It's not my book and I don't earn anything with it, but hey, I'll change my signature just for you.
Even if it's my writing that makes my comments obtuse as you put, it's not my fault that I'm not a native English speaker. So, I guess you misdirected your trolling insult. You might need to learn about the concept of a mirror.
Reading carefully the piece they want to comment, is not a question of changing behavior, is a question of respect. How would you like if it was you? How would you like if you were condemned to jail without an investigation?
No, I'm not saying people have to change anything. You're just assuming things I never said and you're just one more person accusing me of doing something I didn't do. None of what I said implies any of what you just accused me of.
Don't expect me to agree with comments that were made based on lack of comprehension, be it my fault or not.
Good writing is about being humble, but the same applies to writing good comments to anyone else's comments.
Giving the other face doesn't really work.
Let's assume people don't really pay attention to my comments. And they comment something that shows just as much. Are you expecting me to just suck it up? They don't have time to read, but they have time to comment (sometimes very negatively in a non-constructive way)... If someone wants to comment on someone else, they should at least pay attention to what that someone else really wrote first. And, once again, this, of course, assuming, it's not my bad writing.
I never said my post and my content is so important everyone else should just drop everything and change their entire behavior for me. No, that's you saying. I only said that if someone wants to criticize, at least they should know what they really are criticizing, instead of just getting half of an idea and immediately ranting about it.
That is precisely my point... however, not everyone might interpret Knuth's sentence the same way. And no one has a hold on the whole knowledge available in the universe. Like I explained in some other comment, there will come a time when someone will be tempted to use, instead of the construct that person already knows it works, another one that, under a false assumption believes it works just as well, that may even look equivalent at first look, and all this for the sake of readability. Maybe something that most of the time would produce the exact same results, but that would depend on the state of some far-fetched condition. And somewhere, somehow, in some client, that condition would not be verified and all hell would break loose. Or it might trigger some cascading failure due to some dependency. There are probably countless examples of something like this happening.
No, the code isn't precise, if you incorrectly input the wrong code into the computer, under false assumptions of perfect match of results between the code that you do know does the trick and the code you wrongly believe does the trick but that you are using instead because it seems more readable. You could probably have a better understanding of what I meant if you read the other comments in this discussion...
I can give you examples of my code, if you wish. From the opinions of everyone that works it me, it is readable and maintainable, without compromising performance, functionality or accuracy.
I didn't say people were idiots. only that they're so used to read things fast and without really paying attention. We here have an expression for that, which roughly translates to "reading in diagonal". And if you say it's ironic, that means you did understand my message, at which point it implies you're creating a paradox, because if I didn't convey my message right, you would not have understood it.
at any level, actually, this can happen. I'm talking, just for example, when for the sake of readability, a specific construct is replaced by other believed to be equivalent or, that usually is, but that in some specific situations that might (or not) happen in the final application of the project being develop, might lead to unexpected or different results. There are many different situations that can result in something like this. And we can't all expect every programmer to be the perfect genius and know every single possibility by heart to always know when, in the case I mentioned, he will have to do some additional work to make sure that the changes he made do not affect the outcome. People don't all know the same. Somewhere, sometime, there will be people that might be absolute genius, but, for some reason, didn't learn one specific key of information that was important to that particular case, to properly handle the replacement of that one specific construct for the other believed to be always equivalent but which, in fact, is only equivalent if some other strange or far-fetched condition is also met and that is mostly assumed to be true.
I'm not analyzing Knuth's intentions, just the dangers of that sentence alone. There is no conflict if one does the job right. However, code readability is not only about comments or styling. And sometimes, a little change to improve readability with another construct, even if that construct, most of the times is perfectly equivalent, can have a huge impact on the outcome of the project. As I said, I don't want to sacrifice readability or maintainability, but I want even less to sacrifice the accuracy of the result.
Perhaps you've forgotten: Computers are here to serve human beings, not the other way 'round.
And yes, this is true. And that's exactly why what I said applies. Because if they're supposed to serve us, than we better know how to tell them what we want. They're not psychics to guess it for us.
