In the matter of Herb Schildt: the question of a "bad" book

[Tim Streater]

This is the CLC disease, writ large. The idea that there is only one
definition of a word (or concept) and that someone else's failure to use
your definition is simply an academic failure on their part. One that
can be corrected simply through (endless and mindless) repetition of
your catechism.

Obviously there can be more than one definition of "bad". But Spinny was
using two definitions while pretending he was only using one.

Mind you - I see where this is coming from. I've long argued this point
in CLC; I have recently become aware that it is true in other groups as
well. The point is that the people in charge realize that in order to
be able to communicate effectively, given the limited bandwidth of
Usenet (and online fora in general), it is necessary to set the
definitions and to, as Tim does above, completely ignore the possibility
that other definitions are possible.

Oh, am I in charge? News to me.

The above may sound like a recommendation for this method; it is not.
It is a statement that "effective" communication is not necessarily
"good, correct, accurate" communication. It is the acceptance of a lie,
in order to make the wheels continue to turn.

Gosh, you sound like Spinny now.

 

[spinoza1111]

Who, exactly, and when, in what post, said a specific  book was "bad"?
If you don't specify that I will conclude it's a straw man.

And for you to criticize anyone for "personalizing" issues is so
fucking hypocritical that ... well, words fail me. There isn't
anything more absurd I can compare it to.

It's called self-defense, ASSHOLE. Heathfield started this shit ten
years ago, and I'm going to finish it. I'm willing at all times to
have a sensible discussion, even disagreement. But I have to deal with
redneck morons like you.

And people have said that Schildt's "The Annotated ANSI C Standard" is
useful as far as the parts that are cited from the standard.

But where do you get off saying that Sherman is "bad" because it
didn't cover your machine? Did it call itself a "complete reference"
or otherwise imply that it would cover your architecture?

It did say "Programming and Coding for Digital Computers". It did not
say "Programming and Coding for the IBM 7000 Series". The IBM 1401 was
a digital computer. By your redneck/Fascist logic, it was bad, since
its exemplary computer was the IBM 7094, with a completely different
architecture.

And learn to read, REDNECK. I didn't say Sherman was "bad". I said
that because I'd already had the rudiments of humanist education, I
made it serve my purposes by understanding EVEN THEN that computers
came in Baskin and Robbins 32 different flavors.

I never complained to the prof. I kept the textbook. I never, until
now, even raised the issue, and here I've raised it to show that
intelligent people make use of books in such a way that the concept of
"bad" book doesn't occur to them.

I realized, unlike many here, that to switch computers (or programming
languages) will indeed make the Office Expert look like a Fool if he
lacks a solid mathematical and computer science background, because he
will cling to outdated programming languages like C simply to maintain
his "seniority" and his ability to bully "newbies".

This enabled me to transform myself from a 1401 assembler programmer,
to a Fortran-II programmer, to a Cobol programmer, to a PL/I
programmer, to a 360 assembler programmer, to a Rexx whiz, to an
object-oriented VB programmer, to a VB.Net programmer, and a C sharp
programmer, while visiting other platforms as well.

Likewise, Schildt wasn't writing for an autistic Linux bigot who shits
himself when the code he types in fails, and starts blaming everyone
except himself, and is unwilling to LEARN by FIXING the code.

Sherman and Schildt "made it real" by example. But according to
Dweebach's completely fucked-up logic, Sherman sucked because he
didn't cover all possible architectures which even at the time were
quite different.

You might read "A Beautiful Mind" (beyond the single sentence with
your name in it), for an insight into the mentally ill.


Ever topical with the abuse, eh Niggler?

**** you, racist asshole.

 

[spinoza1111]

Nah, that doesn't work. Just because Sherman's book didn't cover the
machine to which you had access doesn't make it a bad book. Whereas the
sorts of errors that Schildt is supposed to have in his book *would*
make it a bad book.

Learn to read, Timmy boy. I didn't say it was a bad book. I said that
BY SEEBACH'S FUCKED UP LOGIC, it is a "bad" book. You missed how I
described how I made use of Sherman to learn interpreters, information
I used years later in "Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler"
because literally such depth is just off your radar screen. Guys like
you will never understand guys like Kenny, Navia, or myself. Navia
might think I'm fucked up, but I think that's the language barrier.

