why cant functions return arrays

[spinoza1111]

In the categories of posts here, you forgot a kind that appears
VERY often and it is one of the favorite sports around:

navia is unable to understand and appreciate C
navia doesn't know C
navia's daughter reads porn
navia is a shrewd businessman trying to sell his wares for free
navia's view of c lead to destruction
navia likes c++ and wants to destroy our beautiful language
navia is not standard
navia likes c99
navia is (... expletive deleted)
navia is a spammer
navia wrote a message where he doesn't mention lcc-win.

maybe you have noticed but i have reduced my postings here
most of the technical discussions that i started led to
a flame fest from heathfield and co.
fine. they win then.

Yeah, this guy is for real and because he's "all wool and a yard wide"
as the Limeys say, you wasted his time and your own by trying to take
him down. HE IMPLEMENTED A GOOD COMPILER. What do most of you do?

Break data bases and blame your coworkers?
Steal employer time to attack people anonymously?
Refuse to maintain code because it's not written in "your" style?
Write incoherent laundry lists about people's "errors" full of
stylistic claims and errors, and use this to hound computer authors?
Harass female posters and computer authors?
Harass Indian people for having polysyllabic names for taking your job
(and doing it better)?

Do the math. The individual with chops in the real world is targeted
by people who have in a naturalized sense become daemons, Legion, and
their entire case is that they belong to a "normal" group.

With dead eyes like old postcards of Amerikkkan Lynch mobs, you repeat
the drama of your OWN inadequacy.

With hearts grown brutal you have fed like Saturn on fantasies.

Edward G. Nilges, author, Build Your Own Language and Compiler

 

[spinoza1111]

I'm starting to miss S**** N****.  He was free-range nuts, but at
least his bugaboos had to do with C and not other posters, at least as
individuals (we were *all* deficient in S****'s eyes).  And he was a

Awwwww you say the sweetest things.

You should be grateful to have Navia post here.

I generally don't post to comp.lang.c because C sux.

Navia's use of "Dr. Nilges" was found in one of my rather infrequent
vanity searches. I figured it was time to break radio silence and
explain why I've not posted a spinoza compiler...yet.

"Dr. Nilges" is my Dad, a medical doctor, and I don't have a PhD or an
MD.

But...this group is about C. What can I add to its collective wisdom?
Very little in contrast to Navia, even in contrast to Heathfield, who
whatever else I might say about him, isn't an anonymous twink and
knows what he is talking about when he doesn't focus on the Big
Picture or The Meaning of It All, that being my fortay.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

That's only three categories.

If you're missing a couple of fingers...

 

[spinoza1111]

I don't have a PhD. My father has the MD: please don't call me "Dr.Nilges": my retired father deserves his emeritus standing, in part
because he took issue like a man with the normalized deviants in his
own field and in medical ethics. I have a BA from Roosevelt University
('73). I was, however, asked to teach philosophy and computer science
after receiving the BA.  I've played a professor at the movies and am
seen in Ang Lee's Lust Caution: the British prof who walks past the
principals in a scene at Hong Kong university, talking with a lovely
blonde, is me. An extra.

spinoza as a programming language is forthcoming, and I've committed
not to post more than the occasional status report on comp.programming
until it's ready. As to why it's late: what part of "six day Asia week
or you no get rice bowl, Gweilo dog" don't you understand?

I find your reference to "meds" wearisome & annoying. It is,
subconsciously, a reference to an absent Father. I assisted John Nash
at Princeton: he got better when he got off "meds" and into a
supportive community that didn't consist of deviants pretending to
represent a normalized POV.

But overall, interesting and well-written post.

- Professor Doctor Extraordinarius-Superfluentius Edward spinoza1111Nilges, Knight Commander of the Mystic Sea













- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Posted essentially the same content twice. My apologies to all.

 

[Flash Gordon]

spinoza1111 wrote, On 08/05/08 08:51:

Navia? Didn't he implement C?

He took a C compiler written by someone else, extended it, added a
debugger and for all I know might have implemented the entire IDE himself.

Perhaps I'm not the only person to
accomplish something in the real world, only to encounter a shit storm
of abuse from people who've done nothing and use anonymous demiblogs
to spit their resentment at people who have.

Not publishing source does not mean people have not achieved anything in
the real world. A lot of people work places where they are not permitted
to publish the code they are paid to write.

Schildt wrote Tiny C and
best selling books, but fatass creeps target him on wikipedia.

The criticisms seem properly researched to me, including being
researched by actual voting members of the C committee.

Life sucks!

Indeed. People can still recommend bad book and some bad books can be
easy to read and appear authoritative.

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111wrote, On 08/05/08 08:51:



He took a C compiler written by someone else, extended it, added a
debugger and for all I know might have implemented the entire IDE himself.

This is, I think, a lie at worst. At best, it is (once again) a
deliberate attempt to destroy a person's reputation, and to make the
ONLY topic of discussion in a TECHNICAL newsgroup, that attempt.

It can be much more difficult to adapt complex software than to write
it using your own conventions.

You come in here anonymously, probably some corporate s*tbag who does
nothing except force users to get rid of screen savers and mess up
data bases, and you assault people who have done something, anything.

Not publishing source does not mean people have not achieved anything in
the real world. A lot of people work places where they are not permitted
to publish the code they are paid to write.

...and they rage, they rage, at people who have refused to be
postmodern slaves.

The criticisms seem properly researched to me, including being
researched by actual voting members of the C committee.

It wasn't there job to destroy people, and if they made it their
mission, and if they used public funds, they need to be served
subpoenas for this behavior.

