In the matter of Herb Schildt
spinoza1111
summarizes my views and will be extended when I have the time with a
detailed commentary on Peter Seebach's and Clive Feather's
disorganized and nasty attacks on Herb. I will host a discussion of
this article at my blog.
I will be somewhat less generous than Peter Seebach has been in
moderating comments at comp.lang.c.moderated. Pure expressions of
hatred such as Harlan's and quertyuiop will find their authors in my
spam queue.
However, no comment whatsoever by my targets, Seebach or Feather, will
be censored, and no matter what they say, they will not be placed in
the spam area. This is in part because of Peter Seebach's
professionalism as the moderator of comp.lang.c.
Indeed, it appears to me that Seebach is maturing. I encourage this
process, and as part of both Seebach's and Feather's growing up they
both need to post a public apology to Schildt. Hopefully we can get
their with this "peace process": that is my long term goal.
I won't look at posts in response to this since I enjoy overmuch the
war of the buffoons here, helping has it always had me to sharpen my
ability to speak truth to power. I will endeavor instead to reply to
posts at my own blog.
--
comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: cl...@plethora.net -- you must
have an appropriate newsgroups line in your header for your mail to be seen,
or the newsgroup name in square brackets in the subject line. Sorry.
Richard Heathfield
> My blog post at <URL elided>
> summarizes my views and will be extended when I have the time with a
> detailed commentary on Peter Seebach's and Clive Feather's
> disorganized and nasty attacks on Herb.
I know of no such attacks. I do know of critiques by those people of
Herbert Schildt's *books*.
<irrelevant stuff snipped>
> I won't look at posts in response to this
Post here, read here. A post-only poster is normally regarded as a
troll or a spammer, and I know you don't regard yourself as being
either of those.
<nonsense snipped>
--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line vacant - apply within
Mensanator
> My blog post athttp://spinoza1111.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/in-the-matter-of-herb-sch...
> summarizes my views and will be extended when I have the time with a
> detailed commentary on Peter Seebach's and Clive Feather's
> disorganized and nasty attacks on Herb. I will host a discussion of
> this article at my blog.
>
> I will be somewhat less generous than Peter Seebach has been in
> moderating comments at comp.lang.c.moderated. Pure expressions of
> hatred such as Harlan's and quertyuiop will find their authors in my
> spam queue.
>
> However, no comment whatsoever by my targets, Seebach or Feather, will
> be censored, and no matter what they say, they will not be placed in
> the spam area. This is in part because of Peter Seebach's
> professionalism as the moderator of comp.lang.c.
>
> Indeed, it appears to me that Seebach is maturing. I encourage this
> process, and as part of both Seebach's and Feather's growing up they
> both need to post a public apology to Schildt. Hopefully we can get
> their with this "peace process": that is my long term goal.
"their" ?
>
> I won't look at posts in response to this since I enjoy overmuch the
> war of the buffoons here, helping has it always had me to sharpen my
> ability to speak truth to power. I will endeavor instead to reply to
> posts at my own blog.
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
gwowen
>
> Post here, read here.
On the plus side, if the posters who argue with spinoza did so
exclusively on spinoza's blog, rather than on comp.lang.c,
it would improve the level of discourse in both places.
spinoza1111
> On Sep 25, 2:24 am,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > My blog post athttp://spinoza1111.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/in-the-matter-of-herb-sch...
> > summarizes my views and will be extended when I have the time with a
> > detailed commentary on Peter Seebach's and Clive Feather's
> > disorganized and nasty attacks on Herb. I will host a discussion of
> > this article at my blog.
>
> > I will be somewhat less generous than Peter Seebach has been in
> > moderating comments at comp.lang.c.moderated. Pure expressions of
> > hatred such as Harlan's and quertyuiop will find their authors in my
> > spam queue.
>
> > However, no comment whatsoever by my targets, Seebach or Feather, will
> > be censored, and no matter what they say, they will not be placed in
> > the spam area. This is in part because of Peter Seebach's
> > professionalism as the moderator of comp.lang.c.
>
> > Indeed, it appears to me that Seebach is maturing. I encourage this
> > process, and as part of both Seebach's and Feather's growing up they
> > both need to post a public apology to Schildt. Hopefully we can get
> > their with this "peace process": that is my long term goal.
>
> "their" ?
Wheir. Homeirik nod. Hwateveir.
>
>
>
> > I won't look at posts in response to this since I enjoy overmuch the
> > war of the buffoons here, helping has it always had me to sharpen my
> > ability to speak truth to power. I will endeavor instead to reply to
> > posts at my own blog.
> > --
> > comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
> > have an appropriate newsgroups line in your header for your mail to be seen,
> > or the newsgroup name in square brackets in the subject line. Sorry.
>
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
> have an appropriate newsgroups line in your header for your mail to be seen,
> or the newsgroup name in square brackets in the subject line. Sorry.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Keith Thompson
> On Sep 25, 2:24 am, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> My blog post athttp://spinoza1111.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/in-the-matter-of-herb-sch...
>> both need to post a public apology to Schildt. Hopefully we can get
>> their with this "peace process": that is my long term goal.
>
> "their" ?
Really, moderator(s)?
--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) ks...@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"
Colonel Harlan Sanders
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Sep 27, 1:16 am, Mensanator <mensana...@aol.com> wrote:
>> On Sep 25, 2:24 am,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
....
>> > both need to post a public apology to Schildt. Hopefully we can get
>> > their with this "peace process": that is my long term goal.
>>
>> "their" ?
>
>Wheir. Homeirik nod. Hwateveir.
Can't even acknowledge a simple error without implying it's an
indicator of genius. Your self-regard has no limit.
>> > I won't look at posts in response to this
Took three days for you to violate that undertaking.
No one cares about this "matter of Herb Schildt". I doubt Schildt
cares. Trying to turn a couple of reviews of a book TEN YEARS AGO into
a controversy is, quixotic, or less charitably, totally fucking
insane.
You only take up cudgels for Schildt because it's a way to bait
Heathfield and others. Sadly they rise to the bait and so it goes on,
and on, and on.
You'll be back here with another "C is a sucky language!"; "You're all
tools of the corporate overlords!"; "I was anal probed by aliens"; "I
was buddies with John Nash" post here in a few weeks when you get
bored with debating straw men in your blog.
--
spinoza1111
> On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:43:15 -0500 (CDT),spinoza1111
>
>
>
> <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Sep 27, 1:16 am, Mensanator <mensana...@aol.com> wrote:
> >> On Sep 25, 2:24 am,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> ....
> >> > both need to post a public apology to Schildt. Hopefully we can get
> >> > their with this "peace process": that is my long term goal.
>
> >> "their" ?
>
> >Wheir. Homeirik nod. Hwateveir.
>
> Can't even acknowledge a simple error without implying it's an
> indicator of genius. Your self-regard has no limit.
I mean no such thing, Colonel.
>
> >> > I won't look at posts in response to this
>
> Took three days for you to violate that undertaking.
Actually, I stay out of this intellectual slum for long periods of
time, because creeps like you sicken me.
