Statement on Schildt submitted to wikipedia today

[spinoza1111]

== Proposal from Edward G. Nilges 7 Sep 2009 ==

The vandalism of Schildt continues. I propose that the following text
be added to the discussion of the controversy. I shall also post this
for discussion at comp.lang.c and submit it to comp.lang.c.moderated.


Other commentators, however, have found that Seebach's and Feather's
objections to Schildt's work result from their POV which is that of
self-serving "language lawyers" concerned less with clear explanation
to working programmers and more with being "right all the time, even
when it's undefined" in the words of one wag. For example, Schildt
describes how things work in terms of the most common features of C
runtimes, features that are not part of "the language". This is an
excellent way to help programmers, typically men and women who want a
"shirtsleeves" POV and to understand how things work, only to have
Seebach condemn him, in a spirit with a nasty overtone of religious
fundamentalism (made merely nastier by the secular, sordid and
pecuniary goals of programming language standardization in service to
corporations) for daring to speak of such Eleusinian mysteries as the
"stack"...which looks backwards to an era when programmers in
corporations were admonished or terminated for excess curiosity.

It is widely believed today that C99 as a standardization effort
failed rather miserably. The reason, according to some, is that it was
less concerned with the needs of working programmers, and more
concerned with spending public monies (in the spirit of the Bush-
Clinton years of privatization) on protecting corporate profits, here
making as many compilers as possible "work" by leaving common sense
functionality "undefined", so that compiler developers could be shed
by compiler development and other corporations, and their investment
protected. There was no interest outside Open Source in making
correct, much less excellent, C compilers in 1999, C compilers having
become commodities, and there was no fiduciary reason for companies to
fix compilers to conform to a more precise standard: therefore, the
standard was made as undefined (not a standard, in other words) as
possible in a giveaway to corporations which looked forward to the
monies handed over to banks in 2008.

It appears to many of us that Schildt was a sacrificial lamb, a
representative of an individual knower, and of the type of
knowledgeable programmer who (like Carthage) had to be destroyed, for
his knowledge is now the private property of corporations, to be
preserved or destroyed at will. In all of this, the public interest
was unmentioned, and the public was damned, not only by corporations
but also by people corrupt enough to work, nor for the wretched of the
earth, but for Moloch itself: the corporation.

Seebach and Feather have not only gone after Schildt. They also
continue to savage professional reputations whenever their standard is
questioned. This despite the fact that the standard destroyed the very
ability to teach C save in the most cautious, and fundamentalist way,
such that "professors" today are well advised to be *imams* in
*madrassahs* teaching *taliban*. In a sense this is an insult to Islam
for the *imams* giving *fatwas* are concerned with the highest things,
whereas the new prophets of C are concerned with the lowest and most
sordid things.

Edward G. Nilges, Hong Kong 7 Sep 2009

 

[jacob navia]

spinoza1111 a écrit :

Other commentators, however, have found that Seebach's and Feather's
objections to Schildt's work result from their POV which is that of
self-serving "language lawyers" concerned less with clear explanation
to working programmers and more with being "right all the time, even
when it's undefined" in the words of one wag. For example, Schildt
describes how things work in terms of the most common features of C
runtimes, features that are not part of "the language". This is an
excellent way to help programmers, typically men and women who want a
"shirtsleeves" POV and to understand how things work, only to have
Seebach condemn him, in a spirit with a nasty overtone of religious
fundamentalism (made merely nastier by the secular, sordid and
pecuniary goals of programming language standardization in service to
corporations) for daring to speak of such Eleusinian mysteries as the
"stack"...which looks backwards to an era when programmers in
corporations were admonished or terminated for excess curiosity.

I agree with this, but it would be better if the rest of that
contribution was dropped. Too much polemic, it is of little use
to be against "religious" and pedantic zealots if you are
going to use the same language and the same tactics.

 

[Keith Thompson]

spinoza1111 a écrit :

[some stuff about Schildt and his critics]

I agree with this, but it would be better if the rest of that
contribution was dropped. Too much polemic, it is of little use
to be against "religious" and pedantic zealots if you are
going to use the same language and the same tactics.

Especially if the people you're criticizing are neither "religious"
nor pedantic zealots.

