Except the K&R style is way uglier because it lacks symmetry...
Symmetry doesn't have to be vertical. There's another 358 degrees that work just as well. Besides, why's the closing brace have to line up with the opening brace? They're only loosely related. It makes more sense for it to line up with the function def'n.
K&R is iconic, but not a good beginner's book at all, and while it does cover some things in great depth it does leave plenty out and is well dated now. Worth reading, but not first.
I disagree. I started with K&R, and would do it again in a heartbeat. I specifically avoided BASIC after doing some research prior to teaching myself to program and went straight to C. That short, densely and well written book was the best and most instructive tutor I've ever had.
Watching C plus Mix Power C on a 16 bit DOS machine, then seeing C on a serious commercial Unix machine was the second most instructive lesson.
"Column coherence" is the least justifiable excuse I've ever heard of in defense of opening brace on a line by itself. I say, if it makes the code look ugly, it's wrong. Go ahead, tell me you know better than K&R (and I'm not talking about the book there, btw).
Maybe you just need a better text editor that can handle it correctly (emacs vs. vi war in 5, 4, 3,...). Hell, there's always indent. You do it any way you damned well please, and indent will fix it for me before I even look at it.
It's a confusing (in several ways) [way] to implement strcpy().
Er, I wasn't confused by it, but then I still remember the many hours I spent with K&R (1st and 2nd ed.).
What's confusing is reading this bantering back and forth of people who can see "=" and assume the code's obviously wrong, not understanding that test for equality is not the same as assigning value. How real programmers can do that's a mystery to me. One makes sense when parsed and the other doesn't, algorythmically. Terseness in C is a feature, but like everything, you need to be careful with it lest it bite you. Compilers barf on stuff like this, or worse, don't barf and produce programs that crash, or worse, don't crash and instead produce corrupt results.
"What? Did I miss something, or does he know something I don't?" No, he just can't read code. "Ah!" Feh.
And as a parting shot, damn I hate seeing opening curly braces alone on an otherwise blank line! It's just ugly! Good code should be pretty.
To all those who replied to my post, it seems you've (to varying degrees) missed this bit of what I wrote:
... a government truly bound by a constitution with which it may not fsck...
Trudeau fscked with it when it was "repatriated", the US fscks with theirs in innumerable ways daily via multiple vectors (Congress, USSC, US Trade Reps,...).
It ought to be a LAW ON GOV'T that specifies WHAT GOV'T MAY AND MAY NOT DO/GET AWAY WITH. It also should be worked over to death to ensure it's correctly crafted and all duties and responsibilities spelled out first, and it should be difficult as hell to change it by gov't or legal edict (assuming change by any party is desired). I don't care if that takes a century or two, as long as it's being worked on and the right thing has a chance to surface eventually. Scrap it and try again is much better than getting something weak that can't stand up to the test of time or special interests.
I'm no fan of gov't nor mobocracy. Gov't, even in its best forms is still a fire waiting and eager to get out of hand. Ditto Democracy (tyranny of the majority). Both may be the best we can do, and may be necessary evils, but eternal vigilance on our part is all that can keep either in check.
Congress critters/Parliamentarians/lawyers/lobbyists should have no rights whatsoever in this realm, and a proper constitution would allow them no room to involve themselves. This's none of their !@#$ business. It's our business, and they should not be welcome sticking their noses into our business.
Why is anyone paying any attention to this piracy list?
That is the question. Wasn't it the US' GAO that admitted it was worthless, considering it was made up solely of numbers provided by the *AAs?
There are much more subtle ways to get his message across.
I think they've come to the conclusion that the US House of Reps & Senate are so bought off now, subtlety's no longer necessary. Think about it: who even cares about this issue other than pirates, patriots, bought off legislators, and the *AAs? The rest of the population, considering their buying habits, clearly don't give a flying fsck about any of this, if they even know about it. I very much doubt that my iPhone loving sister knows about it, nor cares one whit about Disney's copyright related shenanigans.
"Sheeple" is becoming a more valid word every day.
"They also cite cabinet minister Maxime Bernier raising the possibility of showing U.S. officials a draft bill before tabling it in Parliament."