If you don't like a man's work, just ignore him: but given your
replicated and mass psychological disorder, a disorder to be sure even
if statistically preponderant, you're addicted to suppressing the
weakness in yourself by addictively attacking, not ideas nor power,
but people who you think you can bully, here using a standards
committee that probably used public funds.

 

[jacob navia]

spinoza1111 said:


There, there, Edward. I know the facts can be confusing, but that doesn't
mean the facts are lies.

Heathfield?

He just wrote his name in a book that was written by other people...

I can also say that. It is OK with you?

And if you say that that is a lie, I can always say:

> There, there, Heathfield. I know the facts can be confusing, but that
> doesn't mean the facts are lies.
>


It's merely a neutral description of the facts, neither positive nor
negative.

Your lies are obviously a "neutral description of the facts".

And when I say that you just put your name in a book written by other
people it is obviously a neutral description of the facts.

What are the facts?

The lcc compiler version I started with, did not have an assembler, it
generated ascii. I wrote the assembler.

It did not have a linker. I wrote the linker.

It did not have neither a makefile nor an IDE, nor a debugger. I
wrote all those.

I added a peephole optimizer, and speed up by a factor of 4 or 5
the generated code.

It did not have a C99 compliant C library. I wrote that.

It did not have long long support, nor C99 support. I wrote that.
And I will not go into the extensions, etc etc.

You are a liar. With the same logic I can go around and say that
you just put your name in a book written by others.

 

[jacob navia]

Richard Heathfield wrote:[snip]
[snip]

Yes, you are free to say whatever you like. Whether what you say is true is
something that people can decide for themselves on the basis of the
observable facts.

 

[Flash Gordon]

jacob navia wrote, On 09/05/08 08:21:

Your lies are obviously a "neutral description of the facts".

Jacob, it was not an attack on you merely a correction of fact. You did
start with a compiler from someone else and you have since done a lot of
work on it.

What are the facts?

The lcc compiler version I started with, did not have an assembler, it
generated ascii. I wrote the assembler.

It did not have a linker. I wrote the linker.

It did not have neither a makefile nor an IDE, nor a debugger. I
wrote all those.

I acknowledged the debugger as I could remember you wrote that. I said
that you might have written the entire IDE yourself, but could not state
it as fact since I could not remember.

I added a peephole optimizer, and speed up by a factor of 4 or 5
the generated code.

It did not have a C99 compliant C library. I wrote that.

It did not have long long support, nor C99 support. I wrote that.

Yes, adding C99 support is extending the compiler.

And I will not go into the extensions, etc etc.

I actually said that you extended it, not that you added extensions.
Adding optimisation is extending it. I also did not say that adding the
extensions was wrong.

You are a liar. With the same logic I can go around and say that
you just put your name in a book written by others.

You can say that Richard is named as one of the authors of a book a lot
of which was not written by him and this would be true.

 

[Flash Gordon]

Richard Heathfield wrote, On 09/05/08 07:07:

And you had a point, (e-mail address removed)? But AIUI "Flash" is his
nickname in Real Life and Gordon is his real surname. Not so terribly
anonymous after all.

Correct. It is also very easy to find out my real name. The only
difficult thing is finding out what my middle name is.

 

[Chris McDonald]

spinoza1111 wrote:

Actually this is incorrect too. Though its a fairly interesting comment
from someone posting as "spinoza1111" which I'm pretty sure isn't your
given name.

While "spinoza1111" may not be Edward Nilges' given name, anyone
unfortunate enough to have read a sample of Edward's contributions to
USENET life, certainly knows who "spinoza1111" is, and recognizes many
of the personality traits and flaws associated with his moniker.
He is far from anonymous.

 

[spinoza1111]

jacob navia said:








You're free to say what you like. Don't ask *me* whether it's accurate -
I'm obviously biased. Ask some of those "other people" whether your claim
is true.


I very, very rarely accuse people of lying. I think it's a very serious
accusation that requires a lot of supporting evidence. You, on the other
hand, seem to think that such accusations are merely a debating technique.


Yes, you can say that, and of course you are echoing back words that you do
not understand, that stem from a context of which you are unaware.



Lies? Are you saying that you *did* write lcc-win32 from scratch? If so,
please make up your mind whether you did or whether you didn't, because
you are on record as saying that you acquired rights to the lcc compiler
and modified it, which is very different from writing lcc-win32 from
scratch. (See below.)

Modifying existing software is often more difficult than writing it
anew. When you write it *ex nihilo* you can keep standards consistent
whereas Jacob had to fully understand the existing code.

Jacob acquired the rights to the existing code and instead of sitting
on his ass here since 2000 attacking better men, like you have, he
made something very, very, useful.

There was not the slightest hint of plagiarism in his work, any more
than Clinton violated any laws by getting a blow job, but here, you
are trying to drag Navia into some sort of second-level situation in
which you, a bully and a thug, can "prove" him "dishonest" as you sit
on your fat ass and post post post. Precisely as Bill Clinton was
hounded, and precisely as his unspeakable wife is hounding and
harassing Obama.

This form of self-reflexive negative politics is well past its sell-by
date. Just as in the states we need to get rid of Ms. Clinton and have
an honorable and decent campaign between Obama and McCain, people who
don't play Heathfield-style games, we need to get Heathfield to take a
sabbatical, or stump up a collection to pay him to stay away.

If you think so, then you haven't read about a quarter of the book (over
340 pages). Careless of you.

You force people like Navia to respond and then you drag them in the
mud, over and over again. You are the one at fault and I hope one day
to see the lot of you stinking, rotten, little "bloggers", people who
do nothing except destroy, in the dock of Old Bailey or in an American
court. "Freedom of speech?" Bullshit. You misuse it.