 

[Chris McDonald]

== Proposal from Edward G. Nilges 7 Sep 2009 ==

..... This despite the fact that the standard destroyed the very
ability to teach C save in the most cautious, and fundamentalist way,
such that "professors" today are well advised to be *imams* in
*madrassahs* teaching *taliban*. In a sense this is an insult to Islam
for the *imams* giving *fatwas* are concerned with the highest things,
whereas the new prophets of C are concerned with the lowest and most
sordid things.

This final paragraph will certainly test how well the new Wikipedia
editing policy is working.

An easy test, none the less.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Not so. All the guy has to do to be rehabilitated is publish
comprehensive errata. Is that so hard?

[...]

Certainly publishing errata would improve Shildt's reputation, but I'm
not convinced it would rehabilitate it. If he were to start
publishing high-quality books, not just acknowledging errors in his
old ones, he could *begin* to gain a reputation as a good technical
author.

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111a écrit :








I agree with this, but it would be better if the rest of that
contribution was dropped. Too much polemic, it is of little use
to be against "religious" and pedantic zealots if you are
going to use the same language and the same tactics.- Hide quoted text -

Yes indeed, it is hard to have to use such strong language. But if you
use moderate language, beyond a certain complexity, you're a "troll".
I refer you to the fable: may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111a écrit :

[some stuff about Schildt and his critics]

I agree with this, but it would be better if the rest of that
contribution was dropped. Too much polemic, it is of little use
to be against "religious" and pedantic zealots if you are
going to use the same language and the same tactics.

Especially if the people you're criticizing are neither "religious"
nor pedantic zealots.

I'd remark that under economic and other forms of pressure, I've seen
"enlightened" people regress to barbarism, and I'd point to your
behavior hear as an example (your use of "troll", isomorphic to "Jew"
in anti-semitic writings, and "witch" in the Malleus Maleficarum).

 

[spinoza1111]

In <[email protected]>,

spinoza1111wrote:


I have just re-read the Wikipedia article on Schildt as a result of
your posting. It seems that someone has had the temerity to introduce
a little accuracy into that article:

"The technical accuracy of the books has been somewhat criticized:
Peter Seebach, a voting member of ISO C committee and moderator of
the Usenet group comp.lang.c.moderated, alleges that Schildt's C: The
Complete Reference contains code with beginner's mistakes and
statements suggesting the wrong idea. Schildt's The Annotated ANSI C
Standard was similarly criticized by Clive Feather, who is also an
ISO C committee member, and by Steve Summit, author of the C FAQ."

Presumably this is what you are referring to as "vandalism", but it
seems to me to be a very understated description of the problems with
Schildt's C books.




The objections raised by Peter Seebach and Clive Feather are technical
objections that can be tied directly to the language definition. That
isn't POV - that's objectivity.

This is only partly true. Some of Seebach consists of stylistic
objections and instructions to Schildt as to how to teach C, in a
document that admits that Schildt knows how to do this. Others
consists of *fatwas*, that is, admonishments that Schildt may no
longer explain things as if the increment/decrement operators no
longer had a definite timing or meaning, and as if to speak of a stack
was an error.

Schildt claims to teach ANSI C.

No, he tried to help working C programmers keep their jobs in the
context of a government attack on their expertise sponsored by
corporations.

It has been somewhat less than spectacularly successful, yes.
Why?

Are these "some" the same "some" who maintain that Elvis lives? Anyone
is free to express an opinion, but not all opinions are worth
listening to. So - who are these "some"?

No, they are programmers who prefer to program as opposed to
destroying reputations.

Not so. All the guy has to do to be rehabilitated is publish
comprehensive errata. Is that so hard?

"Rehabilitated?" If you were a literate person, you'd know that the
connotation of that word is from Stalinist show trials.

Er, no. His knowledge, such as it is, is in his head and, to some
extent, in his books.



Pointing out technical errors is not the same as savaging technical
reputations.

Actually it is, when the "errors" referred to are typos, matters of
interpretation, and items which even Seebach concedes are "nits" but
which he added to increase the apparent weight of his argument.

The Standard provided the very foundation that allows all C teachers
to teach the same language to everybody, if only they will take
advantage of that foundation.

How can they teach it if they cannot explain things in terms of a
common runtime? You don't let them talk as if preincrementation and
postincrementation take place at a decidable time, and you don't let
them talk about a stack.

