Re: Cobol work?

"Richard" <riplin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1130734689.510562.161760@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I am responding in a not entirely serious manner.

>> I'd appreciate the same leniency you give apparently give yourself.
>
> """everyone else must be (or they are lying about it)."""
>
> Quite right, I should have said 'everyone else who is a programmer'.
Close: it's everyone else who is a programmer who denies *ever* being
confused by C-style pointer

> Judson divided all programmers (from which _any_ programmer can be
> taken) into 3 groups:
>
> 1. Has been confused by C pointers
> 2. Not used them much
> 3. Liars
Your groups are all wrong. There are two sets from the group "programmers":

Group A: Programmers who deny ever being confused
Group B: Programmers who do not deny being ever confused

A literal reading of his post indicates one general deduction applied to
only the first group:
All members of Group A haven't used pointers or are liars.

He doesn't state one thing or the other about group b though I doubt it
would be disparaging as I inferred he was in the group by virtue of being
"confused" at least once and not afraid to say so.

> I don't fit into groups 1 or 2, so in effect he calls me a liar.

I believe you could correct here - but wouldn't it be simpler and more fun
to admit that just once you had been confused? That maybe by accident you
dereferenced something and got a core dump - or maybe once you passed a
pointer into the interlanguage COBOL call instead of a pointer to a
pointer....or maybe you misread the declaration char* char1, char2 or forgot
to initialize the pointer....or didn't quite get your lpsz set correctly.

The important word here though is *ever* because if you were confused at the
beginning of your programming in C with C-style pointers - even if later you
don't even miss a beat at statements like:

int (*pf) (int) = &f;
or
while ((psBuffer[nBufferCount++]=**psWord)&&(*++*psWord!=')'));

the fact is that you were confused when you didn't have familiarity. If you
were to read this with one week of C behind you the statement would be VERY
confusing.

We just need to add a new conclusion:
All members of Group A haven't used pointers or are liars, or are just
incredibly gifted.

I understand your points, I just think you take it all too personally...I
don't think Judson really thinks that you are a "liar" and even if he did,
it's probably a "white liar" and even more than that, it's not something
that is a statement about your character...the :-) makes that clear...it was
just a generalization that is in fact, in some cases, true. The concepts
aren't confusing, it's the care of the person using the concepts that makes
the confusion ultimately. Some people do not understand array pointer
equivalence...I don't know why...the same reason some people cannot solve
for x and others cannot understand Shakespearean English.

>I also dispute his grouping (which he 'stands by'), because 'not having
>used
> them much' (ie being unfamiliar with) is more likely to lead to being
> in the group 'confused' than in a separate group. That is: being in
> group 1 may be the cause of being in group 2, or vice versa. Not being
> in group 1 is more likely (not less) to lead to not being in group 2.
I probably agree here....so off I go into digression:

There are people that analyse data like this and it is actually quite
fascinating. They take accumulator bets when there is a
miscalculation...for example: Kobe Bryant to be the game's high scorer and
Lakers to win. It is much more likely that the Lakers will win if Kobe is
the game's highest scorer and occasionally there is a slip in the odds. So
maybe it's 2-1 for part A and 2-1 for part B and combined the odds are 4-1
instead of 5-2.....it's still gambling, but the odds are stacking in your
favour.

This went on in England on the soccer matches for a long time where a very
common bet was something like "David Beckham to score first goal and
Manchester to win 2-0". There were apparently some very *gifted*
mathemeticians who would find the slight odds defect where it was in their
favour....no guarantee you would win, but when the odds get to be high
enough, the bookies hedge fund can make much money.

The best bet were the idiots who took a bet on results for game in Australia
after they had already occurred. The matches were in Europe and for some
reason - daylight savings, rain or whate have you - the matches had an early
kick off.....but no one told the Aussie bookies who were still taking best
after the fact.

JCE




.

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