Precisely. Nobody was attacking you, nobody was criticising you, nobody was
*blaming* you for starting out with a compiler. They were simply observing
that you did start out with a compiler, rather than write one from

Navia, don't let him get away with this. He uses a quiet and "factual"
tone when he is trying to destroy people's reputation and good name.
He does so because he's a lower middle class shop-boy and thug without
a reputation or good name to protect, and he resents anybody who does
anything...beyond getting his pals to write a book.

scratch. That doesn't take away anything that you've achieved, and nothing
of the kind has been suggested, and the only person who thinks it has been
is Mr Nilges, whose capacity for getting things wrong is quite possibly

Navia, this man, given his posture here as the Great Authority, has
failed a simple test in C++. This man confuses && and || under stress.
Don't believe a word he says. He resents creative people who have
ideas, and as a nasty little clerk, he loves to list other people's
"errors". He is without courage, or charity, or decency, and don't let
him get you down.

unparalleled in the history of Usenet. Yet you are trying to see this
whole claim (that you did not write the compiler from scratch) as an
attack, and turn it into a fight. Why?



What have I said that is untrue?


Yes, you are free to say whatever you like. Whether what you say is true is
something that people can decide for themselves on the basis of the
observable facts.

I've asked Richard to do as I've done several times. This is to simply
leave these groups in a sabbatical. Richard constantly starts
unnecessary wars by making snide and nasty comments to third parties
about the very basic attributes of people: their competence, decency
and honesty, qualities which people of course need to participate in a
discussion. In 1976, during the hobby-programmer era, these sort of
comments were not made in an atmosphere of sharing and enthusiasm, an
atmosphere that was then exploited and destroyed by corporate forces
and the advent of Thatcher and of Reagan, since the plan was for the
middle classes of America and Britain to be destroyed.

People like Heathfield have done the dirty work of this
transformation. They hate the very idea of authorship and when they
encounter any such claim, they try to destroy the author. They are
thugs and vandals and they need to leave this group so that it can
meet its primary purpose.

 

[spinoza1111]

jacob navia said: [...]
spinoza1111wrote, On 08/05/08 08:51:
<snip>
Navia? Didn't he implement C?
He took a C compiler written by someone else, extended it, added a
debugger and for all I know might have implemented the entire IDE
himself.
This is, I think, a lie at worst.

Your lies are obviously a "neutral description of the facts".
Lies? Are you saying that you *did* write lcc-win32 from scratch? If so,
please make up your mind whether you did or whether you didn't, because
you are on record as saying that you acquired rights to the lcc compiler
and modified it, which is very different from writing lcc-win32 from
scratch. (See below.)

Modifying existing software is often more difficult than writing it
anew.

It is very rare that I can find it in my heart to agree with you, but here
I unhesitatingly concur. It /is/ harder to modify someone else's code than
to write one's own, all else being equal. Nobody has said otherwise, as
far as I know.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Mr Navia modified an existing compiler.
That statement is not intended either to attack or to support him. It
simply describes what happened. He has said as much himself. So why he
continues to deny it is beyond me.

Whoa. This makes no sense:

"He has said as much himself. So why he continues to deny it is beyond
me."

Navia can't "have said as much himself" AND "continually deny" the
same proposition.

My dear boy, I am aware that last January, you rather froze up while
swotting a sparknotes test over logical and and or as implemented in C+
+, but surely you know that in logic, "p || !p" is always true, and
what you assert above, "p && !p" is NEVER true.

I am sure that as chap says in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, chap who rather
reminds me of you, "computers are your fortay".

Which means that the error above is an indication that your psychotic
posting is causing an overwhelm.

I don't suggest people take meds, since I saw basic honesty, decency
and community work better for Nash. I suggest instead that you take a
hol. Go to Spain, go to Gibraltar, go to a match in what you chaps
call football. But for your own sake and lest you make yourself even
more of a complete buffoon, desist for a while.

You have plenty of non-psychotic personality traits I am sure. Since
"in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations, you are an
English man", I am certain you do not torment small animals, for the
English invented the notion of not pulling the ears off mice and cats.
Above, you intelligently and graciously concede my point as to the
difficulty of software maintenance.

Which is why I am concerned that your addiction may have gotten the
better of you, and this is why I counsel and intervene here.

This may explain why lcc-win32 doesn't claim conformance to any standard.

Yeah, and that's why it's useful. It is logically impossible and
pragmatically a waste of time to "standardize" C, and I can prove it:

1. One standardizes why? For portability in the main.
2. But because of aliasing, #include and #define, no C program, no
matter how conformant, can be ported to another platform, or used in a
truly modular, plug-in way without a line by line audit
3. Ergo, argal (as First Gravedigger said in Hamlet), standardization
is a massive waste of time and we can only conclude that the C99
standardization effort was a play-pen for semi-retired and burned out
programmers who couldn't get chicks, like Herb could.

Precisely. He acquired the rights. He did not write the compiler from
scratch.

Nobody disagrees over this fact, nor its interpretation. You concede
above that his task was more and not less difficult than a from
scratch compiler. I can only conclude that with no case, you continue
your nonsense because you're addicted to bullying people who
accomplish something, and to getting the last word.

There, there, Edward. Time for meds?

**** you, Richard: **** you, very much. Your reference to "meds" is
sickening, because "meds" destroy people, including older programmers
hounded out of the profession (no, not me, ass hole: I leave bad
situations) for insisting that they need to be treated as men and not
boys.

Nobody has suggested there was. In fact, until *you* used the word
"plagiarism", it had not even been mentioned.

**** you, Richard Heathfield: **** you very much. You think you've
mastered the snide little accusation but we're seeing through your
games. You need to desist and you need to seek psychotherapy (not
"meds").

