Re: Rene is a hypocrite (OK, what else is new?)

From: Randall Hyde (randyhyde_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 02/07/04 

Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 17:28:40 GMT

"The Half A Wannabee" <ShakainZulu_AT(Nightwish - She Is My Sin
(Live).mp3)_Hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:402506fd$1@news.broadpark.no...

> Underscores do mean something in all version of borland pascal , borland
C,
> Borland Javas.

They mean something in HLA, too.
I guess this means that Rene and his minions blew it again :-).

> In most versions of MS C, C++, Basic etc. It meant something
> in MZ sharp Basic, C64 Basic, C128 Basic, in QBasic and in Visual Basic.
So
> for the few languages I have seen, the underscore was not IGNORED in the
> text like they are in RosAsm. In RosAsm they are simply ignored, and if
you
> write a declaration :
>
> [Current_Window_Handle : 0]
> [CurrentWindowHandle : 0]
>
> It will not asseble, as the the two are identical. This means that
> underscore can be used to make numbers appear more easy to read. 00960020h
> = 0_00_960_020h = 0_960_020 (short form, one leading zero means hex, if
> more than one add h at the end to make it clear )
>
> And this is basically brilliant. Cause why would anyone write
> [CurrentWindow_Handle : 0] instead of
> [CurrentWindowHandle : 0] ? Maybe to make it more readable. So when the
> readability is about the only thing that matters in this declaration -
(The
> underscore underlines that handle is a property/member or the
> CurrentWindow) - then a dead underscore is very Spesific.

H.A.W., you really need to pick up a copy of Steve McConnell's
"Code Complete" and read it from end to end. If you think that the
standard RosAsm coding style is an example of "easy to read code"
well, more power to you. But I think you'll be saddened to find that
the average programmer doesn't think so. If you think that arbitrarily
slipping underscores into an indentifier makes that identifier easier to
read, especially when the compiler doesn't check to ensure that you've
got the underscore in the right place, then you have a basic
misunderstanding of what programmers consider "good programming
style" and "easy to read code".

Sure, you can write
Current_Window_Handle
CurrentWindow_Handle
Current_WindowHandle
CurrentWindowHandle

But the average person is going to expect these to be different
items (complaining, of course, that you shouldn't create such
similar identifiers). Just a load of confusion. Naturally, a
*good* programmer would never do anything like the above
on purpose, but it is quite possible for such things to accidentally
find their way into your code. It would be nice if the assembler
reported such problems.

>Its does the job
> EXACTLY for the user. It is creating scope, where scope is not ordinarily
> possible. In pascal too, scope is also just a fake/practical scope. Its
not
> real at all. Its peceived by the programmer/user as scope. But the scope
> doesnt exists at all. Memory is flat. When you write MyObject.FirstMember
:=
> 10 what happens is that a register is loaded with the pointer to MyObject,
> and then the member is accessed though an offset. If you wanted to in
pascal
> you can defeat this scope if you need too. Its not like the private
members
> of an object are stored in a protected part of memory or something.

You really need to learn a thing or two about the following terms in
compiler and programming language theory:

binding
scope
attributes

Needless to say, your ignorance is showing through loud and clear,
as usual.

>
> >
> > I wonder if Betov will claim he invented the pointer next and the
> > compiler designers of the 70s and later sneaked a look at his version
> > of BetovSpazm and copied it. :) Muhahahaha.
> >
> Betov didnt claim anything.

Well, here are a couple of claims he has made that are completely false:

1. AoA was created to support HLA (rather than vice versa).
2. Randall Hyde stole the idea of underscores from SpAsm rather than
    taking the idea from other programming languages (e.g., Ada).
3. The behavior of underscores in HLA is the same as RosAsm (they
     are not, even in numbers the behavior is different).

And implied in all of this is the claim:

4. Randall Hyde thinks so highly of RosAsm that he has borrowed
    several features from the language.

In fact, the only really novel idea present in RosAsm/SpAsm at all
is the concept of burying the source code in the executable file.
That was a new idea I'd personally not seen before. Nearly every
other concept Rene has come up with in the *assembler* has been
done *years* before (and usually, on the order of *50 years* before).
The fact that Rene hasn't done the research to make these discoveries
is really his own fault. Indeed, his claims that all these ideas are his
own really borders on plagiarism.

> Did you read his answer when I told him the
> right - click feature showed up in Borland Delphi after I saw it in Spasm
?
> They modified it to be CTRL+LeftClick, but its about the same feature, not
> as functional, but basically some of the same. Betov did _not_ claim _he_
> invented it (as the first person) only that he invented it independently.

That's easy to believe (that he invented it on his own). Rene doesn't bother
checking out how other software behaves on the PC. His disassembler is
a good example of this. His editor is a good example of this. Once in a
while
he might stumble onto something good, by accident. Often, though, by not
considering successful solutions that already exist, he winds up creating
some really bizarre code with really bizarre features (e.g., not
automatically
supplying scroll bars when the file is longer than one screen, not
automatically
handling the font's pitch when the user changes fonts, not having
"cut/copy/paste"
in the edit menu where it belongs, etc., etc.).

Cheers,
Randy Hyde

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  • Re: Rene is a hypocrite (OK, what else is new?)
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