The chart of comp.lang.c

A

Al Balmer

What does it matter if comp.lang.c goes down the crapper as long as
you have comp.lang.c.moderated?

You've never actually participated in that group, have you? Try it for
a while.
 
A

Al Balmer

If the newsgroup was dedicated to
working environments and he DID do his work in his car, would you send
him to a car NG instead as he extolled the virtues of the fold down
seats, built in 19" monitor, keyboard tray and wireless antenna?

Irrelevant. This newsgroup is *not* dedicated to work environments,
such as IDEs, monitors, computers, task chairs, etc. If you want a
group about programming work environments, find one or start one.
 
R

Richard

Al Balmer said:
Irrelevant. This newsgroup is *not* dedicated to work environments,
such as IDEs, monitors, computers, task chairs, etc. If you want a
group about programming work environments, find one or start one.

And again my point goes totally over a regulars head.

Here's another option : rather than savage some polite nOOb looking for
C programmers opinions in this NG, *you* ignore or kill the thread, and
I, and a heap of others, will offer advice on where to go and what to
consider when choosing an IDE to support his C programming. It'll all
stay in one thread and will probably result in LESS replies than when
the regulars here embark on a feeding frenzy of posturing and shouting
"OT" to some unfortunate.
 
K

Kenny McCormack

And again my point goes totally over a regulars head.

Here's another option : rather than savage some polite nOOb looking for
C programmers opinions in this NG, *you* ignore or kill the thread, and
I, and a heap of others, will offer advice on where to go and what to
consider when choosing an IDE to support his C programming. It'll all
stay in one thread and will probably result in LESS replies than when
the regulars here embark on a feeding frenzy of posturing and shouting
"OT" to some unfortunate.

What this all boils down to is that if you (rhetorical you, but "you"
know who I am talking about) can't learn to ignore the things in life
that don't affect you, then you are going to have a rough life. There's
just too much noise in the world, and you can't fix everything. For the
most part, you can't fix anything, and you have to learn to ignore it.

The HCs will quibble with this, but deep down, you know I'm right.

I'm reminded of this every day, when I observe the world. The
princesses (great turn of phrase, that!) in here just wouldn't stand a
day out there.
 
A

Al Balmer

And again my point goes totally over a regulars head.

Hardly. You postulated a newsgroup dedicated to working environments,
then described a post regarding working environments. Not at all the
same as discussing working environments in a group dedicated to the C
language. It seems, rather, that my point went over your head.
Here's another option : rather than savage some polite nOOb looking for
C programmers opinions in this NG,

Polite noobs asking off-topic questions are not usually "savaged" in
this newsgroup. Rather, they are usually informed that they are
off-topic, and usually get suggestions about where to post. The
"savaging" come in when trolls like you object to this, claiming that
all computer, programming, and any other vaguely associated subjects
are fit subjects for discussion in this group.

In fact, you do newbies a disservice by answering off-topic questions
here rather than directing them to a venue where you might be
contradicted or corrected.
 
E

Ed Jensen

Al Balmer said:
This morning, I downloaded over 400 messages which were posted since
Friday afternoon. That, of course, does not include the few posters
that I've killfiled, or the threads I've marked ignore. comp.lang.c
get quite enough traffic, thank you. We *really* don't need to
encourage off-topic posts.

The number of articles posted has jumped sharply ever since the
pissing contest got rolling.
 
R

Rui Maciel

Richard Heathfield <[email protected]> writes:
That statement is total rubbish of course. Talking about C IDE is
talking about C. Whichever way you want to cut it.

You seem to be a bit confused. An integrated development environment is a
tool that helps writing code. It is not a language.

As with all other tools used to help write software, although many
programmers use IDEs and therefore may have knowledge and some insight
about the tool, that does not mean that the integrated development
environment is the programming language or that the programming language
is the development environment, not even in those IDEs which try to tie
down and blur those concepts.

So obviously no. Talking about IDEs that can be used to write C code is
not talking about C. And never was.

You seem to think
that the NG would crumble into a pile of doggy doo just because some
experienced programmers might offer some advice on an IDE to a C nOOb. I
think you might need to get out more. As I said, this is a good resource
for experienced programmers. It doesn't kill anyone to tolerate the odd
thread about C support whether platform specific or not.

