Comment on thread "Heathfield's errors"

[spinoza1111]

I didn't create or contribute to that thread in bytes.com and its
author is not a sock puppet of mine. It doesn't surprise me that his
book is flawed.

Richard Heathfield has long acted like a thug in comp.lang.c, trolling
discussions in which he doesn't belong, and starting whispering
campaigns about competent computer authors including Herbert Schildt
and myself. He is unqualified to speak on most of the issues he
addresses and is a bully.

I have better things to do including software development, art and
writing, and people interested in my production may apply for Facebook
friendship at "Edward Nilges".

On facebook, people have to take responsibility for what they say. For
this reason, it is far less used by inadequate people to create the
impression that they are adequate by destroying honest and competent
people, for the inadequate, such as Heathfield, rely on anonymous
individuals with personality problems to do their dirty work, such as
quertyuiop.

Edwatd G. Nilges

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111said:


<furrfu>
Nobody created that thread in bytes.com - it is a Usenet thread,
that bytes.com is reporting. Get a clue.

Spoken like the typical arrogant techie who lives in his own world and
has a private language, my dear Richard.

I believe you. I know this sounds really strange, but I actually
believe you (on this occasion). Although I think you find it
difficult to separate reality from fantasy, I accept that you
didn't start that thread.

Spoken with that uncultured lack of grace from the chip shop or pub as
always. Plus ca change.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that any book is flawed. Every book has
flaws. Duh.

The criminal says tu quoque.

No, I haven't. Now, I know this is going to be really difficult for
you to understand, but comp.lang.c is *not* about Richard
Heathfield. It's about C. If you want to talk about me, *please* do
it in alt.fan.heathfield, not in comp.lang.c.

Richard, numerous complaints have been made about you and you have for
several years been the problem person on comp.programming and
comp.lang.c. You interrupt conversations and most seriously, you
instigate campaigns of personal destruction. You have long made these
groups useless whether for technical information or for creating a
sense of community or solidarity amongst software developers. I
suspect that this last is your purpose, and that you're paid to do so
by corporate or government interests.

Aligning yourself with Herbert Schildt's competence, here in
comp.lang.c, is really not a bright idea.

But he is competent.

It has long been known, since Gerald Weinberg's 1972 book The
Psychology of Computer Programming, that programming competence is not
a matter of being either an alles weisen or idiot savant, but of being
able to enter a conversation civilly without either instigating or
conducting campaigns of personal destruction. You have repeatedly
failed this basic test, and sad to say that you even failed, in Jan of
last year, a programming test.

Given that you have regularly been on the losing side in our
technical exchanges, it seems to me that you are not qualified to
decide who is qualified.

Your "technical exchanges" have long been recognized as a sick joke,
since they are conducted by incompetents at the level of kindergarten.
You were embarassed, after instigating a campaign of personal
destruction against me in 2003, when in 2004 some posters quietly
remarked that I'd published a book through Apress, which edits
technical content far more accurately than SAMs. You'd used the
bully's tactic of trying to narrate me as what bullies feel they
themselves to be: isolated sad little losers. You embarassed yourself.

Translation: has regularly been on the winning side in our technical
exchanges. Look, Mr Nilges - if everyone brighter than you is a
bully, that makes most of the world bullies.

You're not "brighter". You are narrow, a poor technician, and
completely without either the curiosity or general culture that
characterises the bright.

"Bright" people don't whine "off-topic" when the content of the
conversation includes topics with which they're unfamiliar. They
generally express curiosity.

Fat, ugly little gnomes have for too long sat on their ass in offices
destroying companies by holding them hostage to their inability to
admit they're wrong. You are wrong on the usability of the C language
and you should be ashamed of yourself.

What has this to do with the price of cheese?


I take responsibility for what I say, right here.

You do do that to your credit. However, in so doing, you marshal
marching myrmidions in service of your nonsense by instigating
anonymous posters against marks, just like Hitler needed thugs to do
his dirty work (yeah Mike Godwin, read Hannah Arendt).

Well, it's certainly true that it's far less used.