If you're the keeper and you want your minions to bring you a coke, will you tell them to bring you a drink and expect them to know it's coke?
For the last time, if anyone really bothered to read carefully what I said, they would know that it is exactly what I was talking about: discipline. You all seem so willing to find a point of disagreement that you fail to really see what I'm talking about... but, well, this is slashdot, anyway...
You should pay better attention to what I wrote. As I've already explained twice before... I am NOT discarding readability. Neither I'm advocating we shouldn't give a bit more work to the compiler. I'm advocating that if you're supposed to write a program that does X, you should write a program that does X and, yes, have care when writing it so that it is maintainable. But you should NOT write a program that does approximately X for the sake of a somehow mythical perfect maintainability. Have your program do X and make your best at making it maintainable. It's easy do make a program that does exactly what you want and still it's maintainable. FOR MOST, it's just a question of not being lazy and do the job right. For some others, a bit more learning, practice and training. And for a lot other, stopping the "heroics" and "macho dev" complex.
Well, if you say that, then you misunderstood me. Yes, I know who he is. I never said to ignore maintainability. Please, read carefully what I wrote. And your client, is neither the compiler nor the "next poor slob who has to work on the source code". The client is the guy that will buy your software and expects it to behave according to what it says it does.
I'm not challenging whether one tells the computer what to do or not. I'm challenging whether or not one tells the computer what he wants it to do. You can tell a computer to do something else than what you want it to do. It's easy... just do it wrong. And I'm just essaying on that sentence alone. I have not read the book, so that sentence is what I'm left with and is that sentence I'm deconstructing.
"I do understand and advocate the need for excellence in coding practices. I even teach it. But as so, I am also the first to tell that we should NOT allow the need to have others understand what we want to sacrifice the absolute necessity of having the computer understanding just as much."
Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.
I'm sorry, but I can't help but disagree with this sentence. The purpose of creating a program really is to instruct the computer what to do. Not to explain other human beings what we want the computer to do. Computers don't do what we want, they do what we tell them to do. Success in programming a computer comes from telling it what we want it to do. One must not compromise the precision of the orders it gives to the computer in order to achieve readability by something/someone else than the computer. One should, however, try to make his code as readable and elegant as he possibly can without sacrificing precision in the message to the computer. If we program without prioritizing the computer, we may end up writing something that may look, to us and anyone else that reads it, like what we want the computer to do, but the computer my not take it that well... I do understand and advocate the need for excellence in coding practices. I even teach it. But as so, I am also the first to tell that we should allow the need to have others understand what we want to sacrifice the absolute necessity of having the computer understanding just as much.
At my company, the coding standards include not only guidelines for styling and comments, but also for performance optimization, code run-time stability and robustness, tips to avoid common programming errors, tips about readability, safety, security and productivity. The manual has a whole chapter dedicated to the compromises between performance, productivity, readability, robustness and safety. There's also a summarized presentation version of the manual that all new employees must attend before they're allowed to begin coding for the company.
Actually, the machine draws very little power and isn't "basically doing nothing". 100Mbps connection is something it's predecessor (a 133Mhz Pentium) couldn't handle. This one is not only serving as a router, but as a VPN gateway as well.
And I am planning on replacing it with a smaller and more efficient one (I've been flirting with Acrosser's Atom-based and VIA-based appliances).
Luckily, even if it was spending as much power as you could think at first, since my Dad works for my country's monopolist power company, we do benefit from special pricing.
The time to set it up? About one day, maybe, I already have a compile farm on the 24U rack next to my bed, so it was mostly the time to configure and the latency between steps as I got distracted with the House episodes I was watching. Since the, I had nothing more to configure on it. Everyting else basically manages itself.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I had mod points for you. Couldn't have put it better myself.
I can. I hope they get nailed. I can't imagine what would I do if I was the one targeted by those webcams.
It's not my book and I don't earn anything with it, but hey, I'll change my signature just for you.