No one is advocating intolerance. On the other hand, emphasis must be
given to topicality, not only to reduce the so called "signal to noise
ratio" but also to offer a better service to those who would like to clear
whatever doubt they may have or even learn a bit more on a particular
subject. Once that emphasis ceases to exist and the set of accepted
topics widens indefinitely, I do not know where and how the group will
manage to stay relevant.


Rui Maciel
 
R

Rui Maciel

"What colour is best for displaying C source?" is a C question. It is not
about the language standard, except in so far as it might influence our
colouring decisions, but it is certainly not a platform-specific matter.
Flashing indigo is distracting but the underscore is not?

You seem to be a bit confused. Font colours, or even font types for that
matter, have absolutely nothing to do with any programming languages, let
alone C. It isn't a matter of being a part of the language standard. It's
simply a matter of having absolutely nothing to do with the language.

On the other hand, people who frequently write code may have some
experience and opinions regarding that subject. Nonetheless, that doesn't
mean that a newsgroup dedicated to the discussion about a programming
language should also be used to discuss issues that, as luck would have it,
some people who happen to have an interest about that particular
programming language also have some experience or even opinion about.

I believe that that confusion is the main source of off-topic posts. "C is
a programming language. KDE programs are also written in a programming
language, as operating systems. C programmers also use IDEs and
some tweak their fonts. Therefore that newsgroup is the perfect place to
ask about operating systems that run KDE and support IDEs that enable the
user to tweak the IDE's fonts." Then people get offended when their
off-topic post gets redirected. Go figure.


Rui Maciel
 
M

Malcolm McLean

Al Balmer said:
Huh? What color to paint my house is a carpentry question, I suppose.
What colours to use for the various wires is an electrical engineering
question.
Nothing inherently to do with electricity, of course, but a useful
convention.
 
A

Al Balmer

What colours to use for the various wires is an electrical engineering
question.
Nothing inherently to do with electricity, of course, but a useful
convention.

But it's still not an electrical engineering question. The electrons
don't care what color the sheath is, any more than your compiler cares
what editor you used.

There's no similar convention for C, because it's not needed. Syntax
coloring can be useful as a parsing aid, but there's no need for it to
be standardized. I can identify a function without it being colored,
but can't tell a hot wire from a ground just by looking at it.
 
R

Richard Heathfield

Al Balmer said:

I can identify a function without it being colored,
but can't tell a hot wire from a ground just by looking at it.

Look closer. Much, *much* closer. You'll work it out (sort of). :)
 
E

Eric Sosman

Rui Maciel wrote On 07/30/07 16:21,:
You seem to be a bit confused. Font colours, or even font types for that
matter, have absolutely nothing to do with any programming languages, let
alone C. It isn't a matter of being a part of the language standard. It's
simply a matter of having absolutely nothing to do with the language.

<off-topic>

Oddly enough, more than twenty years ago I used a C
compiler where the font *did* make a difference, and a
rather large one: Source characters in a specified font
were ignored entirely.

No, it wasn't accidental. The compiler actually
re-wrote the source files it compiled, inserting its
warnings and error messages in-line in the new copy of
the source. Naturally, the messages were written in the
special font, so they would be ignored (and thus deleted)
at the next compilation.

The editor was able to search not only for specified
strings, but also for characters in a specified font;
this made "go to next error" a dead-simple operation.
Of course, it's pretty simple in a modern IDE -- but this
was more than two decades ago, on a 16-bit PDP-11/44 that
had nowhere near enough space or enough cycles to run an
IDE. And yet, the font-fakery provided one of the more
convenient IDE-ish features even on the limited hardware.

</off-topic>
 
K

Kelsey Bjarnason

[snips]

OK, which MPI compiler do you recommend for Beowulf clusters?
See the snag?

Yes, I do - you're asking in a C group which deals with many
implementations across many systems and doesn't focus in on the narrower
confines of MPI or Beowulf and thus is considerably less likely to produce
useful answers than a group or other forum dedicated to such topics -
which is exactly the point which has been made here repeatedly, though
some choose to ignore it.
 
