The problems in comp.lang.c

[Richard Heathfield]

jacob navia said:

Richard Heathfield wrote:

[snip]

Likewise, I assure you. But I think we differ over who we think the
morons are. If you don't like my articles, why not killfile me?

I would say the same. Good advice. You could use it yourself and
stop answering my posts.

Since it is in your commercial interest to have as few people as possible
pointing out your misunderstandings, blunders, and product plugs, your
response does not surprise me at all. It may surprise *you*, however, to
discover that I actually reply to relatively few of your articles. (It may
surprise others, too.)

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip several yards of junk, summarized by: ...

Yes, you can quote any standard BUT the current one. C99 will be
immediately folllowed by comments "This is not portable". Just
try posting

for (int i=0; i<10; i++)

Which is standard and accepted. As you may have noticed, the
standards accepted include C99, C95, C90, C89 (identical to C90),
K&RII, and K&RI.

The point of insisting on standard compliance is that it is not
possible to talk intelligently about an undefined cloudy thing.
Those standards provide a clear basis for discussion.

 

[CBFalconer]

Walter Roberson wrote:
.... snip ...


I couldn't even imagine one. One of the apps I wrote
was for the machines doing the selling of transportation
tickets...

o Control the serial port to receive data from the coin store
o At the same time scan the touch screen to see if the user
has pressed any choice
o At the same time control the special purpose keyboard
o At the same time use the network to see if there is any
software update ready, or another supervisor data.

If you see into ANY modern embedded application they have ALL
to be multitasking!

And why do you imagine that includes multitasking? You may have to
write careful code to control the access to various portions, but
that is not hard. I did all that thirty years ago, in Pascal, on
an 8080 chip. My methods and codes are not applicable in c.l.c.

 

[CBFalconer]

More and more embedded apps are becoming multithreaded yes

One of the objectives of OS development for many decades has been
to provide multitasking etc. abilities to code written for a
single-tasking environment. This simplifies the thinking. Once in
aa while something comes up where you need deeper control, and that
portion is off-topic here.

 

[Chris Thomasson]

One of the objectives of OS development for many decades has been
to provide multitasking etc. abilities to code written for a
single-tasking environment. This simplifies the thinking.

[...]

Are you talking about STM? How does that simplify anything?

Sending follow-ups to comp.programming.threads...

 

[Chris Thomasson]

Walter Roberson wrote:

[snip]

Most of the
programs I wrote during that period that somehow involved networking
worked upon stored syslog files -- their topic was networking
but the programs themselves required no networking, just text files.

Granted. there *are* programs that aren't multi-threaded (a compiler
for instance ) but they are the exception to the rule...

C compilers can definitely benefit from "some" multi-threading techniques...
Think about it for a moment...

 

[Morris Dovey]

Wait. The most vocal propnents of this "topicality only"
stuff are discussing since a week about english grammar
and about whether "I have a doubt" is correct english or not.

You've no doubt noticed the sizable number of non-participants.
I'm happy allow really terrible English so long as I think the
poster is making a genuine effort. I'm also more than willing to
express my admiration for your mastery of English - especially
since I may be the only American visitor to Paris ever to be
begged to speak English instead of French.

I'm more inclined to react poorly to lazy, sloppy writing by
native English speakers who think it's "kewl" to talk/act like a
brat in an adult forum.

One of them (Mr "Bau") told me that my posts about debuggers
and debugging were "OFF TOPIC" here, and several MINUTES later
sent a post to the english grammar discussion.

Like myself, Christian does poorly at walking on water - although
his signal-to-noise ratio is better than mine. Sometimes all one
can do is shake one's head and turn away - or try to find some
humor in the situation.

What is on topic DEPENDS. If you are a member of the select
group that "calls the shots" you can speak about ANYTHING.

Well, yes and no. I don't call the shots anywhere except when I'm
alone in my workshop, but I haven't been much criticized for
off-topic posting here. I'd like to believe that it's a low-key
recognition for my bumbling attempts to help beginners with
advice and standard-compliant code examples over a period of
years.

Color of electric cables, whatever. ANYTHING will be accepted
without any complaint.

Hmm - I missed the discussion of cable colors, or might have
joined in to mention topicality issues (or I might not, it
depends).

When *I* post about topics not in the standard but related to
C like debuggers, the stack, lcc-win proposals for language
extensions, etc, then, I have to suffer from the topicality
zealots.