The 'quiet and "factual" tone' is inevitable when I'm quietly stating
facts. And I'm not trying to destroy Mr Navia's reputation, or yours, or
indeed anyone's.

Yes, you are. It's time to act like a man, and admit the pain you
cause people with your behavior, and start to change.

I've met a lot of psychotics in the corporation, and they are
characterised by a constant reference to rules which although they
bend them and circumvent them, are narrated as unchangeable in a way
designed to cause psychological disorder in others, by creating an
addictive system, without a memory.

At any time, working on behalf of a barrister, I can prepare, using
simple tools, an analysis of your behavior which shows you
deliberately and with legally actionable malice entering conversations
constituted on mutual recognition and collegial respect, choosing who
you think is the weaker discussant, and then, using oh so restrained
speech, shitting all over that person, his online standing, and his
offline family and employability, with only the most superficial and
casual reference to technical issues, on which your performance on
last January's test show you to have only mediocre standing.

Bullies think that their conduct is unnoticed even as another form of
addict, the alcoholic, believes nobody smells his breath. But I spoke
to a team of international lawyers and programmers at DePaul Univ in
1995, who were using a data base to analyze specific instances of
extreme bullying (genocide, in fact) in Bosnia during the 1992..1995
war by thugs who you remind me of, and these people have helped to
nail bigtime operators to the wall. You and the rest of your ilk can
laugh as did the murderer Arkan laughed, but the mill of the gods is
grinding away.

You can stop possible legal actions by acting with a basic decency I
know you possess, and simply taking a break as I have, enabling
lurkers and others to start a new conversation.

For ten years I've been trying to help C programmers to become better C
programmers, not just via the book but also via Usenet and IRC. In those
ten years, I /have/, in fact, acquired a reputation - and one that is in
my view undeserved - as a C expert. Actually, I'm not a C expert and I
don't think I have ever claimed to be one - but yes, okay, I know C pretty
well. If I criticise the content of some of Jacob Navia's articles, it is
because they manifest a demonstrable misunderstanding of the C language, a
misunderstanding that can be verified by consultation of the document that
defines the language. (The particular section to consult does, of course,
vary from case to case.)

The C99 standards document simply does not constitute any such
definition. The language was not defined to be portable. All Dennis
and Brian wanted was a cool programming language for the PDP-10, and
in 1971, programmers like them simply had no conception of the sorts
of issues that arise as regards portability. Issues such as lazy
versus nonlazy or and and were being ignored, perhaps not by Dennis
and Brian, but in the general field, and Dennis and Brian simply had
no way of foreseeing how C would be used.

The C99 effort was a fraud using public funds and a precursor of the
shit Halliburton pulled in Iraq, since the industry simply ignored it,
because a conformant compiler would not compile 90% of legacy code,
and since C is so very out of date, that's what a compiler is needed
for!

Java and C Sharp have conclusively demonstrated that portability
requires a runtime virtual machine, because post-RISC, computer
architects are really not interested in building language-runtime-
specific architectures, because these destroy pipelining, and as
computers approach the end of Moore's Law, deep parallelism and
pipelining are absolutely essential...along with trustable code.

C has no place in this world.

I'll put on a custom-made suit from Bobby's Tailors in Kowloon. I'll
go to an American and British courtroom, and I'll serve as a witness
taller than you, more fit than you, and way better looking (think Bond
clone, mate), and you'll go down in flames, boyo, if your treatment of
Schildt or Navia or me goes to a libel case. I will demonstrate to the
Law Lords on their woolsacked arses that your case has no standing,
because it rests on a mere clerk's understanding.

I am very glad that C compiler writers are around, and very glad to use
their compilers. I'm sure they do a much better job than I would. I'm not

I really hate you when you simulate Uriah Heep, Richard, so cut the
crap.

a compiler writer (although of course I /have/ written compilers - i.e.
translators of code from one program language to another - and I've also
written an assembler and a debugger). But that isn't where my strengths
are - and I've certainly never written a C compiler.

But neither, it seems, has Jacob Navia. He has taken an /existing/
compiler, which appears to have been a C compiler originally, and turned
it into a non-C compiler - a compiler that doesn't claim conformance to
*any* ISO C Standard.

C is defined by actual use, since it is impossible to standardize a
language with alias, #include and #define, and minimal block
structure. Navia's compiler, in my experience, generates usable and
correct programs when used with the due diligence any competent
programmer exercises on any platform, including Java and managed C
sharp.

Your position is absurd! It is foolish! C is the union set of the
languages compiled by actual compilers. Only Java and managed C sharp
can be defined independent of implementation because in Java and in
managed C sharp you provably cannot get gay, and write obfuscated code
that compiles. This is computer science, boyo, and a matter of what
can be mathematically demonstrated.

That's a lie. I don't use the word "lie" often, but I'm using it now. When
you make this claim, you are lying, impure and unsimple.

No, I am not. You bollixed your answer because you confused && and
||.

Mr Navia already thinks I'm a liar, it seems. So do our resident trolls.
But the majority of readers of comp.lang.c are less easily persuaded. I

Yeah, but your metrics as to statistically based truth are all fucked
up.

People assume, when they enter a usenet group, that there are more
contributors than there usually are. Even absent sock puppetry, the
sheer volume subliminally persuades them they are interacting with a
community large enough to factor out psychoses, and since the custom
is to yap about "meds", nonconformists constitute, in the mental
image, the outlier cases that don't contribute to the consensus.

But in fact, as was the case on www.lamma.com.HK, a very small number
of core "contributors" (contributors here of BS and not of code, the
game being to screech at code like little baby girls when it scares
you) in fact set the tone, and since most people have a life, these
core "contributors" generally speaking are deficient people in many
regards.