No. Anonymous individuals with personality problems don't defend me.
Quite the reverse, in fact. I consider their articles to be about
as worthy of respect as those of your esteamed self.

This is a complete lie. You used "programmer dude" in 2003 and you
continue to instigate. When a person says something interesting that
challenges your idiotic view that "we could write all dat software in
C" you attack that person, under your own name to be sure, and then
trust that the usual mob of psychos, anonymous and non-anonymous, will
pile in.

After thirty years and after ensuring that my kids could grow up in a
university community, I left the software business so as no longer to
have to put up with clowns like you.

 

[Martin Ambuhl]

I didn't create or contribute to that thread in bytes.com and its
author is not a sock puppet of mine. It doesn't surprise me that his
book is flawed.

I would be shocked to find that any book is without flaws. In fact, I
suspect that if anyone claimed to have found such a book, he is an
incompetent reader or religious fanatic.

Richard Heathfield has long acted like a thug in comp.lang.c,

That is a simple lie, and pointless as well/

trolling
discussions in which he doesn't belong,

Only a thug would claim that any poster "doesn't belong" in a
discussion. The evidence of Heathfield's trolling is of course nowhere
to be seen.

and starting whispering
campaigns about competent computer authors including Herbert Schildt
and myself.

The incompetence of Schildt is not the subject of a whispering campaign.
Any competent C programmer or author should be glad to shout about it
from the rooftops. That you hallucinate that Schildt is competent
rather puts an end to any claim you might make to be taken seriously.

[..]

On facebook, people have to take responsibility for what they say. For
this reason, it is far less used by inadequate people to create the
impression that they are adequate by destroying honest and competent
people, for the inadequate, such as Heathfield, rely on anonymous
individuals with personality problems to do their dirty work, such as
quertyuiop.

This is just an amazing combination of stupidity, paranoia, and
falsehood. There are many of us who for years have posted openly under
our real names, and we do so knowing that our words are forever out
there and we may at any time be held responsible. I am one of those;
Heathfield is another. Your absurd assertion without proof that any of
us rely on anonymous posters to "do out dirty work" is nothing more than
fantasy. And I suggest that diagnosing "personality problems" is well
beyond your competence.

 

[jameskuyper]

spinoza1111 said:

What is the context for this discussion? I couldn't find anything
about "Heathfield's errors" at bytes.com, but I'm not familiar with
bytes.com and had no idea where to look.

<furrfu>
Nobody created that thread in bytes.com - it is a Usenet thread,
that bytes.com is reporting. Get a clue.

I also couldn't find any usenet thread by that title, on any
newsgroup, using Google.

 

[jameskuyper]

Search for "Dick Heathfield's book errors" late Oct/early Nov 2008, also
"posible minour buggs in dick heathfields book". They're "Han from China"
threads.

It took me a while to find them; Google's subject search seems to be
even more messed up than usual (could someone please tell me where I
can find a better usenet archive than Google?!). It's just typical HfC
nonsense, and it provoked surprisingly little response, given the
rabidity of Heathfield's usual detractors.

So, Nilges is responding to a long-dead thread, and doesn't even
bother to post his message as response to a message on that thread.
Silly me - I'd made the assumption that there was some minimal level
of sanity involved, and that his message must therefore be referring
to some relatively recent discussion, which would therefore have to be
one occurring in some other forum.

 

[jameskuyper]

You're not familiar with Nilges?

That's why I said "Silly me" - I should have known better. He's been
in my kill file for so long that I'd forgotten he was in my kill file,
and why. I do have an actual kill file, though I can only use it when
accessing usenet from my home computer.

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

So, Nilges is responding to a long-dead thread, and doesn't even
bother to post his message as response to a message on that
thread. Silly me - I'd made the assumption that there was some
minimal level of sanity involved, and that his message must
therefore be referring to some relatively recent discussion,
which would therefore have to be one occurring in some other
forum.

Nilges/Spinoza is a pure troll, in that he spouts continuous
nonsense in great numbers of words. He only deserves PLONKing at
the earliest opportunity.

Please do not clutter c.l.c with replies to and quotes from him.

