Re: Seeking computer-programming job (Sunnyvale, CA)

[Brian - qbg]

On Jun 1, 12:22 pm, (e-mail address removed) wrote:
-see above-

Now that I think about it, the output of a macro is not text, it is a
parse tree, which then goes straight to the compiler.  Same as in my
example, the `() form is never represented as text, it goes to the
EVAL as a parse tree.

For code that comes from the user, it goes through the reader to
become a parse tree, [then macro substitutions], then to the compiler.

So the macro can put in references to symbols, the names of which do
not have valid represetations in user code.  I think that partitions
user symbols apart from GENSYM symbols, so that's why GENSYM symbols
used in macros cannot collide with user written code.

Basically...

This is mostly correct; because #:G1 is not interned, when #:G1 is
read again the reader returns a different symbol. Macros work on the
list structure of the code so they can easily put the same symbol in
multiple locations, which does as one expects. Because GENSYM creates
and returns a fresh, uninterned symbol, the symbol will be different
than all of the existing symbols, and will never[1] be returned from
READ as long as it is not interned.

I'll note that you can fix your code from a previous post:
(progn (setq #1=#:G1801 'test) (print #1#) (terpri))
By using the syntax for circular structures, you can the same #:G1801
symbol appear in both locations, and it works as expected (this is
essentially what macros do).

[1]: Well, if you have a reference to the symbol you could return it
using read time evaluation, but this is a non-issue as read time
precedes macroexpansion time, so the symbol generated by the macro
doesn't exist when the macro call is read in...

 

[Series Expansion]

Kindergarten really has been a great time!!
Well, now your incoherence is satisfactorily explained: you are
apparently far too young to have mastered coherence yet.
You see, if somebody is so full of himself [rest of obviously
off-topic post deleted unread]

These tiresome personal attacks do not constitute rational arguments
in favor of either Lisp or Java, java.oke.

Since you're impenetrable to rational arguments [rest of obviously
off-topic post deleted unread]

These tiresome personal attacks do not constitute rational arguments
in favor of either Lisp or Java, Paul.

 

[Series Expansion]

On Jun 1, 12:22 pm, (e-mail address removed) wrote:
-see above-

Now that I think about it, the output of a macro is not text, it is a
parse tree, which then goes straight to the compiler.  Same as in my
example, the `() form is never represented as text, it goes to the
EVAL as a parse tree.

For code that comes from the user, it goes through the reader to
become a parse tree, [then macro substitutions], then to the compiler.

So the macro can put in references to symbols, the names of which do
not have valid represetations in user code.  I think that partitions
user symbols apart from GENSYM symbols, so that's why GENSYM symbols
used in macros cannot collide with user written code.

It can only work, though, if the parse "tree" is a directed acyclic
graph with an undirected cycle (e.g. (let (foo (gensym)) (x foo))
becomes a node with edges eventually to the (foo (gensym)) and the (x
foo) nodes, both of which have nodes to the SAME foo node, rather than
distinct-but-equal-as-strings nodes).

To get the effects the Lispers have claimed seems to require seriously
contorting the definitions of all of:
* macro (not operating on text?!)
* parse tree (contains undirected cycles?!)
* source code (not flat ASCII?!)
and possibly more.

 

[Series Expansion]

I'll note that you can fix your code from a previous post:
(progn (setq #1=#:G1801 'test) (print #1#) (terpri))
By using the syntax for circular structures...

I'll note here that one should not ordinarily need a "syntax for
circular structures" to describe a parse *tree* (emphasis on the
"tree").

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

I'll note here that one should not ordinarily need a "syntax for
circular structures" to describe a parse *tree* (emphasis on the
"tree").

But the above structure above isn't circular. We use the syntax for circular
structures because this tool also also handles the simpler case of substructure
sharing, which is what is going on above. In this case we don't need
that notation to be powerful enough to handle cycles. Cycles are
expressed by the occurence of a label reference like #1# inside
the object which is introduced under that label, e.g.:

;; ``bottomless'' (1 1 1 1 1 ...) cyclic list:

#1=(1 . #1#)

No such backreference occurs above. The expresion simply introduces one object
with #1 and then refer to it later.

Syntax trees may actually be dags with shared substructure.

For instance, see the Red Dragon Book:

_Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools_, Aho, Sethi, Ullman.
1988, Section 5.2, ``Construction of Syntax Trees''.

I value this book as a credible authority on the subject of compilers.

The chapter of the text shows how the same syntax-directed definition can
drive the construction of either a tree or dag:

``A dag is obtained if the function constructing a node
first checks to see whether an identical node already
exists. [ ... ] When the call mkleaf(id, a) is repeated on
line 2, the node constructed by the previous call
to mlkeaf(id, a) is returned.''

What is described here is practically identical to interning in the Lisp
reader.

 

[Thomas A. Russ]

I'll note here that one should not ordinarily need a "syntax for
circular structures" to describe a parse *tree* (emphasis on the
"tree").

