«

"Keith Thompson" <kst-> a écrit dans le message de news:
fi2dl1$gbp$...
> Charlie Gordon wrote:
>> "Mark McIntyre" <> a écrit dans le message de
>> news: ...
>>> jacob navia wrote:
>>>> poor heathfield... in what a predicament he is
>>>>
>>>> sniff!
>>> Again you demonstrate just why you annoy some of the regulars so much.
>>> It seems that you /always/ post a rude or sarcastic final word,
>>> insulting someone.
>>
>> No insult here: Jacob is using a French onomatopy for weeping. He did
>> not mean to express any drug related slur. He could certainly confirm
>> this and apologize accordingly. It is very difficult to express irony in
>> a foreign language, tragic misunderstandings are common place. I would
>> advise Jacob to refrain from this.
>
> Huh?
>
> I read jacob's "sniff!" exactly has he intended it, as a sarcastic
> indication of weeping, and I see absolutely nothing specifically French
> about it. It would never occur to me that it was related to drug use and
> jacob has no need to apologize on those grounds.
>
> As usual, I found jacob's attempt at sarcasm tedious and annoying. He has
> some actual ideas, and some subset of them are both valid and topical. He
> could improve the tone of this newsgroup significantly if he would drop
> his attempts at sarcasm (whether he feels they're provoked or not) and
> stick to discussing technical issues.
>
> jacob: You are not good at sarcasm. This is honestly meant as
> constructive criticism, not as a personal insult. I don't expect you to
> accept it, but hope springs eternal.

I agree completely.

Regarding sniff, I did not imply it was specific to French, but I was quite
sure Jacob got it from the French version of a famous american comic strip.
I was not aware that it was untranslated. It may even have been spelled as
'snif!' back then.

As a matter of fact, the word is used in French slang with the sole drug
related meaning: sniffer de la coke, sniffer de la colle... The original
French word is somewhat similar (renifler) but does not have the same
connotations anymore.

--
Chqrlie.

santosh <santosh....@gmail.com> wrote:
> ...Malcolm has previously expressed his disapproval of
> multiple integer types. After all size_t, his personal
> devil, is an integer too. He favours near universal use
> of the int type, wherever an integer is needed (except
> for the case of char), ...
>
> I also get the feeling that he similarly strongly favours
> signed types over unsigned types, even in situations that
> literally beg for the use of the latter.
>
> His is an eccentric opinion...

No, just a very old one. You've described primordial C to a
tee.

--
Peter

"Richard Heathfield" <> a écrit dans le message de news:
7OidnQ0fTJut-...
> Charlie Gordon said:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I did not "agree" to post corrections to *all* of Jacobs's mistakes
>> instantly,
>
> Partly true - you rightly allowed yourself a reasonable time. But you did
> agree to correct *all* of his mistakes (although obviously we can safely
> exclude those that are corrected by others - no point in doubling up).
>
> And yet you have not done so.

Too much traffic, a lot of which has little to do with C.

> This is hardly your fault. It's practically impossible for any one person
> to keep up with the volume.
>
>> I agreed that I considered "fair" that Richard would stop
>> posting
>> derogatory comments
>
> I'm not sure that I agree that my comments are derogatory. Some, sure, out
> of sheer exasperation - but mostly I seem to attract flak for correcting
> his errors. The reason for my offer was simply to demonstrate that
> /anyone/ - even you - would attract this flak if they corrected as many of
> his errors as I have done in the past.

I think you are mistaken: you attract flak not because of the number of
corrections you feel the need to make, but because of the tone you use and
the extra judgmental remarks you keep adding. Your typical "corrections"
too many times contain derogatory tone and allusions for Jacob Navia, such
as:

"I see no value in attempting to educate you"
"you appear to be incapable of holding a rational debate"
"I cannot take seriously the views on C of a man who, it is evident from his
own postings, knows so little about the language"
"You need to learn to tell right from wrong. For the past few years, you
appear to have got them mixed up with monotonous regularity"
"I've explained this before in clc, but Mr Navia obviously can't remember
that far back..."
"I know from experience that Mr Navia rarely if ever bothers to listen to
good advice"
"you are wrong - as usual"
"are all Frenchmen so wilfully ignorant ..."