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111a écrit :








I agree with this, but it would be better if the rest of that
contribution was dropped. Too much polemic, it is of little use
to be against "religious" and pedantic zealots if you are
going to use the same language and the same tactics.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Frankly, Jacob, I have noticed for a terribly long time how structures
emerge in venues assumed safe from barbarism: I refer you to the
Bible, although my point is not Biblical: "swept and garnished".

That is: software and computers represent pure Enlightenment (swept
and garnished) and thus a hope of escape from barbarism, especially to
lower middle class strivers ever in danger of feeding Moloch, whether
as draftees in Algeria, draftees in Indochina, or blue collar workers
without unions.

This is why we expect men giving eleemosynary time to a standard to be
the best of us, and it's quite a shock to some of us when these people
turn out to as utterly nasty, and petty, and mean, as Clive Feather
and Peter Seebach; for happen what may, better men ignore books with
"errors" in free societies lest they violate freedom of speech.

Because of constitutional freedom of speech in the US and Britain, all
sorts of crap erroneous books exist, far worse than Schildt's books on
C. There are US history textbooks that don't mention John Brown's
attack on Harper's Ferry. And there's a lot of computer books full of
horseshit.

Professionals and leaders in the field, however, are in the main
silent about books per se. Generally speaking and in my experience
since 1970, computing books with horse shit are simply uncited and
unremarked by cool guys. Donald Knuth didn't cite a former boss of
mine at Roosevelt who was smart in his own way: he predicted Y2K in
1973: but he couldn't write and his books promoting IBM's hapless
"System 3" and its 96 column punched card sank like a stone in
silence.

In a civilized society, you at most publish a book review and a
rating, and then you zip up. You cite or not, and then you zip up.
Seebach and Feather did far more, and they incited and enabled even
more attacks on Schildt. This was barbarism and it foreshadowed the
vicious attacks on Java author Kathy Sierra in 2006 by "meanKids".

Further evidence of barbarism is the double standard: criticise a
Feather, and he's on you like a fly on shit.

There's a reason for this, and it's the ugly history of book-burning,
witch-burning, and hounding books and peoples out of existence.
Seebach and Feather lack the historical insight or sensitivity to just
zip up about Schildt.

Human affairs are not thermodynamics. There is not always a slow build
up, or slow bleed, of pressure over time. Human are more like
dialectical switching engines in which overnight one can get the sense
that things have changed, and not for the better. The old devils of
barbarism, whispering campaign, and smirking bastards with secrets
return to the mansion precisely because it is swept and garnished,
like cockroaches.

 

[Nick Keighley]

You use language oddly. I'd always thought "vandalism" applied to
property not persons. Perhaps to you Schildt is an owned property.

This is only partly true. Some of Seebach consists of stylistic
objections and instructions to Schildt as to how to teach C, in a
document that admits that Schildt knows how to do this. Others
consists of *fatwas*,

fatwa: "an Islamic law pronouncing a death sentence upon someone who
is
considered an infidel or a blasphemer" (although apparently the
meaning
in Arabic is merely a religious opinion concerning Islamic law).

that is, admonishments that Schildt may no
longer explain things as if the increment/decrement operators no
longer had a definite timing or meaning,

I cannot believe that someone as knowledgeable as Seebach would claim
that the increment and decrement operators had no meaning. I suspect
your
poor knowledge of C and difficulty with technical language led you
astray.

I'm also sure he didn't say they "had no definite timing"
(whatever *that* means!)

and as if to speak of a stack was an error.

he probebly pointed out that a hardware stack was not necessary for
the
implementation of C. Usully the expression "arguments are pushed onto
the
stack" are disparaged as misleading. I'm not entirely on the side of
the
anti-stackers. Concretism, even if slightly misleading, is sometimes
pedagogically handy. Over concentration on implementation details can
sometimes be unhelpful. Someone once "explained" a telecommunications
switch to me as "it's all shift registers!"; an explanation I found
unhelpful.

Why?

much less interesting than C89. C89 was *needed* to standardise
existing
practice. Everyone wanted to use C89 (so-called ANSI-C) every
implementor
wanted to stick "ANSI-C" labels on their boxes. With C99 there was no
clear
concensus as to what was wanted (much less than we got in my case),
much
less pressure from users (they already had their "portable assembler)
and
less commitment from vendors (Microsoft said they had no intention of
supporting C99) and some bits were hard (VLAs). The lobby that seemed
to
get the ear of the committeee seemed to be the Fortran people who
wanted
to make C more useable to them. I assume they are a significant group
but complex numbers and anti-aliasing are pretty esoteric to me.

