text -
spinoza1111
> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
> >I'm not worried about my credibility, ....
>
> The most, and perhaps only, correct thing you've said here since Christmas.
>
> (Oops, I've posted one line; that should lead to a 1049 word bullying)
You're not worth 1,049 words, and verbal self-defense is not bullying.
Ben Bacarisse ain't my pal, but he's doing most of the work while you
jerks are standing around making smartass remarks.
You guys make me puke.
>
> --
> Chris.
CBFalconer
> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
... snip ...
>
>> The nature of the medium, Julienne, in which people do not in the
>> main post anything like halfway decent technical arguments,
>> creates stress and causes me to view rude replies with a
>> jaundiced eye. Although I read every word of every post to which
>> I plan to reply, I thought Ben was talking about something else,
>> and at the time was engaged in defending myself against the
>> attacks of people, not including Ben, who have made it their
>> mission here to drown me out, as they made it their mission to
>> discredit Herb.
>
> There, see what I mean? Now instead of seeing you as a complete
> nutter, I understand your mistake and can re-evaluate my opinion.
> If we didn't "quibble" over the error, my perspective wouldn't
> have been altered and your point would have been lost to me.
Er - what point? All I see is further nutter quibbling.
--
[mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
[page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
Try the download section.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Ben Bacarisse
> On Jan 16, 3:41 am, Ben Bacarisse <ben.use...@bsb.me.uk> wrote:
>> spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
<snip>
>> > You left it to me to find the problem. I
>> > ran the code, and .Net's runtime showed me the offending statement. I
>> > almost threw up when I thought that Kernighan had published a code
>> > that deliberately went one beyond the end of the string,
>>
>> The published code is correct.
>
> I haven't found a single "bug" in it. I have found many errors,
> starting with the error of claiming that it processes strings when all
> it processes are arrays of bytes and continuing with its use of
> idiomatic C to claim to teach anything at all about computer science.
> Within its framework, which sucks, it is a correct program. Which
> sucks insofar as to suck is hereditary.
You would enjoy it more if you saw it in terms of what it set out to
be not what you expected it to be. And I think you are placing too
low a value on correctness.
<snip>
>> > Please explain how my efforts to improve the code caused the second
>> > error case
>>
>> You wanted to improve the code by reporting where the match occurs.
>> To do this you changed a value parameter to a reference parameter and
>> this makes the recursion go wrong. It "goes wrong" differently with
>> the C++ and C# version.
>
> Thanks!
<snip>
> I understand that if I pass the address for reference call, it's going
> to always update the first parameter at the top of recursion UNLESS it
> copies the address into a work area. But how is that a problem?
Because it alters the algorithm. Your code is not a transliteration
of Pike's original into C++ and C# with additional features, it is a
different program with different (and now incorrect) semantics. Take
one of the test cases I gave you and trace what the original does and
what your code does and I think you will find that they do not match
the same things.
The recursive algorithm relies on the parameters to remember where
things matched, and sharing one variable all the way down the call
sequence breaks it.
The C++ and C# versions behave differently to each other because you
chose to share different things (an index in C# and a pointer to the
rest of the string to match in C++) but I think they both go wrong for
the same fundamental reason based on the same attempt to improve the
code.
> Can you explain how C++ and C differ in the handling of reference
> parameters passed as &a?
I take it you don't mean "in general", because if you do I can't help
because I don't know C#. If you are asking why your two version
behave differently, it is because they share different things using a
"reference" (see the previous paragraph).
You choose for some reason (presumably lack of familiarity) *not* to
use real reference parameters in C++, but instead you used another
level of indirection (another * in the type) as one would have to in
C. Using C++ references (i.e. char *&) would have made your intent a
lot clearer in my opinion.
It may seem a small point to you, but I am still not sure your code is
really C++. The reference syntax for C++ that I use does not have
"value" as a keyword and I had to comment out:
/* public value */ class kernighanRegexC
to get g++ to compile it. As a result, all my comments are rather
conditional. If your code in not C++, then there may be subtle
differences elsewhere between what I think C++ means, and what you
intended in the similar but related language.
--
Ben.