Well, so Lisp operates on parse GRAPHs and not parse TREEs. Seems like
that gives it more generality. Score one for lisp. The particular
example above is an example of a parse LATTICE, since it isn't
circular. It just has shared substructure.

 

[Seamus MacRae]

Seamus MacRae said:

Very boring.

You consider [yet another personal attack] to be boring?

Yes, I consider personal attacks to be boring. I thought we were here to
discuss Lisp and Java, not to flame one another. I'm only interested in
the former. Please discuss the former or please go away. Either way
please stop publicly badmouthing me!

 

[Seamus MacRae]

That's true: it is not a value at all. It is an expression whose
size _can_ be measured.

How can you measure the size of something you don't actually have? Don't
forget C99 added variable-length arrays.

Since you have rejected

I reject any claim that implies that I'm some sort of doofus, especially
if that claim was made publicly.

I'd like to know what sources of information you _would_ believe.

When the discussion has become a platform for launching personal
attacks, I *won't* believe any information whatsoever that says
something hostile about me. So you can get that idea right out of your
head, right now. I've no interest in "discussing" myself at all -- I
will ignore the subject unless someone else brings it up, and then I
will defend myself to the maximum extent possible, without any
negotiation or compromise. Whether I am, or am not, whatever nasty thing
you may be thinking is not up for debate: I am not, and that is final,
and I will not budge on that score.

Unfortunately, I know that some people seem to consider such an attitude
a challenge or even an affront and will try ever-more-strenuously to
assert forcefully in public their own, negative opinion of me. Be
warned: any who do so become the subjects of complaints to their
internet providers for posting large volumes of off-topic posts, since
that's what they inevitably do if they get a bee in their bonnet about
publicly badmouthing me.

I suggest you just Let. The matter. Drop. instead of pursuing it.

I.e. where do get your information from, and what do you consider a
definitive source for resolving questions like this?

There is no question in my mind whatsoever that whatever hostile things
you're thinking about me, and probably plotting to say about me, are not
true in the slightest. You will not convince me otherwise. If you try to
back me into some sort of corner pushing for a public negative
evaluation of me I will shove right back and harder. Perhaps you'd like
a taste of being on the receiving end of the kind of flak you seem to be
contemplating letting loose? Perhaps you'll find out.

 

[Ben Pfaff]

How can you measure the size of something you don't actually have?

You can know the size of an int without knowing the value of that
int.

 

[Seamus MacRae]

Seamus MacRae said:

Right

Then please drop this.

NOW!!!

If you don't wish for mistakes in your articles to be corrected, you
have two choices - (a) don't make mistakes, or (b) don't post them.

I go for option (a), always.

I make mistakes in my articles - and they /do/ get corrected,
and I'm pleased by that, because it means I get to learn stuff,
which is good, right?

Are you unconcerned with how you are perceived? I'd think you'd rather
not be publicly humiliated and made to look like an idiot. If that's not
the case, though, it might explain your boorish behavior here, where you
seem unconcerned for the risk that your actions will have that sort of
effect on someone else. If, for some strange reason, you wouldn't mind
it yourself, then perhaps it just didn't occur to you that someone else
*would* mind.

Well, now that you're aware of the possibility, you should know to just
quietly move on now.

I think you're confusing

I am not.

I am also not interested in entertaining any more public speculation
about my mental functioning.

Drop it.

Now.

Sure - but this isn't *foo; it's sizeof *foo

Which contains *foo as an argument, for heaven's sake.

Yes

No, and this is not negotiable. I do not miss points. Now move along.

If you are prepared to limit yourself to systems that use
IEEE754-compatible floating point systems, that's your decision to
make.

Since that's the vast majority of systems in present-day use, it doesn't
seem to be a biggie.

Firstly, I told you before

I said, don't patronize me. And what's the next thing you do? Patronize me!

**** off. You are clearly a complete waste of bandwidth and congenitally
incapable of remaining polite or civil.

I'm still treating you like an intelligent man

Ordinarily, one does not treat intelligent men as shoddily as you've
treated me. In particular, when an intelligent man requests that you
drop a condescending tone, or drop an entire line of questioning, then
unless you are a police interrogator and he is a murder suspect, you do
so! Any other behavior is extremely impolite.

That opinion, however, is beginning to change.

Is that a threat?

Actually, I frankly don't care about your opinion of me, just so long as
you don't broadcast it loudly but keep it to yourself as a polite person
would.

If you have a negative opinion of me, please keep it to yourself and
ignore me. If you have a positive opinion of me, then feel free to not
insult me in public.

Please go look in a mirror and adjust that attitude you're wearing.

"Please" is a good start [rest of patronizing crap deleted]

Either discuss the original subject matter or remain silent please.

Actually, I

Actually, I'm not interested in your explanations or excuses. I'm
interested in two things:

1. Shutting down this unwelcome and off-topic inquiry into the status
of my mental functioning, and
2. Getting an apology, if one might be forthcoming, though I will
settle for complete silence instead.

the nature of your misunderstanding has been made crystal clear.