Have you considered the possibility that your signal-to-noise
ratio may have had an effect on this?

So what?

So ask where you're most likely to get the highest quality answer
- unless, of course, you don't care about quality - and if you
don't care about quality, then why even bother to ask?

Most C applications today are multi-threaded and why can't
we discuss about that?

I'm not sure your premise is true, but the discussion should take
place where it's topical - which isn't CLC.

It is much more related than English grammar.

Ok, but that still doesn't make it topical.

This is a minor isue. If a poster omits some information,
we can ASK him/her.

We could, but since we already know that the poster knows it's an
off-topic query to be redirected to a better source, why bother?
To increase the noise level or to waste the OP's time?

I have tried to remain within C. But I am tired of getting flamed
because

o C99 is viewed as an error, and any code posted that uses STANDARD
C will be flamed as "non-portable" because they say that no
implementation of C99 exists, what is obviously not correct.

Hmm. The criticisms my code gets are usually for undefined or
implementation-defined behavior. They're usually correct and
reflect either ignorance or sloppiness on my part. I don't let it
eat me up, I just resolve not to repeat the error. Most often
it's a matter of too quick with the "send" button.

Yes, I am vilified as a "money hungry" businessman, that sells
his software. Obviously, people like Microsoft, Red Hat, and
others never do that. "My own personal interests" lead me to
contribute in this group. The fact that my software is free
to use, that it is a very popular C99 implementation doesn't
bother you.

Here's a news flash: We're nearly all "money hungry". The norm
for technical forums is that being a business stakeholder isn't
necessarily a Bad Thing, but we mustn't take up bandwidth to
promote that business except in our signature. If it helps you
feel better, you should know that I'm faced with exactly the same
situation on news:alt.solar.thermal

Those people could just ignore my posts. I would be happy to
be spared the trouble of answering to the insults (my daughter
is addicted to porn, said one of them), to the stupid "off topic"
posts etc.

Yes, we always have the option to just ignore pollution.
Different people respond to it in different ways. Some /do/
ignore, and some work to preserve a clean environment. By and
large, it's better not to be seen as the source of the pollution.

Yes. The standard doesn't mention the word debugging, and never
specifies what happens when Undefined behavior happens. So what?

So discuss debugging where the conversation won't be regarded as
pollution, and learn that discussing UB here is very much like
discussing division by zero in a mathematics forum. How difficult
is that?

1) No implementation of C without a stack exists.
2) Debuggers are one of the most often used tools when developing
C code. Obviously "regulars in clc" never use it. So please
IGNORE my posts.

You're not being truthful. "Regulars in clc" said they used
debuggers, and this quasi-regular volunteered that he'd actually
written special purpose debuggers.

I will not ignore your posts, nor will others who care about the
quality of information presented here. It is in the nature of a
technical forum that everything posted is subject to critical
review - and it is that, in fact, which makes the forums of
value.

So, here we have it. This group, (as decided by these people)
should only discuss their boring, limited view of C, that is at best
represented by TURBOC of 1988.

The "TURBOC" reference is exterraneous - I'll give you the
benefit of the doubt and read that as "ISO/IEC 9899:1999(E)" and
previous standards. Other than that small slip, you've summed it
up fairly well. The simple fact is that there's no way to expand
topicality without sacrificing quality.

Yes, I have been forced to read the articles of that person for
some years, and I can tell you that most of the bullshit he
produces will be swallowed by his fan club without any problem.

Forced? By whom?

Technically, he has some clarity of mind, and some of his
works are OK. This doesn't allow him to insult people that
do not share his stupid view of C and the C standard: C99.

I'm willing to agree if you're willing to accept the same
restrictions _and_ either conduct a civilized negotiation with
the newsgroup to expand topicality and, if you're not successful
- accept the pre-existing norm.

I think that standard C, even if it is not implemented in
every compiler around, has many positive improvements over older
standards. I have the right to have this view, and I am
working since years for getting my small implementation up to speed.
I find it stupid (yes, that is the word) that somebody with the
technical capacities of heathfield will wage a war against
standard C.

Of course you have a right to that view, and I respect the effort
and dedication required to implement a compiler. I generally
don't have enough time to spend any of it watching two adults
butt heads.