Their deviance is normalized, so you can take your "majority" and
shove it, my dear Richard.

have helped hundreds, if not thousands, of people with C programming here
in comp.lang.c over the last ten years, and you'll need to work very hard
indeed to convince /them/ not to believe a word I say.

It has long been the case in programming that pseudo-savants can be
useful idiots. As Gerald Weinberg pointed out, programmers have long
had the most deficient of their coworkers look at code to find flaws,
because a child saw that the emperor was naked. Bug-finding is an
important skill, but it is also a negative skill which people with
anger management issues overuse.

And for every newbie you've helped there are many conversations which
you've entered uninvited in order to tell one of the discussants that
the other discussant cannot be trusted. In meat space, this is known
as being a little sneak and in honorable meat spaces would have of old
gotten you sorted out.

The difference between us is that, when you take your occasional leaves of
absence, Usenet's S/N ratio jumps significantly.

**** you, dear Richard: **** you very, very much.

 

[Walter Banks]

spinoza1111 wrote:

Mr. Nigles don't let the facts get in the way of a good personal
attack with a side bar of rant.

3. Ergo, argal (as First Gravedigger said in Hamlet), standardization
is a massive waste of time and we can only conclude that the C99
standardization effort was a play-pen for semi-retired and burned out
programmers who couldn't get chicks, like Herb could.

Before making definitive statements actually check the facts
about who you are talking about and their objectives and their
social status. Factually report back.

All Dennis
and Brian wanted was a cool programming language for the PDP-10, and
in 1971, programmers like them simply had no conception of the sorts
of issues that arise as regards portability.

Do a fact check even Wikipedia had this right.

The C99 effort was a fraud using public funds and a precursor of the
shit Halliburton pulled in Iraq, since the industry simply ignored it,
because a conformant compiler would not compile 90% of legacy code,
and since C is so very out of date, that's what a compiler is needed
for!

You are accusing me of fraud with public funds. C99 standardization
was not done with public funds. Independently verify that this is a fact

Walter..

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111said:




Again, I am forced to agree with you. That's twice in one day.

Translation: you're losing this one.

Tell *him* that. He has stated publicly that he modified a compiler that he
did not himself originally write, but when /I/ said the same thing (i.e.
that he modified a compiler that he did not himself originally write) he
called me a liar.

You trust to aliteracy and insensitivity to content. He called you a
liar because you start these heartbreaking threads, these wastes of
spirit in these expanses of utter shame, by consistently INITIATING
questions about your fellow human being's fundamental decency and
credibility, based on no meaningful research, in a way meant to cause
pain to others, and frivolously.

Rubbish. The truth is that you dug up a massively broken C++ test which you
seemed to think had some validity, and several people (myself included)
pointed out many flaws with it. During that process, I was so busy

Actually, teachers in my community, where students consistently
outperform students in the UK and the USA, trust spark notes and use
it heavily.

documenting an error with one particular line of code that I misread

No excuses, please. "I misread" MEANT that you made a mistake about
something utterly fundamental: the difference between AND and OR.

another. It happens. The reason you try to make so much capital out of it
is that you have hardly any opportunities to point out my mistakes,
because I make so few. (Actually, I make plenty, but you wouldn't spot
most of them in a million years because you don't know diddly squat.)

Another elementary error, which along with your January "misreading",
the above logical contradiction you posted to and have admitted: "you
don't know diddly squat" is a double negative having the literal
meaning that I know a shitload of squat where "diddly" == 0. Even in
demotic speech, it's "you know diddly squat" and this error indicates
a signal lack of logic or diligence that quite apart from your
constant incivility DISQUALIFIES you from being the resident
authority, and DISQUALIFIES you from trying to judge and destroy
others.

It has been done. Therefore, your proof is flawed.

Words, my Lord, words, words. Clive and his little friends wrote a
document. A white paper. Kitty litter box liner. Navia created a
compiler.

Wrong. Jacob Navia has called me a liar for stating it. We may therefore
presume that /he/ disagrees with it. (He also agrees with it, of course.)

You are completely confused what with your double negatives, your
logical contradictions, and your compounded lies which present your
limited intellect with its own variant of the Halting problem. At this
point, the thug and bully of course tries to make his confusion a
general miasma.

"So act that your action may be recommended as a general law". Kant
enjoins actions which undercut their own basis. The lie bootstraps
over truth making the distinction between the truth and the lie
unclear, and eventually no-one trusts the liar any more than they
trust the honest man, and the Liar's own stock in trade itself becomes
worthless.

All you wanted to do was make a false charge of dishonesty stick. If
everyone tries to do this, and this filthy little newsgroup is a
Kantian laboratory in that regard, then at the latter day the Liar is
hounded out of town babbling as you babble, trying to bring down the
general curse of Babel on everyone's head.

If the Big Fat Liar of this newsgroup, and that would be you, my dear,
dear, Richard is brought low he falls down in a swoon and speaks as
you speak in tongues, cursing everyone, telling them that no matter
how many best-selling computer books they write, no matter how many
compilers they create, they are no better than he.

"They have brought down deep Heaven on their heads" - C. S. Lewis

No, I didn't concede that. I agreed that it is true. That isn't the same as
conceding the point, because I never claimed otherwise.

You don't know the meanings of the words you babble, so quit
explaining them to me.

Take your medicine.

Very, very much. Again: I saw Nash get better when he didn't take his
meds. I saw my uncle get worse when he did. HAVE YOU ANY IDEA JUST HOW
OFFENSIVE YOU ARE when you say "take your meds"? If you do not, you're
one hell of an insensitive bastard. If not, you act with almost
criminal malice.