M

Malcolm McLean

Al Balmer said:
But it's still not an electrical engineering question. The electrons
don't care what color the sheath is, any more than your compiler cares
what editor you used.
But engineering is a psychological as well as a material activity. So
colouring schemes for wires are part of electrical engineering. They have
nothing to do with the underlying physical principles on which the devices
work, of course.

As it happens C syntax colouring has not been standardised. That doesn't
mean that conventions or even formal standards are not desireable.
 
S

santosh

Malcolm said:
But engineering is a psychological as well as a material activity. So
colouring schemes for wires are part of electrical engineering. They have
nothing to do with the underlying physical principles on which the devices
work, of course.

As it happens C syntax colouring has not been standardised. That doesn't
mean that conventions or even formal standards are not desireable.

It's hard enough to Standardise relatively objective fields. Who wants to
attempt to Standardise aesthetics?
 
A

Al Balmer

But engineering is a psychological as well as a material activity. So
colouring schemes for wires are part of electrical engineering.

I'll permit you your definition, strange as it is ;-) But you're a
long way from persuading me.
They have
nothing to do with the underlying physical principles on which the devices
work, of course.

As it happens C syntax colouring has not been standardised. That doesn't
mean that conventions or even formal standards are not desireable.

Actually the electrical wire color conventions are not standardized
across the field, either. Electronic wiring and power wiring have
different conventions. Power wiring color codes are actually
regulated, at least in the US, so I guess you could say they're
standardized. But they still aren't part of electrical engineering :)
 
M

Malcolm McLean

Al Balmer said:
I'll permit you your definition, strange as it is ;-) But you're a
long way from persuading me.
The people who maintain your engineering masterwork are part of the system.
So if you build a wonderful R2D2 robot with AI and a cute bleeper, but no
one can replace the fuses when they blow because you've used a silly
colouring scheme, it's a badly engineered robot.
This consideration is especially important for software engineering. Mores
systems fail because humans cannot cope with the complexity of the design
than for any other reason.
 
C

Chris Hills

It most defiantly is.

That's electrical theory not engineering
>

It's hard enough to Standardise relatively objective fields. Who wants to
attempt to Standardise aesthetics?

It's not aesthetics. Some people are colour blind between two colours.
This is a known problem with electrical wiring.

Several times I have been asked if there is a standard for syntax
highlighting. People have been surprised that there isn't.

I discussed this with more than one compiler company as there was a
thought, now colour printers are common place, that if you print a file
that is in the IDEs editor it retains the syntax highlighting.

This means the same colours used on screen would be there in the code
review.

The trouble is that many cultures assign different meanings to colours.
Some times directly opposing meanings.

I recall Bjanre Stoustrup suggesting, now that we had unicode, that
all functions should have a single letter name and be differentiated by
colour.

I have seen a very long argument as to the use of fixed verses justified
fonts in programming.

I don't thing there will be any clear cut answers for colour and fonts
apart from the fact that some fonts are easier to scan than others,
 
A

Al Balmer

Walter said:
... snip ...

I've been using Thunderbird a bit lately as it has -some- useful
facilities -- but the "message filter" facilities do not work on
newsgroups at all.

[OT] I suspect an operator error. I don't use T'bird, but it is a
descendent of what I do use, and the message filters here are per
newsgroup, not global.
[/OT]
Both per newsgroup and server-wide newsgroup filters are supported in
current Thunderbird.
 
D

Dave Vandervies

I doubt that. You may. Most prefer the direct control they get
from separate compilers, editors, etc.

It's not really about direct control, though that's part of it.

If you have an IDE that can share projects between three (or more!)
platforms and whose editor can be persuaded to act like vi, I want to
know about it (but not from reading about it in CLC); until then, I'll
stick with a bunch of independent programs that can be made to Just
Work Sensibly.

If in fact "most" developers prefer not to use an IDE (a claim I believe
to be true, but not one I'm prepared to defend), the biggest reason is
probably that most IDEs have weaknesses in areas that are important to
them that their favorite non-IDE tools don't have.


dave
(yes, I do work on three different platforms, and have at least one
hobby project that will eventually "need" to run on all three)
 

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