C: The Complete Meta-Nonsense

On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 06:57:13 -0800 (PST), Mark Bluemel
<> wrote:

>"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig enjoys
>it" (attributed variously).
>
>I'd also suggest what is reportedly a Malagasy proverb "In a fight
>with a fool, it's the wise man who quits".

Or a corollary to Murphy's Law:
"In any situation, the craziest person in the room controls the agenda."
This formulation is attributed to Blue Meme, who continues "Reasonable
people tend to try to accommodate, find common ground and compromise.
Those with limited capacity for reason tend to take harder and more
extreme positions, and take more extreme actions to defend those
positions. And, sadly, the dynamics of such a conflict tend to favor the
crazy."

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

Rich Webb

On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 05:53:41 -0800 (PST), spinoza1111
<> wrote:


>Nor is it an opinion to say that wikipedia has been
>taken over by 14 year old Hitler Youth and convenience store clerks.
>It's an acknowledged fact.

Like all your "facts", all the vast conspiracies of Nazis directed at
you, acknowledged by you, and you alone. And that you keep repeating
and possibly believing them, indicative of a seriously disturbed mind.

>Do your homework: there are any number of
>bitter former wikipedians blowing the whistle on the fraud and tax
>cheat Jimmy Wales, and I hope to see his hairy ass in jail on tax
>charges.

If you have any information regarding tax fraud, why the hell don't
you inform the IRS, and they will certainly act on it.
Well?
Why don't you?
Take ten minutes, send an email.
You'd be vindicated.
The fact that you do not, will not and cannot shows that you are just
a windbag, for all you macho talk and threats, you never follow
through.

Colonel Harlan Sanders

On 2009-11-02, spinoza1111 <> wrote:
> It's not an opinion that to write the history of philosophy one has to
> do philosophy.

Yes, it is. And a stupid one at that.

> Nor is it an opinion to say that wikipedia has been
> taken over by 14 year old Hitler Youth and convenience store clerks.

Actually, it is. And again, a stupid one.

> It's an acknowledged fact. Do your homework: there are any number of
> bitter former wikipedians blowing the whistle on the fraud and tax
> cheat Jimmy Wales, and I hope to see his hairy ass in jail on tax
> charges.

This doesn't establish your claim, even if it's true.

-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

Seebs

On 2009-11-02, spinoza1111 <> wrote:
> ...or understanding them at greater depth, perhaps.

No. People who understand things in greater depth can provide justifications
other than bald assertion that intelligent people would agree with them.

> But yes, I like fighting.

Quite obvious. Shame you're no good at it, but at least you're having fun.

> Who is the qualified expert at "C: The Complete Nonsense?" You admit
> you were a kid when you wrote it.

Ahh, but I'm a qualified expert now, and while I think the page is poorly
organized, the substance is sufficient to establish the claim.

> Excuse me, where were those source presented?

Usenet. Repeatedly. In these very threads.

> Give yourself some
> credit. "C: the Complete Nonsense" is the single stop source for anti-
> Schildt bullshit, and I know of no independent source of criticism of
> Schildt.

Your inability to read responses in threads you started is not my problem.

>> It turns out that mechanics are part of the substance of using computers
>> effectively.

> That's untrue. The mechanics can be the work of low-level
> functionaries.

The people who claim this always seem to go bankrupt trying to get anything
to work. It turns out it just ain't so.

>> > His
>> > omission of your hobby-horse justified you pointing this out on Amazon
>> > or in a review in a computer journal. It did not justify what you did.

>> Because putting something up on your personal web page is WAY more serious
>> than publishing a review in a computer journal, right?

> Wrong.

.... Uh. Dude. THAT WAS MY POINT. That sentence there? It is an example
of a literary form known as "sarcasm".

Your material (quoted above in >> >) implies that a review in a computer
journal could be justified, but that posting on the internet is MUCH more
serious (in the sense of "taking serious steps" -- a graver or more extreme
measure) and requires a higher standard of justification.

That's stupid. I commented on it.

> You had no independent reviewer as did I in my published
> articles in .Net Programmer's Journal and "Build Your Own .Net
> Language and Compiler, nor as Herb had at McGraw-Hill. A reasonably
> competent editor would have rejected your copy:

No. A mediocre editor would have rejected it. A competent editor would
have sent it back for revision with suggestions as to organization.

> that's why McGraw Hill shitcanned it.