>
> No one cares about this "matter of Herb Schildt". I doubt Schildt
> cares. Trying to turn a couple of reviews of a book TEN YEARS AGO into
> a controversy is, quixotic, or less charitably, totally fucking
> insane.
Schildt cares.
>
> You only take up cudgels for Schildt because it's a way to bait
> Heathfield and others. Sadly they rise to the bait and so it goes on,
> and on, and on.
I'm not here to bait anyone. I like discussing code collegially, but I
find that these discussions are continually disrupted by redneck
morons. Like you, Kaintuck.
>
> You'll be back here with another "C is a sucky language!"; "You're all
> tools of the corporate overlords!"; "I was anal probed by aliens"; "I
> was buddies with John Nash" post here in a few weeks when you get
> bored with debating straw men in your blog.
Well, Hoss, the fact is that Nash could not live in the sort of
shithole where you live, because that's how the local boys think,
bein' dumb bastards who are today jest too cowardly to continue
lynchin' Nigras. Being ignorant, the boys all con-flate (re-duce,
hoss) knowledge to conspiracy theorizing.
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
Colonel Harlan Sanders
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Sep 30, 4:56 pm, Colonel Harlan Sanders <Har...@kfc.com> wrote:
>> No one cares about this "matter of Herb Schildt". I doubt Schildt
>> cares. Trying to turn a couple of reviews of a book TEN YEARS AGO into
>> a controversy is, quixotic, or less charitably, totally fucking
>> insane.
>
>Schildt cares.
You know this how?
Andrew C. Suttles
>
>
> Well, Hoss, the fact is that Nash could not live in the sort of
> shithole where you live, because that's how the local boys think,
> bein' dumb bastards who are today jest too cowardly to continue
> lynchin' Nigras. Being ignorant, the boys all con-flate (re-duce,
> hoss) knowledge to conspiracy theorizing.
>
Is this a moderated forum?
Moderator, please clean this up. I thought this would be a helpful place to
learn and contribute to discussions regarding the use of my favorite programming
language - this is too much! I'm hoping this gets cleaned up and there will be
fruitful discussions here in the future.
Andrew
Francis Glassborow
>> spinoza1111 <spino...@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>
>> Well, Hoss, the fact is that Nash could not live in the sort of
>> shithole where you live, because that's how the local boys think,
>> bein' dumb bastards who are today jest too cowardly to continue
>> lynchin' Nigras. Being ignorant, the boys all con-flate (re-duce,
>> hoss) knowledge to conspiracy theorizing.
>>
>
> Is this a moderated forum?
>
> Moderator, please clean this up. I thought this would be a helpful place to
> learn and contribute to discussions regarding the use of my favorite programming
> language - this is too much! I'm hoping this gets cleaned up and there will be
> fruitful discussions here in the future.
>
> Andrew
Two things:
1) the moderator is himself being attacked. When I was an editor of a
periodical for programmers I had one absolute rule that anyone writing a
letter criticising me would have it published. That way I could never be
accused of using my position to siffle criticism of me.
2) I suspect that the moderator has been offering the poster enough rope
to hang himself. I think the paragraph you quote more than demonstrates
that he is unwilling to behave in a civilised fashion and if (as he
claims) he is currently a teacher then his employers need to ask
themselves some serious questions about their employment policy.
I think he has had enough rope and should be forced to go away and play
with himself. :-)
Seebs
> Is this a moderated forum?
(Speaking in my capacity as mod, for once!)
No, it is a moderated newsgroup. My sole actions are to confirm, or
not-confirm, postings to the group.
> Moderator, please clean this up. I thought this would be a helpful place to
> learn and contribute to discussions regarding the use of my favorite programming
> language - this is too much! I'm hoping this gets cleaned up and there will be
> fruitful discussions here in the future.
I don't remove posts once they've been approved. I do not approve or
disapprove posts based on whether I think they are posted by kooks, or whether
they contain flames.
The charter says:
CHARTER:
For the discussion of C programming topics that are
NOT system-specific and NOT covered by the c.l.c. FAQ.
Obvious homework problems or simple questions that can
be answered by a quick look in any C text will be off-topic.
Examples: of actual topics posted lately:
Portability of TRUE/FALSE
goto's
char * vs void * in k&r
are examples of acceptable messages, while
kbdhit() function in Unix
How to write a getch() in Ultrix
Scanner Genius GS 4500
Virtual screen swapping
are examples of off-topic, unacceptable messages.
RATIONALE:
The noise level in comp.lang.c. has gotten unbearable
in the last year or so. Various ways of keeping things reasonable
have failed. The main problem is that many messages are posted by
new users who can't be expected to know that their question is a
FAQ, or (in some cases) to understand that their question is actually
an OS issue rather than a C issue. comp.lang.c.moderated will provide
a newsgroup that will benefit _all_ c programmers, especially those
at the intermediate-to-expert level.
comp.lang.c would still be left in place for more general discussion,
and for those topics that no one seems to agree on a place for.
MODERATION:
The moderator will reject off-topic messages, as well as incorrect
answers to questions (within reason).
It does not say "the moderator will reject incoherent rants".
In my opinion, discussion of how people teach and learn C is significantly
relevant to the discussion of C. Recommendations for and against books about
C strike me as topical; thus, so do discussions of such recommendations.
I don't really want to get into the line of determining which posts are
clear enough or coherent enough. The purpose of the group is to offer
a somewhat-filtered discussion environment.
(On a related note: I was having some issues authenticating with my
upstream news server, which was delaying article approvals, but I've
gone and hacked on the copy of inews I use to make it retry with a delay
after a particular error code, and the problem seems to be resolved.)
-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
Dag-Erling Smørgrav
> Is this a moderated forum?
Yes.
> Moderator, please clean this up.
The moderator is one of the people Edward Nilges (aka Spinoza) accuses
of defaming Herbert Schildt, so killing the thread might be seen by some
as dishonest.
DES
--
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - d...@des.no
Seebs
> 1) the moderator is himself being attacked. When I was an editor of a
> periodical for programmers I had one absolute rule that anyone writing a
> letter criticising me would have it published. That way I could never be
> accused of using my position to siffle criticism of me.
This is certainly a component of my evaluation; I have no interest in
dealing with the predictable cries of "censorship!" that would ensue.
> 2) I suspect that the moderator has been offering the poster enough rope
> to hang himself. I think the paragraph you quote more than demonstrates
> that he is unwilling to behave in a civilised fashion and if (as he
> claims) he is currently a teacher then his employers need to ask
> themselves some serious questions about their employment policy.
Actually, I haven't even looked at his posts, for the most part, in
weeks. I only unkillfiled him once briefly to explain why I wasn't posting
on his blog.
> I think he has had enough rope and should be forced to go away and play
> with himself. :-)
As long as one could reasonably conclude that his posts are part of an
attempt to assert or support an opinion about the quality of a C programmming
text, or the quality of a review of a C programming text, I'm probably
going to keep approving them. I don't see any obvious reason for people
not to killfile him at this point, as he seems bound and determined to
ensure that the largest possible number of people are aware that a number
of experienced C programmers and writers in the field think that Schildt's
books are crap.