FYI, from TFA, the paragraph immediately following reads:
The cables, from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, even have a policy director for then industry minister Tony Clement suggesting it might help U.S. demands for a tough copyright law if Canada were placed among the worst offenders on an international piracy watch list. Days later, the U.S. placed Canada alongside China and Russia on the list.
What strikes me as astonishing is how monumentally stupid this makes the US' powers that be look, as this action was immediately viewed with scorn and disbelief by pretty much anyone who noticed. Yet, has any of that scorn and disbelief made any dent in US policy intentions? Hell no, full steam ahead, ignore the peanut gallery. Let 'em eat cake.
And what about the Constitutional Coup that Harper conducted with the Governor General ?
In my mind, that is sufficient reason right there for Canada to become a Republic.
As if that's a cure-all solution. Cf. the USA.
I think what you really want is a government truly bound by a constitution with which it may not fsck, and barring a very messy and violent revolution, that's a pipe dream.
Even a shotgun wielding hermit in a cave is depending upon others to respect his claim or provide him with bullets. Yet the more common reality is this: in order to share in the fruits of society, to obtain things like food and electricity, we need money. Money requires a form of employment.
s/Employment/trade/
Employment requires us to fit within certain social norms.
And that's what's wrong with Canada. We preach tolerance of those unlike ourselves from the mountaintops, but only tolerance of the officially sanctioned unlikeness. It's a shallow form of tolerance. Other races, countries of origin, gender or perceived gender, religions, yada, yada; all officially state sanctioned subjects to be venerated. I can wind up in jail for offending any one of those, but those are the only "social norms" that appear to matter.
What about other-handedness? No. Atheism? Only barely. Not much of a believer in democracy (mobocracy)? No, not appreciated at all. I've been almost assaulted for not changing a public computer back to right-handed once I was finished with it (how dare I ?!?). Ditto for preferring FLOSS over Win*. When Toronto was in the World Series and I wasn't cheering for them, friends treated me like a pariah.
Canada's tolerance is a shallow form of it, and nothing to be lauded. I could list a thousand other ways that my differences from what you consider the norm (and what you will tolerate) can make my life hell.
The Japanese had a saying: "The nail that sticks up will be hammered down." We, no-one, should emulate that kind of thinking. You should be learning to tolerate my differences, not expecting me to conform to what you consider acceptable behaviour. You prize diversity? How much, and of what kind?
Anonymity's just more of the same. What right does anyone have in not tolerating it, much less lauding it?
... but something that can be understood in such differing ways sounds suspicious to me, like there's something we don't understand yet and had to "patch things up"...
To paraphrase Richard Feynman, "Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but this is the way this stuff works." Besides, this happens all the time in other fields. Take software: structured vs. object oriented, waterfall method vs. $DOGS_BREAKFAST_OF_TLAS.
My quantum-mechanical pet peeve.
You should save that for the string theorists.:-) That stuff makes quantum mechanics look drop dead believable.
The Amish separate themselves from modern society, rather than demand that said society bend over backwards to cater to their peculiarities, like libertarians do.
What a load of crap. The Amish are treated like pets by the rest of society.
They fail to live up to their potential, depriving said society of any meaningful contribution...
Define meaningful. To me, building a barn together with all your neighbours that'll last a century is a lot more meaningful than any glittering widget that comes out of Apple Inc. (et al).
... while still benefiting from its protection and occasional bits of modern science and technology, but ultimately spending their lifes fruitlessly due to vanity is their business, no matter how ironic it might be. Libertarians, on the other hand, actively promote their "laissez-faire" idiocy, resulting in ever-worsening economical and social problems.
If you want to be treated like the Amish, do like the Amish: move to a Galt's Gulch somewhere and stop bothering the rest of us.
What a poser you are. None of that makes a lick of sense. For one thing, Ayn Rand (of Galt's Gulch fame) despised libertarians, and how the hell do you get proselytizing from "leave us alone"?!? Think of it instead as, "count me out. I don't like your strychnine laced koolaid, and don't want to drink any, thanks."