You keep claiming this, but it's already been pointed out that this event
never occurred.

> It was a disorganized mass of trivia and opinion
> masquerading as fact.

Actually, it's a disorganized mass of trivia, opinion, and fact, not
particularly masquerading as anything. But since some of the trivia are
factual, and some of the opinions are essentially universal among competent
C programmers, that's good enough.

> You pussies pick your fights carefully and still lose. I note you
> don't comment on the C version of the infix2Polish grammar-based
> conversion, because when you can't make cheap shots you don't fire,
> yet I want your opinion because you're good coders all the same.

Er, what C version of it? If you posted it within the last 12ish hours
or so, I probably haven't seen it. While I spend far too much time on
Usenet, I do occsionally sleep or even work at my regular job and stuff.

>> Ahh, but it's not generalized from too small a data set; it's cherry-picked
>> from a much larger data set. *That's different.

> Where is the big data set? I've asked this repeatedly.

And you've been told, repeatedly.

To reiterate, since you apparently couldn't figure it out:

The big data set is the pool of errors in the book. No one that I know of
has had the time or patience to actually write these all down, but that
doesn't change anything; data exist whether or not they've been written
down.

>> > No, you are not qualified to publish documents of this nature.

>> Actually, I sort of am.

> No, you're sort of not.

If you have reasoning, you're welcome to present it at any time. No
one is stopping you.

Hmm.

Come to think of it, maybe that's the problem. If I start telling you
that you are *forbidden* to actually argue your points, will that cause you
to do it?

-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

Seebs

On 2009-11-02, Mark Bluemel <> wrote:
> "Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig enjoys
> it" (attributed variously).

Certainly, my engagements with Spinny have left a number of pigs wondering
where their vocal instructor went, but consider that if you just accept that
he's clearly not reacting rationally at any particular level, it is actually
really funny. In short, it is amusing and suprisingly likely to yield
an occasional nugget of genuinely interesting discussion of C, albeit usually
that's a discussion between two other people rather than one involving him
directly.

Still, you can sometimes learn more from bad claims than good ones, because
understanding why they're wrong is extremely informative.

-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

Seebs

In article <>, Gareth Owen <> wrote:
>jacob navia <> writes:
>
>> For heathfield and Kiki, Spinoza1111 is a welcome partner.
>
>Please Jacob, rise above the silly name calling.
>I still want to believe you're above that level.

Would all those who've referred to Mr. Nilges as "Spinny" please tender
their resignations from the high court now? Thank you.

Kenny McCormack

On 2009-11-02, Kenny McCormack <> wrote:
> Would all those who've referred to Mr. Nilges as "Spinny" please tender
> their resignations from the high court now? Thank you.

'k. I hereby resign from the high court.

That said, the guy's an absolute kook, and I have no intention of ceasing
to refer to him by a funny nickname. Yes, it indicates that I don't take
him seriously. So did my suggestion of a spinoza1111 drinking game, and
the comment about the clown nose.

I'll change my mind when we see his coherent, reasoned, arguments based
on actual evidence of the claim that the C standard exists solely to allow
vendors to fire compiler developers and preserve profits.

-s
--
Copyright 2009, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!

Seebs

spinoza1111 <> writes:

>Schildt bullshit, and I know of no independent source of criticism of
>Schildt.

I suspect that you've, yet again, chosen your weasel words carefully,
but why don't the criticisms of Schildt's doorstops on Amazon count as
"independent" sources?

If someone buys a book, strongly dislikes it, and expresses their dislike,
have they lost their "independence"?

If so, any such positive review should be discounted, too.

--
Chris.

Chris McDonald

On Nov 1, 5:05*am, spinoza1111 <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> This thread shall be the center for compaints about Peter Seebach's
> document "C: The Complete Nonsense", which is as far as I can tell the
> sole source of the false rumors about Herb Schildt's books, a source
> amplified by the confusion of a citation with that of a citation of a
> citation.
>
> I shall start the ball rolling: Peter, what goes around, comes around.
>
> "Page 284
> All of the header files are listed in capitals; the standard specifies
> them in lower case. It is not required that a C compiler reject all-
> caps, but nor is it required that it accept them. "
>
> Herb here relies on the relative prevelance of case insensitivity in
> Windows systems and before them, in IBM systems.

So? Why not use canonical forms that are guaranteed to work
*everywhere*, regardless of whether the underlying platform is case-
insensitive or not?