"Rehabilitated?" If you were a literate person, you'd know that the
connotation of that word is from Stalinist show trials.

not in my world (UK). The connotation is from parole and prison.
A former wrong-doer who has now reformed.

I would expect him to hold the copyright.

How can they teach it if they cannot explain things in terms of a
common runtime?

the abstract machine. Discuss *what* it does rather than *how* an
implementation does it. I confess I like to have a rough idea about
implementation but not to be too glued to it.

You don't let them talk as if preincrementation and
postincrementation take place at a decidable time,

but it is bounded time. And there is nothing particular about ++ and
--

and you don't let them talk about a stack.

well it's a logical stack, but misleading to leave people with the
impression o a physical stack

 

[Nick Keighley]

In
spinoza1111 wrote:

and "cleansing" is from the Serbian for genocide.

If you were a bright - or at least an educated - person, you'd know or
easily be able to find out that it's from the Latin "rehabilitare",
which comes from "habilitas" (skill or ability).

etomology doesn't always clearly define meaning. Atoms are actually
divisible.

Your imagined
connotations are of no significance in this context.

true, true.

 

[Phil Carmody]

On 7 Sep, 05:37, spinoza1111 <[email protected]> wrote:

You're feeding the troll.

well it's a logical stack, but misleading to leave people with the
impression o a physical stack

It's not a logical stack, it's a logical linked list!
Each function's autos can certainly be thought of as being
clumped together, but there's no reason to think that one
functions autos are in any way spacially related to any
other function's.

Phil

 

[Keith Thompson]

You're feeding the troll.


It's not a logical stack, it's a logical linked list!
Each function's autos can certainly be thought of as being
clumped together, but there's no reason to think that one
functions autos are in any way spacially related to any
other function's.

The word "stack" has two relevant meanings.

One is a hardware stack, which advances in a particular direction
through contiguous memory. This is a common, but not universal,
method used in C implementations.

The other is a data structure with last-in first-out (LIFO) behavior.
This kind of stack can be implemented in a variety of ways: as a
contiguous array, as a linked list, or as organized flocks of carrier
pigeons.

I'm sure that Nick was using the term "logical stack" to refer to the
latter.

The problem is that people who, for example, talk about "passing
arguments on the stack", are generally referring to a contiguous
hardware stack and incorrectly assuming that it's universal in C
implementations.

 

[jacob navia]

Keith Thompson a écrit :

The word "stack" has two relevant meanings.

One is a hardware stack, which advances in a particular direction
through contiguous memory. This is a common, but not universal,
method used in C implementations.

The other is a data structure with last-in first-out (LIFO) behavior.
This kind of stack can be implemented in a variety of ways: as a
contiguous array, as a linked list, or as organized flocks of carrier
pigeons.

I would like that you provide an example. I strongly believe that
you have none, or some dead system decades ago.

I'm sure that Nick was using the term "logical stack" to refer to the
latter.

The problem is that people who, for example, talk about "passing
arguments on the stack", are generally referring to a contiguous
hardware stack and incorrectly assuming that it's universal in C
implementations.

I can say that in 30 years programming in C I never saw a machine
without a hardware stack or a dedicated register for that purpose.

We have discussed this stuff to death and regulars never came
with an example of a relevant architecture.

 

[Chris Dollin]

Keith Thompson a écrit :

I would like that you provide an example. I strongly believe that
you have none, or some dead system decades ago.

You want an example of a C implementation that uses a non-contiguous
stack? ARM C on RISC OS a decade or so ago -- and for all I know,
ARM C /still/.

Functions that need LIFO-type store for local variables (and not
all of them do) use a stack which is allocated, in chunks, from
the heap; the chunks are threaded together. Chunks are big enough
to hold multiple stack frames.

I can't remember whether or not the chunk-using code made special
use of SP, the /conventional/ stack pointer; that would depend on
whether the same calling sequence is used to call C and non-C code.
What I can say is that in the C call:

inc(17)

the code looks like (working from memory here)

mov R1, #17
bl inc

so /this call/ is not directly using any stackery [indirectly, it
has to ensure that if `inc` /needs/ stack that it knows where to
find it], and that if `inc` is defined like:

int inc( int n ) { return n + 1; }

then it will be compiled to:

add R1, R1, #1
mov pc, lr

which again is utterly stackless. If `inc` needed some stack
space, then it messes around checking that there's enough free
and linking in a new stack chunk if not.

