The problems in comp.lang.c

[Ed Prochak]

... snip ...

No - the sort of thing that goes on is that various processes are
multi-tasked, without ever doing anything multi-tasking specific.
Or, for example, you ask for terminal input. The system doesn't
waste its time checking for keypresses. It goes off and does other
things until a keypress occurs, and then returns and presents its
result. No multitasking games required. But arranging for that
keypress to be reported on occurence is actually complex, and
probably involves various bufferes, interrupts, timers, process
priorities, whatever. It's in the OS, not the program.

However for many applications multithreading can dramatically improve
performance, since on most systems thread switching is much faster than
process switching. Another incraesingly important advantage of
multithreaded programs is that their threads can be scheduled
simultaneously under multiple CPUs or under multiple cores of a single
CPU. This _cannot_ be done with a program with single thread of
execution.

Consider a GUI program that compresses data and prints the progress in a
graphical window. []

As you can probably see multiple threads in a program makes life easier
in many types of programming tasks.

No one said multithreading is not helpful. Just as structured
programming, networking, multiprocessing, and many other methods and
features are helpful. They just are outside the scope of discussion
here. They might belong in comp.software-eng,
comp.os.linux.networking, comp.os.linux.programming, or any of the
other many comp.* groups.

And if you want to discuss flowers, take it to rec.gardening. You can
see that flowers make life more pleasant don't you?
Ed

 

[santosh]

Because a hell of a lot of C programs feature multithreading. Linux
and Linux apps for one.

[...]

Has someone discovered a new Church-Rosser Theorem, that
these days "threads" have to be added into the model of what
is computable or not? Or is what you are saying that programming
is no longer about what is being computed and is instead about
the "user experience", and all those programs that used to
-compute- something are just living on life support?

It has become both, hasn't it? For good or for bad.

 

[Ed Prochak]

Or when people simply say nothing when y question is not relevant to
their area of expertise. The problem here is that Heathfield wants to
limit it to HIS area of expertise.

No. You do not understand what can happen to a group if topicality is
broken.

There has been enough of a groundswell of public opinion here recently
which makes me think that topicality is indeed expanding in the C
related areas. And this can only be a good thing - C is used in the real
world and real world needs real solutions. Dont like the thread? Kill
it.

Okay. make a cogent argument for discussing threading in this group.
Make an argument for why it is on topic here and not better in
comp.programming.threads. I haven't seen that argument yet. The only
this posted so far goes like this:

**Thread programming is part of many applications.
**many applications are programmed in C
**therefore thread programming is topical in comp.lang.c

Can you see that that is a poor argument?
In the presense of the comp.programming.threads group, the argument
must prove it is better to discuss it here than there.

The floor is yours.
Ed

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

Consider a GUI program that compresses data and prints the progress
in a graphical window.

Now consider a multithreaded version that has two threads: one
thread that does the compression and another that redraws the
window and services GUI events. In this case the redrawing can
proceed simultaneously to the compression on truly parallel systems
and quasi-simultaneously on systems simulating parallel processing.

In the case of a single threaded version the code for compression
must voluntarily call the code for window drawing from time to
time, while event handling would become very complicated. A GUI
event would presumably send a signal to the program which a
signal handler would catch and set a global flag before returning.
Then the event would be serviced the next time the code calls
service_pending_events().

As you can probably see multiple threads in a program makes life
easier in many types of programming tasks.

Now consider that 'threaded' program running on a single processor
that is time shared between processes. That means that
periodically one process is interrupted, the time and effort spent
to switch processes, the new process finds it has nothing to do,
and the interruption time etc. is spent all over. In this case
things can be more efficient running in an unthreaded system.

The point is that things are not open-endedly improvements. They
may improve the apparent organizational complexity (which is an
advantage) without gaining any performance. When the two processes
are effectively separate programs, and you just start both, things
are logically simple. The complexity is hidden in the mechanisms
that wake processes. Now some of the standard systems come into
place - producer/consumer, for example.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

Threads are already in their own group comp.programming.threads
There are groups for networking, databases, embedded, and real-time
programming.
Some of the questions being proposed for this group are well covered
in those groups. Others clearly could start in comp.programming and if
they came across a C specific question could then post that question
here.

Have we figured out yet whose sock puppet "Ed" is?

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...


Consider an instance where one compiler allows an extension and
another does not (e.g. using a nameless union or having a list
of intializers where the last entry has a comma after it).

That is not C code, within the meaning of this newsgroup.

 

[santosh]

Jeff P. Bailey wrote:

[ ... ]

Hello all,

Let me contextualize my message. I've been actively asking questions
in clc for some years from 99 onwards. I've been away for some time
but now I've been following the group for the last 2/3 weeks. Yes, the
group might have problems, in fact probably more than it had before
but I don't see why people not replying to you about threads is a
problem at all. I do remember when I started posting to receive
replies such as "read the FAQ", or "that's off-topic", or "the C
standard knows nothing about displays". And you know what? I resorted
to unix programming, threads programming and such other newsgroups
which can actively help about those topics and learned the difference
about what C really is.
Okay.

In fact, I started resorting to K&R2 to know
if my C question might resemble some problem in the book before
posting.
"hummf, I have a question about threads... K&R2 says nothing about
threads. Better not post it in c.l.c. then."

Is this to be taken as sarcasm?

[ ... ]

I don't know Jacob Navia but I would suggest the best path for Jacob
these days would be to have a blog. Posts on stacks and debuggers
would definitely be worth the reading through a RSS feed. I would then
use that knowledge to actively help those with their C
questions. There's no need, and no excuse to post questions unrelated
to the C language here, no matter how good they are. Saying this, let
me say I do think they Navia's articles are quite nice but would be
much better fitted into a blog. Not only due to the fact that posting
that here is off-topic but also because I could easily reach them
whenever I can, and even send the link to my g/f which is learning C
at the university and would definitely benefit from it.

Many of his recent threads are suitable for comp.programming, where it
would almost certainly have enjoyed a more fruitful, less heated
discussion than in here, but for some reason, he decided to post them
here.

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.

I need to say I am impressed to see you say that about Richard. I do
remember Richard Heathfield but in a slight different way. I remember
Richard Heathfield, Dann Corbit, Ben Pfaff, among others, actively
replying to my questions as a C student when I was actively posting
them. I might add that they were the reason why I was able to learn C
and enjoy C as much as I do these days. I remember to get a copy from
the US [when getting books from the US to Portugal was quite
expensive] as soon as "C Unleashed" came out and have loads of fun
while reading it. Damn, I still use it. If Richard did anything to the
community, it was surely not harmful.

I concur. My awareness of portability issues and general programming in
C has improved dramatically in the two/three years I have been actively
participating in this group, and it's mostly thanks to the excellent
knowledge of the group's "regulars".

Trolls and snipers bring nothing to the table, neither for lurkers and
newbies, nor for anyone else, except themselves and their few admirers.

[ ... ]

However, I regularly compile my code with -std=c99 [gcc
option]. - 'Anywhere' variable declarations
for(int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) { ... }

are in my opinion extremely useful and make the code much more
readable (in fact, this is perhaps the only time I resort to them).
- // comments
help me document my code with simple line without the issue of
forgetting a missing */...

Yes. For me personally, the most useful additions to C99 have been
stdint.h and inttypes.h, snprintf and compound literals.

I guess these are in fact, the things I use the most from C99. The
other stuff might be useful to others. I even inquired the gcc people
why C99 is so poorly [in ~10 years they still miss a couple of
features] implemented. Their reply was ... interesting but
not as clear as one would wish:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-help/2008-03/msg00221.html

Interesting.

<snip>

 

[Ed Prochak]

On 23/3/2008 23:57, Richard Heathfield wrote:
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.)
This is the sort of thing I was talking about - a pointlessly negative
post. Every article of jacob's I've read has been well-informed and
useful - and if his posts put C in its wider context, instead of being
narrowly focussed on minor details, then so much the better!

In a discussion thread on topicality,
Navia calls Heathfield's views "stupid" and "bullshit"
Heathfield says Navia's posts contain "misunderstandings, blunders,
and product plugs"
and you say Heathfield's comment was "pointlessly negative"?

Talk about cherry picking your examples.

I selected comments from this thread. How is that cherry picking? I
did not go searching for especially bad posts from Jacob Navia, just
ones in this discussion.

I only wondered why Jeff P. Bailey found Richard H's posts
apparently so negative, but Jacob N's were not. Or was it Jacob is
pointedly negative? or pointlessly positive? If he has some
justification for the apparent imbalance between Jacob N and Richard H
it may be interesting to see. If he does not, then my post pointed out
what may be a false impression on his part. Either way one of us will
learn something. So let's see what Mr Bailey has to say.

Ed

 

[Antoninus Twink]

Ben Bacarisse said:


I see he's still at it. Having temporarily unplonked him (always, it seems,
a bad idea) to get the original context, I will simply point out that I do
not use sock-puppets, and that his claim is in error.

I think everyone in this group will know exactly how much faith to place
in these denials.

 

[Antoninus Twink]

Have we figured out yet whose sock puppet "Ed" is?

Certainly not Heathfield's. After all, we have Heathfield's word that he
doesn't use sock puppets, and we all know the value of Heathfield's
word.

 

[Antoninus Twink]

It's been a subject of debate. Some people felt Boost was off-topic and
should be discussed on the mailing list, others thought that it was
very portable and should be allowed to a certain extent. The latest
version of the standard has or is about to (I'm sure where the process
is) incorporate many Boost elements as standard.

It's lucky no-one here gives a frick about manifest hypocrisy, because
here it is yet again. Mr Topicality Police himself, Brian the Loser,
provides clc with an assessment of progress standardizing a C++ library.
As so often, one rule for them, another rule for everyone outside their
Clique.

 

[Walter Roberson]

Have we figured out yet whose sock puppet "Ed" is?

Heck, you haven't even figured out yet who -my- sock puppets are!

 

[santosh]

Paulo Jorge de O. C. de Matos wrote:

I guess these are in fact, the things I use the most from C99. The
other stuff might be useful to others. I even inquired the gcc people
why C99 is so poorly [in ~10 years they still miss a couple of
features] implemented. Their reply was ... interesting but
not as clear as one would wish:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-help/2008-03/msg00221.html

Interesting.

And to follow up, Paulo's respondent seems to be implying pretty
strongly that a reason for gcc's slow implementation of C99 (and for
many other implementations as well) is that C is proving to be an
ill-designed language to extend easily.

It's interesting that this is something that Jacob Navia often seems to
imply too, and presents it as a rationale for including operator
overloading.

It would be interesting to hear the group's opinions on this.

 

[Ed Prochak]

...


Have we figured out yet whose sock puppet "Ed" is?

Silly boy.

google me. You will see I am myself alone and no ones puppet.

I have not been a regular in C.l.c but I have been posting in usenet
newgroups a LONG time.

Meanwhile, do you have some justification for thread discussion here
instead of comp.programming .threads? If you have a good one, you can
persuade me. but I haven't seen a good justification for it being here
yet.

patiently waiting.

Have a good day.
Ed

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Walter Roberson said:

Heck, you haven't even figured out yet who -my- sock puppets are!

And he never will - because he assumes *you* are a sock puppet, and so is
everyone else. Occam's Razor suggests that there is only one Usenet
contributor, who is insanely busy and busily insane.

It is impossible to persuade the trolls that they are in a vanishingly
small minority here, because they are determined not to be persuaded. The
facts are of no consequence. Mud-slinging is their stock-in-trade. They
offer no evidence to support their views for the simple reason that there
isn't any. Witness the recent claim that I'd made some offensive remark or
other about Jacob Navia's daughter - not only is there absolutely no basis
for the claim (because I have never made such a remark), but the claim
itself betrays a complete misunderstanding of my nature and character, a
misunderstanding that can only be explained by either utter idiocy or a
grimly fixed determination not to be blinded by the truth.

Harking back to the Subject line, the problems in comp.lang.c are, in fact,
the trolls, because they consume a disproportionate amount of people's
time and attention without adding one iota to discussions about the group
topic. If they were genuine in their proclaimed goal of improving the
newsgroup, they'd contribute positive, intelligent, competent, and helpful
articles about C programming. But they don't, for the simple reason that
they can't. All they *can* do is sling mud. Were they competent, they
would not feel the need to do that.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather talk about C, this being a C
newsgroup and all.

 

[Flash Gordon]

santosh wrote, On 25/03/08 18:32:

Paulo Jorge de O. C. de Matos wrote:

I guess these are in fact, the things I use the most from C99. The
other stuff might be useful to others. I even inquired the gcc people
why C99 is so poorly [in ~10 years they still miss a couple of
features] implemented. Their reply was ... interesting but
not as clear as one would wish:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-help/2008-03/msg00221.html

Interesting.

And to follow up, Paulo's respondent seems to be implying pretty
strongly that a reason for gcc's slow implementation of C99 (and for
many other implementations as well) is that C is proving to be an
ill-designed language to extend easily.

It's interesting that this is something that Jacob Navia often seems to
imply too, and presents it as a rationale for including operator
overloading.

It would be interesting to hear the group's opinions on this.

My more general experience (not specifically compilers) is that it
depends on whether you designed your implementation to be easy to easy
to extend. Jacob internally using operator overloading is actually an
example of designing the implementation to be easy to extend in certain
areas! Personally I don't think that would get the performance I would
want for decimal floats where a processor has native support for decimal
floats, but that is another matter.

I suspect the reason that gcc and a lot of other C compilers might not
be designed to be easy to extend is because there was not seen to be a
reason to do so after C89 because the language was then standardised and
so not subject to change!

 

[Jeff P. Bailey]

Jeff P. Bailey said:




If you'd been here a bit longer, you'd know the basis in objective fact. If
you're prepared to put the work in, you will find many examples of Mr
Navia's articles that demonstrate this.

I haven't found any to date. I have to say that jacob navia has written
a popular and well-respected C compiler. To me, this is pretty strong
evidence that he's knowledgeable about C, and if you want to argue that
he's incompetent at C then the onus should be on you to provide evidence
for that. In the absence of such evidence, I can only conclude that you
have a personal bias against him.

I am content with my record of providing useful information and advice
about C to readers of this group. Are you content with yours? Instead of
complaining about this group, why not work to make it better, by posting
useful information and advice about C? My attitude may seem negative to
you, but your attitude seems destructive to me. If you think there isn't
enough useful information posted here about C, post some!

Of course you are right that my contributions to this group are
currently non-existent. I have to say that I'd be more inclined to
change that if the atmosphere round here was a bit more positive.

This group seems to have its share of trolls (who've been a bit
overactive in this thread, it seems), but it's a shame if even the
"serious" people here are poisoning the atmosphere with personal attacks
and vendettas.

 

[Jeff P. Bailey]

On 23/3/2008 23:57, Richard Heathfield wrote:

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.)

This is the sort of thing I was talking about - a pointlessly negative
post. Every article of jacob's I've read has been well-informed and
useful - and if his posts put C in its wider context, instead of being
narrowly focussed on minor details, then so much the better!

In a discussion thread on topicality,
Navia calls Heathfield's views "stupid" and "bullshit"
Heathfield says Navia's posts contain "misunderstandings, blunders,
and product plugs"
and you say Heathfield's comment was "pointlessly negative"?

Talk about cherry picking your examples.

I selected comments from this thread. How is that cherry picking? I
did not go searching for especially bad posts from Jacob Navia, just
ones in this discussion.

I only wondered why Jeff P. Bailey found Richard H's posts
apparently so negative, but Jacob N's were not. Or was it Jacob is
pointedly negative? or pointlessly positive? If he has some
justification for the apparent imbalance between Jacob N and Richard H
it may be interesting to see. If he does not, then my post pointed out
what may be a false impression on his part. Either way one of us will
learn something. So let's see what Mr Bailey has to say.

I've only seen a small cross-section of what seems to be a long and
acrimonious posting history between these two, but the picture from what
I've seen is of jacob navia posting interesting articles likely to be of
wide interest to new C programmers, while he is roundly condemned for
this by everyone for being off-topic.

Mr Heathfield doesn't content himself with saying jacob's posts are
off-topic, but also adds personal insults to the effect that jacob is
incompetent at C. These accusations are quite implausible given that
jacob has authored a successful C compiler, and I can't blame jacob for
getting irritated by it.

Of course, as I said, I'm willing to believe that I haven't seen the
whole picture in this.

 

[Jeff P. Bailey]

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).




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




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.

This post is really a perfect example of everything I find off-putting
in what I've seen of this group. It's like a hedgehog putting up a
defensive barrier against any suggestion of improvement.

Better that people and their potentially valuable contributions are
"driven away" than that the character of the newsgroup should change to
a more open, friendly place for discussion of C, sure, but also its context.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

I think everyone in this group will know exactly how much faith to place
in these denials.

"I am not a crook" - Richard M. Nixon

"We do not torture" - G.W. Bush

"I do not use sock puppets" - R.J. Heathfield