This was the thing that frustrated me the most about his book and one
of the reasons why it wound up in the trash; a good chunk of his
examples wouldn't even compile for me since I was working on VAX/VMS,
and the VAX C compiler would inevitably choke on some DOS-ism. Why
limit your audience by writing examples that only work for a subset of
possible platforms? Why not write examples that work on all systems
with conforming compilers? K&R did it. H&S did it. Why couldn't
Herb?

> It has long been a
> sort of fashion statement in unix to be case sensitive. There are
> arguments pro and con both ways, but by omitting this information
> Peter is able to make Yet Another unwarranted implication about
> Seebach's competence.
>

Seebach correctly points out that using all caps may not always work.
One would think that information would be valuable.

> It is tribalism to confuse shibboleths such as these with knowledge,
> where a "shibboleth" is used to recognized tribe members. It is a
> barbarism.
>

Okay, let's talk about *knowledge*. Let's talk about another example
cited by Seebach:

> Page 53
> The following code:
> /* Write 6 integers to a disk file. */
> void put_rec(int rec[6], FILE *fp)
> {
> int len;
> len = fwrite(rec, sizeof rec, 1, fp);
> if (len != 1) printf("write error");
> }
> Is described as causing all of rec to be written, no matter what
> size of array is being used.

This is *not* a trivial mistake. We're not arguing over style, we're
not arguing over platform idiosyncracies. This is basic **** that
Shildt gets *wrong*; any student who read this was grossly misinformed
on the semantics of arrays as function parameters.

Or how about this:

> #include <string.h>
>
> char s1[] = "hello ";
> char s2[] = "there.";
>
> void main(void)
> {
> int p;
>
> p = strcat(s1, s2);
> }

Hello instant security hole!

Again, these aren't trivial mistakes, and they aren't rare in
Schildt's book. God knows how many students and professionals
repeated those mistakes in their own code.

I said it in another thread, I believe there's a correlation between
the popularity of Schildt's books and the generally abysmal quality of
C code written in the '80s and '90s. Schildt caused real harm to the
industry, and your quixotic defense of his honor is puzzling to say
the least. Unless you are Herb himself, it simply doesn't make sense
why someone would waste their time defending the indefensible.

John Bode

On Nov 3, 6:34*am, John Bode <jfbode1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 1, 5:05*am,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > This thread shall be the center for compaints about Peter Seebach's
> > document "C: The Complete Nonsense", which is as far as I can tell the
> > sole source of the false rumors about Herb Schildt's books, a source
> > amplified by the confusion of a citation with that of a citation of a
> > citation.
>
> > I shall start the ball rolling: Peter, what goes around, comes around.
>
> > "Page 284
> > All of the header files are listed in capitals; the standard specifies
> > them in lower case. It is not required that a C compiler reject all-
> > caps, but nor is it required that it accept them. "
>
> > Herb here relies on the relative prevelance of case insensitivity in
> > Windows systems and before them, in IBM systems.
>
> So? *Why not use canonical forms that are guaranteed to work
> *everywhere*, regardless of whether the underlying platform is case-
> insensitive or not?
>
> This was the thing that frustrated me the most about his book and one
> of the reasons why it wound up in the trash; a good chunk of his
> examples wouldn't even compile for me since I was working on VAX/VMS,
> and the VAX C compiler would inevitably choke on some DOS-ism. *Why

Then Vax was arguably wrong. And why are we discussing out of date
systems, and why is Richard Heathfield quoting Aho/Sethi et al (Dragon
compiler book) 1986? Are we in a time warp?

> limit your audience by writing examples that only work for a subset of
> possible platforms? *Why not write examples that work on all systems
> with conforming compilers? *K&R did it. *H&S did it. *Why couldn't

No they didn't. No intelligent programmer (there are very few)
programs by moronically copying code snippets. Nothing really works,
without change, for all platforms, and this isn't Herb's doing: it's
what vendors do to make money. Even if the code doesn't have to be
changed for a particular target, anyone who expects not to have to
probably change and in consequence doesn't do his homework, deserves
what he gets.

> Herb?
>
> > It has long been a
> > sort of fashion statement in unix to be case sensitive. There are
> > arguments pro and con both ways, but by omitting this information
> > Peter is able to make Yet Another unwarranted implication about
> > Seebach's competence.
>
> Seebach correctly points out that using all caps may not always work.
> One would think that information would be valuable.