The fucked up logic is also seen in the use of "troll" by Kiki.
Basically, the regs are such narcissists that anything unfamiliar to
them (including literacy) is "trolling" and Bad.

The logic is the "logic" of Fascism. Basically, Fascism is one guy
imposing his hatreds upon a sufficient number of clueless fools.

A simple test, or thought experiment. If you could be ONLY a Fascist,
or a Communist, which would you choose? Most decent people
internationally would (with reluctance) choose Communism, because the
Communists had ONE dream and it was for EVERYONE. It was freedom from
the slavery imposed on most of us by lack of ownership of the means of
production.

Whereas Fascism is Kiki calling people trolls whenever his personal
tastes are offended, just as Hitler's hatreds became the hatreds of
Germans. It never has any friends outside the *fascii*; the Japanese
militarists raped Nanking, the decent German consul alerted Hitler,
Hitler literally didn't care. Likewise people here really just don't
care about Schildt's feelings and his hard work, just as the
programmer who works 18 hours a day is usually screwed.

Fascists can never formulate a program, or when they try, it's the
Nuremburg laws (violated by the Wannsee conference) or the C99
standard, with its farce about undefined constructs. Just as guys like
Dweebach lacked the manhood to get vendors to agree on a deterministic
semantics, Nazis focus on mobilizing common hatreds (where "Schildt
sucks" is all they can agree on).

 

[Seebs]

Gosh, you sound like Spinny now.

Neither of them has any particular interest in the idea of truth as a
quality a statement could have independent of its personal convenience
to them. Nilges is obsessed with his reputation for its own sake, while
Kenny appears to be obsessed with his reputation in terms of how it can
give him power, but they're otherwise frighteningly similar. I think
Kenny's less likely to go sufficiently insane to get committed, though.

-s

 

[Tim Streater]

Learn to read, Timmy boy. I didn't say it was a bad book. I said that
BY SEEBACH'S FUCKED UP LOGIC, it is a "bad" book.

No, that doesn't compute either. Seebs alleges that Schildt's book is
bad because it contains errors. That logic, fucked up or not, can in no
way be made to apply to Sherman's book, much though you'd like it to,
because as far as we know it doesn't contain errors. It just didn't
cover the machine that interested you.

Now piss off. You're a very boring toad.

 

[Joachim Schmitz]

Seebs wrote:

I am beginning to suspect that this has no point. My advice is that
we pick another venue (I nominate Freethought Forum, just because
people there find stuff like this amusing) and respond to Nilges only
there. He can participate or not, then, but comp.lang.c is spared
the overhead.

Oh yes, please, pretty please...

Bye, Jojo

 

[Kenny McCormack]

Seebs wrote:


Oh yes, please, pretty please...

Bye, Jojo

This, of course, will never happen. If not responding to Nilges had
ever been an option (for CLC regs), they'd have done so by now.

--
(This discussion group is about C, ...)

Wrong. It is only OCCASIONALLY a discussion group
about C; mostly, like most "discussion" groups, it is
off-topic Rorsharch [sic] revelations of the childhood
traumas of the participants...

 

[Seebs]

No, that doesn't compute either. Seebs alleges that Schildt's book is
bad because it contains errors. That logic, fucked up or not, can in no
way be made to apply to Sherman's book, much though you'd like it to,
because as far as we know it doesn't contain errors. It just didn't
cover the machine that interested you.

It's not just the errors; also the omissions.

The problem is that Nilges can't distinguish between:

* This book, purporting to be a complete reference for C, completely
ignores significant topics such as structure padding, and its coverage
of inline functions doesn't even mention the significant effects of
the "inline" keyword.
and
* This book, purporting to cover Computer System A, does not also talk
about Unrelated Computer System B.

Omissions *can* make a book bad. They don't always; you have to understand
both the topic and the omissions to determine whether they make a book bad.
You also have to understand the book's intended focus. Koenig's _C Traps
and Pitfalls_ is an excellent book, but it is not a general reference for C,
and does not cover any number of things which are probably significant to
C programmers -- but it doesn't *claim* to, it claims to be a moderately
specialized book on a particular sub-topic.