[That's XOR FYI, you lout.]

No, Edward. Medicine will make you better. Take your medicine. It's good
for you.




See what happens when you don't take your medicine? You lose your temper
and start swearing. Seriously, it's not good to disobey doctor's orders.

My uncle, a personal physician to President Johnson, died because he
was wrongly medicated yet obeyed his doctors. HAVE YOU ANY IDEA WHAT
OFFENSE YOU GIVE?

See me in Paris. I won't knock you down, I give you my word as a
gentleman. We'll always have Paris. Seriously, this has gone far
enough.

No, I'm not. Making a statement that a person did not write a particular
compiler from scratch, when they did not write that compiler from scratch
and did not even /claim/ to have written that compiler from scratch, is
not an attack on anyone's reputation.

Yes it is. You act with malice to paint a picture misusing newsgroups.

ROTFL! How many people have you threatened with lawsuits /this/ week?

FYI, chump, the lawsuit for the 1993 attack on the WTC has just been
settled, in part. We're not all nasty little clerks who are given only
unimportant and short-term assignments because of incompetence at the
long range.

Yes, it does.


The C90 Standard has been implemented on practically every mainstream
platform in existence. Code strictly to that Standard, and your code will
be portable. Code in /fairly/ strict adherence to that Standard, and your
code is likely to be fairly portable.


Careful - your ignorance is showing again.



Yeah, right.


If you try it, you'll have to pay my costs, which I will take special pains
to make absolutely colossal.

Gee, can't you read? I said I was going to win. You'll pay my costs,
including business class Cathay Pacific to and from London. Don't
worry, I never travel in first.

We have an excellent working description of that union: ISO/IEC 9899:1990.



I refer those who care to the relevant article, message ID
<[email protected]>, where I pointed out a
significant number of flaws in the test that demonstrated the fact that it
had been set by someone who didn't know the language very well.




There, there, Edward - keep taking the tablets.

Under British law, you are causing me actionable distress because I
have a (deceased) family member who was medicated for psychological
difficulties, and you are daily compounding your potential legal
problems, boyo.

 

[Nick Keighley]

Whoa. This makes no sense:

"He has said as much himself. So why he continues to deny it is beyond
me."

Navia can't "have said as much himself" AND "continually deny" the
same proposition.

well he did "say as much himself" and deny it. It's not sensible
but he did do it.

I don't suggest people take meds

I don't think this is a good idea withut cause, but then calling
people
liars without good cause is a bad idea as well.

[...] It is logically impossible and
pragmatically a waste of time to "standardize" C, and I can prove it:

1. One standardizes why? For portability in the main.
2. But because of aliasing, #include and #define, no C program, no
matter how conformant, can be ported to another platform, or used in a
truly modular, plug-in way without a line by line audit

this is just untrue. I have ported programs from one platform
to another with just a compile. Admittedly small "filter" type
applications. I have seen substantial programs (500kloc) ported
between platforms without a "line by line audit".

Nobody disagrees over this fact, nor its interpretation. You concede
above that his task was more and not less difficult than a from
scratch compiler. I can only conclude that with no case, you continue
your nonsense because you're addicted to bullying people who
accomplish something, and to getting the last word.

I think this sort of "Ladybird Book of Freud" ameteur psychoanalysis
is a mistake.

[Ladybird are a series of childrens books]

<expetives deleted> Your reference to "meds" is
sickening, because "meds" destroy people, including older programmers
hounded out of the profession (no, not me, ass hole: I leave bad
situations) for insisting that they need to be treated as men and not
boys.

obviously a bit of a sensitive subject...

<expetives deleted> You think you've
mastered the snide little accusation but we're seeing through your
games. You need to desist and you need to seek psychotherapy (not
"meds").

well why do you start slinging the plagerism about?
Is this your problem. You misread Richard to be accusing
Jacob of plagerism. Go back and re-read the thread...

Bullies think that their conduct is unnoticed even as another form of
addict, the alcoholic, believes nobody smells his breath. But I spoke
to a team of international lawyers and programmers at DePaul Univ in
1995, who were using a data base to analyze specific instances of
extreme bullying (genocide, in fact) in Bosnia during the 1992..1995
war by thugs who you remind me of, and these people have helped to
nail bigtime operators to the wall. You and the rest of your ilk can
laugh as did the murderer Arkan laughed, but the mill of the gods is
grinding away.

if you can't tell the difference between posting to a technical
news group and taking part in a genocide then you *really* need
to get a sense of perspective!

The C99 effort was a fraud using public funds and a precursor of the
shit Halliburton pulled in Iraq, since the industry simply ignored it,

this is just bonkers! How on earth can can you link an
international language standard with the invasion of Iraq!

Java and C Sharp have conclusively demonstrated that portability
requires a runtime virtual machine, because post-RISC, computer
architects are really not interested in building language-runtime-
specific architectures, because these destroy pipelining, and as
computers approach the end of Moore's Law, deep parallelism and
pipelining are absolutely essential...along with trustable code.

yes you can write portable programs in C. You recompile for
different archictures. The smarts are in the compilers (including
lcc-win). You just take a word salad of technical gibberish
and wrap it around your ill-formed opinions.

C has no place in this world.

name a modern architecture that doesn't have a C compiler.

<snip>

and then I just got bored.

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111said:



Not at all. If we're in agreement, we're both winning. The things we've
agreed on so far are: (a) all else being equal, it's harder to modify
someone else's software than to modify software one wrote oneself; (b)
Jacob Navia's apparent position on whether he wrote lcc-win32 from scratch
is self-contradictory and makes no sense.

You're babbling in a distinctly ungracious effort to keep a
conversation going. Whaddayou, lonely?