Shall I repeat what I just said? About the unwelcome nature of any
further public inquiry into my mental functioning?

I understand perfectly. I do not, however, agree with your stated
opinions of me, and I will not ever agree with them.

You cannot gain anything by continuing this. If you drop the subject
now, we both walk away and get on with our lives. If you continue to
publicly insinuate various unpleasant things about my mental
functioning, you will be in for a world of shit. You'll get at least as
good as you give and will likely lose your usenet access in the bargain.

It's your choice.

No

Yes. Publicly insulting me was bad enough. Now you have the gall to lie
about it?

Nothing, really. What is the matter with you

Nothing. And that is final.

I am not interested in discussing or negotiating or anything like that.
My stance regarding my own mental functioning is firm, and you will not
budge it. You will only let yourself in for a nasty and pointless
flamewar if you insist on continuing to poke into a subject matter where
you have been warned repeatedly now that you're not welcome.

And with several other people in these newsgroups?

"It was a terrible parade. [rest deleted]

Parades are not on topic here.

True enough. I will rephrase. I *believe* you are taking this far
too personally.

Irrelevant. If I say I don't welcome a continued discussion of me in
public, then the subject is closed, whether or not you would mind if our
positions were reversed.

When it's your mental competence that's being discussed in public, then
it's your turn to decide the same things.

Fair's fair.

It could be polite. I am doing my best to remain polite, and I think
that mostly I'm succeeding.

You're not succeeding.

To remain fully polite, you will need to avoid mentioning or implying
anything at all negative about me. This could be accomplished by
remaining silent, by being full of praise for me, or by discussing
something other than me and avoiding saying or implying anything about
me while doing so.

I corrected

You nitpicked where no nitpicking was welcome. Don't do it again.

I don't recall your trying to smooth things over.

Yes. In <[email protected]> you nitpicked me,
apparently unaware that the correct response to my post was to either
leave it alone or agree.

In <[email protected]> I responded in such a way
that you could have just left that post to stand unmolested and
everything would have been fine. Instead, you attacked and here we are now.

Given that you had several opportunities to leave me alone and chose
instead to blast me with increasingly-stronger shots each time, I have
to conclude that you want a fight.

Now I am warning you that a fight with me will end very badly for you.

Again, got a msg-ID?

Yes: <[email protected]>

This you should definitely never have posted.

My own recollection is that you appeared to continue to
misunderstand

I HAVE NO INTEREST IN CONTINUING TO DISCUSS YOUR OPINION OF MY MENTAL
FUNCTIONING. HAVE I MADE MYSELF CLEAR?

Why are you so unwilling to respect multiple boundaries?

1. The topic bounds. These newsgroups are for discussing programming,
not people.
2. The personal boundaries around one another. You do not publicly
speculate about another person's mental functioning without
permission! Jeezus.
3. The relevance bounds. The arguments about Lisp vs. Java,
emacs vs. Eclipse, and Seed7 warnings, and the original
job-search topics, all have relevance bounds. My mental
functioning is irrelevant to all of those topics. The only
person whose mental functioning might be relevant to any of them
is Robert Maas, the original job-seeker.

Why would I back down from a correct position?

I refer to your arguments about my mental functioning. You hold certain
*opinions* there. They are not "correct" in my opinion, and they are not
matters of fact regardless. Those opinions are what you should back down
from. Instead you seem determined both to air them far and wide and to
defend them aggressively.

This might be okay if those opinions were on a neutral subject matter,
say, abortion or gun control. But those opinions are about a particular
other person, which means that he ought to have at least some say in
whether and how you blather about him in public.

And I say you are to stop discussing me in public altogether. Killfile
me if you must, but henceforth, please pretend that I do not exist. That
means if you see a post by me, it does not exist so you will not post a
followup. If you hold an opinion about me, it does not exist so you will
not post mentioning it or implying it.

I hope I've made myself clear enough this time.

You don't get to control my actions.

Ordinarily, no, but when your actions include making public statements
about me, my rights of privacy and publicity enter into it, and I say I
don't want you discussing me in public.

Really, I am none of your business anyway so you have no good reason to
be doing so; and I am off-topic in all three of these newsgroups so you
certainly have some very good reasons not to be doing so in this thread,
regardless.

You don't get to control my actions.

You're missing the point. I am attempting to explain rules of polite
society to you that apparently you don't get. You don't keep pressing
someone that clearly doesn't want a fight. You leave them alone.

If you screw up

That never happens.

If it ever did, then you should certainly not keep aggressively poking
at someone who is trying to save face. That's how big, nasty fights
start, when someone disrespects someone else's right to be left alone.

You can move on any time you like. Nobody forces you to respond.

Oh, is that what this is about? You keep posting because you have a
childish insistence on having the last word? How disappointing.

If someone (anyone, not just you) disagrees with a point I've made
in an article, either they are right (in which case I'm wrong and
I'd like to know about it), or they are not right (in which case it
may be worth trying to put things in a way that is easier to
grasp)

Insulting. I think you should be thinking "worth trying to put things in
a way that preserves both sides' dignity", don't you? Or does the
dignity of other people not concern you?