Since I happen to agree with that, I'm inclined to encourage this behavior.
Honestly, our correspondent's rants have done more to harm public opinion
of Schildt's writing than I could have even with a genuine and concerted
effort, but since it seems to be essentially a fair cop, I guess I can
live. ("Herbert Schildt: Recommended by frothing-mad Usenet cooks for
over a year!")
-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
James Kuyper
...
> As long as one could reasonably conclude that his posts are part of an
> attempt to assert or support an opinion about the quality of a C programmming
> text, or the quality of a review of a C programming text, I'm probably
> going to keep approving them. I don't see any obvious reason for people
> not to killfile him at this point,
I thought one of the key points of having a moderated newsgroup was to
reduce the need for a killfile.
Seebs
> I thought one of the key points of having a moderated newsgroup was to
> reduce the need for a killfile.
Reduce, yes. Eliminate, no.
Someone who regularly posted only about Unix stuff wouldn't need killfiling
here. Someone who posts incoherently about C probably will.
-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
Andrew C. Suttles
>
> Two things:
> 1) the moderator is himself being attacked. When I was an editor of a
> periodical for programmers I had one absolute rule that anyone writing
> a letter criticising me would have it published. That way I could
> never be accused of using my position to siffle criticism of me.
>
> 2) I suspect that the moderator has been offering the poster enough
> rope to hang himself. I think the paragraph you quote more than
> demonstrates that he is unwilling to behave in a civilised fashion and
> if (as he claims) he is currently a teacher then his employers need to
> ask themselves some serious questions about their employment policy.
Thanks for the explanation Mr. Glassborow and Mr. Moderator. I think I have a
clearer picture of the situation now, even though I'm confused about who does
and who does not like the book. I can ignore it for now and enjoy the rest of
the posts.
Andrew
spinoza1111
> On 2009-10-05, Francis Glassborow <francis.glassbo...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> > 1) the moderator is himself being attacked. When I was an editor of a
> > periodical for programmers I had one absolute rule that anyone writing a
> > letter criticising me would have it published. That way I could never be
> > accused of using my position to siffle criticism of me.
>
> This is certainly a component of my evaluation; I have no interest in
> dealing with the predictable cries of "censorship!" that would ensue.
>
> > 2) I suspect that the moderator has been offering the poster enough rope
> > to hang himself. I think the paragraph you quote more than demonstrates
> > that he is unwilling to behave in a civilised fashion and if (as he
> > claims) he is currently a teacher then his employers need to ask
> > themselves some serious questions about their employment policy.
This issue first arose for me more than twenty years ago when I was at
Princeton University. Some people who'd been bested by me in online
debate complained to my manager at SIGUCCS in 1987, and when she
returned to campus, she asked me in to her office to discuss the
matter.
I explained the situation to her satisfaction. Furthermore, Princeton
had a policy that employees' personal opinions were theirs by right,
and a year later I attended demonstrations against the (apartheid)
South African ambassador on my lunch hour and on campus.
I remained in Princeton's employ until 1992 and then left for greener
pastures.
The sort of people that threaten other people's employment, even in a
futile way as here, are people terrified by their own incompetence and
over-specialization (what Adorno called the secret contour of their
weakness) so as to think they'll terrify people who are confident
enough to speak truth to power.
Forever applying for their own job in uncaring companies for managers
who make a game and a joke out of employment, these people are quite
ready to try to threaten the employment of others because they're so
terrified of unemployment.
They are also the sort of people so inarticulate that they have to
make dirty words out of a person's family name to make their case.
>
> Actually, I haven't even looked at his posts, for the most part, in
> weeks. I only unkillfiled him once briefly to explain why I wasn't posting
> on his blog.
>
> > I think he has had enough rope and should be forced to go away and play
> > with himself. :-)
>
> As long as one could reasonably conclude that his posts are part of an
> attempt to assert or support an opinion about the quality of a C programmming
> text, or the quality of a review of a C programming text, I'm probably
> going to keep approving them. I don't see any obvious reason for people
> not to killfile him at this point, as he seems bound and determined to
> ensure that the largest possible number of people are aware that a number
> of experienced C programmers and writers in the field think that Schildt's
> books are crap.
>
I'm afraid that what's being exposed is the low quality and dishonesty
of the stream of consciousness document that you posted, which made
reference to non-existent errors and listed only a few. I would
certainly hesitate to employ you, Peter Seebach, with your track
record of attacking people for no good reason except your own vanity.
You're trouble, Peter Seebach, because you don't have the ability to
describe and generalize over ideas: instead, you find people to blame.
I've seen your kind destroy morale and productivity in companies in a
heartbeat.
Adults, Peter Seebach, don't try to win arguments with dirty mouths
and by insulting families. They don't make disorganized lists of
errors in fishing expeditions in order to strike out at people. I
don't think you were qualified to serve on the C99 standardization
project in the slightest, and I think you knew it. I think that's why
you targeted Schildt. In your crazy world, destroying him would make
you a C expert.
> Since I happen to agree with that, I'm inclined to encourage this behavior.
> Honestly, our correspondent's rants have done more to harm public opinion
> of Schildt's writing than I could have even with a genuine and concerted
> effort, but since it seems to be essentially a fair cop, I guess I can
> live. ("Herbert Schildt: Recommended by frothing-mad Usenet cooks for
> over a year!")
>
> -s
> --
> Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.nethttp://www.seebs.net/log/<-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictureshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
spinoza1111
> >spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > Well, Hoss, the fact is that Nash could not live in the sort of
> > shithole where you live, because that's how the local boys think,
> > bein' dumb bastards who are today jest too cowardly to continue
> > lynchin' Nigras. Being ignorant, the boys all con-flate (re-duce,
> > hoss) knowledge to conspiracy theorizing.
>
> Is this a moderated forum?
>
> Moderator, please clean this up. I thought this would be a helpful place to
> learn and contribute to discussions regarding the use of my favorite programming
> language - this is too much! I'm hoping this gets cleaned up and there will be
> fruitful discussions here in the future.
Not all of us have the patience of a Schildt who has been silent
online about his treatment. Seebach is among other things an
incompetent and biased moderator who admits posts of Sanders where
Sanders has given no evidence of programming knowledge that I've seen
and is exclusively here to bully people as is Rosenau.
I'm sorry if you're offended if people defend themselves in a
moderated group where they should not have to, because the moderator
deliberately allows pure flames to be made, especially against people
that have shown his life work (destroying Herb Schildt) to be
malicious, dishonest, deceptive and libelous.
>
> Andrew
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
Seebs
> Not all of us have the patience of a Schildt who has been silent
> online about his treatment.
This could show patience, or lack of concern, or total unawareness. We
have no way to determine which is which. The only data point I have is
that I once got a fax forwarded from his publisher which suggested that
he was defensive and unable to articulate arguments. I have no clue whether
I still have a copy of that fax now, so I can't really pass on anything
but vague recollections of the style.
