spinoza1111 said:
[ snip ]
Got it. But the ambiguity of "the number of occurences" remains.
And? As best I can tell, you're critiquing code I didn't write.
Now, it's true that the function in my code that counts how many
replacements are needed is called count_occurrences. But I think
the ambiguity is resolved by the comments -- or at least that
was my intent:
/*
* count occurrences of old_text in s, scanning left to right and
* ignoring overlapping occurrences
*/
size_t count_occurrences(const char* s, const char* old_text) {
char* first;
if (x_strlen(s) == 0) return 0;
first = x_strstr(s, old_text);
if (first == NULL) return 0;
return 1 + count_occurrences(first + x_strlen(old_text), old_text);
}
(Functions x_strlen and x_strstr are either the string.h library
functions or user-written substitutes.)
Possibly some other wording would be even less ambiguous. <shrug>
I'm still curious about what you meant by "requirements study", when
you said upthread:
'You claim simplicity as the virtue of your code but you didn't do a
"requirements" study imo.'
[ snip ]
I take it you disapprove.
Yes. Mildly, but yes.
Well, I disapprove of someone trying to ruin
Schildt's reputation to puff his own, and I think my recreational
sexism is nothing in comparision.
I don't find that the one excuses the other. <shrug>
[ snip ]
Babe, it's far more than "mildly" disrespectful to coin neologisms
such as "Bullschildt" and "Nilgewater" out of patronyms,
Agreed said:
and in
response I won't only coin Dweebach: I'll write original limericks in
Peter's honor:
[ snip ]
[ snip ]
Remember the expert, who avoids minor errors while sweeping on to the
grand fallacy? We all know that MS-DOS is no longer viable.
And?
But it's a mistake to believe that Linux is the answer. As the
(textbook author and professor) Andrew Tanenbaum pointed out, Linux as
compared to the MORE MODERN technology of microkernel OSen, is
innately insecure, less reliable and maintainable. Tanenbaum had a
"flame war" with Torvalds over this. He graciously apologized for some
of his flames; Torvalds did not, and failed to credit Tanenbaum for
Minix on which Linux was based. This was Maoism; the assault on
midlevel academic authority in the service of big money and power.
Far more than Windows, Linux is in the service of big money and power
since it is the product of slave labor. That is, each coder who
contributed to any version was a time-sliced slave. He might have been
a happy slave, but these are the best kind.
This allowed IBM, a larger and more powerful (and somewhat less
principled) company than Microsoft, to lay off its proprietary OS
developers and save the big bucks. It started with Torvalds' attack on
and expropriation of, Tanenbaum. These are as far as I can tell the
objective facts even if Tanenbaum expressed respect for Torvalds,
since computer science departments are so supported by corporate
interests that most of their professors lack true intellectual
independence.
Are they. Hm, where's *my* corporate support ....
[ snip ]
Expects deliverables. And to reduce hours, expects a deliverable, on
many of its projects, at 5:00 PM every day. This deliverable may be a
simple return, or the final product.
So are you saying that Microsoft's technical employees are not
expected to work more than about 40 hours a week? That would be
a pleasant surprise if true -- which I suppose it could be.
My understanding is that if you deliver, you can work 20 hours a week.
That's what I was told in my 1986 interview, which I hosed.
[ snip ]
Being self-taught in your sense might indicate interest and
committment, but in a company with tuition refund, not beating your
ass on over to NYU, Stanford or even DeVry might also indicate vanity
and reluctance to be exposed to the Other. I say this because in Peter
I detect this reluctance, most strongly from his not even reading the
first email from me when I tried to resolve the "flame war". He also
acted bizarrely as regards Schildt, refusing an offer from McGraw Hill
possibly because this might have meant an encounter. Also, I checked
his Mom's blog...which is public, to find her protesting the
affirmative expansion of science classes to minorities, which
indicates a sort of social background of mistrust and reluctance to
engage.
Can you provide a specific reference to one such post? The link
from Seebs's Web page (athttp://
www.seebs.net) to his mother's column
appears to be broken. Googling, I found this
http://www.lindaseebach.net/wordpress/
which I think is the right person, but in a quick skim of the first
few entries I don't find anything like what you describe.
http://bigjournalism.com/lseebach/2...-between-excellence-and-equity/#idc-container
Mrs. Seebach links to her rather well-written and reasoned defense of
preserving funding for Advanced Placement science preparation, against
efforts to redistribute resources to minority students in the Berkeley
school system in California (which includes students from a much
poorer Oakland).
However, I sense in her a desire to defend privilege. For one thing, I
think Advanced Placement is misused by many students (esp. middle
class students) to avoid "having to take" "boring" survey classes lest
they be exposed to some professor's possibly idiosyncratic views: as
if learning is in no way a social thing. In this attitude I see
Peter's absurd pride in never having taken computer science classes.
In wanting to "AP out", the student wants to avoid a particular
viewpoint in fear that the viewpoint, like Herb's MS-DOS focus, might
not be the "right" viewpoint. However, there is no such thing as the
"right viewpoint". A viewpoint, like a taxonomy, is neither right nor
wrong.