I'm getting a very disturbing picture here: that you are not willing to
agree to disagree on any subject, nor do you care about preserving the
dignity of others.

In this case, you [insult deleted]

I repeat: I am not interested in your opinion of me. Neither is anyone
else. Don't. Post it. Again.

you didn't seem to see why

I see exactly why you hold your opinion of me. I also don't give a shit.
My concern is with your *posting that opinion in public*, and posting
things apparently designed to induce *other people to develop the same,
negative opinion*. You can surely understand why I don't want that
happening, particularly the latter part.

What I don't understand is why you seem to be insistent that that
happen, and that I not be permitted to speak up in my own defense?

Really, I just want to be left alone.

If, after this post, you continue to harass me, I will have to conclude
that your purpose is in fact to start a fight. There is no other
explanation for someone posting an attack post in response to "I just
want to be left alone", after all.

I have even now not made it clear enough (although the middle part
of this reply is another attempt).

Your opinion is crystal clear. I hope by now so is mine: I do not want
you to make yours even clearer. I want you to drop the subject and leave
me in peace.

Selective quotation

Please do not change the subject.

Firstly, I'm not personally attacking you.

Yes, you are. You are publicly calling my intelligence into question.
That is an insult. It's the same as if you posted "Seamus MacRae is an
idiot" on the billboard at Times Square.

How would you like it if someone put "Richard Heathfield is an idiot" on
there?

I'm guessing you wouldn't.

Please let this entire matter just drop, for both of our sakes.

I am having a discussion on Usenet.

You are discussing a person in public without that person's consent.
That is a no-no.

Secondly, I am sure you would agree that you are wholly
entitled to make your own choice about whether to take part in, or
to withdraw from, this discussion.

Then I choose to withdraw from it, by which is meant my name will not
appear any further in it, which in turn means you do not talk about me
and you do not follow up to one of my posts.

Is that clear?

Otherwise, I am "taking part" by being mentioned or quoted in it,
against my will and in violation of that very entitlement that you just
admitted I possess.

You will not again use the
words "flawed" or "mistaken" to describe me in public. Do I make
myself clear?

You make yourself perfectly clear, but [insults deleted]
You don't get to decide what I write.

**** you.

Obviously, you understand me perfectly and are explicitly refusing to
leave me alone.

Fine. If you want a fight, let's fight.

Your mother is so fat, she is required by law to wear a "wide load" sign
and beep when she backs up.

Your turn.

If you don't wish to communicate with me, you can stop doing so at
any time.

I don't wish to be communicated ABOUT in public by you.

I agree

Then stop talking about me!

sizeof *is* topical, and that's what I'm discussing.

Get real. This stopped being about "sizeof" several posts ago when you
decided to make things personal.

All this extraneous guff is just a side issue.

All this "extraneous guff" is what actually matters to me. If you
consider it a mere "side issue" then that's another reason for you to
drop this thread and move on -- topic drift has taken it outside of your
area of interest.

That's called "special pleading".

No, it's called pointing out that insulting software is not insulting a
human being, and therefore is not a personal attack. For it to have been
a *personal* attack it would have had to imply something negative about
some specific *person*.

Who said anything about ignoring compiler warnings?

You did. That's what "environments like that" was in reference to,
remember? Workplaces that actually do diffs on the compiler warnings and
only pay attention to new ones, thus ignoring lots of other warnings,
rather than attempting to get a clean build.

That is a complete misunderstanding

And there you go again, making things personal and publicly accusing me
of idiocy!

**** you.

I've had it with you. You pretend to some kind of civilized character
but your real objective is simply to go around badmouthing anyone you
disagree with, have the last word in any discussion, and generally shove
your weight around. How old are you, about three?

(a) it's impossible to satisfy every compiler, and code that is
required for eliminating a warning on one compiler may itself cause
a warning on another; therefore, a clean build is not actually
possible in the general case for non-trivial code that must build
on multiple compilers;

Doesn't follow. Ever heard of #ifdef and its friends? Conditional
compilation means being able to satisfy multiple compilers, and produce
more portable code.

Yes, it's at least partly because there are people who don't
know
[rest of personal attacks deleted]
Stop attacking me.
For someone who doesn't like personal attacks, you sure like
making them.

No, I do not. Stop publicly lying about me.

Well, it wasn't a lie, but it's possible that I was mistaken to
claim that you enjoyed making personal attacks.

That you were.

Nevertheless, you have clearly made them.

I have *now*, when you continued to publicly badmouth me. You asked for
it, you got it. Now, are you ready to quit, or are you thirsty for more?

I respectfully disagree.

Respect? That's a joke. You've shown no respect for my wishes, for my
boundaries, or for any of the three newsgroups' topic boundaries, at
least thus far.