There, there, Edward - you got it wrong again (no surprise there). So let
me point out that (a) I did not start this thread; (b) even if I had
(which I didn't), starting a thread does not a priori make one a liar.
Telling lies makes one a liar. Look up the word "liar" in a dictionary.


You think it's credible to maintain two mutually contradictory positions?
Interesting.

Just lay off the guy, creep. He created a compiler, he did not write
one. It's obscene that you should babble on at this point.

The fact that your teachers trust Spark Notes does not surprise me. But
anyone who trusts Spark Notes (if their C++ test is anything to go by)
should not be trusted with students, and the performance of those students
is highly suspect if it is scored on the basis of tests set by incompetent
people such as whoever wrote the Spark Notes C++ test.

I am very familiar with the lack of education and general culture of
computer programmers, many of whom aren't man enough not to blame
themselves and are, in my experience, too ready to blame teachers and
educational resources.

This is because commencing, in Chicago, in the 1960s, corporations in
order to staff their unworking "mainframes" started to lower standards
for entry. In the case of IBM a simple military-sourced "aptitude"
test was used and Time-Life, headquartered in Chicago at the time,
accepted high school graduates and dropouts as trainees.

Of course, this enabled many people to be upwardly mobile...until they
hit a much lower glass ceiling women complain about.

Most of these programmers are so quick to criticise the content of
courses and tests so as to make testing them or their kids a
meaningless act since they so game and criticise the test that nothing
is measured.

They don't know that modern testing dates from a progressive demand
for the career open to talents (a demand of the French revolution) and
they don't know that a university education in France, given a test,
is free as in free beer, something that for all its faults prevents
the system that obtains in America.

This is where the absence or meaninglessness of testing means that the
places and degrees go, in a reversion to barbarism, to loudmouths,
bullies, and thugs *und seinem Kinder*, reproducing, in America of the
present day, a reversion to an 18th or 17th century America, a pirate
haven with its own pirate charms but lethal to intellect along with
people of color, and run by loudmouths, bullies and thugs, with your
own country trundling after.

It was of you distinctly unsporting to so immediately criticise even a
bad test. All tests suck by definition because life sucks, and our job
is to make it suck as little as possible.

Again, I invite people to read the original article:



You mean you *do* know diddly squat? Well, there's a thing.


As any schoolboy knows, double negatives are commonly (and acceptably) used
for emphasis. Of course, I do realise that you don't aspire to such dizzy
academic heights, which is why I've explained it here.

Not when the correct as in statistically preponderant usage of the
idiom "you know diddly squat" doesn't use the double negative. An
idiom is an incantation which must not be changed unless of course
you're a dork.

No, he didn't. He himself says that he didn't.



Actually, no - I was pointing out the falsity of the charge of dishonesty.


You just insulted your entire readership. Not bright.

Not in the got to get ahead sense, no. But as I've said, you've made
it one.

 

[spinoza1111]

Whoa. This makes no sense:

"He has said as much himself. So why he continues to deny it is beyond
me."

Navia can't "have said as much himself" AND "continually deny" the
same proposition.

well he did "say as much himself" and deny it. It's not sensible
but he did do it.

I don't suggest people take meds

I don't think this is a good idea withut cause, but then calling
people
liars without good cause is a bad idea as well.

[...] It is logically impossible and
pragmatically a waste of time to "standardize" C, and I can prove it:

1. One standardizes why? For portability in the main.
2. But because of aliasing, #include and #define, no C program, no
matter how conformant, can be ported to another platform, or used in a
truly modular, plug-in way without a line by line audit

this is just untrue. I have ported programs from one platform
to another with just a compile. Admittedly small "filter" type
applications. I have seen substantial programs (500kloc) ported
between platforms without a "line by line audit".

Nobody disagrees over this fact, nor its interpretation. You concede
above that his task was more and not less difficult than a from
scratch compiler. I can only conclude that with no case, you continue
your nonsense because you're addicted to bullying people who
accomplish something, and to getting the last word.

I think this sort of "Ladybird Book of Freud" ameteur psychoanalysis
is a mistake.

[Ladybird are a series of childrens books]

<expetives deleted> Your reference to "meds" is
sickening, because "meds" destroy people, including older programmers
hounded out of the profession (no, not me, ass hole: I leave bad
situations) for insisting that they need to be treated as men and not
boys.

obviously a bit of a sensitive subject...

<expetives deleted> You think you've
mastered the snide little accusation but we're seeing through your
games. You need to desist and you need to seek psychotherapy (not
"meds").

well why do you start slinging the plagerism about?
Is this your problem. You misread Richard to be accusing
Jacob of plagerism. Go back and re-read the thread...

Bullies think that their conduct is unnoticed even as another form of
addict, the alcoholic, believes nobody smells his breath. But I spoke
to a team of international lawyers and programmers at DePaul Univ in
1995, who were using a data base to analyze specific instances of
extreme bullying (genocide, in fact) in Bosnia during the 1992..1995
war by thugs who you remind me of, and these people have helped to
nail bigtime operators to the wall. You and the rest of your ilk can
laugh as did the murderer Arkan laughed, but the mill of the gods is
grinding away.

if you can't tell the difference between posting to a technical
news group and taking part in a genocide then you *really* need
to get a sense of perspective!

The C99 effort was a fraud using public funds and a precursor of the
shit Halliburton pulled in Iraq, since the industry simply ignored it,

this is just bonkers! How on earth can can you link an
international language standard with the invasion of Iraq!

Because I've read a daily newspaper "of record" since 1981. The
Thatcher, Reagan and Bush administrations have privatised government,
and used public monies to enrich corporations. It appears to me that
the C99 standard was a pork-barrel boondoggle for vendors of C
compilers that was meant to stop a switch to Java and later .Net, by
convincing software managers that C was "standard" and therefore
reliable and adequate.

