Re: Dealing with ad hominem attacks in comp.programming

On Feb 18, 7:36 pm, "Malcolm McLean" <regniz...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Richard Heathfield" <r...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:gP-dne_6yfKDUiTanZ2dnUVZ8tOmnZ2d@xxxxxxxxx> Malcolm McLean said:

Meanwhile a thread I consider to be more useful, on
adding units to programming language variables, seems to have died.

If it died a natural death (all that needed to be said had been said),
fine. If there's more yet to discuss, why not resurrect it?

I felt it deserved a thread of its own because, to my knowledge, no major
programming languages come with units as standard.
However I don't have any good ideas, at least as yet.

FWIW physical quantities as programming entities are far from dead.

However they not simple to deal with. People like to discuss problems
that they have solutions to not that seem overwhelming.

There is a large amount of interest from scientific and engineering
computing, including the defence industry.

A physical quantities library is also an interesting test of a
programming language.

Here are some of the libraries that I have collated in various
different languages:

Dmitry Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de/ada/units.htm

Oskar Linde
http://www.csc.kth.se/~ol/physical.d

Andy Little
http://sourceforge.net/projects/quan

Sun
http://fortress.sunsource.net/

Java JSR
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=275

I have previously spent a large amount of time discussing quan (used
to be pqs) in public, but now prefer to spend the time improving the
work offline. I have answered the same basic questions from casually
inerested people so many times, that I now don't see the point.

OTOH I am more than happy to answer technical queries from those that
have downloaded and used quan and have a technical queries, with the
caveat that quan is in a state of suspension, and has been for a year
and a half. I may restart work on the library, or I may not. I am
aware that isnt a good sell point.

I have learnt a huge amount from doing the library, and also am well
aware of its problems, and I hope that I can present my findings one
way or another in a more mature work.

There is also I believe a large amount of FUD involved in this whole
business, the true source of which is unclear. This may be partly
inertia. You cant retrofit units to existing libraries, they tend to
take over. There is also certainly history involved.

There have been various vague attacks on quan, which when responded to
try to elicit the exact nature of the criticism, tend to mysteriously
fade away. This is the tactics of FUD.

Long term though I think there is a good future for physical
quantities in programming.

regards
Andy Little







.

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