How is that in any way a threat to you if you're not intent on pushing poisoned koolaid on others? Ah, I know; you've a "social agenda" that you're pushing and expect everyone to buy into it "for the good of all" whether they want it or not. Who's the tyrannical one now?
Show me someone who hates [Ll]ibertarians, and I'll prove to you they've no inkling of what [Ll]ibertarians actually believe or want. Read some books, FFS! Don't take all your opinions from shallow as a pane of glass six o'clock news commentators.
I like any theory that could get rid of particle-wave duality, be it this one, or any other.
Honestly, why? I've always considered that duality to be a feature. Being able to study phenomena from two (or more?) otherwise unrelated vectors is useful, isn't it? I know physicists always prefer the holy grail of symplicity, but wtf is wrong with having multiple valid paths to explain what's actually happening?
Or, in/. terms, what's wrong with car analogies as long as they're valid?
I wonder if removing the mention of cars would get me enough room to link to a Slashdot journal article...
Nah, mentioning car analogies is what makes it funny. Remove the "Please ask me your questions" part, as it's redundant, and change it to "car/computer" if you need more space. Tah.:-)
We're not the Tea Party, FFS! We only want all of us to be free of BS interventions in our lives. We'd like to be left alone, ideally. Laissez nous faire! WTF is so difficult about that? Leave us alone! Geez!
Unfortunately, that's so far from the present "those in power"'s agenda, we tend to get vocal about their intrusions upon our lives.
Demopublican, Republicrat, whatever, I can get along with any of you if you'll just leave me alone. [Ll]ibertarians are a lot like the Amish; we chose not to drink your Koolaid. If you like it, carry on, none of my damned business.
No, the Koch Bros. don't speak for me. L. Neill Smith comes closer.
The FDA is raiding Amish for sharing unpasteurized milk products...
According to a link found on FARK (you look it up; I'm tired), they're also checking Amish driver's licenses. You need a driver's license to drive a horse drawn carriage?!? Fsck!!!111 [sic]
The article is right though. Timezones are a dumbing down thing which, with ubiquitous instant net connectivity, no one should need any more. Send an email, and it'll be in their inbox waiting for them to see it, regardless of when they wake up to see it. Smiple [sic].
[Then again, considering all of those I've met recently who despise email,...]
We shouldn't need to bother knowing when others' sleep cycles occur. They get to it when they get to it. Much better than cell-phone always on, always interruptable.
Modern Slackware is still a reasonable choice for older hardware all the way down to Pentium Pros.
Agreed, as was it's little step-brother Zenwalk the last time I looked. SW was the second distro I used (soon after SLS imploded). Debian (et al) pees me off big time from time to time and I'm often tempted to go back to SW. So far, Debian's great admin tools have kept me from jumping, though I loved SW's netpkg last time I saw it.
I ended up installing Ubuntu and Edubuntu, then stripped down the core as much as I could while still keeping things clean. The machines still take several minutes to boot fully.
In my experience, it's not the speed of the processor that makes an old machine feel old. It's more a combination of not enough RAM and/or slow disk. Beef those up and do a minimal install, then apt-get install everything you want. Regardless of cpu (within reason:-), it'll be more than capable of keeping up.
I just abandoned an old Sun U30 (ca. '99), not because it wasn't fast enough, but because it weighed a ton. It was perfectly capable of running Linux and OpenBSD.
As for forks for old machines, there's already Xubuntu and Lubuntu. Also consider that old machines make fine headless servers long after they're up to the challenge of serving as gaming boxes.
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Except the K&R style is way uglier because it lacks symmetry ...
Symmetry doesn't have to be vertical. There's another 358 degrees that work just as well. Besides, why's the closing brace have to line up with the opening brace? They're only loosely related. It makes more sense for it to line up with the function def'n.
I agree wrt DHW. However, ...
K&R is iconic, but not a good beginner's book at all, and while it does cover some things in great depth it does leave plenty out and is well dated now. Worth reading, but not first.
I disagree. I started with K&R, and would do it again in a heartbeat. I specifically avoided BASIC after doing some research prior to teaching myself to program and went straight to C. That short, densely and well written book was the best and most instructive tutor I've ever had.