Am I right to interpret this as "Seamus is not interested in

You are right to interpret this as "Seamus is not interested in
continuing this discussion, or in being the subject of any discussion in
which you participate".

I'm already in the right place.

No. See above.

I don't believe I've called you a liar.

Implied it, at any rate.

I do believe you do not understand the truth [snip]

Your opinion has been noted and logged. Now here's a quarter. (%)

Go call someone who gives a damn.

this belief is based on what you have written

I don't care what your beliefs are based on, because I don't care about
your beliefs, except insofar as your publicly broadcasting them might
help or harm me.

Irony is always dangerous.

So is a complaint to your internet provider for flooding three
newsgroups with offtopic drivel.

I'm not the one who introduced expletives into the discussion.

You are, however, the one who introduced rudeness, personal innuendos,
and an unwillingness to leave things alone.

Nor will I sink to your level

My God, are you really trying to claim the moral high ground now? How
utterly ridiculous. It's never available at any price to the guy that
shot first, so you can give up on that idea right quick.

It's more cost-effective to xxx in a public article than to send
emails to every single subscriber.

I was, of course, suggesting that you send your insults *privately*, to
me only, instead of airing them in public *at all*, but apparently you
have once again missed the point. Probably, this time, deliberately.

Your implied threat of emailing a large number of random people with
letters badmouthing me by name is, of course, a very bad idea. If you
actually do that you will lose your internet account so fast your head
will spin. Unsolicited bulk mail is frowned upon by most service
providers nowadays, and at the first sign that you did anything like
that I'd report you as a spammer.

Anyway, I guess it's now your move. Will you decide to leave things be,
and consider this match a draw, or are you determined to win (or maybe
just to get the last word) even though you risk losing by pressing
things? We shall see.

 

[Seamus MacRae]

Panto Time! Look out behind you!
Non-sequitur.

Ah, well there is no point in arguing with the man who won't listen.

Then please don't.

I merely adress the massed ranks of the Lurkers.

Not about me, you don't, not if you know what's good for you.

 

[Seamus MacRae]

(e-mail address removed) said:

More to the point

[snip]

No points here. Move on.

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

The C Standard doesn't even mention you, let alone call you a
doofus.

You're arguing with a mentally ill individual who believes that all expression
of disagreement constitutes a personal attack.

There is no way you can word a paragraph which disagrees with a statement he
made in such a way that it will not be construed as a personal attack,
and used as an opportunity to start another subthread about this favorite
subject of his.

His recommendation (as he explicitly stated in another article) is that when
you disagree with something, you should just let it be. One person has said his
piece, the other has said his, and leave it at that. That is how you avoid
making an attack.

And yet he insists that he wants to be part of a debate (whatever that
means, without the possibility of proper disagreement).

I.e. he expects to be granted a waiver from all of Usenet, allowing him the
privilege of having the last word, regardless of what B.S. he posts.

Good luck.

 

[MarkH]

Your ISP has been notified of your mental disturbance. Now stop the
personal attacks Seamus!, and admit that Common Lisp is better than
Java. You've been warned! Don't allow your mental malfunctions to
further hurt you.

Seamus MacRae said:

Right

Then please drop this.

NOW!!!

If you don't wish for mistakes in your articles to be corrected, you
have two choices - (a) don't make mistakes, or (b) don't post them.

I go for option (a), always.

I make mistakes in my articles - and they /do/ get corrected,
and I'm pleased by that, because it means I get to learn stuff,
which is good, right?

Are you unconcerned with how you are perceived? I'd think you'd rather
not be publicly humiliated and made to look like an idiot. If that's not
the case, though, it might explain your boorish behavior here, where you
seem unconcerned for the risk that your actions will have that sort of
effect on someone else. If, for some strange reason, you wouldn't mind
it yourself, then perhaps it just didn't occur to you that someone else
*would* mind.

Well, now that you're aware of the possibility, you should know to just
quietly move on now.

I think you're confusing

I am not.

I am also not interested in entertaining any more public speculation
about my mental functioning.

Drop it.

Now.

Sure - but this isn't *foo; it's sizeof *foo

Which contains *foo as an argument, for heaven's sake.

Yes

No, and this is not negotiable. I do not miss points. Now move along.

If you are prepared to limit yourself to systems that use
IEEE754-compatible floating point systems, that's your decision to
make.

Since that's the vast majority of systems in present-day use, it doesn't
seem to be a biggie.

Firstly, I told you before

I said, don't patronize me. And what's the next thing you do? Patronize me!

**** off. You are clearly a complete waste of bandwidth and congenitally
incapable of remaining polite or civil.

I'm still treating you like an intelligent man

Ordinarily, one does not treat intelligent men as shoddily as you've
treated me. In particular, when an intelligent man requests that you
drop a condescending tone, or drop an entire line of questioning, then
unless you are a police interrogator and he is a murder suspect, you do
so! Any other behavior is extremely impolite.

That opinion, however, is beginning to change.

Is that a threat?

Actually, I frankly don't care about your opinion of me, just so long as
you don't broadcast it loudly but keep it to yourself as a polite person
would.