> Seebach is among other things an
> incompetent and biased moderator who admits posts of Sanders where
> Sanders has given no evidence of programming knowledge that I've seen
> and is exclusively here to bully people as is Rosenau.
You don't seem to understand the terms of the group. Discussion of C
and things closely related to C. There is nothing stating that the discussion
must be competent, or lucid, or anything else like that -- for instance, I
keep approving your posts, even though you continue to propose conspiracy
theories that are better suited to an X Files newsgroup.
The only thing I'm rejecting is spam or stuff that's clearly specific to
a particular system rather than to C.
> I'm sorry if you're offended if people defend themselves in a
> moderated group where they should not have to, because the moderator
> deliberately allows pure flames to be made, especially against people
> that have shown his life work (destroying Herb Schildt) to be
> malicious, dishonest, deceptive and libelous.
And yet here I am approving your posts... Because they're, however loosely,
vaguely about C.
That said... Do you seriously think I care about this Schildt crap? The sum
total of my involvement in this was to post a single web page on the issue
something like ten years ago. You've made hundreds of posts calling peoples'
attention to the fact that the page exists; you appear to be single-handedly
responsible for most of its page views at this point.
Seriously, if something were my life's work, I would probably have put
more than four hours into it over a ten or twenty year period. I've put
more time into frying egg rolls in my life than I have into discussion of
Schildt, but I don't see you accusing me of being a master chef...
You really need to figure out what your actual problem is and deal with it.
From your long surreal rants about compiler developers being fired, it sounds
like you had some kind of career problem, and for some reason, the most
rational response to that seems to be to canonize some guy who wrote some
books ten or fifteen years ago and devote endless hours to flame wars on
Usenet about a page critical of his books. It seems like this is, in all
probability, unrelated to the underlying problem.
-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
David Wolff
spinoza1111 <spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I'm sorry if you're offended if people defend themselves in a
> moderated group where they should not have to, because the moderator
> deliberately allows pure flames to be made, especially against people
> that have shown his life work (destroying Herb Schildt) to be
> malicious, dishonest, deceptive and libelous.
"His life work"???
I can't believe I have to do this in a moderated newsgroup, but:
*PLONK*
-- David
(Remove "xx" to reply.)
spinoza1111
> On 2009-10-22,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Not all of us have the patience of a Schildt who has been silent
> > online about his treatment.
>
> This could show patience, or lack of concern, or total unawareness. We
> have no way to determine which is which. The only data point I have is
> that I once got a fax forwarded from his publisher which suggested that
> he was defensive and unable to articulate arguments. I have no clue whether
> I still have a copy of that fax now, so I can't really pass on anything
My information, the sources of which aren't your business, is that he
and his family are upset by your attacks.
>
> > Seebach is among other things an
> > incompetent and biased moderator who admits posts of Sanders where
> > Sanders has given no evidence of programming knowledge that I've seen
> > and is exclusively here to bully people as is Rosenau.
>
> You don't seem to understand the terms of the group. Discussion of C
> and things closely related to C. There is nothing stating that the discussion
> must be competent, or lucid, or anything else like that -- for instance, I
> keep approving your posts, even though you continue to propose conspiracy
> theories that are better suited to an X Files newsgroup.
>
> The only thing I'm rejecting is spam or stuff that's clearly specific to
> a particular system rather than to C.
Meaning you're, like many techies, positively proud of what is merely
a lack of judgement.
>
> > I'm sorry if you're offended if people defend themselves in a
> > moderated group where they should not have to, because the moderator
> > deliberately allows pure flames to be made, especially against people
> > that have shown his life work (destroying Herb Schildt) to be
> > malicious, dishonest, deceptive and libelous.
>
> And yet here I am approving your posts... Because they're, however loosely,
> vaguely about C.
>
> That said... Do you seriously think I care about this Schildt crap? The sum
> total of my involvement in this was to post a single web page on the issue
> something like ten years ago. You've made hundreds of posts calling peoples'
> attention to the fact that the page exists; you appear to be single-handedly
> responsible for most of its page views at this point.
You enabled others who are ignorant of C and of Schildt's books to
repeat what you have said, therefore you are responsible for this
amplification. You need to take the post down and apologize for the
mess you have made.
>
> Seriously, if something were my life's work, I would probably have put
> more than four hours into it over a ten or twenty year period. I've put
> more time into frying egg rolls in my life than I have into discussion of
> Schildt, but I don't see you accusing me of being a master chef...
That's not true given your follow ups.
>
> You really need to figure out what your actual problem is and deal with it.
> From your long surreal rants about compiler developers being fired, it sounds
> like you had some kind of career problem, and for some reason, the most
> rational response to that seems to be to canonize some guy who wrote some
> books ten or fifteen years ago and devote endless hours to flame wars on
> Usenet about a page critical of his books. It seems like this is, in all
> probability, unrelated to the underlying problem.
Since (in Adorno's words) all techies are always "candidates for
posts", a favorite trope happens to be denial, in which they charge
another with anxieties and angers they cannot admit they see in
themselves. Nothing in what you have written gives me the impression
that you are a good communicator or able to either manage or get along
with others, and code monkeys must now, as I did, migrate to Asia for
work (although you may have noticed I'm not a code monkey).
You are absolutely correct, however. I think MOST techies, especially
the most competent, are used, abused, and thrown away. The HR director
at Northern Telecom/Bell Northern Research told me that MOST BNR
Mountain View employees left BNR not for new technical jobs but for
careers and jobs outside of technology, and this because they found
themselves abused by an uncaring middle management that was robbing
the company blind, and an uncaring Northern Telecom executives who
were destroying the company to enrich themselves.
The mythos in technology is that DESPITE the admitted corruption,
there's still somehow such a thing as a technical competence which
will ensure a modicum of economic security, and this is not so. Many
BNR employees left for "careers" as greeters at Walmart because their
pensions were destroyed, and I was unusual in that my career in
programming lasted much longer than most (30+ years).
Nonetheless, you're right that part of my motivation is anger over how
I'd been treated by some employers. You see, I discovered that the
best way to deal with this is to generalize it to the willingness to
see others' mistreatment and to stick up for them instead of artifacts
like computers or abstractions such as the C standard.
You trashed a man's good name and caused pain to his family for no
better reason than the "safety", the "standardization" of a useless
and out of date language, and (to quote the movie Crash), "if I was
your father, I'd kick your ass".
>
> -s
> --
> Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.nethttp://www.seebs.net/log/<-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictureshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
Seebs
> My information, the sources of which aren't your business, is that he
> and his family are upset by your attacks.
Weird. I can't imagine why they'd care -- seriously, a single web page that
hasn't been touched in a decade is not a realistic cause for concern.
> Meaning you're, like many techies, positively proud of what is merely
> a lack of judgement.
Neither proud nor ashamed. That's the charter we set. We could have set a
different charter, but we didn't, so here we are.
> You enabled others who are ignorant of C and of Schildt's books to
> repeat what you have said, therefore you are responsible for this
> amplification.
