Re: Creationist software engineering? A frightening possibility!

In article <1117181496.482945.218100@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx says...
>
> Chris McDonald wrote:

> Since the Bush administration took office, Dr. McDonald, Congressional
> testimony from FBI agent and whistleblower Colleen Rowley revealed
> serious deficiencies in the software she had to use in her effort to
> track the "20th highjacker", Zacarias Moussaui. One that I mention in
> my recent tech book Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler inspired
> me in fact to write that book (Apress 2004): Rowley said her system was
> unable to process Boolean queries.

Chris McDonald will notice that Nilgewater never misses an opportunity
to shill for his novel, or to repeat his drivel about Colleen Rowley.
In fact, use the google archive to search for how many times he has
brought up that issue alone in this newsgroup alone.

Or, how many times he has used the term "fascist" to describe everything
from political beliefs to variable naming conventions.

> Block structure enables the actual coder, the mere programmer if you
> will, to focus on a subgoal but Taylorist American management (as in
> the thought of Frederick Taylor, a management consultant of the early
> 20th century) assumes that MANAGEMENT has already "scientifically"
> factored problems (including coding) by virtue of being management.

If you haven't figured it out yet, Nilgewater is a sociologist, not
a programmer. He seems keen to try and pretend that all programming
problems are rooted in one of the infinite number of social problems
he perceives. One could easily imagine an essay from him on how
program race conditions could be eliminated forever if only programmers
were given more instruction during their elementary school years on the
problems with malnutrition of children in third-world countries.

If you think that's too silly to contemplate, just read some of his
historical posts, if you have the patience.

> > >By the way, Randy Howard may be safely ignored. He's a troll. Pursuant
> > >to requests made by other posters I do not reply to subtrees infected
> > >by him.
> >
> > You're the first I've read suggest that; that's not enough evidence for
> > me to draw a conclusion.
>
> Of course not. Randy Howard, however, is a troll-with-respect-to, a
> common enough species: a troll(x) and not a troll(), perhaps.

For someone that has a proven record of not being able to even recognize
the programming language of source code posted to this newsgroup, I'm not
sure we are interested in your definitions of anything.

> Another term for the troll-with-respect-to is the bully, who doesn't
> pick random targets, instead selects targets he thinks can be targeted
> because they violate community standards just widely enough.

You were not a target Nilgewater, you were simply disagreed with, by
at least 20 different people, on a wide range of programming topics
that you chose to pontificate (incorrectly) upon over the last year
or so. Most of them got tired of it after a while. I simply refused
to let you continue to lie to people and not argue with it. You
threatened legal action against me for having the temerity to actually
argue with you on programming issues in a *gasp* programming newsgroup.

The fact that you were never able to back up any of your claims, such
as the episode not too long ago where you claimed that one of your
more obviously braindead programming methods would be optimized by
"any decent C compiler". When it was pointed out to you that ZERO
optimizing C compilers on the market today would fix the obvious
problem with the way you construct (intentionally) loops that
exhibit exponential performance issues in the hopeless belief that
the compiler would save you from your own stupidity, you refused
to answer and called me a troll instead.

<sarcasm>
It was ooohhhh so troll-like to publish source code and conduct
actual experiments across numerous operating system and compiler
combinations to verify your hypothesis. It was really troll-
like when a number of other respected programmers used that same
code independently and got the same benchmark results on even
more platforms and compilers.
</sarcasm>

The real problem you had with it was that it proved you were,
and likely remain, clueless on such matters.

The truth is any time actual facts are presented to refute one of
your far less than concrete (one might say "jello-like") claims, you
run for the hills, threatening lawsuits, restraining orders, crying
about "fascism", and generating another of your sociology diatribes
to cover your tracks.

> Randy Howard's conduct in this ng is a microcosm of this overall
> pattern. Like Alberto Gonzalez who as Bush's legal assistant approved
> torture of suspects but then denied he had during his confirmation
> while many Senators had trouble keeping a straight face, Howard will of
> course adopt a respectful and centrist tone EXCEPT on subtrees where he
> thinks he can get away with an actionably libelous attack on a computer
> professional with 30 years experience, who was asked to assist John
> Nash with C, and who's published several articles and a recent book on
> compiler design.

A) If you think you have been libeled, do something about it, or shut
up about it. You've been claiming it for almost a year now. If you
think pointing out the actual, verifiable flaws in your untenable
claims here is actionable, then get off your *** and do something
about it.