Even if it's my writing that makes my comments obtuse as you put, it's not my fault that I'm not a native English speaker. So, I guess you misdirected your trolling insult. You might need to learn about the concept of a mirror.
Reading carefully the piece they want to comment, is not a question of changing behavior, is a question of respect. How would you like if it was you? How would you like if you were condemned to jail without an investigation?
No, I'm not saying people have to change anything. You're just assuming things I never said and you're just one more person accusing me of doing something I didn't do. None of what I said implies any of what you just accused me of.
Don't expect me to agree with comments that were made based on lack of comprehension, be it my fault or not.
Good writing is about being humble, but the same applies to writing good comments to anyone else's comments.
Giving the other face doesn't really work.
Let's assume people don't really pay attention to my comments. And they comment something that shows just as much.
Are you expecting me to just suck it up? They don't have time to read, but they have time to comment (sometimes very negatively in a non-constructive way)...
If someone wants to comment on someone else, they should at least pay attention to what that someone else really wrote first. And, once again, this, of course, assuming, it's not my bad writing.
I never said my post and my content is so important everyone else should just drop everything and change their entire behavior for me. No, that's you saying. I only said that if someone wants to criticize, at least they should know what they really are criticizing, instead of just getting half of an idea and immediately ranting about it.
That is precisely my point... however, not everyone might interpret Knuth's sentence the same way. And no one has a hold on the whole knowledge available in the universe.
Like I explained in some other comment, there will come a time when someone will be tempted to use, instead of the construct that person already knows it works, another one that, under a false assumption believes it works just as well, that may even look equivalent at first look, and all this for the sake of readability. Maybe something that most of the time would produce the exact same results, but that would depend on the state of some far-fetched condition. And somewhere, somehow, in some client, that condition would not be verified and all hell would break loose. Or it might trigger some cascading failure due to some dependency. There are probably countless examples of something like this happening.
No, the code isn't precise, if you incorrectly input the wrong code into the computer, under false assumptions of perfect match of results between the code that you do know does the trick and the code you wrongly believe does the trick but that you are using instead because it seems more readable. You could probably have a better understanding of what I meant if you read the other comments in this discussion...
I'm not trying to correct Knuth. I was just analyzing that isolated sentence, like I've already explained in some other comment...
I can give you examples of my code, if you wish. From the opinions of everyone that works it me, it is readable and maintainable, without compromising performance, functionality or accuracy.
I didn't say people were idiots. only that they're so used to read things fast and without really paying attention. We here have an expression for that, which roughly translates to "reading in diagonal". And if you say it's ironic, that means you did understand my message, at which point it implies you're creating a paradox, because if I didn't convey my message right, you would not have understood it.
yes, for example.
ok, you people, really need to be pay way more attention to what I write...
at any level, actually, this can happen. I'm talking, just for example, when for the sake of readability, a specific construct is replaced by other believed to be equivalent or, that usually is, but that in some specific situations that might (or not) happen in the final application of the project being develop, might lead to unexpected or different results. There are many different situations that can result in something like this. And we can't all expect every programmer to be the perfect genius and know every single possibility by heart to always know when, in the case I mentioned, he will have to do some additional work to make sure that the changes he made do not affect the outcome. People don't all know the same. Somewhere, sometime, there will be people that might be absolute genius, but, for some reason, didn't learn one specific key of information that was important to that particular case, to properly handle the replacement of that one specific construct for the other believed to be always equivalent but which, in fact, is only equivalent if some other strange or far-fetched condition is also met and that is mostly assumed to be true.
I'm not analyzing Knuth's intentions, just the dangers of that sentence alone. There is no conflict if one does the job right. However, code readability is not only about comments or styling. And sometimes, a little change to improve readability with another construct, even if that construct, most of the times is perfectly equivalent, can have a huge impact on the outcome of the project. As I said, I don't want to sacrifice readability or maintainability, but I want even less to sacrifice the accuracy of the result.
Perhaps you've forgotten: Computers are here to serve human beings, not the other way 'round.