Watching C plus Mix Power C on a 16 bit DOS machine, then seeing C on a serious commercial Unix machine was the second most instructive lesson.
"Column coherence" is the least justifiable excuse I've ever heard of in defense of opening brace on a line by itself. I say, if it makes the code look ugly, it's wrong. Go ahead, tell me you know better than K&R (and I'm not talking about the book there, btw).
Maybe you just need a better text editor that can handle it correctly (emacs vs. vi war in 5, 4, 3, ...). Hell, there's always indent. You do it any way you damned well please, and indent will fix it for me before I even look at it.
It's a confusing (in several ways) [way] to implement strcpy().
Er, I wasn't confused by it, but then I still remember the many hours I spent with K&R (1st and 2nd ed.).
What's confusing is reading this bantering back and forth of people who can see "=" and assume the code's obviously wrong, not understanding that test for equality is not the same as assigning value. How real programmers can do that's a mystery to me. One makes sense when parsed and the other doesn't, algorythmically. Terseness in C is a feature, but like everything, you need to be careful with it lest it bite you. Compilers barf on stuff like this, or worse, don't barf and produce programs that crash, or worse, don't crash and instead produce corrupt results.
"What? Did I miss something, or does he know something I don't?" No, he just can't read code. "Ah!" Feh.
And as a parting shot, damn I hate seeing opening curly braces alone on an otherwise blank line! It's just ugly! Good code should be pretty.
I can't believe Dvorak isn't an option ...
I can't believe there's still people who believe Dvorak is the superior option. It was disproved decades ago. Kind of like astrology and dowsing.
... that is second to known ...
There's really no good substitute for proofreading, honest.
To all those who replied to my post, it seems you've (to varying degrees) missed this bit of what I wrote:
... a government truly bound by a constitution with which it may not fsck ...
Trudeau fscked with it when it was "repatriated", the US fscks with theirs in innumerable ways daily via multiple vectors (Congress, USSC, US Trade Reps, ...).
It ought to be a LAW ON GOV'T that specifies WHAT GOV'T MAY AND MAY NOT DO/GET AWAY WITH. It also should be worked over to death to ensure it's correctly crafted and all duties and responsibilities spelled out first, and it should be difficult as hell to change it by gov't or legal edict (assuming change by any party is desired). I don't care if that takes a century or two, as long as it's being worked on and the right thing has a chance to surface eventually. Scrap it and try again is much better than getting something weak that can't stand up to the test of time or special interests.
I'm no fan of gov't nor mobocracy. Gov't, even in its best forms is still a fire waiting and eager to get out of hand. Ditto Democracy (tyranny of the majority). Both may be the best we can do, and may be necessary evils, but eternal vigilance on our part is all that can keep either in check.
Congress critters/Parliamentarians/lawyers/lobbyists should have no rights whatsoever in this realm, and a proper constitution would allow them no room to involve themselves. This's none of their !@#$ business. It's our business, and they should not be welcome sticking their noses into our business.
Real men use VT52s and self-written EVE/TPU macros.
Damn. I'd almost forgotten about EVE, now ... :-P
Why is anyone paying any attention to this piracy list?
That is the question. Wasn't it the US' GAO that admitted it was worthless, considering it was made up solely of numbers provided by the *AAs?
There are much more subtle ways to get his message across.
I think they've come to the conclusion that the US House of Reps & Senate are so bought off now, subtlety's no longer necessary. Think about it: who even cares about this issue other than pirates, patriots, bought off legislators, and the *AAs? The rest of the population, considering their buying habits, clearly don't give a flying fsck about any of this, if they even know about it. I very much doubt that my iPhone loving sister knows about it, nor cares one whit about Disney's copyright related shenanigans.
"Sheeple" is becoming a more valid word every day.
"They also cite cabinet minister Maxime Bernier raising the possibility of showing U.S. officials a draft bill before tabling it in Parliament."
FYI, from TFA, the paragraph immediately following reads:
The cables, from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, even have a policy director for then industry minister Tony Clement suggesting it might help U.S. demands for a tough copyright law if Canada were placed among the worst offenders on an international piracy watch list. Days later, the U.S. placed Canada alongside China and Russia on the list.
