A note on Peter Seebach's vicious little tirade

[Chris McDonald]

As Nash and I discovered ....

Ah good, you managed to drop Nash's name again....

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

Just because you know jackshit about McCarthyism, Stalinism, the
second-order relationship of the two, or Naziism don't mean I don't,
Bubba.

And in your mind, writing a book review is equivalent to this.

WTF did schildt do, KFC?

None of the people actually involved in this -- Schildt, Seebach,
Feather -- have done a thing or said a word about it for the last ten
years, except in response to your obsessive rehashing of the subject
and vicious personal attacks -- on people's character, intelligence,
politics, sexuality -- trying to get them to pay attention to you.

Are you really so lonely that engaging in Usenet flame wars is the
only social interaction you have?

Well, the group can survive the sport shoe and porn spammers, it can
survive you.

 

[spinoza1111]

I basically agree -- which is embarassing because I'm pretty sure there's at
least one such error in my shell programming book which I have not yet set
up the errata list for.

Gods bodykins man, better. Vse euerie man after his desart, and who
should scape whipping: vse them after your own Honor and Dignity. The
lesse they deserue, the more merit is in your bountie. Take them in.

(Shakespeare, Hamlet)

 

[spinoza1111]

To not weigh in too heavily on this. The real issue is Schildt's book
was promoted as a reference on C99 and his authority was the
contributions he made to the SC22/WG14 on C99. Both are not
true. At a point during the evolution of C that there was a real need
for clarity it didn't help.

The secondary problem is the book's publisher and author
don't seem to care about the errata.

w..- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

This is untrue, and it is an example of why it's important not to
trigger viral rumors as has Seebach.

C: The Complete Reference was published BEFORE C99. Herb's book on the
Standard was published later and was attacked separately by another
member of the standards committee with a similar interest in trashing
individuals so as to divert attention from what was being done: the
protection of private investment in bad C compilers. Feather acted
because Peter had shown that Schildt was a safe target for bullies, is
my guess.

 

[spinoza1111]

It probably did originate as a typo, but it should never have
survived to appear in a published book.  If it was a typo in
Schildt's original code, it should have been caught as soon as he
compiled and ran the code -- and there's no excuse for not doing so
for code intended for a published book.

It's possible that Schildt's code was correct and the apostrophes
were lost later, perhaps in typesetting.  I don't know enough about
the process of publishing books to know how plausible that is.
If that's the case, then I can understand the error appearing in
the published book -- but then there needs to be an errata list
from either the author or the publisher.

While Apress and I published errata on my books, this is not a
universal practice for the very good reason that people don't read
such lists. Instead, careful and critical readers learn from the
author's Homeric nods and treat his clarity (something admitted by
Schildt's enemies) as more important.

And, as I have said, no programmer takes printed code seriously to the
extent of blindly running it unless he's a complete buffoon. Are you a
complete buffoon, or only part of one?

 

[spinoza1111]

Ah good, you managed to drop Nash's name again....

Right. And the point was highly Germane, as in Sophie, for Nash had
correctly calculated a limit value by subtracting one from the 31st
power of two. The Microsoft compiler treated this differently from the
Borland compiler, and I'd already learned, while doing in-house
compiler development at Bell Northern Research, that calculating
values at compile time in a constant operation requires those values
to calculated outside of default precision limits.

You're shitting repeatedly on Schildt's name. I conclude that it's
venial of me to namedrop benignly in response to people who shit on
his family, especially because most of you probably have never worked
outside of some cheesy bank, nor traveled, nor read widely. For you,
knowledge is a conspiracy theory, reality is TV, and life experience
is banned "original research" as if we're nothing more than jurors
selected for our utter banality. Which you are, which I am not.

 

[spinoza1111]

Richard Heathfield wrote:
[...] Most people should not be let anywhere
near C. In fact, most people should not be let anywhere near a
computer.
In today's world that would require an Amish-like lifestyle.
There's computers in our cars, our kitchen appliances, our TV sets,
and our telephones.

I know people I would not trust in a car, people I would not trust
in a kitchen, people I would not trust with a TV, and definitely
people I would like kept away from telephones!

<grin> You have a daughter too, huh?

But mostly I was referring to hosted systems (eg PCs, mainframes,
etc).

<snip>

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line vacant - apply within

 

[spinoza1111]

Richard Heathfield wrote:
[...] Most people should not be let anywhere
near C. In fact, most people should not be let anywhere near a
computer.
In today's world that would require an Amish-like lifestyle.
There's computers in our cars, our kitchen appliances, our TV sets,
and our telephones.

I know people I would not trust in a car, people I would not trust
in a kitchen, people I would not trust with a TV, and definitely
people I would like kept away from telephones!

<grin> You have a daughter too, huh?

Ham. For if the Sun breed Magots in a dead dogge, being a good kissing
Carrion===
Haue you a daughter?
Pol. I haue my Lord.
Ham. Let her not walke i'th Sunne: Conception is a blessing, but not
as your daughter may conceiue. Friend looke too't.

(Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Part of the problem here is something I shall have to call patriarchal
hysteria: the fear that one's daughter, like Ophelia, might be sending
Hamlet sexy messages on SMS is linked to the fear that some longhaired
man might be able to publish books "full of errors" while one can only
publish on Google Groups.

The fact is that men are still biologically filled with instinct to be
patriarchs, but deprived by the corporation of the ability. The result
is scapegoating and Fundamentalism, here in the minor key of C
fundamentalism, elsewhere Jesus-walloping and Islamic fundamentalism.

 

[spinoza1111]

This is untrue, and it is an example of why it's important not to
trigger viral rumors as has Seebach.

C: The Complete Reference was published BEFORE C99. Herb's book on the
Standard was published later and was attacked separately by another
member of the standards committee with a similar interest in trashing
individuals so as to divert attention from what was being done: the
protection of private investment in bad C compilers. Feather acted
because Peter had shown that Schildt was a safe target for bullies, is
my guess.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

That's enough...this is a waste of spirit in an expense of shame.
Richard Heathfield, don't you EVER take a vacation? Still a pompous
stuffed shirt, Keith Thompson. Colonel Harlan, hoss, illegitimi non
carborundum. Peter, grow up.

All are welcome to my blog palace at any time. Yeah, Harlan, Kaintuck,
you will be judged by me. There, and there only.

 

[Chris M. Thomasson]

the errata list for.

Gods bodykins man, better. Vse euerie man after his desart, and who
should scape whipping: vse them after your own Honor and Dignity. The
lesse they deserue, the more merit is in your bountie. Take them in.

(Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Good versus pure 100% horrible cheating evil:

 

[Chris M. Thomasson]

Good versus pure 100% horrible cheating evil:

spinoza1111... Would Seebs be the dragon, or the germ? According to you of
course!

 

[Moi]

In a free society, no government, not even a powerful private entity
(such as a manipulated viral Internet opinion) has the right to claim
that a book's errors will have pernicious effect. This is because free
citizens in a free society will do as I did in January 1970 when I

float f;
printf("sizeof f=%f\n", sizeof f);

My guess is that uninitialized readers (like Schild's)
will be *very* confused by the above lines.
But as a professional teacher you'll of course know better.

HTH,
AvK

 

[James Kuyper]

Colonel Harlan Sanders wrote:
....

Well, the group can survive the sport shoe and porn spammers, it can
survive you.

I'm not so sure about that; I don't see anyone responding to the sport
shoe and porn spammers, but for some reason many people (like you) are
responding to this guy.

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

Colonel Harlan Sanders wrote:
...

I'm not so sure about that; I don't see anyone responding to the sport
shoe and porn spammers, but for some reason many people (like you) are
responding to this guy.

Point taken.
However, I'm trying to dissuade people from taking the bait.
If he wasn't exciting dozens of replies for his deliberately
provocative posts I wouldn't even do that.
As it is, after my summing up I was about to retire anyway.

I wish that Heathfield could step back and see how he's being played.
Knowing he will always respond is probably a major reason Spinoza
keeps haunting this group.
But his privilege to post as he wishes.

 

[Chris McDonald]

You're shitting repeatedly on Schildt's name. I conclude that it's
venial of me to namedrop benignly in response to people who shit on
his family, especially because most of you probably have never worked
outside of some cheesy bank, nor traveled, nor read widely. For you,
knowledge is a conspiracy theory, reality is TV, and life experience
is banned "original research" as if we're nothing more than jurors
selected for our utter banality. Which you are, which I am not.

You'll observe (it's not difficult, if you bother) that I made no mention
of, or reference to, Shildt's name, nor his family, nor his book, so
it's very unclear how I am "shitting repeatedly on Schildt's name".
You're shitting repeatedly on the Internet.

You do not drop Nash's name benignly; you drop it frequently in the false
hope that it will give your dross some credence. It does not. I've read
no statement that Nash was particularly advanced with his C programming,
so the fact that someone helped him with C is no more amazing than the
fact that many c.l.c. readers help others with C everyday.

 

[Richard Bos]

Point taken.
However, I'm trying to dissuade people from taking the bait.

....while going for it hook, line and sinker yourself.

Well done; mucho congratulationes.

Richard

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> "Page 163
> You may also declare main() as void if it does not return a value.
> Specifically untrue. ANSI mandates two declarations for main, and says that
> main may have declarations compatible with those. Both return int."
>
> My K&R2 uses "main()" yet is highly thought of. Trivial.

You did not know that when no return type is given it defaults to int?

 

[jameskuyper]

You did not know that when no return type is given it defaults to int?

He might be unaware of that rule because it's no longer true in C99.
Of course, even when that rule applied, it was a bad idea to take
advantage of it, for precisely the same reasons that the rule has
since been removed. K&R2 was written before there was much awareness
of the fact that it was a bad idea.