And yes, this is true. And that's exactly why what I said applies. Because if they're supposed to serve us, than we better know how to tell them what we want. They're not psychics to guess it for us.
If you're the keeper and you want your minions to bring you a coke, will you tell them to bring you a drink and expect them to know it's coke?
For the last time, if anyone really bothered to read carefully what I said, they would know that it is exactly what I was talking about: discipline. You all seem so willing to find a point of disagreement that you fail to really see what I'm talking about... but, well, this is slashdot, anyway...
You should pay better attention to what I wrote. As I've already explained twice before... I am NOT discarding readability. Neither I'm advocating we shouldn't give a bit more work to the compiler. I'm advocating that if you're supposed to write a program that does X, you should write a program that does X and, yes, have care when writing it so that it is maintainable. But you should NOT write a program that does approximately X for the sake of a somehow mythical perfect maintainability. Have your program do X and make your best at making it maintainable. It's easy do make a program that does exactly what you want and still it's maintainable. FOR MOST, it's just a question of not being lazy and do the job right. For some others, a bit more learning, practice and training. And for a lot other, stopping the "heroics" and "macho dev" complex.
Well, if you say that, then you misunderstood me. Yes, I know who he is. I never said to ignore maintainability. Please, read carefully what I wrote.
And your client, is neither the compiler nor the "next poor slob who has to work on the source code". The client is the guy that will buy your software and expects it to behave according to what it says it does.
I'm not challenging whether one tells the computer what to do or not. I'm challenging whether or not one tells the computer what he wants it to do. You can tell a computer to do something else than what you want it to do. It's easy... just do it wrong. And I'm just essaying on that sentence alone. I have not read the book, so that sentence is what I'm left with and is that sentence I'm deconstructing.
typo, correction
"I do understand and advocate the need for excellence in coding practices. I even teach it. But as so, I am also the first to tell that we should NOT allow the need to have others understand what we want to sacrifice the absolute necessity of having the computer understanding just as much."
Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.
I'm sorry, but I can't help but disagree with this sentence. The purpose of creating a program really is to instruct the computer what to do. Not to explain other human beings what we want the computer to do.
Computers don't do what we want, they do what we tell them to do. Success in programming a computer comes from telling it what we want it to do.
One must not compromise the precision of the orders it gives to the computer in order to achieve readability by something/someone else than the computer. One should, however, try to make his code as readable and elegant as he possibly can without sacrificing precision in the message to the computer.
If we program without prioritizing the computer, we may end up writing something that may look, to us and anyone else that reads it, like what we want the computer to do, but the computer my not take it that well...
I do understand and advocate the need for excellence in coding practices. I even teach it. But as so, I am also the first to tell that we should allow the need to have others understand what we want to sacrifice the absolute necessity of having the computer understanding just as much.
At my company, the coding standards include not only guidelines for styling and comments, but also for performance optimization, code run-time stability and robustness, tips to avoid common programming errors, tips about readability, safety, security and productivity.
The manual has a whole chapter dedicated to the compromises between performance, productivity, readability, robustness and safety.
There's also a summarized presentation version of the manual that all new employees must attend before they're allowed to begin coding for the company.
Actually, the machine draws very little power and isn't "basically doing nothing". 100Mbps connection is something it's predecessor (a 133Mhz Pentium) couldn't handle. This one is not only serving as a router, but as a VPN gateway as well.
And I am planning on replacing it with a smaller and more efficient one (I've been flirting with Acrosser's Atom-based and VIA-based appliances).
Luckily, even if it was spending as much power as you could think at first, since my Dad works for my country's monopolist power company, we do benefit from special pricing.
The time to set it up? About one day, maybe, I already have a compile farm on the 24U rack next to my bed, so it was mostly the time to configure and the latency between steps as I got distracted with the House episodes I was watching. Since the, I had nothing more to configure on it. Everyting else basically manages itself.
I use a dedicated PC for my 100Mbps connection. An old PIII 800 computer with Gentoo. Works like a charm.
my writing style is called "not being a native english speaker"... and oswald seems a very english/american name to me...