Yes, you can quote any standard BUT the current one. C99 will be
immediately folllowed by comments "This is not portable". Just
try posting

for (int i=0; i<10; i++)

Strangely enough, I'm inclined to post code that I'm certain
everyone can compile and try out on their own machines. A
reasonable number of the functions I've shared have been provided
with conditional unit test mainlines to facilitate whatever
tinkering people might care to do. I've certainly participated in
discussions of both C90 and C99 that were civil and informative.
I'm not sure why you're experiencing difficulties - could the
problem be in the mode of conversation, rather than the actual
information content?

That was YOUR viewpoint of this group.

Of course - what other viewpoint would I express?

I beg to differ!

Ok - but as far as I'm concerned, neither begging nor agreement
are necessary to constructive dialog.

 

[santosh]

One of the objectives of OS development for many decades has been
to provide multitasking etc. abilities to code written for a
single-tasking environment. This simplifies the thinking. Once in
aa while something comes up where you need deeper control, and that
portion is off-topic here.

Once in a while? Nearly all GUI based applications these days are
multithreaded. When it's needed it cannot be substituted easily with
multitasking, unless each logical "thread" of an application was split
into separate intercommunicating processes, which only increases
overhead unnecessarily.

 

[Richard]

One of the objectives of OS development for many decades has been
to provide multitasking etc. abilities to code written for a
single-tasking environment. This simplifies the thinking. Once in
aa while something comes up where you need deeper control, and that
portion is off-topic here.

Utter nonsense. A huge amount of C applications written for the desktop
in C are multithreaded. As you should know since you constantly mention
your Linux knowledge. To suggest that an OS time slicing between single
threaded applications is the same as a single application utilising
multiple threads indicates that your knowledge of the matter is next to
zero.

 

[Chris McDonald]

jacob navia said:

That would be the non-existent charter, presumably - comp.lang.c has never
had a charter.

Confusing; Jacob regularly posts a charter here, and Richard states
that there isn't one. One interpretation of this is that there has
never been an officially agreed charter.

So, why don't (we) participants develop a charter, over a period of a
month, have a voting period, and declare an outcome? There will then
be little doubt, or need for constant sniping and ranting, as to what
the agreed role of this newsgroup is.

Some kind sole could then post the charter once a week (yes, once a week
seems too frequent, but it's currently longer than the period between
the frequent wars on c.l.c topicality).

??

 

[santosh]

Confusing; Jacob regularly posts a charter here, and Richard states
that there isn't one. One interpretation of this is that there has
never been an officially agreed charter.

I think that when c.l.c was created there was no concept of a formal
charter as it exists now. What Jacob posts is a sort of
founding "manifesto", which does indeed encourage discussion of
platform specific details. But that was in 1986, things have changed a
lot since then.

So, why don't (we) participants develop a charter, over a period of a
month, have a voting period, and declare an outcome? There will then
be little doubt, or need for constant sniping and ranting, as to what
the agreed role of this newsgroup is.

I'm afraid that disagreements will persist. They are fondly held
differences of opinion and a charter, even if one were to be enforced,
is not some Holy Writ for everyone is going to adhere to. The OT posts
are going to continue and so will the trolling of the trolls. The only
real answer is moderation, for which of course there is already a
group, and a spectacular failure at that.

Some kind sole could then post the charter once a week (yes, once a
week seems too frequent, but it's currently longer than the period
between the frequent wars on c.l.c topicality).

??

In an unmoderated group, a charter needs to be adhered to voluntarily,
which I don't think is going to fare any better than the situation we
have now.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Morris Dovey said:

Technically, [yours truly] has some clarity of mind, and some of his
works are OK. This doesn't allow him to insult people that
do not share his stupid view of C and the C standard: C99.

I'm willing to agree if you're willing to accept the same
restrictions _and_ either conduct a civilized negotiation with
the newsgroup to expand topicality and, if you're not successful
- accept the pre-existing norm.

I, too, am willing to agree with most of that (although of course I don't
agree that my view of C is stupid). There are many people here who don't
share my view of C, with whom I conduct perfectly civilised and indeed
friendly discussions. If I cross a line occasionally (and really, I try
not to do that, but we're all human), it's not because people disagree
with me; rather, it's when people show contempt for the customs and mores
of the group, or display a remarkable capacity for getting the wrong end
of the stick (e.g. the recent "stack" nonsense).

Ok - but as far as I'm concerned, neither begging nor agreement
are necessary to constructive dialog.

Right. As Billy Chambless famously said, "The way I see it, an intelligent
person who disagrees with me is probably the most important person I'll
interact with on any given day."

