Re: Wit-to-whine ratios

James Dow Allen said:

<snip>

On Apr 20, 6:44 pm, Richard <de...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
James Dow Allen <jdallen2...@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
... The 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" relationship
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.

In other words, RR got it wrong again. This would be surprising if it were
not so unsurprising.

<snip>

And while I agree with *many* of Mr. Heathfield's
views, I don't think my alleged puppet master and
his

alleged

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.

No, the reason you're going blind is that you have to look at miles and
miles of horizontal whitespace. Drop to a two-space indent, and otherwise
use whitespace only around binary operators and after #includes, commas,
semicolons, and the like. You should find that your eyesight clears up
after only a few decades.

<snip>

Of course the best posters are usually also witty people.

For certain values of "best", of course - but I happen to agree with you.
What I find fascinating and somewhat disturbing is the high whoosh factor
here. It's lower than in most groups I use, but it's still alarmingly
high.

<re code fragments>

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!

When it's obviously a fragment and yet obviously sufficient in itself to
describe the problem, I agree. But when the OP supposedly posts an entire
program and yet doesn't provide necessary headers, I think that's a
reasonable response - even if it is the entire response!

I think such terse responses are also reasonable if the fragment is
purportedly producing runtime results even though it could not reasonably
be expected to compile (back in its original context) without some
seriously insane #definery.

<snip>

IMHO, Mr. Heathfield has a higher wit-to-whine ratio
than most of his detractors,

s/most/all/duh

though I'm afraid many
of his helpful but ironic responses are over-clever.

If the choice is between "too clever" or "too stupid", I'm perfectly
content to hog "too clever" to myself.

(Mr. Heathfield, do you also have Scottish ancestry? :-)

One grandparent, or so I am given to understand. This explains why I am
only a quarter as skilled at engineering, medicine, and bagpipe-playing as
the average Scot.

Well, I hope this diatribe amuses someone,

It is too good natured to be a diatribe (unlike this response, in places).
Perhaps you'll have to be content to think of it as a monotribe.

I also hope
I've offended no Scotsmen with my comments on "Scottish
sense of humor"

You will not have offended any *true* Scotsmen.

--
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
.

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