For another, I think that the needs of the least well off do indeed
trump in this case the needs of more privileged students. Indeed, the
very fact that the AP students want to avoid, a bit later at
university, exposure to professors and students in "boring" survey
classes (and in Peter's case, wanted to avoid computer science
altogether while at the same time wanting to be a programmer), means
that students who need and want to take the basics should be funded by
taking money away from AP science.
If you have as much contempt for professors and authors as is often
manifested here, don't take it away from people who have more respect
for learning. And: my direct experience at Roosevelt University and
DeVry in Chicago is that American black people (especially women, but
guys too) have more respect than many whites for learning and for
teachers. I taught some serious ex-cons of color who'd served time for
murder. They knew that they had to **** or walk, and I never had any
trouble from them. And some of the highest-achieving women in America
today, starting with the First Lady, are of course minorities.
The AP students can start tutoring the minorities in math and science
as a way of both deepening their own knowledge, and giving back
something to society, which in Berkeley isn't just "Berkeley": it's
Oakland, too.
I sense in Mrs Seebach a psychology of disassociation from the world
around her. AP science is as much a frill as girl's sports, art, dance
and music, to name three more popular targets for educational
cutbacks.
[ snip ]
Could be. In my experience, however, "can't you take a joke?" is
as often as not an attempted defense of supposed humor that's really
a thinly-veiled insult.
Yeah, well I don't accept that women are to be accorded respect
insofar as they enable bullying. Period.
With all due respect, we have only your word for this.
With all due respect, don't call me a liar.
[ snip ]
Cf. THE CHALLENGER LAUNCH DECISION, Univ of Chicago 1999, Diane
Vaughan. It's a study of the 1986 explosion of the Space Shuttle.
Vaughan had to develop a theory of "normalized deviance" because
quantitative sociologists tend to accept statistically predominant
behavior as non-deviant within a community, but it was obvious that as
a result of Reagan-era demands on NASA to "prove" that "America was
still great", engineers abandoned nondeviant practice from immediately
outside NASA, and normalized bad practice, including being proactively
skeptical of knowledge claims; engineers "knew that they didn't know"
how alloys on O-rings around fuel tanks would perform in unusually
(for Florida) low temperatures, and this absence was used (deviantly
with respect even to former NASA standards applied to Apollo) to
justify a disastrously aggressive launch schedule.
Huh. I think I was under the impression that the Challenger launch
disaster had been caused by management acting against the advice of
technical employees. Your description makes it sound as though the
engineers were at fault.
The engineers were, but insofar as they, with the encouragement of
managers, "acted like managers and not engineers". The older
tradition, as documented by Diane Vaughan, was "pushback", in which an
engineer not also a manager could veto a launch at NASA or a software
release at IBM up to about 1980 based on technical criteria alone. By
the 1980s, and especially in software, many workers who bragged of
being "engineers" were quick to assent to bad decisions because of
Reagan-era propaganda to the effect that only "academics" and trouble-
makers would insist on "niceties" and "frills".
In fact, the Columbia disaster of 2003 was caused by the same
situation. Chunks of foam insulation were coming off Columbia in
launches, and striking the wings forcefully. However, inspection
showed little damage. The situation (which was recognized by the post-
crash official investigation as being grave) was transformed into a
"known issue" and was administratively forgotten even though, as the
investigation pointed out, the Columbia was operating outside of its
intended performance; it had not been designed to discard pieces of
itself any more than a driver is supposed to drive around with a
busted taillight or exhaust pipe making sparks on the road.
But in the case of Columbia, the engineers were silenced by the
absence of pushback and the administrators were focused on making the
schedule. The result was the slaughter of the crew including the first
astronaut from India, a woman named Kalpana Chawla.
http://caib.nasa.gov/news/report/volume1/default.html
What troubles me is that would be "software engineers" right here
treat errors as "known issues" in exactly the same way; for example
Seebach as regards %s, broken switch() and off by one. Instead of
fixing their errors they explain that they are being "fast and
dirty" (without explaining why we would be interested in their F & D
code), that it's not "rilly" an error, etc., whilst engaging in
deliberate campaigns of personal and professional destruction over the
putative errors of others.
Enablers here silence meaningful dissents in the case of Navia and
myself by politely dismissing or deliberately failing to understand
their concerns using patronizing language. This also seems to have
occured at NASA, where female managers were selected because of their
"people" (enabling) and codependent skills. It appears that these
enablers set "attack dog" engineers on engineers pointing out the
truth, which was that the insulation shedding was a serious problem as
were the O-rings.
A typical pattern is a pseudo-compenatory overstress on popular issues
*du jour* such as int v. void main() in hopes of diverting attention
away from "the elephant in the living room". This conduct requires
codependent enablers in the same way the family of the alcoholic often
manages a great deal of rigidity about minor rules while Dad is passed
out on the couch.
Here, you're ignoring and codependently enabling the fact that Seebach
doesn't moderate clcm competently, refuses to engage, and conducts
vicious personal campaigns against others based on "competence" while
being himself incompetent in C.
This is what Vaughan calls "normalized deviance". Just as "the
elephant in the living room", the deviant behavior of the alcoholic,
becomes normalized, here, incompetence and the politics of personal
destruction are so normed as to make the normal "trolling".