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

Dear everyone

I've been lurking in this group for a few weeks now. Originally I had a
question to ask (about atomic/threadsafe operations in C), and I wanted
to get the feel of the newsgroup first. In fact I've got to know it well
enough that I realize there's no point in even asking my question, which
would be vilified as "off topic".

That is correct. With one tiny exception, there are no atomic or
thread safe operations in C. However, that doesn't mean you have
nowhere within Usenet to ask your questions. There is a general
newsgroup about multithreading called comp.programming.threads, as
well as various platform-specifics newsgroups.

 From what I have observed, this group has big problems.

As someone who chooses to write a long-winded, bullshit rant about
personalities instead of working on obtaining answers to your
technical questions, you fit in rather marvelously, don't you think?

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

Then there are lots of other people with a bizarre view of what
is "on topic" and "off topic", where fundamental concepts of C are (for
their own completely arbitrary reasons) verboten in this group.

There is quite a precise concensus about what is topical and what
isn't, and it has not changed in well over a decade. It is not
arbitrary at all. (Try making up your own arbitrary rules for what is
topical and assert them against someone).

This stupidity will drive away ordinary C programmers who might want to share
their knowledge and experience!

People who can't see past personalities deserve to be driven away.

I wish people would see what a useful resource this group could be if it
weren't for a noisy minority of morons who spoil it for everyone else
with their negativity and aggression towards other views.

It would be a useless forum where the clueless would freely spread
misinformation, giving answers which are incorrect and nonportable.

For instance, newbies would be told that fflush(stdin) is the way to
discard unread input characters, and nobody would have the spine to
call this nonsense, because it's not nice to argue.

To get an idea about what that's like, find any random web-hosted ``C/C
++'' programming forum.

By contrast, you get very precise, standard-based answers here---just
not to offtopic questions that are outside of the C language. But
there are equally (or almost equally) precise newsgroups elsewhere in
the comp.* hierarchy for that. For instance, why should we discuss the
Unix or POSIX system interfaces here, when there is
comp.unix.programmer?

The entire universe of platform-specific libraries and system
interfaces for every system that is programmed in C is vastly larger
than the language itself. Would you want all of that to be topical in
one place?

If so, go start your own newsgroup. Call it
``alt.comp.lang.c.all.platforms''. Actually there is already
``alt.comp.lang.c'' which seems to fit the bill. You can discuss in
any language, not just English, and it seems that anything goes.

Contrary to your hypothesis that a friendlier newsgroup would attract
more knowledgeable C programmers, that newsgroup seems to have very
low traffic.

In a single page listing the most recent threads, I see material
ranging from November 2007 to March 2008.

 

[John Bode]

Dear everyone

I've been lurking in this group for a few weeks now. Originally I had a
question to ask (about atomic/threadsafe operations in C), and I wanted
to get the feel of the newsgroup first. In fact I've got to know it well
enough that I realize there's no point in even asking my question, which
would be vilified as "off topic".

First of all, *thank you* for following common usenet etiquette; it's
more than most people bother to do.

And as you have discovered, yes, you would not have found the answer
to your question in this particular newsgroup. The C language itself
is a big enough topic, and this group generates enough traffic (even
without all the frakking spam us benighted Google users must endure)
that it's in the best interests of the group to keep things focused as
narrowly as possible. Threads are not part of the language, and *any*
discussion of them is not universally applicable. The right answer
for pthreads may be the absolute wrong answer for other threading
APIs.

It's like walking into a cheese shop expecting to buy a pizza, and
getting pissed off when the staff suggest going to the pizzeria around
the corner. It's happened often enough over the years that the staff
are getting a bit surly about it. And we've picked up a few mall rats
who have nothing better to do than to heckle the cheese shop staff.
Most of us ignore them, but every now and again it's hard not to hurl
a wheel of Gruyere at them.

However, it's better than the time the crazy homeless guy camped out
for several weeks and decided to argue religion. That was nasty. He
was free-range nuts, hadn't bathed in weeks, and spit on everything.

From what I have observed, this group has big problems. There are some
positive posters here (I'd especially like to thank jacob navia for his
very interesting and useful long posts on stacks and debuggers), but
there seem to be many many more people here who post only to be
negative.

While I won't argue that Jacob's posts haven't been informative, it's
again like posting pizza recipes in a cheese shop. And Jacob's not
without his hangups. He very graciously invited me to never
participate in any newsgroup discussions ever again when I pointed out
that I'm no longer writing C code professionally.

