The C language in the planet Mars

[Frederick Gotham]

Eric Sosman posted:

that -> which ...

"that" in the place of "which" is quite acceptable, both in written and
spoken English.

Even when I'm intentionally trying to write fancy, I sometimes use "that"
instead of "which" in some places. I believe it has even more acceptance than
"who" in the place of "whom".

 

[Eric Sosman]

Eric Sosman posted:





"that" in the place of "which" is quite acceptable, both in written and
spoken English.

Not to me, you-- you-- you Visigoth! (Note, too, the
curious inversion of notation used in the post to which I
responded. My correction, read in that notation, suggests
substituting "that" for "which," not "which" for "that.")

Even when I'm intentionally trying to write fancy, I sometimes use "that"
instead of "which" in some places. I believe it has even more acceptance than
"who" in the place of "whom".

It's been noted that people when speaking aloud tend to
use "which" and "that" correctly, but when writing tend to
get all formal and stuffified and use "which" because it seems
more dignified even when it's wrong.

http://stipo.larc.nasa.gov/sp7084/sp7084ch1.html#1.3.3.
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/062.html
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/which.htm
http://www.kentlaw.edu/academics/lrw/grinker/LwtaClauses__Restrictive_and_Nonrest.htm

 

[J. J. Farrell]

that -> which ...

Which gives us "It's things like which which identify the C programmer
in everyday conversation". Some mistake, Shirley?

 

[Eric Sosman]

Which gives us "It's things like which which identify the C programmer
in everyday conversation". Some mistake, Shirley?

Actually, no. Correctly written (I'm laying myself
WIDE open here) it's

It's things like that that identify the C
programmer in everyday blather.

(As I've mentioned in another post, the "-->" notation
seems backwards, or at least inconsistently applied. In the
"Its --> It's" case it suggests replacing the incorrect "Its"
with the correct "It's," but in "identify --> identifies" the
replacer/replacee roles are reversed. My "that --> which"
followed the latter model, on the assumption that the direction
of the arrow had to do with whether the number of letters in
the correct word was even or odd. Remind me not to let Keith
design my next programming language, okay? ;-)

 

[Keith Thompson]

[...]
(As I've mentioned in another post, the "-->" notation
seems backwards, or at least inconsistently applied. In the
"Its --> It's" case it suggests replacing the incorrect "Its"
with the correct "It's," but in "identify --> identifies" the
replacer/replacee roles are reversed. My "that --> which"
followed the latter model, on the assumption that the direction
of the arrow had to do with whether the number of letters in
the correct word was even or odd. Remind me not to let Keith
design my next programming language, okay? ;-)

Yeah, that's it, it's about whether the number of letters is odd or
even. I couldn't have just screwed up.

 

[Default User]

Frederick Gotham wrote:

Not to me, you-- you-- you Visigoth! (Note, too, the
curious inversion of notation used in the post to which I
responded. My correction, read in that notation, suggests
substituting "that" for "which," not "which" for "that.")


It's been noted that people when speaking aloud tend to
use "which" and "that" correctly, but when writing tend to
get all formal and stuffified and use "which" because it seems
more dignified even when it's wrong.

The general rule of thumb, "that" being for prescriptive cases and
"which" for non-prescriptive cases, is one of those things that's not
really a grammatical rule. In general, I find that to be a decent rule,
and use it myself, but I don't consider it wrong to do it otherwise.

Once again I feel like I'm on alt.usage.english.



Brian

 

[Mabden]

Eric Sosman posted:
"that" in the place of "which" is quite acceptable, both in written and
spoken English.

Even when I'm intentionally trying to write fancy, I sometimes use "that"
instead of "which" in some places. I believe it has even more acceptance than
"who" in the place of "whom".

And he in place of him, sure that's gaining acceptance all over the place.
Just axe around.

Why is this hard?!
ex:
"Did you go with him to the mall?" "With whom did you go to the mall?"
object: him = whom
vesus
"He went to the mall." "Who went to the mall?"
subject: he = who

See how they add the M to the one that's the object? The subject is always
he/she/who.

Now that I think about it, this should probably be taken over to
Subject-Object-Oriented forum...

 

[Mabden]

BubbaGump wrote:
<snipped>

Definition of the day:


"left-handed compliment"

You don't need to debug, if you don't put the bugs in, in the first place...

 

[Andrew Poelstra]

You don't need to debug, if you don't put the bugs in, in the first place...

Of course! You've revolutionized programming. Thank you so much for
discovering how to save us countless hours of debugging. And here we
were deliberately putting bugs into our programs. Like monkeys.

 

[Frederick Gotham]

Mabden posted:

I believe it has even more acceptance than "who" in the place of
"whom".

See how they add the M to the one that's the object? The subject is always
he/she/who.

I'm aware of the usage of "whom"

I'll rephrase my original statement for clarity:

I believe it has even more acceptance than "who" in the place of "whom" (in
the accusative case, or dative case).

 

[Joe Wright]

Of course! You've revolutionized programming. Thank you so much for
discovering how to save us countless hours of debugging. And here we
were deliberately putting bugs into our programs. Like monkeys.

I suppose Mabden had his tongue in his cheek saying that. But he's not
really wrong. If you write good code, it's good. When I get into a bind
I usually put a printf() statement in the middle of the mess to tell me
what's happening. I've never used a C debugger.

 

[lawrence.jones]

The general rule of thumb, "that" being for prescriptive cases and
"which" for non-prescriptive cases, is one of those things that's not
really a grammatical rule.

In fact, Fowler seems to have made it up himself in a futile attempt to
"fix" an ambiguity that English speakers have been quite comfortable
with since time immemorial.

-Larry Jones

It's hard to be religious when certain people are never
incinerated by bolts of lightning. -- Calvin

 

[Ian Collins]

I suppose Mabden had his tongue in his cheek saying that. But he's not
really wrong. If you write good code, it's good. When I get into a bind
I usually put a printf() statement in the middle of the mess to tell me
what's happening. I've never used a C debugger.

Or write your code test first, you shouldn't need a debugger if you do
this well. If you make a change and a test fails, just undo the change
and try another way.

 

[goose]

Ian Collins wrote:

If you make a change and a test fails, just undo the change
and try another way.

Unless your /test/ invokes UB

"Hey the test worked, lets move on"

six months later ...

"The problem *has* to be in these 20 lines
I added yesterday. After all, the test was working
fine until these 20 lines were added."

goose,
Yes; that actually does happen