What strikes me as astonishing is how monumentally stupid this makes the US' powers that be look, as this action was immediately viewed with scorn and disbelief by pretty much anyone who noticed. Yet, has any of that scorn and disbelief made any dent in US policy intentions? Hell no, full steam ahead, ignore the peanut gallery. Let 'em eat cake.
Holy legislative capture, Batman!
And what about the Constitutional Coup that Harper conducted with the Governor General ?
In my mind, that is sufficient reason right there for Canada to become a Republic.
As if that's a cure-all solution. Cf. the USA.
I think what you really want is a government truly bound by a constitution with which it may not fsck, and barring a very messy and violent revolution, that's a pipe dream.
... they are meant to represent the people ...
It's the 21st Century. Your naivete is showing.
Even a shotgun wielding hermit in a cave is depending upon others to respect his claim or provide him with bullets. Yet the more common reality is this: in order to share in the fruits of society, to obtain things like food and electricity, we need money. Money requires a form of employment.
s/Employment/trade/
Employment requires us to fit within certain social norms.
And that's what's wrong with Canada. We preach tolerance of those unlike ourselves from the mountaintops, but only tolerance of the officially sanctioned unlikeness. It's a shallow form of tolerance. Other races, countries of origin, gender or perceived gender, religions, yada, yada; all officially state sanctioned subjects to be venerated. I can wind up in jail for offending any one of those, but those are the only "social norms" that appear to matter.
What about other-handedness? No. Atheism? Only barely. Not much of a believer in democracy (mobocracy)? No, not appreciated at all. I've been almost assaulted for not changing a public computer back to right-handed once I was finished with it (how dare I ?!?). Ditto for preferring FLOSS over Win*. When Toronto was in the World Series and I wasn't cheering for them, friends treated me like a pariah.
Canada's tolerance is a shallow form of it, and nothing to be lauded. I could list a thousand other ways that my differences from what you consider the norm (and what you will tolerate) can make my life hell.
The Japanese had a saying: "The nail that sticks up will be hammered down." We, no-one, should emulate that kind of thinking. You should be learning to tolerate my differences, not expecting me to conform to what you consider acceptable behaviour. You prize diversity? How much, and of what kind?
Anonymity's just more of the same. What right does anyone have in not tolerating it, much less lauding it?
YES!!! =D
WITH RESPECT TO WHAT?
fsck, I hate you idiots who've never learned to quote!!!111
Disclaimer: I am not a physicist.
Ditto, fwiw.
... but something that can be understood in such differing ways sounds suspicious to me, like there's something we don't understand yet and had to "patch things up" ...
To paraphrase Richard Feynman, "Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but this is the way this stuff works." Besides, this happens all the time in other fields. Take software: structured vs. object oriented, waterfall method vs. $DOGS_BREAKFAST_OF_TLAS.
My quantum-mechanical pet peeve.
You should save that for the string theorists. :-) That stuff makes quantum mechanics look drop dead believable.
The Amish separate themselves from modern society, rather than demand that said society bend over backwards to cater to their peculiarities, like libertarians do.
What a load of crap. The Amish are treated like pets by the rest of society.
They fail to live up to their potential, depriving said society of any meaningful contribution ...
Define meaningful. To me, building a barn together with all your neighbours that'll last a century is a lot more meaningful than any glittering widget that comes out of Apple Inc. (et al).
... while still benefiting from its protection and occasional bits of modern science and technology, but ultimately spending their lifes fruitlessly due to vanity is their business, no matter how ironic it might be. Libertarians, on the other hand, actively promote their "laissez-faire" idiocy, resulting in ever-worsening economical and social problems.
If you want to be treated like the Amish, do like the Amish: move to a Galt's Gulch somewhere and stop bothering the rest of us.
What a poser you are. None of that makes a lick of sense. For one thing, Ayn Rand (of Galt's Gulch fame) despised libertarians, and how the hell do you get proselytizing from "leave us alone"?!? Think of it instead as, "count me out. I don't like your strychnine laced koolaid, and don't want to drink any, thanks."