Note that the conventional stack pointer SP aka R13 has no
stack-specific hardware operations. Any ARM register [except the
PC ...] can use the push-like/pop-like instructions. The ARM
has shadow registers for interrupt states, and SP and LR are
some of the shadowed registers, so even if you multiply SP by
17 and subtract Scotland Yard's phone number, an interrupt or
system call won't be faced with a garbage scratch area.

I can say that in 30 years programming in C I never saw a machine
without a hardware stack or a dedicated register for that purpose.

The question was not whether or not a machine had a hardware stack or
a dedicated register for that purpose; it was whether a C implementation
/used/ such a hardware stack or stack pointer register. And not all
of them do, not all of the time. I'm pretty sure the IBM 360 didn't
(doesn't) have a dedicated stack or stack register /in hardware/
for function calls. (What it does with interrupts I have never had
to learn, or at elast if I learned it I have forgotten.)

 

[jacob navia]

Chris Dollin a écrit :

You want an example of a C implementation that uses a non-contiguous
stack? ARM C on RISC OS a decade or so ago -- and for all I know,
ARM C /still/.

Excuse me but:

<quote>
3.2.1 The stack pointer, SP or R13
Register R13 is used as a stack pointer and is also known as the
SP register
<end quote>

ARM Architecture: Chapter 3. Page 26

Now you tell me that C doesn't use register R13?

Please, we have had this discussion a thousand times. You are confusing
passing arguments in some registers with absence of a stack. See
below

What I can say is that in the C call:

inc(17)

the code looks like (working from memory here)

mov R1, #17
bl inc

This is called "passing arguments in the registers". This is done
by lcc-win in all 64 bit x86 targets and in the power PC version.
You are confusing this calling convention with the absence of a
stack.

The question was not whether or not a machine had a hardware stack or
a dedicated register for that purpose; it was whether a C implementation
/used/ such a hardware stack or stack pointer register. And not all
of them do, not all of the time. I'm pretty sure the IBM 360 didn't
(doesn't) have a dedicated stack or stack register /in hardware/
for function calls. (What it does with interrupts I have never had
to learn, or at elast if I learned it I have forgotten.)

System 360 was developed last century in the sixties. Great example of
a CURRENT architecture. And anyway, you are wrong. Mainframes
also have a stack obviously.

 

[spinoza1111]

Chris Dollin a écrit :


Excuse me but:

<quote>
3.2.1 The stack pointer, SP or R13
Register R13 is used as a stack pointer and is also known as the
SP register
<end quote>

ARM Architecture: Chapter 3. Page 26

Now you tell me that C doesn't use register R13?

Please, we have had this discussion a thousand times. You are confusing
passing arguments in some registers with absence of a stack. See
below





This is called "passing arguments in the registers". This is done
by lcc-win in all 64 bit x86 targets and in the power PC version.
You are confusing this calling convention with the absence of a
stack.


System 360 was developed last century in the sixties. Great example of
a CURRENT architecture. And anyway, you are wrong. Mainframes
also have a stack obviously.

It was nasty on the 360. In the case of subroutine call, the caller
provided the callee with space to save registers.

But this meant that in a sequence of nested subroutine calls, the
callee, when it was in turn the caller, would have to provide its
callee with another "save area".

This in effect was a stack, because it is not necessary (it is per
accidens) that a stack be contiguous, and your interlocutors,
Monsieur, don't see a stack unless it is called a stack. This means
that they can't see a duck when it quacks if their story book doesn't
say its a duck.

Recursion? We doan't need no steenking recursion...and indeed, I and
my mates discovered as consultants a reinsurance system which was
irretrievably broken because of this.

These in other words are the terminology kiddies who don't see
reality, only words they've been trained to see.

