Re: casts

On Aug 14, 7:32 pm, Tom St Denis <t...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 13, 7:36 pm,spinoza1111<spinoza1...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Most shit programmers prefer languages that conceal their shittiness.
This is why most *** programmers refuse to learn languages including
C Sharp and Java.

I can't help but read this as "wyah wyah I suck at C so I'm gonna

I don't "suck at C"; I no longer use it. I used it in the early 1990s
and was asked to teach it to prospective computer science majors at
Princeton. I assisted John "A Beautiful Mind" Nash with C.

However, I noted that as I tried to do anything significant or
elaborate, especially with GUIs, I was spending too much time on
infrastructure: for example, a struct seemed to me to require
additional routines to print it and inspect it for validity. I
discovered that primitive Visual Basic as of its early (1995) object-
oriented release did a better job of encapsulation, and wrote a
compiler in a later edition of Visual Basic, publishing said compiler
as the software for "Build Your Own .Net Language and
Compiler" (Apress 2004).

The compiler would have been far more difficult, if more "efficient",
in C.

troll usenet instead of doing something truly fun because I have a
shallow and depraved lifestyle that is so inactive usenet is
considered a highlight..."

I type fast. This allows me to work six days a week as a teacher and
run or work out 10..20 miles or mile-equivalents per week. I take a
break now and then to banter here with you slobs.


And if you think regex construction lies more in an algebra text than
a compiler text that speaks volumes to your understanding of computer
science.

Yes, it does indeed. "Computer science" is not the collective opinions
of a bunch of greedy ruffians.

Ok, but that doesn't change the fact that the discussion of regex
belongs in a compiler text, not an algebra text.

Regular expressions were developed before computers by John von
Neumann et al., and their function is NOT to be an obfuscated machine
language for processing data. Instead, a regular expression specifies
a class of languages. As I show at
http://spinoza1111.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/the-irresponsibility-of-many-systems-for-parsing-regular-expressions/,
the programming use of regular expressions obscures their mathematics
since they require sentinels for EOF, and process strings either
lazily or greedily, where the processing method is irrevelant to the
mathematical regex. The result is the misery of a variety of
incompatible regexp processors.


You're contention is that you can pick anyone off the street to pick
up a java or pascal or python or ... project and run with it?  Am I
hearing this right?  Only C programs require "professionals?"

No, a Java or C Sharp program which compiles with neither errors nor
warnings, and which is accepted to work, can be recompiled on a
different system with a separate Java or C Sharp installation, and it
will manifest the same acceptable behavior, and this is not the case
with C.

First off, that's not even right, the Java API *has* changed over time
and different VMs treat programs differently.  There are businesses
out there that their sole occupation is porting Java games from one
mobile phone to another.

C did a great deal in creating the ignorant perception amongst
software managers that because C isn't portable, Java isn't portable
to the same extent.



On the other hand, I've written C applications that build in 20
different UNIX/Linux/BSD platforms from a single source.

I don't care to listen to you boast if you don't care to treat my
opinions with any collegiality, Bubba. In my thirty years as a
developer I became overfamiliar with the arrogant "lead" or "senior"
developer who is usually just the fattest man in the group with the
biggest mouth, and who claims that his software works without testing.


You seem to think that because POSIX.1 C applications don't map well
to Windows that C is somehow deficient, or something, to be honest I
don't really know where you're coming from in this.  A lot of us here
have written C applications that "just work" on other platforms from
where they were originally written.  Heck, I write software that
simultaneously targets PPC, ARM, and x86 [32 and 64-bit] and I don't
even have a "#ifdef ARM" anywhere except for optimizations [inline
asm].

Not only that, but what's to stop me from writing a C VM that then
hosts C applications in a sandbox like Java and runs "anywhere"?  That
is not a function of the C language though.  So your rant is lost
here.

It's quite obvious that you're not really an experienced developer,

Although I was probably programming in machine language, and debugged
a compiler in machine language, while you were in ***-stained diapers
watching Scooby Doo, being an "experienced developer" in my experience
usually involves drinking some form of Jonestown Kool-Ade. Since so
few managers or users, and indeed few developers themselves, know much
beyond a specified skill set, external markers of inward grace often
substitute for knowledge and real experience in naming the
"experienced" developer. For example, I went from "experienced" to
"inexperienced" when in 1981 I started to work out and got slimmer,
because one such marker is that the developer should be an unhealthy-
looking white guy.

let alone computer scientist, you think regex has something to do with
math [more than compiler theory that is], you think all Java

Well, I first encountered regular expressions in "Formal Languages and
Their Relation to Automata" by Jeffs Hopcroft and Ullman, published in
1972. This was a math book.

applications run anywhere for all of time, you think that C can't be

Of course, not all Java applications run anywhere all the time. But,
far fewer C applications do so in my experience.


sandboxed, you think a lot of things, and they're just not true.

And last but not least, you think we care enough about you to
persecute you.  Truth is, if you stopped posting this instant, I and
probably the rest of the world, wouldn't miss you.  Which isn't meant
to be an offense, it's just the truth.  I suspect the same is true for
myself and most others around here.  Individuals just don't count that
much, team contributions on the other hand do.  CLC is a place where a
group of people can discuss C language issues.  And right now you're
just a distraction.  Nothing positive is coming out of this
discussion.  So why not join the winning team there eh champ?  Stop
trolling and contribute meaningful dialogue.

You are blind but you see a truth in a perverted way. It is that the
purpose of digital technology wasn't to glorify individual ace
programmers, but to make the rich, richer, to advance American
hegemony, and to keep the rest of us in cubicles defined by our social
position. Despite my early fascination with computers, I could see
where all the interesting things having to do with writing assemblers
and debugging compilers was, although challenging and interesting,
leading in the direction of moronization and social rigidity.

As such, you're right. The system isn't set up for people to
demonstrate that they are geniuses or incisive social critics. It's
set up for them to sacrifice their in-duh-viduality as team members
for a paycheck and health insurance if they're lucky.

However, you naturalize, reify, hypostatize and fetishize this
situation. Lacking any deep culture, I'd wot, you think this is the
only possible world. Yet at the same time, you're not really
reconciled to it because you do boast, don't you, about your studly
accomplishments in a zero sum way, where they must be at all times
opposed to someone else's necessary failure.

In psychological terms, society has made you internalize a judgemental
father, who emerges in your bad-tempered snarling at the harmless
expression of viewpoints.

The hostility, and unmanaged anger, that comes out in you emerges
because you feel in fact unrewarded for mastering your job, and
because in fact, programmers are treated consistently like marginal
dog***.

But: the fact that you're moved to express this hostility shows where
Fascism comes from. Because you must manifest all sorts of
intelligence and discipline, but are nothing more than an abstract
"resource", your anger is targeted at anyone who refuses the terms of
the deal. I see this type of anger emerging in the USA in health
insurance "town meetings", and it is an anger which is used to advance
the interests of the rich and powerful...not you.

I've probably forgotten more than you know about C. In my experience,
it forces the developer to think in inhumane and twisted ways and to
take his anger out on the victims of his malpractice.
Tom

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