If you have a negative opinion of me, please keep it to yourself and
ignore me. If you have a positive opinion of me, then feel free to not
insult me in public.

"Please" is a good start [rest of patronizing crap deleted]

Either discuss the original subject matter or remain silent please.

Actually, I

Actually, I'm not interested in your explanations or excuses. I'm
interested in two things:

1. Shutting down this unwelcome and off-topic inquiry into the status
    of my mental functioning, and
2. Getting an apology, if one might be forthcoming, though I will
    settle for complete silence instead.

the nature of your misunderstanding has been made crystal clear.

Shall I repeat what I just said? About the unwelcome nature of any
further public inquiry into my mental functioning?

I understand perfectly. I do not, however, agree with your stated
opinions of me, and I will not ever agree with them.

You cannot gain anything by continuing this. If you drop the subject
now, we both walk away and get on with our lives. If you continue to
publicly insinuate various unpleasant things about my mental
functioning, you will be in for a world of shit. You'll get at least as
good as you give and will likely lose your usenet access in the bargain.

It's your choice.

No

Yes. Publicly insulting me was bad enough. Now you have the gall to lie
about it?

Nothing, really. What is the matter with you

Nothing. And that is final.

I am not interested in discussing or negotiating or anything like that.
My stance regarding my own mental functioning is firm, and you will not
budge it. You will only let yourself in for a nasty and pointless
flamewar if you insist on continuing to poke into a subject matter where
you have been warned repeatedly now that you're not welcome.

"It was a terrible parade. [rest deleted]

Parades are not on topic here.

True enough. I will rephrase. I *believe* you are taking this far
too personally.

Irrelevant. If I say I don't welcome a continued discussion of me in
public, then the subject is closed, whether or not you would mind if our
positions were reversed.

When it's your mental competence that's being discussed in public, then
it's your turn to decide the same things.

Fair's fair.

It could be polite.  I am doing my best to remain polite, and I think
that mostly I'm succeeding.

You're not succeeding.

To remain fully polite, you will need to avoid mentioning or implying
anything at all negative about me. This could be accomplished by
remaining silent, by being full of praise for me, or by discussing
something other than me and avoiding saying or implying anything about
me while doing so.

I corrected

You nitpicked where no nitpicking was welcome. Don't do it again.

I don't recall your trying to smooth things over.

Yes. In <[email protected]> you nitpicked me,
apparently unaware that the correct response to my post was to either
leave it alone or agree.

In <[email protected]> I responded in such a way
that you could have just left that post to stand unmolested and
everything would have been fine. Instead, you attacked and here we are now.

Given that you had several opportunities to leave me alone and chose
instead to blast me with increasingly-stronger shots each time, I have
to conclude that you want a fight.

Now I am warning you that a fight with me will end very badly for you.

Again, got a msg-ID?

Yes: <[email protected]>

This you should definitely never have posted.

My own recollection is that you appeared to continue to
misunderstand

I HAVE NO INTEREST IN CONTINUING TO DISCUSS YOUR OPINION OF MY MENTAL
FUNCTIONING. HAVE I MADE MYSELF CLEAR?

Why are you so unwilling to respect multiple boundaries?

1. The topic bounds. These newsgroups are for discussing programming,
    not people.
2. The personal boundaries around one another. You do not publicly
    speculate about another person's mental functioning without
    permission! Jeezus.
3. The relevance bounds. The arguments about Lisp vs. Java,
    emacs vs. Eclipse, and Seed7 warnings, and the original
    job-search topics, all have relevance bounds. My mental
    functioning is irrelevant to all of those topics. The only
    person whose mental functioning might be relevant to any of them
    is Robert Maas, the original job-seeker.

Why would I back down from a correct position?

I refer to your arguments about my mental functioning. You hold certain
*opinions* there. They are not "correct" in my opinion, and they are not
matters of fact regardless. Those opinions are what you should back down
from. Instead you seem determined both to air them far and wide and to
defend them aggressively.

This might be okay if those opinions were on a neutral subject matter,
say, abortion or gun control. But those opinions are about a particular
other person, which means that he ought to have at least some say in
whether and how you blather about him in public.

And I say you are to stop discussing me in public altogether. Killfile
me if you must, but henceforth, please pretend that I do not exist. That
means if you see a post by me, it does not exist so you will not post a
followup. If you hold an opinion about me, it does not exist so you will
not post mentioning it or implying it.

I hope I've made myself clear enough this time.

You don't get to control my actions.

Ordinarily, no, but when your actions include making public statements
about me, my rights of privacy and publicity enter into it, and I say I
don't want you discussing me in public.

Really, I am none of your business anyway so you have no good reason to
be doing so; and I am off-topic in all three of these newsgroups so you
certainly have some very good reasons not to be doing so in this thread,
regardless.

You don't get to control my actions.

You're missing the point. I am attempting to explain rules of polite
society to you that apparently you don't get. You don't keep pressing
someone that clearly doesn't want a fight. You leave them alone.