A book claiming to be a biography of Winston Churchill, which omitted any
mention of World War II, would be a bad book. A book claiming to be a study
of Winston Churchill's childhood, which omitted any mention of World War
II, might or might not be bad -- I'd think they might want to refer to how
childhood events might have influenced later events, but if it really was
just about his childhood, well, WWII didn't happen then, so it's outside the
scope of the book.

A book purporting to teach C, however, cannot claim that structure padding
is outside its scope. A book purporting to teach C99 and explain function
inlining, likewise, cannot claim that the semantic implications of declaring
a function "inline" are outside its scope.

The omissions alone might not be enough to make the book "bad", although if
there are more omissions of the same nature, they would be. On the other
hand, they don't need to be enough, because the errors are sufficiently
egregious to make the book unambiguously awful regardless. That it also
has serious omissions of crucial and relevant information doesn't make it
less bad; that was the evidence that convinced me that it was not merely
a book too flawed to be useful, but in fact, a book which was flawed enough
to be actively harmful, without even the marginal benefits you'd get from
a book which was reasonably complete but which had an unfortunately high
frequency of minor errors.

-s

 

[Keith Thompson]

spinoza1111 <[email protected]> wrote:

[more of the same]

Now piss off. You're a very boring toad.

He's very boring to most of us, but apparently not to you.

Tim, I haven't really kept track, but my impression is that most of
your recent posts have been taunts directed at spinoza1111. Have I
missed something more interesting (i.e., topical) that you've posted?

 

[jacob navia]

Kenny McCormack a écrit :

This, of course, will never happen. If not responding to Nilges had
ever been an option (for CLC regs), they'd have done so by now.

They and spinoza111 have swamped this forum with all this rubbish
There are almost no posts about C anymore

 

[Kenny McCormack]

spinoza1111 <[email protected]> wrote:

[more of the same]

Now piss off. You're a very boring toad.

He's very boring to most of us, but apparently not to you.

Tim, I haven't really kept track, but my impression is that most of
your recent posts have been taunts directed at spinoza1111. Have I
missed something more interesting (i.e., topical) that you've posted?

Momma Kiki weights in. Don't be a bad boy, Timmy.

--
(This discussion group is about C, ...)

Wrong. It is only OCCASIONALLY a discussion group
about C; mostly, like most "discussion" groups, it is
off-topic Rorsharch [sic] revelations of the childhood
traumas of the participants...

 

[Kenny McCormack]

They and spinoza111 have swamped this forum with all this rubbish
There are almost no posts about C anymore

As I have demonstrated many, many, many times in the past, it is not
possible to have an on-topic discussion here (except for language
lawyering). By the definitions set down by the regs, nothing (except
for language lawyering) is on-topic.

So, the problem isn't spinny or me or anyone else on the "troll" side.
The problem is the regs who have defined things such that nothing
(except for language lawyering) is topical here. In particular, all the
good stuff that you post is, alas, off-topic. Which is why it never
goes anywhere. A shame, it is.

As mentioned elsewhere, they have defined things this way so that we are
all speaking the same language (except for us "troll"s, of course). The
problem is that the language we are all speaking - is useless.

--

No, I haven't, that's why I'm asking questions. If you won't help me,
why don't you just go find your lost manhood elsewhere.

CLC in a nutshell.

 

[spinoza1111]

jacob navia  <[email protected]> wrote:

Wise up. You're "off topic" and headed for the gas chamber too.

...

(To Navia not Kenny)
C like a monad in Leibniz is only meaningful if it can reflect other
concerns. We're not all narrow code monkeys. Some of us learn new
languages and paradigms fast, and have time to visit your Louvre left
over.

The charge that I'm off topic is ignorant, and it doesn't become you.
I was hired at Princeton because I was not only a code monkey but
could also talk to professors about their concerns and disciplines,
and I delivered.

I suggest you start showing some solidarity. I'm tired of seeing
incompetents like Seebach patronize you.

 

[spinoza1111]

It's not just the errors; also the omissions.

The problem is that Nilges can't distinguish between:

* This book, purporting to be a complete reference for C, completely
  ignores significant topics such as structure padding, and its coverage
  of inline functions doesn't even mention the significant effects of
  the "inline" keyword.
and
* This book, purporting to cover Computer System A, does not also talk
  about Unrelated Computer System B.