The fact is that in the Chicago loop of the 1970s, many systems
programmers at service bureaus and insurance firms knew all about
stacks and wanted them on their IBM mainframes: but the suits at IBM
had decided that stacks were a "frill" and too gay too live, therefore
the 360 and 370 had a set of 16 general purpose registers which had to
be saved. Indeed, we were busy "saving" shit all the time, where the
theological implications of saving and bein' saved were a cultural
artifact. Stacks on the other hand don't appear in the Good Book and
as such were regarded by some programmers and many managers as tools
of Satan. In criticising Schildt for speaking of stacks, Seebach is
rebarbative, like Jack Cade in the old play:

"Thou hast most traiterously corrupted the youth of the Realme, in
erecting a Grammar Schoole: and where-as before, our Fore-fathers had
no other Bookes but the Score and the Tally, thou hast caused printing
to be vs'd, and contrary to the King, his Crowne, and Dignity, thou
hast built a Paper-Mill. It will be prooued to thy Face, that thou
hast men about thee, that vsually talke of a Nowne and a Verbe, and
such abhominable wordes, as no Christian eare can endure to heare."

(Shakespeare, Henry VI part 2)

 

[spinoza1111]

Keith Thompson a écrit :









I would like that you provide an example. I strongly believe that
you have none, or some dead system decades ago.



I can say that in 30 years programming in C I never saw a machine
without a hardware stack or a dedicated register for that purpose.

Nor have I outside of basic business coding in 360 assembler and
Cobol, and even here I found systems that were buggy because of the
absence of a stack, notably in reinsurance. By the end of my Cobol
career, in 1979 (when I fled Cobol in disgust) I was implementing
stacks in software and in Cobol to do things such as emulate PBXs in
order to bill complex calls.

I also implemented soft stacks on the Texas Instruments TI-79
calculator, which didn't have them (unlike HP calculators) to write a
compiler and runtime for Mouse in 1K.

It was plain to my by 1975 that programming without stacks was evil.

 

[spinoza1111]

The word "stack" has two relevant meanings.

One is a hardware stack, which advances in a particular direction
through contiguous memory.  This is a common, but not universal,
method used in C implementations.

The other is a data structure with last-in first-out (LIFO) behavior.
This kind of stack can be implemented in a variety of ways: as a
contiguous array, as a linked list, or as organized flocks of carrier
pigeons.

I'm sure that Nick was using the term "logical stack" to refer to the
latter.

The problem is that people who, for example, talk about "passing
arguments on the stack", are generally referring to a contiguous
hardware stack and incorrectly assuming that it's universal in C
implementations.

No, Schildt was giving his readers a picture to get them started. It
is Seebach who confused the picture with the reality of a stack
implemented contiguously, as a linked list, or WTF, not Schildt, for
it was Seebach who made the wild accusation/implication that Schildt
believes that stacks must be contiguous.

 

[spinoza1111]

Chris Dollin a écrit :


Excuse me but:

<quote>
3.2.1 The stack pointer, SP or R13
Register R13 is used as a stack pointer and is also known as the
SP register
<end quote>

ARM Architecture: Chapter 3. Page 26

Now you tell me that C doesn't use register R13?

Please, we have had this discussion a thousand times. You are confusing
passing arguments in some registers with absence of a stack. See
below





This is called "passing arguments in the registers". This is done
by lcc-win in all 64 bit x86 targets and in the power PC version.
You are confusing this calling convention with the absence of a
stack.


System 360 was developed last century in the sixties. Great example of
a CURRENT architecture. And anyway, you are wrong. Mainframes
also have a stack obviously.

Here's how Seebach operates:


Page 19
Schildt: In general, negative numbers are represented using the two's
complement approach...

Seebach: This is not a C feature. It is a common implementation, but
it is specifically not required. (Binary is, but one's complement is
not unheard of.)

Schildt SAY "in general": yet Seebach identifies this as an error in
his *fatwa*. A programmer who doesn't know the fact that Schildt is
trying to teach is a useless bastard who can't debug.

Seebach is like my student nicknamed "Otto" in a C class for IBM
mainframes that I taught in 1992. "Otto" wanted to continue to use IBM
mainframe assembler and did not want to learn C, so "Otto" kept on
disrupting the class with trivial counterexamples, primarily to show
off.

But it was understandable that "Otto" wanted to show off: his
employers had treated him like shit for twenty years whilst he had put
in the hours to maintain complex assembler code that had been written
by a man (who I knew) that'd gotten rich writing the original software
and walked away, leaving "Otto" and his mates to unsnarl the mess he
made.

"Otto" was a real contributor, but his employers had told him that his
expertise was false, and that he needed to learn C...on an IBM
mainframe with significant problems, starting with EBCDIC, in hosting
C.

Whereas Seebach is trying to destroy Schildt here, in his first
charge, even though Schildt says "in general"!