B) The "assistance" you gave to Nash has been refuted as incorrect
here multiple times, by multiple people. The details are in the
archive. You never seem to reply to that little tidbit though.

> He started this conduct when he discovered me being criticised by
> Richard Heathfield, but in a professional way, along with Programmer
> Dude for putatively posting buggy code in C which on investigation
> turns out to be code with a bug fixed the same evening as it was posted
> and which in other respects violated their stylistic prejudices.

Incorrect. I "started" arguing with you almost immediately after
perceiving your posts here, which were then and continue today in
two basic flavors:

1) Posting of source code that was obviously flawed (since you were
unanimously chided over every source fragment you posted, you
have basically giving up on discussion of source code here, as
it was no doubt too painful).
2) Posting of sociological diatribes which were, and remain to this
day largely indistinguishable from this:
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/

Even when the negative effects of certain programming "styles" you
employ were pointed out to you, including benchmarking results,
you refused to stop pretending like your methods were still superior.

Somehow we are supposed to believe that since you have been bouncing
around the industry (and the globe) for a long time searching for
gainful employment, that the weight of your experience trumps actual
empirical data to the contrary.

> He continues despite the fact that Heathfield, in March 2004, ceased
> his attacks when Heathfield failed to persuade some other posters to
> ignore my forthcoming book and despite the fact that since that date,
> Programmer Dude has acted collegially.

Heathfield stop posting to Usenet, period (at least under that name).
He has shown up, under cover, since then, and those that recognize
his posting style are aware of it.

Of course *you* accused him of being a spy, working for the British
intelligence service. To which most people laughed and continue
to laugh at you, and an aluminum foil deflector beanie has been
recommended to you before. Perhaps he just got tired of you slinging
darts at him. He is one of the most widely respected of contributors
in a number of technical newsgroups, a noted authority on the C
programming language (including having authored a book that is
actually successful on the topic). I wish he were more active
here again, as I miss the discussions that had actual programming
content in which he often participated. Instead, we are treated
to your discourse on enlightening topics like fascism vs hungarian
notation and similarly enlightening gibberish.

> Because of my seeming isolation and anonymity, Howard joined in the
> attack and has persisted since then despite being asked by third
> parties to desist. I myself had to agree with these third parties to
> not reply directly any more to Howard and lived up to that agreement,
> even in cases where those third parties violated their OWN committments
> not to partake in subtrees.

Anonymity? You post under your actual name, or a pen name that you
have published under. Any real-world isolation you encounter is
likely a result of your behavior, and not my concern. I was asked
to ignore your trolling, to which I largely agreed, apart from when
you continue to post like this, whereby you lie about me, but indirectly,
pretending that if your followup is posted to someone other than myself
you are not "talking to me".

> Howard has also stayed away from my public blog site at
> www.developerdotstar.com

Shilling again? Let me guess, it's covered up with add links.

> because he knows full well that were he to
> harass me at this site, which of course allows comments, the other
> visitors and the administrator would ask him to desist.

I have stayed away from it for several reasons, none of which have
anything to do with your claims.

1) I didn't know about.
2) Nothing you "blog" about is likely to contain any useful information
whatsoever.
3) I couldn't care less what followers of your cult of sociological
persiflage have to say about me.

> And Howard is pretty much defined by his silly beliefs that he need not
> do any work to install 26000 lines of source code for my book, Build
> Your Own .Net Language and Compiler on an out of control
> multiprocessing Windows system and that he can with long-term impunity
> engage in libel.

Yeah, it's "out of control". Why? Because it has two whole processors,
as shipped from the factory, by Dell computer. Oooooh, scary. To a
sociologist maybe, but not to a programmer. The fact is, I didn't need
to "intall" your source code. I simply attempted to execute the
precompiled binaries, which failed miserably. I then deleted the whole
mess off of my computer. That computer is still working fine btw, as
it has been for the last 3 or 4 years.

> Dr. McDonald, many computer professionals are apolitical and what has I
> think attracted Howard's scorn is my willingness, on the available
> evidence, to connect dots not otherwise connected.

Yes, we've seen how there is now an apparently previously unrecognized
connection between a person's religion and the quality of their source
code. I fully expect Nilgewater to be awarded the ACM Turing Award
any moment now as a result of this discovery. Do you agree?

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"I don't really care about being right you know,
I just care about success." --Steve Jobs
.