Not really, no. You're the one repeating it, highlighting it, and calling
attention to it. I'm not responsible for your actions. So far as I can tell,
you aren't either.
> You need to take the post down and apologize for the
> mess you have made.
No, because... and this is a big point:
*What I said was true.*
The book is full of crap. His explanations were frequently just plain
wrong, the examples were full of errors, and people who learned from these
books regularly ended up needing to unlearn a bunch of garbage before they
could get really good at C.
>> Seriously, if something were my life's work, I would probably have put
>> more than four hours into it over a ten or twenty year period. I've put
>> more time into frying egg rolls in my life than I have into discussion of
>> Schildt, but I don't see you accusing me of being a master chef...
> That's not true given your follow ups.
Uh, yes, it is. I've probably put a good solid half hour to responding
to your surrealist rants. I didn't even know that web page was still there
until you started calling attention to it and making crazy claims about
its accuracy.
> Since (in Adorno's words) all techies are always "candidates for
> posts", a favorite trope happens to be denial, in which they charge
> another with anxieties and angers they cannot admit they see in
> themselves.
This is not a sentence.
> Nothing in what you have written gives me the impression
> that you are a good communicator or able to either manage or get along
> with others, and code monkeys must now, as I did, migrate to Asia for
> work (although you may have noticed I'm not a code monkey).
I don't think I actually care whether I give you the impression that
I am a good communicator, or get along with others. I care what my coworkers
think, because they're the people I mostly try to get along with. I have
no real idea about this rant about "code monkeys".
> The mythos in technology is that DESPITE the admitted corruption,
> there's still somehow such a thing as a technical competence which
> will ensure a modicum of economic security, and this is not so.
And this really has absolutely nothing to do with the technical merits,
or lack thereof, of a ten-year-old criticism of a ten-year-old book.
> Nonetheless, you're right that part of my motivation is anger over how
> I'd been treated by some employers. You see, I discovered that the
> best way to deal with this is to generalize it to the willingness to
> see others' mistreatment and to stick up for them instead of artifacts
> like computers or abstractions such as the C standard.
In theory, this could be a great thing -- except that it shows us that you
don't understand why standards exist or matter.
Standards are part of how we can get our jobs done. They're useful to us.
You might as well go about standing up for people instead of abstractions
such as the rule about which side of the road people drive on... It turns
out that having such a rule is very good for people, because the alternatives
are a lot more trouble.
> You trashed a man's good name and caused pain to his family for no
> better reason than the "safety", the "standardization" of a useless
> and out of date language, and (to quote the movie Crash), "if I was
> your father, I'd kick your ass".
Welcome to engineering. If a bridge isn't safe, I'm a lot more concerned
with whether people know about this, and fix it, than with whether the guy
who designed the bridge feels affirmed.
I do not honestly believe, for a minute, that Herb Schildt's family would have
any reason to know or care who I am in the absence of your massive floods of
crackpot insanity. But, underneath it all: Yes, if someone is wrong in
a technical book, I'll point out the errors. Even if this makes them feel
bad. Engineering is about making things work.
If he actually wanted people to not criticize him, one option would have
been to get a better technical reviewer and learn more about the language.
Fundamentally... If you can't do your job correctly, you don't have a good
name in the field. A "good name" is not something we just make up to be nice.
-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
--
Clive D.W. Feather
>> > Not all of us have the patience of a Schildt who has been silent
>> > online about his treatment.
>>
>> This could show patience, or lack of concern, or total unawareness. We
>> have no way to determine which is which.
>My information, the sources of which aren't your business, is that he
>and his family are upset by your attacks.
I don't believe you.
I don't believe he cares one whit or jot about Peter's page or mine.
He's probably laughing all the way to the bank.
--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home: <cl...@davros.org>
Mobile: +44 7973 377646 | Web: <http://www.davros.org>
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is: <cl...@davros.org>
Francis Glassborow
> On Oct 22, 9:49 pm, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
>> On 2009-10-22,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Not all of us have the patience of a Schildt who has been silent
>>> online about his treatment.
>> This could show patience, or lack of concern, or total unawareness. We
>> have no way to determine which is which. The only data point I have is
>> that I once got a fax forwarded from his publisher which suggested that
>> he was defensive and unable to articulate arguments. I have no clue whether
>> I still have a copy of that fax now, so I can't really pass on anything
>> but vague recollections of the style.\
>
> My information, the sources of which aren't your business, is that he
> and his family are upset by your attacks.
As that statement is only refutable by HS making a statement
contradicting you it has no place in in a debate. Considering the number
of books he has sold across all his titles I doubt that he cares.
>>> Seebach is among other things an
>>> incompetent and biased moderator who admits posts of Sanders where
>>> Sanders has given no evidence of programming knowledge that I've seen
>>> and is exclusively here to bully people as is Rosenau.
>> You don't seem to understand the terms of the group. Discussion of C
>> and things closely related to C. There is nothing stating that the discussion
>> must be competent, or lucid, or anything else like that -- for instance, I
>> keep approving your posts, even though you continue to propose conspiracy
>> theories that are better suited to an X Files newsgroup.
>>
>> The only thing I'm rejecting is spam or stuff that's clearly specific to
>> a particular system rather than to C.
>
> Meaning you're, like many techies, positively proud of what is merely
> a lack of judgement.
No just that where the decision is marginal he has taken the one that is
to his disadvantage.
>>> I'm sorry if you're offended if people defend themselves in a
>>> moderated group where they should not have to, because the moderator
>>> deliberately allows pure flames to be made, especially against people
>>> that have shown his life work (destroying Herb Schildt) to be
>>> malicious, dishonest, deceptive and libelous.
>> And yet here I am approving your posts... Because they're, however loosely,
>> vaguely about C.
>>
>> That said... Do you seriously think I care about this Schildt crap? The sum
>> total of my involvement in this was to post a single web page on the issue
>> something like ten years ago. You've made hundreds of posts calling peoples'
>> attention to the fact that the page exists; you appear to be single-handedly
>> responsible for most of its page views at this point.
>
> You enabled others who are ignorant of C and of Schildt's books to
> repeat what you have said, therefore you are responsible for this
> amplification. You need to take the post down and apologize for the
> mess you have made.
Well considering that every professional programmer in either C or C++
that I have met, when asked expresses a negative reaction to his books I
am happy that at least some of the less knowledgeable have picked up
the message. Unfortunately it is too late for many.
>
>> Seriously, if something were my life's work, I would probably have put
>> more than four hours into it over a ten or twenty year period. I've put
>> more time into frying egg rolls in my life than I have into discussion of
>> Schildt, but I don't see you accusing me of being a master chef...
>
> That's not true given your follow ups.
How could you possibly know? But that aside, someone's life's work surey
merits at least an hour a day, at least 5 days a week. No reasonable
person could accept your statement.
>> You really need to figure out what your actual problem is and deal with it.