If you screw up

That never happens.

If it ever did, then you should certainly not keep aggressively poking
at someone who is trying to save face. That's how big, nasty fights
start, when someone disrespects someone else's right to be left alone.

You can move on any time you like. Nobody forces you to respond.

Oh, is that what this is about? You keep posting because you have a
childish insistence on having the last word? How disappointing.

If someone (anyone, not just you) disagrees with a point I've made
in an article, either they are right (in which case I'm wrong and
I'd like to know about it), or they are not right (in which case it
may be worth trying to put things in a way that is easier to
grasp)

Insulting. I think you should be thinking "worth trying to put things in
a way that preserves both sides' dignity", don't you? Or does the
dignity of other people not concern you?

I'm getting a very disturbing picture here: that you are not willing to
agree to disagree on any subject, nor do you care about preserving the
dignity of others.

In this case, you [insult deleted]

I repeat: I am not interested in your opinion of me. Neither is anyone
else. Don't. Post it. Again.

you didn't seem to see why

I see exactly why you hold your opinion of me. I also don't give a shit.
My concern is with your *posting that opinion in public*, and posting
things apparently designed to induce *other people to develop the same,
negative opinion*. You can surely understand why I don't want that
happening, particularly the latter part.

What I don't understand is why you seem to be insistent that that
happen, and that I not be permitted to speak up in my own defense?

Really, I just want to be left alone.

If, after this post, you continue to harass me, I will have to conclude
that your purpose is in fact to start a fight. There is no other
explanation for someone posting an attack post in response to "I just
want to be left alone", after all.

I have even now not made it clear enough (although the middle part
of this reply is another attempt).

Your opinion is crystal clear. I hope by now so is mine: I do not want
you to make yours even clearer. I want you to drop the subject and leave
me in peace.

Selective quotation

Please do not change the subject.

Firstly, I'm not personally attacking you.

Yes, you are. You are publicly calling my intelligence into question.
That is an insult. It's the same as if you posted "Seamus MacRae is an
idiot" on the billboard at Times Square.

How would you like it if someone put "Richard Heathfield is an idiot" on
there?

I'm guessing you wouldn't.

Please let this entire matter just drop, for both of our sakes.

I am having a discussion on Usenet.

You are discussing a person in public without that person's consent.
That is a no-no.

Secondly, I am sure you would agree that you are wholly
entitled to make your own choice about whether to take part in, or
to withdraw from, this discussion.

Then I choose to withdraw from it, by which is meant my name will not
appear any further in it, which in turn means you do not talk about me
and you do not follow up to one of my posts.

Is that clear?

Otherwise, I am "taking part" by being mentioned or quoted in it,
against my will and in violation of that very entitlement that you just
admitted I possess.

You make yourself perfectly clear, but [insults deleted]
You don't get to decide what I write.

**** you.

Obviously, you understand me perfectly and are explicitly refusing to
leave me alone.

Fine. If you want a fight, let's fight.

Your mother is so fat, she is required by law to wear a "wide load" sign
and beep when she backs up.

Your turn.

If you don't wish to communicate with me, you can stop doing so at
any time.

I don't wish to be communicated ABOUT in public by you.

I agree

Then stop talking about me!

sizeof *is* topical, and that's what I'm discussing.

Get real. This stopped being about "sizeof" several posts ago when you
decided to make things personal.

All this extraneous guff is just a side issue.

All this "extraneous guff" is what actually matters to me. If you
consider it a mere "side issue" then that's another reason for you to
drop this thread and move on -- topic drift has taken it outside of your
area of interest.

That's called "special pleading".

No, it's called pointing out that insulting software is not insulting a
human being, and therefore is not a personal attack. For it to have been
a *personal* attack it would have had to imply something negative about
some specific *person*.

Who said anything about ignoring compiler warnings?

You did. That's what "environments like that" was in reference to,
remember? Workplaces that actually do diffs on the compiler warnings and
only pay attention to new ones, thus ignoring lots of other warnings,
rather than attempting to get a clean build.

That is a complete misunderstanding

And there you go again, making things personal and publicly accusing me
of idiocy!

**** you.

I've had it with you. You pretend to some kind of civilized character
but your real objective is simply to go around badmouthing anyone you
disagree with, have the last word in any discussion, and generally shove
your weight around. How old are you, about three?

(a) it's impossible to satisfy every compiler, and code that is
required for eliminating a warning on one compiler may itself cause
a warning on another; therefore, a clean build is not actually
possible in the general case for non-trivial code that must build
on multiple compilers;

Doesn't follow. Ever heard of #ifdef and its friends? Conditional
compilation means being able to satisfy multiple compilers, and produce
more portable code.

Yes, it's at least partly because there are people who don't
know
[rest of personal attacks deleted]
Stop attacking me.
For someone who doesn't like personal attacks, you sure like
making them.
No, I do not. Stop publicly lying about me.

Well, it wasn't a lie, but it's possible that I was mistaken to
claim that you enjoyed making personal attacks.