Omissions *can* make a book bad.  They don't always; you have to understand
both the topic and the omissions to determine whether they make a book bad.
You also have to understand the book's intended focus.  Koenig's _C Traps
and Pitfalls_ is an excellent book, but it is not a general reference for C,
and does not cover any number of things which are probably significant to
C programmers -- but it doesn't *claim* to, it claims to be a moderately
specialized book on a particular sub-topic.

A book claiming to be a biography of Winston Churchill, which omitted any
mention of World War II, would be a bad book.  A book claiming to be a study
of Winston Churchill's childhood, which omitted any mention of World War
II, might or might not be bad -- I'd think they might want to refer to how
childhood events might have influenced later events, but if it really was
just about his childhood, well, WWII didn't happen then, so it's outside the
scope of the book.

A book purporting to teach C, however, cannot claim that structure padding
is outside its scope.  A book purporting to teach C99 and explain function
inlining, likewise, cannot claim that the semantic implications of declaring
a function "inline" are outside its scope.

The omissions alone might not be enough to make the book "bad", although if
there are more omissions of the same nature, they would be.  On the other
hand, they don't need to be enough, because the errors are sufficiently
egregious to make the book unambiguously awful regardless.  That it also
has serious omissions of crucial and relevant information doesn't make it
less bad; that was the evidence that convinced me that it was not merely
a book too flawed to be useful, but in fact, a book which was flawed enough
to be actively harmful, without even the marginal benefits you'd get from
a book which was reasonably complete but which had an unfortunately high
frequency of minor errors.

-s

The assumptions here are twofold:

* That you've done a true technical review of Schildt, as in depth as
Appleman's review of my book. This would involve reading every word
and trying all code out on a Microsoft platform. Have you done so?

* You are the sort of person qualified to judge Schildt. This would
be a person of equal or greater academic preparation in computer
science, OR a better programmer. But you have NO such preparation
while he has the BS and MSCS. Your programming skills seem very poor
based on code you have presented.

Look at me, Mommy, look at me
I can code and code in C
I'm so brilliant it's hard to see
Me make mistakes in basic C
Me just love democracy
That is for me and not for thee
I redefine hypocrisy
It's on others that I like to pee
Look at me, Mommy, look at me

Based on the second assumption refutation, which has been established,
you are not qualified to call Schildt's books bad, any more that I
believed in 1970 that it was the student who could judge a textbook
"bad": although we were willing to judge a war in which we might get
killed to be bad, we thought that textbooks were in general good.

More broadly, anybody who calls a book bad is just a barbarian and a
crypto-Nazi.

I teach book reviewing to kids. My example of a "bad" review is one by
Evil Chuckie and is based on a real Amazon review of "Roll of Thunder,
Hear My Cry" by a white kid who didn't want to have to read about
black people. His first mistake, I point out, is to call the book
"bad". You're supposed to say whether you didn't like it.

Had you any shred of honesty and decency, you would have posted that
you, little Peter Seebach, really hated Schildt. Instead, you
presented yourself dressed in borrowed robes of authority, including
your uninvited presence in C99, and was for this reason used as the
major source of the Schildt bio on wikidweebia. This was dishonest. If
I were Herb or McGraw Hill, I'd sue your ass. If I were your father,
I'd kick your ass.

O perilous mouthes
That beare in them, one and the selfesame tongue,
Either of condemnation, or approofe,
Bidding the Law make curtsie to their will,
Hooking both right and wrong to th' appetite,
To follow as it drawes.

- Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

 

[spinoza1111]

No, that doesn't compute either. Seebs alleges that Schildt's book is
bad because it contains errors. That logic, fucked up or not, can in no
way be made to apply to Sherman's book, much though you'd like it to,
because as far as we know it doesn't contain errors. It just didn't
cover the machine that interested you.

You misread me, Dumbo. I didn't say that Sherman's book was bad. I
said that had I been Dweebach, I would have called it bad. But I
didn't. I used it to learn and bought the IBM 1401 reference manual
from the IBM retail shop that was in the IBM building on the Chicago
river. I then did most of the assignments despite not having attended
the classes in May 1970 because I joined the strike against Nixon's
invasion of Cambodia, and got a B...which was of course based on my
poor attendance BEFORE the strike. The prof didn't take away points
for joining the strike.