 

[James Dow Allen]

[Nilges] may well be capable of
adequate work when he takes his meds.

Your reference to "meds" is rather offensive.

I apologize. You should realize, however that many of
your posts are *quite* exasperating: long drifting monologues
with, eventually, accusations that posters in these comp groups
have made anti-Semitic remarks! If there really have been such
anti-Semitic remarks, please cite them.

Navia? Didn't he write a C compiler? And am I perhaps not the only
person to accomplish a thing or two in the real world, only to
encounter a shit storm of abuse from people stealing time from their
employers working as incompetent programmers?

A few days ago, I presented Mr. navia with a simple test puzzle
about a C compiler. He lacked either the competence or the
intellectual curiosity to cope with that problem. "Innocent
until proven guilty" is a good rule, but often the opposite
seems more effective when dealing with some of the blowhards
on Usenet.

And speaking of "offensive", lumping me with "incompetent programmers"
... "stealing time from their employers" is offensive on multiple
grounds.
I'm self-employed; you can estimate my competence from my resume.
I have thirty-two U.S. patents in algorithm design. How many do you
have?

James Dow Allen

 

[James Dow Allen]

Has anyone noticed how much hypocrisy there is in
some Usenet groups? (As just one example, many
posters celebrate the bug whereby some old news readers
use opening '--' as a discard signal (even though
opening '--' is a common idiom for those of us used
to writing LaTeX input) but refuse to omit trailing
punctuation on URL's, because *their* old-fashioned
newsreaders can't access a URL, whether properly
formatted or not.)

I think Mr. Falconer has killfiled Google Groups
posters in general as well as me personally, and,
although he's admitted his killfilter is defective,
he probably won't see this unless someone else quotes it.
Still, I will respond to him personally.

Chuck Falconer wrote [paraphrased]:

I want to PLONK (killfile) this guy, but don't
know how to do it except one group at a time.
This is embarrassing, but I'm going to waste everyone's
time to tell the world all about my inadequacies
because, to quote a Buddhist proverb, nobody thinks
their own farts stink.

Although Chuck's post has no clear discernible query,
I will assume it's on-topic here and that Chuck needs
help writing a kill-filter program. Please post your
present effort, Chuck; experts here will be happy to help
debug your homework problems, but need you to show
a sincere attempt. To save time, try compiling with
a "-Wall" option and do pursue any warnings the
compiler reports. Include appropriate header files.
Oh ... *don't* use strcpy() -- any good programmer in
these newsgroups will be able to code from scratch, in a
minute or less, a safe version of strcpy() for you.

While I would *never* want to accuse a fellow Usenetter
of posting to the Wrong Group(tm), two other possibilities
did occur to me, other than a request for programming help.

Chuck:
(1) Perhaps you have devoted fans eagerly awaiting news
of all your PLONK decisions -- even the redundant
PLONKs necessitated by your buggy killfilter. In
this case I'm sure you will have no trouble getting enough
votes to start a talk.plonks.falconer. I'll vote for it.

(2) It also occurred to me you might be reaching out
to make a confession, and hope for absolution, either
for the bugs in your killfilter software, or for a
general lack of social grace. To save you the effort
of finding a more appropriate ng (or priest or minister)
for confessions, let me repeat the advice I gave in a
recent thread: Contact a stress-reduction therapist in
your area. If you live near the metropolitan areas of
New York or California, you will have no trouble finding
a therapist who specializes in the sorts of punishment
and absolution therapies you seem to require.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Interesting that your response occurred in a thread
titled "Wit-to-whine ratio". Perhaps we Scotsmen
have an abnormal sense of humor, but I detected
little or no wit in your post until I edited it
on your behalf. And even ignoring posts by the
Chuckie_B anti-top-posting bot -- over which you
presumably have no control -- I doubt if I'm alone
in finding most of your posts boring or whining.

As just one example, there were several recent messages
in another thread that seemed to debate the relative
merits of "i <= 200000" versus "i < 200001". (Or
was it "i < 200000"? -- I'm afraid epistemology
isn't my strong suit, and I got lost in this deep
philosophical debate.)

I've read many messages by Mr. Falconer over the decades.
The few with semi-technical content are mostly toutings of
The_Hash_library_which_is_better_than_gnu's_hsearch(tm)
(even for problems where hash tables are inappropriate!).
I guess no one's had the heart to mention to Mr. Falconer
that any high school student who can't write a hash routine
better than gnu's has no future as a programmer.

Chuck? Speaking of
The_Hash_library_which_is_better_than_gnu's_hsearch(tm)
I mentioned several years ago that this code foolishly
wastes time with an inane and unnecessary division on
*every* reprobe! Have you fixed this bug yet?
(Obviously accuracy is more important than efficiency,
but if you can't find an easy safe alternative to that
division ... well, let's not resort to abusive language.)


James Dow Allen

PS: Several posters in these groups seem to have memorized
a few platitudes which they trot out on all occasions;
that's why I avoided a round of rejoinders by including
the "accuracy is more important than efficiency" truism
above. I think it was Chuck himself who recently deprecated
a suggested beginner's test program fragment:

s = t = 7;
s++;
printf("%d %d\n", s, t);

on grounds that C's mysteries cannot be resolved by such tests!

(In a recent thread in another group, a student was asking
about worst-case inputs for QuickSort, and someone recommended
a *code profiler* to understand why one input set was slower
than another! Perhaps this was the same guy who responded
"Use a profiler to see if DCT speed matters" when someone
queried abut speeding up the transform code inside JPEG.)