That you were.

Nevertheless, you have clearly made them.

I have *now*, when you continued to publicly badmouth me. You asked for
it, you got it. Now, are you ready to quit, or are you thirsty for more?

I respectfully disagree.

Respect? That's a joke. You've shown no respect for my wishes, for my
boundaries, or for any of the three newsgroups' topic boundaries, at
least thus far.

Am I right to interpret this as "Seamus is not interested in

You are right to interpret this as "Seamus is not interested in
continuing this discussion, or in being the subject of any discussion in
which you participate".

I'm already in the right place.

No. See above.

I don't believe I've called you a liar.

Implied it, at any rate.

I do believe you do not understand the truth [snip]

Your opinion has been noted and logged. Now here's a quarter. (%)

Go call someone who gives a damn.

this belief is based on what you have written

I don't care what your beliefs are based on, because I don't care about
your beliefs, except insofar as your publicly broadcasting them might
help or harm me.

Irony is always dangerous.

So is a complaint to your internet provider for flooding three
newsgroups with offtopic drivel.

I'm not the one who introduced expletives into the discussion.

You are, however, the one who introduced rudeness, personal innuendos,
and an unwillingness to leave things alone.

Nor will I sink to your level

My God, are you really trying to claim the moral high ground now? How
utterly ridiculous. It's never available at any price to the guy that
shot first, so you can give up on that idea right quick.

It's more cost-effective to xxx in a public article than to send
emails to every single subscriber.

I was, of course, suggesting that you send your insults *privately*, to
me only, instead of airing them in public *at all*, but apparently you
have once again missed the point. Probably, this time, deliberately.

Your implied threat of emailing a large number of random people with
letters badmouthing me by name is, of course, a very bad idea. If you
actually do that you will lose your internet account so fast your head
will spin. Unsolicited bulk mail is frowned upon by most service
providers nowadays, and at the first sign that you did anything like
that I'd report you as a spammer.

Anyway, I guess it's now your move. Will you decide to leave things be,
and consider this match a draw, or are you determined to win (or maybe
just to get the last word) even though you risk losing by pressing
things? We shall see.

 

[Series Expansion]

But the above structure above isn't circular.

It is, in that it contains undirected cycles. It doesn't contain
directed cycles. Regardless, it isn't a tree.

Syntax trees may actually be dags with shared substructure.

Ordinarily that would be as an optimization, without affecting
semantics!

 

[Series Expansion]

Well, so Lisp operates on parse GRAPHs and not parse TREEs.

If true, that is extremely odd.

Please stop silently redirecting followups.

 

[thomas.mertes]

I am not.

The compile time operator 'sizeof' determines the size of a
given variable, constant or type at compile time. This is done
by using the type of the variable or constant or by using the
given type. The compiler knows the sizes of most data
structures. When the size cannot be determined at compile
time the sizeof operator cannot do something reasonable.
E.g.: When using void * pointers the size of the destination
of a void pointer cannot be reasonable determined at compile
time since the compiler cannot know where the void pointer
points to. I am not sure what you get for 'sizeof(void)' but
this will probably not be something you want to use. Since
'sizeof' is executed at compile time there is nothing that can
be executed at runtime. The compiler replaces the sizeof
expression by an unsigned integer of type size_t.

E.g.: When the structure ' tm' is defined as:

struct tm {
char ch[8];
};

The expression

struct tm *foo = malloc(sizeof *foo);

is probably equivalent to something like

struct tm *foo = malloc(8);

Note that I used 'malloc' instead of 'calloc', since 'calloc'
usually has two parameters.

The explanation above refers to K&R C and to C89.

Greetings Thomas Mertes

Seed7 Homepage: http://seed7.sourceforge.net
Seed7 - The extensible programming language: User defined statements
and operators, abstract data types, templates without special
syntax, OO with interfaces and multiple dispatch, statically typed,
interpreted or compiled, portable, runs under linux/unix/windows.

 

[Guest]

(e-mail address removed) said:


More to the point, the sizeof in question was taking the size of a
struct tm, not a VLA.

yes, I missed that

I share your lack of conviction wrt VLAs. Nevertheless, they /are/
part of C99, so when C99 eventually becomes widespread (perhaps in
only a few more decades) it will become important to understand
VLAs.

when that time comes I'll learn about VLAs. I operate a YAGNI policy.

 

[Guest]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:


Not about me, you don't, not if you know what's good for you.

are you threatening me!? With what? What will happen if I discuss
your idocy on the internet? Will you cry? Come round to my house?
I'm genuinely interested.

It obviously doesn't pay to be reasonable with some people...

--
Nick Keighley

The world you perceive is drastically simplified model of the real
world
(Herbert Simon)

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Richard Heathfield:

(e-mail address removed) said:


Okay, I'll bite - YAGNI?

http://acronyms.tfd.com/YAGNI

I have a Thunderbird extension where you just have to right-click on things and
select "search dictionary", it's very practical.


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf