I have hanging on comp.lang.c over a longer time and based on my
experience here, the above statement is completely false. Your
analysis of Richard Heathfield's programming ideas is way off the
reality. Perhaps you need to be more fundamental to C's technical
details in order to understand what *exactly* Heathfield wants to say
when he says something about someone's code.
I think I learned exactly the opposite from Richard (and from CLC).
Take responsibility of your code. Why someone else has to pay for your
mistakes. I even wrote entire Coding Guidelines for my company based
on what I have learned.
History has taught me that average biological students and
academicians always had trouble understanding Charles Darwin's ideas.
His ideas were accepted after 100 years of his death. Perhaps you need
time to understand the ANSI C.
I have hanging on comp.lang.c over a longer time and based on my
experience here, the above statement is completely false. Your
analysis of Richard Heathfield's programming ideas is way off the
reality. Perhaps you need to be more fundamental to C's technical
details in order to understand what *exactly* Heathfield wants to say
when he says something about someone's code.
That's the secret of self-serving expertise. You cannot be an "expert"
if you "bite the hand that feeds you", here, the computer companies
that foolishly overinvested in C. It becomes impossible to criticise.
This type of "expertise" in the United States and Britain produced
thousands of casualties in the Iraq war.
You see, I did as you recommend years and years ago. I taught C at
Princeton and assisted John "A Beautiful Mind" Nash with C. But I
realized as platforms grew more and more complex that I was trying to
do "objects" with a non-OO language and as a competent programmer I
thought ontologically, in terms of objects, even when programming in
Cobol in the 1970s: in Cobol I learned to treat a report as an object
and not at all as a bunch of "lines".
But let me be quite honest with you. Although I taught C at Princeton
and effectively assisted John Nash, I rarely did much effective coding
in the language.
[Go ahead, Richard, insert your flame. You done? Thanks.]
In True Basic, I developed a hydrostatic stability program for
oceangoing research vessels used for years on far more than the vessel
it was designed-for. In IBM 1401 SPS, a primitive assembly language, I
developed an early data base system with provisions for user
specification of logic and report format. In Visual Basic I developed
a compiler for Quick Basic. In Cobol I developed a digital switch
simulator to bill for calls by reconstructing them from phone events.
In Rexx I developed a parser generator and parser for Rexx. Etc.
But when I adopted C for a real estate appraiser, I was dismayed,
since I had to spend, as Richard Heathfield has admitted he's wasted,
hours of paid time merely to be able to use strings, which have a
place in all applications because we need error messages.
As a programming professional I abandoned C to discover that even old
Visual Basic was safer and superior. I then discovered C Sharp and
today will not use C except for recreationally freezing and crashing
my system.
I think I learned exactly the opposite from Richard (and from CLC).
Take responsibility of your code. Why someone else has to pay for your
mistakes. I even wrote entire Coding Guidelines for my company based
on what I have learned.
When the basically ignorant reach the limits of their minds,
They then turn to groaning Religion, this one often finds.
Having been bested in the Realms of Science and of Light,
They call upon airy spirits of Divinity to be their manly might.
They doff the Scholar's robes and don the robe of Priest,
And groan shibboleths and curses to the sun as it rises in the East.
They burn the books of yore and thrust the Honest from their door,
And pronounce sentence on all but the Pedant, Boor, and Bore.
"Responsibility" is their newest watch-word, although of this they
partake None:
It is post facto victim blaming which the Witch is perforce,
condemn'd.
You pass their void pointers to Abyssinia, and Timbuktoo
It gives you meaningless answers and then it prints, Screw You.
Old and ancient Programmers like Ritchie and Brian Kernighan
Are elevate to Gods and lose the name and form of Man.
They alter'd parameters passed by value and without an asterisk
This their followers do: it's the mark of the truly "Blest".
Tics and saws and old wives' tales take on a new power and new might:
Their violation becomes a hanging matter, and they're used to just
Afright.
Thus man devolves as years go by from Neil Armstrong on the Moon
To Ape, to Horse, to Dog, to Swine and then, to mad Buffoon.
(Edward G. Nilges, Hong Kong, 1 Aug 2009. Moral rights have been
asserted by the author, so screw you, ok? All verse responses on
Google Groups are writ original extempore and for the occasion and the
hour, unless otherwise indicated. "Probably didn't know I was a poet,
probably thought I was a jag" - Sasha, Lincoln Park Ale House, 1981.)