>> From your long surreal rants about compiler developers being fired, it sounds
>> like you had some kind of career problem, and for some reason, the most
>> rational response to that seems to be to canonize some guy who wrote some
>> books ten or fifteen years ago and devote endless hours to flame wars on
>> Usenet about a page critical of his books. It seems like this is, in all
>> probability, unrelated to the underlying problem.
>
> Since (in Adorno's words) all techies are always "candidates for
> posts", a favorite trope happens to be denial, in which they charge
> another with anxieties and angers they cannot admit they see in
> themselves. Nothing in what you have written gives me the impression
> that you are a good communicator or able to either manage or get along
> with others, and code monkeys must now, as I did, migrate to Asia for
> work (although you may have noticed I'm not a code monkey).
>
> You are absolutely correct, however. I think MOST techies, especially
> the most competent, are used, abused, and thrown away. The HR director
> at Northern Telecom/Bell Northern Research told me that MOST BNR
> Mountain View employees left BNR not for new technical jobs but for
> careers and jobs outside of technology, and this because they found
> themselves abused by an uncaring middle management that was robbing
> the company blind, and an uncaring Northern Telecom executives who
> were destroying the company to enrich themselves.
God, what on earth did they do to you to so poison your mind?
>
> The mythos in technology is that DESPITE the admitted corruption,
> there's still somehow such a thing as a technical competence which
> will ensure a modicum of economic security, and this is not so. Many
> BNR employees left for "careers" as greeters at Walmart because their
> pensions were destroyed, and I was unusual in that my career in
> programming lasted much longer than most (30+ years).
No doubt those were the ones whose skill set was bad because their idea
of professional edevelopment was to read books such as those from Schildt.
>
> Nonetheless, you're right that part of my motivation is anger over how
> I'd been treated by some employers. You see, I discovered that the
> best way to deal with this is to generalize it to the willingness to
> see others' mistreatment and to stick up for them instead of artifacts
> like computers or abstractions such as the C standard.
Aparently that understanding stops short of understanding that publicly
attacking the character of people you have never met is not acceptable
behaviour. You can attack the ideas of others, though these days you
have to be very careful about attacking the beliefs of others.
>
> You trashed a man's good name and caused pain to his family for no
> better reason than the "safety", the "standardization" of a useless
> and out of date language, and (to quote the movie Crash), "if I was
> your father, I'd kick your ass".
He did no such thing. He pointed out a number of errors in a book. These
errors were not generally addressed by the author in his subsequent
writing nor through an errata list for the book in question. When, as a
writer, we claim technical knowledge and understanding we open ourselves
to correction and adverse commentary. My only regret is that the
criticisms so rarely reach the potential readers before they have spent
their hard earned money on a flawed book.
Had Peter written that 'X was a sexist pig who treated his wife as a
plaything who was not entitled to have an opinion or an idea of her own'
he would be trashing X's good name and it would have no place in a
technical review or critique even were it true (which in case you
wonder, it isn't if X == "Herbert Schildt" but is true about one
technical author who I had the misfortune to have to entertain for an
evening.)
Please do not mistake the silence of the majority with agreement. look
to the beam in your eye and stop trying to trash Peter's good name (an I
have met him enough times to know that he deserves it.
In my introduction to Wiley's publication of the C Standard I wrote that
the moderator (of this newsgroup) was both tolerant and helpful.
Sometimes I think he is perhaps too tolerant for his own good.
spinoza1111
<francis.glassbo...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> spinoza1111wrote:
> > On Oct 22, 9:49 pm, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote:
> >> On 2009-10-22,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >>> Not all of us have the patience of a Schildt who has been silent
> >>> online about his treatment.
> >> This could show patience, or lack of concern, or total unawareness. We
> >> have no way to determine which is which. The only data point I have is
> >> that I once got a fax forwarded from his publisher which suggested that
> >> he was defensive and unable to articulate arguments. I have no clue whether
> >> I still have a copy of that fax now, so I can't really pass on anything
> >> but vague recollections of the style.\
>
> > My information, the sources of which aren't your business, is that he
> > and his family are upset by your attacks.
>
> As that statement is only refutable by HS making a statement
> contradicting you it has no place in in a debate. Considering the number
> of books he has sold across all his titles I doubt that he cares.
No comment.
But if you look at Seebach's "critique" you find it's trivia. For
example, Seebach triumphantly presents free(NULL) as a serious
counterexample to Herb's sage recommendation that one only free()
things that have been malloc'd, calloc'd or realloc'd. You also find
that it makes reference to hundreds of other errors which are never
documented. You find that "hating Schildt" is merely a fashion
statement, a shibboleth showing membership in the in crowd.
Do your homework.
I merely worked for a living outside of some safe government job while
keeping my brain intact, Francis.
>
>
>
> > The mythos in technology is that DESPITE the admitted corruption,
> > there's still somehow such a thing as a technical competence which
> > will ensure a modicum of economic security, and this is not so. Many
> > BNR employees left for "careers" as greeters at Walmart because their
> > pensions were destroyed, and I was unusual in that my career in
> > programming lasted much longer than most (30+ years).
>
> No doubt those were the ones whose skill set was bad because their idea
> of professional edevelopment was to read books such as those from Schildt.
Actually, programming "skill" has nothing to do with employability at
all.
>
>
>
> > Nonetheless, you're right that part of my motivation is anger over how
> > I'd been treated by some employers. You see, I discovered that the
> > best way to deal with this is to generalize it to the willingness to
> > see others' mistreatment and to stick up for them instead of artifacts
> > like computers or abstractions such as the C standard.
>
> Aparently that understanding stops short of understanding that publicly
> attacking the character of people you have never met is not acceptable
> behaviour. You can attack the ideas of others, though these days you
> have to be very careful about attacking the beliefs of others.
Schildt, Navia, and I are fair game but Seebach is not? Why is that? I
submit that if a person initiates a successful attack on another, that
person is himself immune to criticism because other people like apes
tend to crowd around the aggressor.
Don't you dare, don't you DARE presume to counsel me on decency or
courtesy, sir. >
>
>
> > You trashed a man's good name and caused pain to his family for no
> > better reason than the "safety", the "standardization" of a useless
> > and out of date language, and (to quote the movie Crash), "if I was
> > your father, I'd kick your ass".
>
> He did no such thing. He pointed out a number of errors in a book. These
> errors were not generally addressed by the author in his subsequent
> writing nor through an errata list for the book in question. When, as a
> writer, we claim technical knowledge and understanding we open ourselves
> to correction and adverse commentary. My only regret is that the
> criticisms so rarely reach the potential readers before they have spent
> their hard earned money on a flawed book.
Intelligent people rarely if ever speak of "a flawed book". Instead,
they discuss flawed ideas, characterising them as carefully as they
are able. But because Seebach was without any education in computer
science, he had no way of characterising Schildt as a type and not a
token: of describing a certain empirical, Standard-disregarding, and
Microsoft-centric way of programming.
This would have been a valuable effort! My own experience with Nash
was that at least in 1991, Microsoft compilers tended to "go their own
way": in the case of Nash's code, it was broken by the compiler
because the Microsoft compiler developers used 32 bit integer
arithmetic in the compiler itself and should have considered long long
for expressions meant to be evaluated at compile time.