A year later, I gave the prof the output of a simple assembler program
which calculated the exact value of 100! and he kept this for years.
Years later we reconnected through Facebook and I learned he'd taken
some really bad classes from John Nash when at MIT (Nash sucked as a
teacher before he went crazy, was an excellent teacher in recovery).

Another reason I pulled a B was that I simply refused to use a 1620 at
Educational Testing Service to compile my Fortran programs out of a
Seebach-like laziness and passive aggression, which I have long
outgrown. The 1401 had a Fortran compiler but I didn't figure out the
bug until two years later.

I accepted that the prof was applying the rules, and years later, at
Princeton, I learned the rules were much more strict. Students there
had to hand in working programs on time or get no credit. This is
probably why Seebach didn't take computer science, altho I doubt the
guy was at Princeton; sheer cowardice, which 20 years on has become a
personality from hell.

 

[Rui Maciel]

For example, can you refute my argument

It's a bit hard to refute something which was never made. Your post consists of nothing more than
idiocy, a series of puerile insults and a set of personal attacks.



Rui Maciel

 

[Seebs]

It's a bit hard to refute something which was never made. Your post consists of nothing more than
idiocy, a series of puerile insults and a set of personal attacks.

While this doubtless amuses:

Please respond to Nilges elsewhere. I've set up a thread for followups to
him somewhere that the community will be more appreciative of his tomfoolery.

-s

 

[Kenny McCormack]

It's a bit hard to refute something which was never made. Your post
consists of nothing more than
idiocy, a series of puerile insults and a set of personal attacks.

I take it, that's a 'no' then, dear?

--

No, I haven't, that's why I'm asking questions. If you won't help me,
why don't you just go find your lost manhood elsewhere.

CLC in a nutshell.

 

[Tim Rentsch]

While this doubtless amuses:

Please respond to Nilges elsewhere. I've set up a thread for followups to
him somewhere that the community will be more appreciative of his tomfoolery.

If people are being asked to take these comments elsewhere,
it seems only fair to ask that you stop talking about said
person here also. Doesn't it?

 

[jacob navia]

spinoza1111 a écrit :

(To Navia not Kenny)
C like a monad in Leibniz is only meaningful if it can reflect other
concerns. We're not all narrow code monkeys. Some of us learn new
languages and paradigms fast, and have time to visit your Louvre left
over.

What you fail to understand is that this group is about C. You can't discuss about
ANYTHING just because everything is linked to everything else in this universe.

The atoms of your body came from dying stars, that manufactured the carbon and the other ingredients
of your organic soup. It is bad taste to discuss about astronomy in a group dedicated to medicine
however!

C is related to the wider view of the data processing economics. Software, as you may know, is like
the textile industry: it needs FASHION.

Here in Paris the textile industry created Vogue and other magazines, to promote FASHION. This
allowed them to convice people of throwing away that perfectly functioning shirt to make place for
the new, more FASHIONABLE one.

This repeats itself with the computer languages FASHION. C is old fashioned, out. C++ is going out
of fashion too. C# is more fashionable because Sun (and Java) went belly up and were swallowed by
Oracle.

There are "Fashion makers", those who decide what is "in" and what is "out". There are also, real
concerns, like the fact that beginning with a certain degree of complexity, programming languages
implode because of their own weight. With fashion is the same. With some baroque clothes the women
couldn't possible move freeely, there were problems if you want to take a car, or (god forbid) take
the proletarian Metro. Those clothes went the same way that C++ is going...

We could discuss about this here, but you have never even mentioned this, the REAL economic context,
besides some slogans that you throw around.

I think C is a GOOD language, maybe because I detest fashion and "old fashioned" stuff makes it even
more interesting for me. I prefer simplicity and power, two things that modern languages avoid like
the pest.

Since I like C, I am trying to put up a standard container library for it, a project that I discuss
regularly in this group.

Apparently (besides answering some newbee questions that are marked as off topic by the regs) you
think that discussing that irrelevant book of Schild is THE thema that we should all love.

OK, the regulars like those discussions. They can go on destroying the C language and this group as
they have been doing for years. They will produce hundreds of messages about Schild, Wikipedia
biographies or whatever.

You can go on discussing with them, I stopped most of those discussions some time ago, when I
decided that those people aren't worth much effort.

Yours sincerely

jacob navia