I agree that Jacob makes mistakes, and gets carried away with baseless
allusions and misused irony, but both of you need to cool down and use
better manners for this group's sake.

--
Chqrlie.

Charlie Gordon said:

<snip>

> I think you are mistaken: you attract flak not because of the number of
> corrections you feel the need to make,

Did you feel the need to reply in that way? Or did you just reply in that
way? It is possible to reply in a particular way without "feeling a need",
is it not?

> but because of the tone you use

Check out Jacob Navia's tone some time - the tone he uses when he's wrong
but thinks he's right (which is most of the time).

> and the extra judgmental remarks you keep adding.

It didn't start out that way - and by the way, they're not intended to be
judgemental. All the behaviour they describe can be corrected, if Mr Navia
so chooses.

> Your typical "corrections"
> too many times contain derogatory tone and allusions for Jacob Navia,

Let's see, shall we?

> such as:
>
> "I see no value in attempting to educate you"

What is Jacob Navia's learning percentage? How much of what we teach him
about C does he actually take in and absorb and act upon? I'm not saying
it's zero, but I would suspect it's not far above it. Therefore, I see no
value in attempting to educate him. This is not an allusion. It is not
even derogatory. It is simply a statement of fact (which, I might add, is
taken out of context - it is almost certainly the case that I said the
above in a context such as "but in case anyone else was misled by your
claim, I would point out the fact that..." or something like that).


> "you appear to be incapable of holding a rational debate"

Again, this appears to me to be true. Have you any counter-examples?


> "I cannot take seriously the views on C of a man who, it is evident from
> his own postings, knows so little about the language"

Again, this appears to me to be true. Charlie, he's been getting this stuff
wrong for *years*.

> "You need to learn to tell right from wrong. For the past few years, you
> appear to have got them mixed up with monotonous regularity"

Again, this appears to me to be true. He seems to have things exactly the
wrong way round on so many issues. Have you any counter-examples?

> "I've explained this before in clc, but Mr Navia obviously can't remember
> that far back..."

If he could, he'd have got it right.

> "I know from experience that Mr Navia rarely if ever bothers to listen to
> good advice"

Again, absolutely true.

> "you are wrong - as usual"

And again.

> "are all Frenchmen so wilfully ignorant ..."

Context: "Just out of curiosity: are all Frenchmen so wilfully ignorant as
to drop honorifics from names (as you habitually do), or is it just you
giving your countrymen a bad name?" It seems to me to be a fair question.

> I agree that Jacob makes mistakes, and gets carried away with baseless
> allusions and misused irony,

Lots and lots of mistakes, *despite continued corrections*. Did you mean
"baseless allegations"? Because that's certainly the case. As for his
"irony", it is beyond parody.

> but both of you need to cool down and use
> better manners for this group's sake.

I think you need to get off my back about this, Charlie. If you want to
criticise anyone about manners, you're looking in the wrong direction.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:07:41 -0000, "Malcolm McLean"
<> wrote:

> Another one, which you will realise if you use Lisp, is that in C there are
> too many ways to express the same thing - arrays of arrays of structures
> with arrays, or lists of list of lists. Lisp handles it fine by simply
> having one "list" structure. In C you are constantly checking - is it a
> pointer or a nested array, where is the size member ?

Classic LISP yes, but even there you have 'raw' pairs (conses); for
example I (vaguely) remember some implementation I used did binding
context as list of pairs. Which could look misleading, since the
bindings of many (most?) variables would be lists, and dotting to a
list gives you something that looks like a different list.

Over time more structures were added. Standardized 'Common' Lisp has
arrays including vectors, bitvectors, and (character) strings; and
structs (with inheritance); and hashtables; as well as composites that
are primarily defined and used by 'the system' but are more or less
accessible to user code such as package/obarray, readtable,
metaclasses, I/O pathnames and streams.

- formerly david.thompson1 || achar(64) || worldnet.att.net