In short, he can be a drama queen of the highest order.

The main example seems to be Richard Heathfield - I don't know what the
history of it is, but he obviously has a deep personal hatred of jacob
navia, and this dominates his posting. Most of his insults are pretty
puerile, but this constant negativity really seems to bring down the
atmosphere.

Seriously, WTF? Heathfield's been one of the more valuable
contributors over the years, he knows his shit, and he attracts hoards
of anti-groupies like some kind of biblical plague. Yeah, he has a
history with Jacob, because Jacob absolutely cannot deal with
criticism, constructive or otherwise.

Then there are lots of other people with a bizarre view of what
is "on topic" and "off topic", where fundamental concepts of C are (for
their own completely arbitrary reasons) verboten in this group.

For example?

This
stupidity will drive away ordinary C programmers who might want to share
their knowledge and experience!

I wish people would see what a useful resource this group could be if it
weren't for a noisy minority of morons who spoil it for everyone else
with their negativity and aggression towards other views.

Jeff

God invented kill files for a reason.

 

[Richard]

Seriously, WTF? Heathfield's been one of the more valuable
contributors over the years, he knows his shit, and he attracts hoards
of anti-groupies like some kind of biblical plague. Yeah, he has a
history with Jacob, because Jacob absolutely cannot deal with
criticism, constructive or otherwise.

Nobody doubts Heathfield's knowledge of the subset of C that he decides
is topical. The issue is his obnoxious posturing when someone disagrees
with him or presents a different, yet equally valuable to many, view on
matters.

It would take someone of particularly thick skin not to notice that
nearly all squabbling and pedantic foolery is a result of either
Heathfield getting on his high horse or "Chuck" Falconer being typically
rude and abrasive to people who do not post in adherence to his
seemingly random dictates on posting standards.

I know of no other technical newsgroup where so few have self appointed
themselves as the group's guardians and feel that they can bend and
distort the rules whenever it suits *them*.

 

[santosh]

Nobody doubts Heathfield's knowledge of the subset of C that he
decides is topical. The issue is his obnoxious posturing when someone
disagrees with him or presents a different, yet equally valuable to
many, view on matters.

It would take someone of particularly thick skin not to notice that
nearly all squabbling and pedantic foolery is a result of either
Heathfield getting on his high horse or "Chuck" Falconer being
typically rude and abrasive to people who do not post in adherence to
his seemingly random dictates on posting standards.

I know of no other technical newsgroup where so few have self
appointed themselves as the group's guardians and feel that they can
bend and distort the rules whenever it suits *them*.

Um, what about the "moderators" of moderated forums? They *are* self
appointed and I have witnessed quite a bit of "rule bending" and strife
(sometimes leading to open rebellion) on some so-called moderated
forums.

Strictly egalitarian groups are mostly a myth.

 

[Richard]

Um, what about the "moderators" of moderated forums? They *are* self
appointed and I have witnessed quite a bit of "rule bending" and strife
(sometimes leading to open rebellion) on some so-called moderated
forums.

There will always be some boat rocking. But we are not talking about
other groups. We are not talking about moderators - self appointed or
not. We are talking about a certain minorities attitude to certain
things, which if they were to relax a little would make this group a far
more productive place.

Strictly egalitarian groups are mostly a myth.

Your point being? No one is saying other places are perfect. The main
issue is that this group is one of the worse. Although I don't expect
you to agree since you are, despite being a decent person and helpful
more times than not, almost certainly indoctrinated and immune to the
rudeness and preening egomania which is apparent very quickly to any new
visitor to this group.

 

[Keith Thompson]

Yes, you can quote any standard BUT the current one.

That is manifestly untrue. I see far more quotations from C99 than
from C90. (That's partly because the C90 PDF is difficult to
copy-and-paste.)

C99 will be
immediately folllowed by comments "This is not portable". Just
try posting

for (int i=0; i<10; i++)

It is a simple fact that code that depends on C99 features is, at
least potentially, less portable than pure C90 code that does not.
There is nothing wrong with pointing that out. Doing so does not
constitute a flame.

[snip]

 

[Keith Thompson]

But precisely, WHY do we have to have a censorship?

There is no censorship. Has anyone ever prevented you from posting
anything you like here?

Disagreement and criticism are not censorship. Would you censor those
who disagree with you?

[...]

The charter of this group (that I posted here several times)
specifically allows it.

This newsgroup has no charter.