(My whining diatribe complains about whining and
is thus oxymoronic, or in violation of the Barber's
Paradox. I've combined 2 or 3 whining diatribes
into a single message so that the few who've not yet
killfiled me will need but a single, if vicious, punch
on the 'n' key.)
On Apr 20, 6:44=A0pm, Richard <de...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> James Dow Allen <jdallen2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> > ...=A0The ease with which arrays can be embedded in
> > structures (and vice versa), as well as the fact that C's
> > elegant syntax depends on the "peculiar" relation****p
> > of pointer and array means, IMHO, that the views of
> > OP and Mr. navia imply gross failure to understand and
> > appreciate C.
> ...
> This post has Heathfield sockpuppet written all over it.
Perhaps I can't fully rule out being controlled by an
alien intelligence, but I did double-check my birth
certificate and found that my name, as I have long
suspected, is indeed shown as James Dow Allen III.
(I dropped the pretentious-seeming "III" several
decades ago. I hope the medionym "Dow" doesn't seem
pretentious -- I started using it in the Google era,
since "James Allen" gets almost as many search-engine
hits as "Usenet trolling" or "George Bush idiot.")
And while I agree with *many* of Mr. Heathfield's
views, I don't think my alleged puppet master and
his sockpuppet will be sharing each other's code,
at least without a re-indent utility: I use wholesome
and generous 8-space tabs, while Mr. Heathfield
insists on the infuriating and anal-retentive 2-space
tabs which are probably responsible for my rare
ophthalmological disorders.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Excepting spam, posts in this ng can be divided roughly
into five categories: homework/work problems, technical
answers, boring or boorish gibberish, witticisms, and
whining. There are also posts on various meta-topics,
but these can be treated roughly as combinations of
boorishness, witticisms and whining.
There are a few posters whose contributions consist almost
entirely of correct and useful technical information.
Eric Sosman and Chris Torek are among the most obvious
examples of this category, though I don't intend to slight
several other excellent participants.
Of course the best posters are usually also witty people.
Mr. Sosman, for example, once accused me of making a
Pascal's wager. This was probably intended as a euphemism
for hypocrisy but I chose to take it as a flattering
comparison with the discoverer of the Mystic Hexagram! :-)
Usenet would be a boring place without wit and whining,
but if we do want only homework problems and their answers,
a simple solution is possible: authorize only Mr. Sosman
and a few others to respond to queries and provide a bot
which responds after 36 hours to any unanswered query with:
> Apparently your homework problem was too boring or insipid
> for our experts. Please check the FAQ again, or ask
> your Professor to recommend a remedial text.
Since most homework problems will have a single obvious
answer, it follows that most of the posts here will be
whining or witticisms. (I'll lump boring gibberish with
whining though usually the whining is more interesting.)
There are many examples of postings I find far more
annoying than even Dr. Nilges' whining. Many posters
don't even understand the concept of "fragment" where
a program excerpt is provided for brevity, even though
it's not a self-contained compilable unit. I don't
have any problem with an otherwise appropriate answer
that contains a line like
> BTW, don't forget to #include stdio.h when calling
> printf().
but lately I've seen several responses to homework which
consist *solely* of such trivia. In most of these cases
it would take any competent C programmer about 20 seconds
to identify and fix the student's actual bug, but the whiner
who trots out his pretentious stdio.h cliche -- though
wasting several *man-hours* of other people's time since
thousands of c.l.c. readers will need to hit their 'n'
key -- can't be bothered to spend 20 seconds answering
the homework question!
(Another annoyance is the Chuckie_BF bot which sends an
automated reply to every "top poster." We can be sure
*this* is a bot since any real human who uses the
Internet would be well aware that the annoyance of
improper quoted-material editing in e-mail and newsletters
dwarfs any minor transgressions in this newsgroup.)
Anyway, after ignoring spam, homework problems, and the
rarish useful responses, c.l.c is simply another forum
for wits and whiners. No need to complain about that --
the level of debate here is still better than, say, much
of Rupert Murdoch's media -- but of course we all prefer
to read posters with a high wit-to-whine ratio (WWR).
IMHO, Mr. Heathfield has a higher wit-to-whine ratio
than most of his detractors, though I'm afraid many
of his helpful but ironic responses are over-clever.
It will be difficult to get general agreement on any
particular poster's WWR score. Many witticisms will seem
like whining, especially to a thin-skinned OP. I'm sure
my WWR score will be judged as quite poor, but this is
partly due to my Scottish sense of irony and whimsy.
(Mr. Heathfield, do you also have Scottish ancestry? :-)
Adding a winking smile ;-) is contrary to the whole tone
of Scottish irony, but perhaps I should change my ways:
I recall once making an absolutely hilarious reply,
advising an OP on pharmaceuticals for obsessive-compulsion
disorder and felt any emoticon would be redundant, but
OP shot back an enraged rejoinder about my own
pathologies and pharmaceutical needs!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Many many of the technical newsgroups seem dominated
by B-grade level sophomores showing off to C-grade
level freshmen, but I don't mean to impugn sophomores
or even B-grade students. (After all, the probable
next Pres. of the U.S. graduated near the bottom of
his class.) PhD's are no bargain either, as anyone
with real-world experience knows. Dr. Nilges' degrees
are probably authentic and he may well be capable of
adequate work when he takes his meds. Mr. navia seems
like a sophomore but he could have a degree for all
I know (though I doubt if he's ever written the world's
fastest image compressor, or coded an OS from scratch
in 9 weeks). Here, I've given him a chance to improve
his wit-to-whine ratio with something like:
>James wrote:
>>> BTW, don't forget to #include stdio.h when calling
>>> printf().
> You've made 11 syntax errors here in just 2 lines, Bozo.
> Also, calling printf() with no arguments may cause
> your hard disk to be trashed, and I hope that happens!
Well, I hope this diatribe amuses someone, and doesn't
detract too much from the on-going discussions about
the evils of a "void main()" declaration. I also hope
I've offended no Scotsmen with my comments on "Scottish
sense of humor" -- I now wonder if this concept was just
an invention of my mother who had to live with the
sarcasm of my father (whose name, coincidentally
enough, was James Dow Allen Jr.).
Sincerely,
James Dow Allen ... (I think!)
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