Likewise, strict left to right evaluation of procedure parameters
orthogonal to the comma operator may have been a property of
implementation confused with a necessary property of C.
But this would have required Seebach to have had more education that
he had, and, it would have required him to speak truth to power. How
much more convenient it was to attack Schildt.
>
> Had Peter written that 'X was a sexist pig who treated his wife as a
> plaything who was not entitled to have an opinion or an idea of her own'
> he would be trashing X's good name and it would have no place in a
> technical review or critique even were it true (which in case you
> wonder, it isn't if X == "Herbert Schildt" but is true about one
> technical author who I had the misfortune to have to entertain for an
> evening.)
Peter, or people enabled by him, transformed Herbert's family name
into a crude ephitet. This is what Nazis did to Jewish names and it
had NO PLACE in technical discussion whatsoever.
Others inspired by Peter created a wikipedia article mocking Herb's
work.
Schildt was seriously maligned by a person who was less qualified than
he in terms of education in computer science.
>
> Please do not mistake the silence of the majority with agreement. look
> to the beam in your eye and stop trying to trash Peter's good name (an I
> have met him enough times to know that he deserves it.
>
> In my introduction to Wiley's publication of the C Standard I wrote that
> the moderator (of this newsgroup) was both tolerant and helpful.
> Sometimes I think he is perhaps too tolerant for his own good.
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
> have an appropriate newsgroups line in your header for your mail to be seen,
> or the newsgroup name in square brackets in the subject line. Sorry.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
spinoza1111
> In message <clcm-20091023-0...@plethora.net>,spinoza1111
>
> <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> > Not all of us have the patience of a Schildt who has been silent
> >> > online about his treatment.
>
> >> This could show patience, or lack of concern, or total unawareness. We
> >> have no way to determine which is which.
> >My information, the sources of which aren't your business, is that he
> >and his family are upset by your attacks.
>
> I don't believe you.
>
> I don't believe he cares one whit or jot about Peter's page or mine.
> He's probably laughing all the way to the bank.
That might make you feel good, but according to my sources, it is
untrue. You and your friend Seebach maligned him at a level actionable
especially in British libel law.
But while you're here, I need from you a statement of your educational
qualifications in computer science. Thank you.
>
> --
> Clive D.W. Feather | Home: <cl...@davros.org>
> Mobile: +44 7973 377646 | Web: <http://www.davros.org>
> Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is: <cl...@davros.org>
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
spinoza1111
> On 2009-10-23,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > My information, the sources of which aren't your business, is that he
> > and his family are upset by your attacks.
>
> Weird. I can't imagine why they'd care -- seriously, a single web page that
> hasn't been touched in a decade is not a realistic cause for concern.
On the contrary. It has become a fashion statement all over clc and
elsewhere to "know" that "Schildt sucks".
>
> > Meaning you're, like many techies, positively proud of what is merely
> > a lack of judgement.
>
> Neither proud nor ashamed. That's the charter we set. We could have set a
> different charter, but we didn't, so here we are.
>
> > You enabled others who are ignorant of C and of Schildt's books to
> > repeat what you have said, therefore you are responsible for this
> > amplification.
>
> Not really, no. You're the one repeating it, highlighting it, and calling
> attention to it. I'm not responsible for your actions. So far as I can tell,
> you aren't either.
Yes, I am, and it concerns me. But absent my involvement prior to this
year, the negative information has been growing, because like many
forms of Web-based idiocy (such as Creationism, Zionism, Shakespeare
authorship denial, and Holocaust denial) people repeat things that
they have seen on Web pages that just aren't true. The victims of
Creationism are high school teachers and kids. The people of Gaza have
been victimized by Zionism. Good teachers of literature are horrified
by Shakespeare denial. The descendants of Holocaust victims are harmed
by Holocaust denial, and Schildt was harmed by you.
Since in fact your criticisms were disorganized and jejune, since you
had no standing in the matter being uneducated in computer science, I
ask you again, Mr. Seebach. to replace the Web page "C: the Complete
Nonsense" with a statement of apology to Mr. Schildt.
>
> > You need to take the post down and apologize for the
> > mess you have made.
>
> No, because... and this is a big point:
>
> *What I said was true.*
No, it wasn't. The fact, for example, that free(NULL) is permitted
doesn't change the fact that competent C programmers audit their code
to balance calls to malloc(), calloc() and realloc() with calls to free
(). You stated and you implied that it is important to return an int
in main when in fact it's not, because the value is returned outside
the environment of the program. You denied the worth of explanation of
runtime in terms of a simple stack model because you'd never attended
a computer science class, in which zero-address machines are a simple
way of explaining runtime semantics.
>
> The book is full of crap.
A PROFESSIONAL DOES NOT USE TOILET LANGUAGE.
Unless, of course, he finds himself surrounded by savage and demonic
people who use the Internet to attack others and compensate for their
inadequacies in which case, you faggots, he fights back like a man,
you dig me, Seebach?
Schildt has NEVER responded to you. He has, like most decent, ordinary
people, decided, perhaps on the advice of counsel or his editor at
McGraw-Hill, to ignore you.
Therefore, you are attacking unprofessionally. You had, in view of
your lack of education in CS alone, no place on C99 and you have no
place as the moderator of this group.
> His explanations were frequently just plain
> wrong, the examples were full of errors, and people who learned from these
> books regularly ended up needing to unlearn a bunch of garbage before they
> could get really good at C.
The view that people EVER need to "unlearn", that they cannot in fact
manage and reconcile an ever growing fund of reading and knowledge, is
of recent (20th century) origin. It originated in basic training in
armies, where the goal is to make the recruit "unlearn" common
decency.
After WWI, it was imported into any number of business offices which
were in the 1920s engaged in a variety of Ponzi stock speculation
schemes, in which auditors and clerks likewise had to unlearn honesty
and decency.
In the case of C, the "learning" consists of acquiring an attitude of
technology worship in which foolish people believe that they are wise
because they use a difficult and counterintuitive programming
language.
>
> >> Seriously, if something were my life's work, I would probably have put
> >> more than four hours into it over a ten or twenty year period. I've put
> >> more time into frying egg rolls in my life than I have into discussion of
> >> Schildt, but I don't see you accusing me of being a master chef...
> > That's not true given your follow ups.
>
> Uh, yes, it is. I've probably put a good solid half hour to responding
> to your surrealist rants. I didn't even know that web page was still there
> until you started calling attention to it and making crazy claims about
> its accuracy.
You need to start taking responsibility. You need to replace its text
with an apology.
>
> > Since (in Adorno's words) all techies are always "candidates for
> > posts", a favorite trope happens to be denial, in which they charge
> > another with anxieties and angers they cannot admit they see in
> > themselves.
>
> This is not a sentence.
You cannot read. You are unqualified to write on computer science
because you have no academic training in cs, your reading skills fail
you after a low upper bound of complexity is passed, and you were
unable to create other than a crude and completely disorganized list
of randomly arranged errors, while very dishonestly implying that
there were many more errors: a list of which you never provided.