Yes, it is. Even more valuable would have been an explanation of the
culture divide in computing between case insensitivity in IBM
mainframes and subsequently PCs, and Vaxen and many other systems
which were case-sensitive.

It's not Herb's fault that this difference exists. I do feel that for
best results, he needed a co-author who was expert on non-Microsoft
systems. But this lack was absolutely no reason for the campaign of
abuse to which he was subjected.

>
> > It is tribalism to confuse shibboleths such as these with knowledge,
> > where a "shibboleth" is used to recognized tribe members. It is a
> > barbarism.
>
> Okay, let's talk about *knowledge*. *Let's talk about another example
> cited by Seebach:
>
> > Page 53
> > The following code:
> > * */* Write 6 integers to a disk file. */
> > * *void put_rec(int rec[6], FILE *fp)
> > * *{
> > * * *int len;
> > * * *len = fwrite(rec, sizeof rec, 1, fp);
> > * * *if (len != 1) printf("write error");
> > * *}
> > Is described as causing all of rec to be written, no matter what
> > size of array is being used.
>
> This is *not* a trivial mistake. *We're not arguing over style, we're
> not arguing over platform idiosyncracies. *This is basic **** that
> Shildt gets *wrong*; any student who read this was grossly misinformed
> on the semantics of arrays as function parameters.

The **** is in the design of C.

>
> Or how about this:
>
> > #include <string.h>
>
> > char s1[] = "hello ";
> > char s2[] = "there.";
>
> > void main(void)
> > {
> > * int p;
>
> > * p = strcat(s1, s2);
> > }
>
> Hello instant security hole!

It's actually a bug in C akin to the sprintf issue (sprintf
intrinsically unsafe on all platforms). As I have said, a professional
doesn't accept the correctness of code in books any more than a
mathematician expects all the statements in an elementary math
textbook to be true in literal terms and given what we now know:
explanations in calculus in particular can be wildly off-base.

As a humanist and not an autistic twerp who worships abstractions and
machines because he can't get laid, I think Schildt's peace of mind
and reputation was MORE important than using a language in which it is
(almost by design) insanely difficult to write correct code. The
standards efforts had a chance to rectify this situation and they
failed to owing to vendor greed.

>
> Again, these aren't trivial mistakes, and they aren't rare in

Actually, they are. Seeback lists only twenty mistakes and says in "C:
The Complete Nonsense" that these are the known errors.

> Schildt's book. *God knows how many students and professionals
> repeated those mistakes in their own code.
>
> I said it in another thread, I believe there's a correlation between
> the popularity of Schildt's books and the generally abysmal quality of
> C code written in the '80s and '90s. *Schildt caused real harm to the
> industry, and your quixotic defense of his honor is puzzling to say
> the least. *Unless you are Herb himself, it simply doesn't make sense
> why someone would waste their time defending the indefensible.

Coders who write crap code are in general aliterate or autistic and
either don't read at all, or read standards manuals exclusively.
People who actually can read do so critically. As in the case of my
own experience in 1970 (getting a book about the IBM 7094 in a class
that used the 1401) the "errors" are a learning experience.

I today teach classes in *critical* reading of texts such as Joseph
Conrad. You don't understand until you've found aporias and errors in
a text so arguably Schildt does his readers an unintentional service
with his errors, which as I have said, are fewer in number than
claimed.

In an ideal world computer books would contain "nothing but the
truth". But in the real world, programmers, who proclaim their
dedication to truth, actually are so completely dependent on their
jobs and health insurance that when one reads THEIR code, it is full
of errors and bad practice in nearly all cases. This is because as
paraprofessionals, the rate of speed at which they must work is
consistently set above the rational and humane, and the result is real
code that really sucks.

Furthermore, I see where you don't have the balls to post a fix to the
strcat. Let me try:

>
> > char s1[] = "hello ";
> > char s2[] = "there.";
>
> > void main(void)
> > {
> > int p;
>
> > p = strcat(s1, s2);
> > }

No, that doesn't work, does it?

OK, how about

s1[6] = '\0'; p = strcat(s1, s2);

That might work (I haven't tested it.)

The point is that C IS A JOKE especially in string handling. As soon
as any competent programmer starts using C (whether Bjarne Stroustrup
in the 1970s or I in the early 1990s) he is appalled by it and starts
using its macro and function facility to craft his own C.

Stop blaming, and scapegoating, Schildt for your own poor taste in
programming languages.

spinoza1111