K
Keith Thompson
jacob navia said:Look in this group:
Any change to C is perceived as a threat. The overwhelming reaction
to a proposal of getting rid of MSDOS in the FAQ proves beyond
any doubt where those people are living.
Just what reaction are you referring to?
I agree that the MSDOS material in the FAQ is largely obsolete.
I think it's of historical interest, so I wouldn't want it deleted
altogether, but it could be moved to an archive section. And some,
but not all, of it could be made relevant just by tweaking a few
numbers. (There's plenty of room on the web; keeping the MSDOS
material doesn't mean there's less space for other information.)
I think most of the negative reaction was to your claim that
MSDOS is dead. That's just not true. It's *mostly* dead,
and has been almost entirely superseded by other things,
but it's still in use here and there.
This kind of thing seems to happen a lot. You make a basically
reasonable proposal, one that could trigger an interesting
discussion, but you combine it with an over-the-top claim that's easy
to refute. Naturally, people jump on the over-the-top claim because
it's easy, and your reasonable proposal gets lost in the noise.
For our purposes, it doesn't really matter whether MSDOS is
completely dead or just mostly dead. You're right, MSDOS gets too
much emphasis in the FAQ. You didn't need to make the false claim
that it's dead to support that.
That is why I am so despised in this group, now it is at least
clearer. I want to change stuff, and I try to project myself into
the future, and (worst) I even speak about the future of C.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't despise you. I do find
you annoying at times, especially when you make claims about other
people's motivations and get them so spectactularly wrong.
Everybody (with a few exceptions) sees C as a thing of the past,
joined by a few nostalgic old C programmers that live in 1989,
with MSDOS and Turboc.
The fact that those times were TWENTY years ago doesn't bother them.
They want to STAY there, in their untouched glorious past.
Nope.