How is that in any way a threat to you if you're not intent on pushing poisoned koolaid on others? Ah, I know; you've a "social agenda" that you're pushing and expect everyone to buy into it "for the good of all" whether they want it or not. Who's the tyrannical one now?
Show me someone who hates [Ll]ibertarians, and I'll prove to you they've no inkling of what [Ll]ibertarians actually believe or want. Read some books, FFS! Don't take all your opinions from shallow as a pane of glass six o'clock news commentators.
I like any theory that could get rid of particle-wave duality, be it this one, or any other.
Honestly, why? I've always considered that duality to be a feature. Being able to study phenomena from two (or more?) otherwise unrelated vectors is useful, isn't it? I know physicists always prefer the holy grail of symplicity, but wtf is wrong with having multiple valid paths to explain what's actually happening?
Or, in /. terms, what's wrong with car analogies as long as they're valid?
... someone finally did a hard look at it and found recent Xubuntu actually uses *more* RAM than a regular Ubuntu install!
Wow. Epic fail on Xubuntu's part. A distro advertised as a lightweight alternative isn't, yet still manages to make it out the door.
Good to hear someone's still checking premises.
I wonder if removing the mention of cars would get me enough room to link to a Slashdot journal article ...
Nah, mentioning car analogies is what makes it funny. Remove the "Please ask me your questions" part, as it's redundant, and change it to "car/computer" if you need more space. Tah. :-)
Look, can we just start ignoring libertarians?
Maybe, as soon as you stop vilifying us.
We're not the Tea Party, FFS! We only want all of us to be free of BS interventions in our lives. We'd like to be left alone, ideally. Laissez nous faire! WTF is so difficult about that? Leave us alone! Geez!
Unfortunately, that's so far from the present "those in power"'s agenda, we tend to get vocal about their intrusions upon our lives.
Demopublican, Republicrat, whatever, I can get along with any of you if you'll just leave me alone. [Ll]ibertarians are a lot like the Amish; we chose not to drink your Koolaid. If you like it, carry on, none of my damned business.
No, the Koch Bros. don't speak for me. L. Neill Smith comes closer.
Laissez nous faire!
The FDA is raiding Amish for sharing unpasteurized milk products...
According to a link found on FARK (you look it up; I'm tired), they're also checking Amish driver's licenses. You need a driver's license to drive a horse drawn carriage?!? Fsck!!!111 [sic]
I'd offer you coffee, but it's a bit late in the day in ${TIMEZONE} to be using the "just woke up" excuse, even for Slashdotters.
Love your .sig :-)
Starbucks will do for me. Free WiFi! Woohoo!
If Taco was still around...
I sense a meme forming ...
The article is right though. Timezones are a dumbing down thing which, with ubiquitous instant net connectivity, no one should need any more. Send an email, and it'll be in their inbox waiting for them to see it, regardless of when they wake up to see it. Smiple [sic].
[Then again, considering all of those I've met recently who despise email, ...]
We shouldn't need to bother knowing when others' sleep cycles occur. They get to it when they get to it. Much better than cell-phone always on, always interruptable.
Modern Slackware is still a reasonable choice for older hardware all the way down to Pentium Pros.
Agreed, as was it's little step-brother Zenwalk the last time I looked. SW was the second distro I used (soon after SLS imploded). Debian (et al) pees me off big time from time to time and I'm often tempted to go back to SW. So far, Debian's great admin tools have kept me from jumping, though I loved SW's netpkg last time I saw it.
I ended up installing Ubuntu and Edubuntu, then stripped down the core as much as I could while still keeping things clean. The machines still take several minutes to boot fully.
In my experience, it's not the speed of the processor that makes an old machine feel old. It's more a combination of not enough RAM and/or slow disk. Beef those up and do a minimal install, then apt-get install everything you want. Regardless of cpu (within reason :-), it'll be more than capable of keeping up.
I just abandoned an old Sun U30 (ca. '99), not because it wasn't fast enough, but because it weighed a ton. It was perfectly capable of running Linux and OpenBSD.
As for forks for old machines, there's already Xubuntu and Lubuntu. Also consider that old machines make fine headless servers long after they're up to the challenge of serving as gaming boxes.