>
> > Nothing in what you have written gives me the impression
> > that you are a good communicator or able to either manage or get along
> > with others, and code monkeys must now, as I did, migrate to Asia for
> > work (although you may have noticed I'm not a code monkey).
>
> I don't think I actually care whether I give you the impression that
> I am a good communicator, or get along with others. I care what my coworkers
> think, because they're the people I mostly try to get along with. I have
> no real idea about this rant about "code monkeys".
>
> > The mythos in technology is that DESPITE the admitted corruption,
> > there's still somehow such a thing as a technical competence which
> > will ensure a modicum of economic security, and this is not so.
>
> And this really has absolutely nothing to do with the technical merits,
> or lack thereof, of a ten-year-old criticism of a ten-year-old book.
>
> > Nonetheless, you're right that part of my motivation is anger over how
> > I'd been treated by some employers. You see, I discovered that the
> > best way to deal with this is to generalize it to the willingness to
> > see others' mistreatment and to stick up for them instead of artifacts
> > like computers or abstractions such as the C standard.
>
> In theory, this could be a great thing -- except that it shows us that you
> don't understand why standards exist or matter.
Today, standards are funded by companies, and these companies refuse
to change software without money making. As a result, the standards
writing in which you participated defined perfectly reasonable
expectations as to post and pre increment as invalid, making it more
and not less difficult to predict what existing C programs would do.
You gave yourself no mandate, or were given no mandate, to make the
language more friendly.
You should have used the most common implementation (Microsoft) as a
guide but this you did not do because the vendors didn't want you to.
>
> Standards are part of how we can get our jobs done. They're useful to us.
> You might as well go about standing up for people instead of abstractions
> such as the rule about which side of the road people drive on... It turns
> out that having such a rule is very good for people, because the alternatives
> are a lot more trouble.
>
> > You trashed a man's good name and caused pain to his family for no
> > better reason than the "safety", the "standardization" of a useless
> > and out of date language, and (to quote the movie Crash), "if I was
> > your father, I'd kick your ass".
>
> Welcome to engineering. If a bridge isn't safe, I'm a lot more concerned
> with whether people know about this, and fix it, than with whether the guy
> who designed the bridge feels affirmed.
The analogy fails, because in fact you made no bridges any safer.
Instead, you merely pronounced them unsafe when many were safe. You
did nothing to make bridge building in C safer, because you let the
tail of possible optimization wag the dog.
>
> I do not honestly believe, for a minute, that Herb Schildt's family would have
> any reason to know or care who I am in the absence of your massive floods of
> crackpot insanity. But, underneath it all: Yes, if someone is wrong in
> a technical book, I'll point out the errors. Even if this makes them feel
> bad. Engineering is about making things work.
>
> If he actually wanted people to not criticize him, one option would have
> been to get a better technical reviewer and learn more about the language.
> Fundamentally... If you can't do your job correctly, you don't have a good
> name in the field. A "good name" is not something we just make up to be nice.
You are living a fantasy, because owing to people like you and your
unwillingness to go against the will of corporations, programming does
not in fact have a set of expectations at all like civil or mechanical
engineering. If it did, they would mandate that C be retired owing to
aliasing alone.
Programmers love to fantasize that they are "engineers" being
unwilling to face the fact that they are half-educated clerks working
at-will and at the pleasure of corporations. I pointed out ten years
ago that medicine, law and engineering have professional canons today
only because they were founded in a Progressive era in the US, and the
Liberal era in Britain, in which there was a concept of public
interest not highjacked by corporate greed.
I have indeed learned that my own Microsoft based expectations as to C
need to be changed, in part as a result of these discussions but also
because of my experience assisting Nash. I am now aware that C should
not be used to do work inside of parameter lists or expressions in the
form of side effects, which I thought to be a virtue of C. I have
found that while this could have been solved in the C99 standard with
a little creativity (replacing the useful comma sequencing operator
with a tilde, and declaring that expressions recognizable as possibly
having side effects would be executed left to right in function calls
etc) it was not and for this reason, one should code C like VB.
But I had to beat this information out of you since you phrased the
problem as Schildt, didn't I.
>
> -s
> --
> Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nos...@seebs.nethttp://www.seebs.net/log/<-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictureshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
> --
> comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: c...@plethora.net -- you must
Colonel Harlan Sanders
<spino...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On 2009-10-23,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> > My information, the sources of which aren't your business, is that he
>> > and his family are upset by your attacks.
Schildt does not care about this -- no matter what you have decoded by
reading every thirteenth letter of his books for the messages he is
sending to you, begging for your help.
In reality, you are the only one who is trying to drag Schildt's
family into this fantasy of yours. And if anyone is upsetting them, it
would surely be you.
>> Weird. I can't imagine why they'd care -- seriously, a single web page that
>> hasn't been touched in a decade is not a realistic cause for concern.
>
>On the contrary. It has become a fashion statement all over clc and
>elsewhere to "know" that "Schildt sucks".
Now here's something we can verify:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/search?group=comp.lang.c&q=%22Schildt+sucks%22&qt_g=Search+this+group
( http://tinyurl.com/yfc5tnf if that is scrambled)
And the result: one hit, in 1997.
Though it looks like that post is, like you, merely making up a
sentiment ascribing it to someone else.
The whole basis of your crusade is that there is a conspiracy out to
"Get Schildt".
Yet if you look for evidence of this, the only posts in the last
several years when the subject comes up are all instigated by you.
Tinkertim
<oh for fuck sakes, SNIP>
> Programmers love to fantasize that they are "engineers" being
> unwilling to face the fact that they are half-educated clerks working
> at-will and at the pleasure of corporations. I pointed out ten years
> ago that medicine, law and engineering have professional canons today
> only because they were founded in a Progressive era in the US, and the
> Liberal era in...
Are you aware that several grad students are studying your posts? Most
of them are working at new ways to catalog (and detect) personality
disorders. I know one of them personally and don't agree with the "let
him just deteriorate, this is interesting" mentality.
I *strongly* suggest that you find some convenient and expeditious way
of spending less time in front of your computer. You might also
consider that you are in the midst of a nervous break down and not
exactly rational.
I'm not going to reply to this again, I've shared all that I came to
share. I'm quite concerned that you have hit a rather ugly bump, that
strikes in a rather rude way and all too often encountered in this
field.
Take. A. Vacation. You are witty, eloquent and alarmingly bizarre.
Saying "alarmingly bizarre" on usenet is a very suggestive stride, I
hope that you interpret it as such.
Chris McDonald
>This would have been a valuable effort! My own experience with Nash
>was that at least in 1991, Microsoft compilers tended to "go their own
>way": in the case of Nash's code, it was broken by the compiler
>because the Microsoft compiler developers used 32 bit integer
>arithmetic in the compiler itself and should have considered long long
>for expressions meant to be evaluated at compile time.
We were getting worried! Without this fresh update of name dropping,
readers were beginning to sense a lack of your credibility.
--
Chris.