 

[JC]

I would characterize the personal criticisms
as instances of projection. And I agree that he's crazy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

In addition to being a bit strange (and choosing an unfortunately
annoying pastime), I have some suspicions that he's also the same
troll that seems to have popped up recently here calling himself Dan
from China or whatever:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/browse_frm/thread/cdb7c952c1e92646

Reads:

=== BEGIN QUOTE ===

On Jan 2, 1:07 pm, JC wrote:
Don't sweat it, the question was likely a troll given that "pater"
seems to coincidentally show up every time "Han from China" goes on
streaks of having conversations with himself on Usenet groups, e.g.:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/browse_frm/thread/2e8af7a80a277e00

The "spinoza" name seems to show up around the same times also,
sharing a similar disdain for some guy named Richard, a similar
trolling style, and appearing to be "from China" as well, at least
according to the Hong Kong IP addresses left in his signatures when he
was trolling Wikipedia articles on Herb Schildt and Ayn Rand (after
his real user name was apparently banned from Wikipedia).

Who knows? The internet sure is a strange place sometimes, although
sometimes it seems like people would be better served by buying a Wii
and playing some video games or something instead of spending downtime
trolling Usenet groups...

=== END QUOTE ===

Anyways, what's with the trolls on comp.lang.c? They seem
particularly ... weird. I don't really spend a lot of time in this
newsgroup. There's certainly some stinkers here. I guess that's why we
have the moderated version.

Jason

 

[JC]

In addition to being a bit strange (and choosing an unfortunately
annoying pastime), I have some suspicions that he's also the same
troll that seems to have popped up recently here calling himself Dan
from China or whatever:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/browse_frm/thread/cdb7c952...

Reads:

=== BEGIN QUOTE ===

On Jan 2, 1:07 pm, JC wrote:
Don't sweat it, the question was likely a troll given that "pater"
seems to coincidentally show up every time "Han from China" goes on
streaks of having conversations with himself on Usenet groups, e.g.:

 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/browse_frm/thread/2e8af7a8....

The "spinoza" name seems to show up around the same times also,
sharing a similar disdain for some guy named Richard, a similar
trolling style, and appearing to be "from China" as well, at least
according to the Hong Kong IP addresses left in his signatures when he
was trolling Wikipedia articles on Herb Schildt and Ayn Rand (after
his real user name was apparently banned from Wikipedia).

And, of course, they also share a similar apparent inability to reply
to threads correctly without breaking the reply chain and starting new
topics.

Jason

 

[spinoza1111]

My book also has flaws. It is very hard to write a non-trivial amount of
example code without introducing some bugs.

This is correct. However, Richard has never given evidence that he
actually thinks about his mistakes, allowing them to change his world-
view. His response to his relative failure on the Spark Notes test was
to blame the test.

This sort of programming personality, which like the Bourbons "learns
nothing and forgets nothing", and admits error only in a way that says
"shit happens", is why software for so long failed to work, until
development moved to Asia.

 

[Keith Thompson]

This is correct. However, Richard has never given evidence that he
actually thinks about his mistakes, allowing them to change his world-
view. His response to his relative failure on the Spark Notes test was
to blame the test.

[...]

Richard, let me encourage you not to take the bait.

 

[Qwertyioup]

I didn't create or contribute to that thread in bytes.com and its
author is not a sock puppet of mine. It doesn't surprise me that his
book is flawed.

You can post tens of thousands of messages in Usenet, yet remain so
ignorant of how it works.

Richard Heathfield has long acted like a thug in comp.lang.c, trolling
discussions in which he doesn't belong, and starting whispering
campaigns about competent computer authors including Herbert Schildt
and myself. He is unqualified to speak on most of the issues he
addresses and is a bully.

Projection.

I have better things to do including software development, art and
writing, and people interested in my production may apply for Facebook
friendship at "Edward Nilges".

Great! See you there.

On facebook, people have to take responsibility for what they say. For
this reason, it is far less used by inadequate people to create the
impression that they are adequate by destroying honest and competent
people, for the inadequate, such as Heathfield, rely on anonymous
individuals with personality problems to do their dirty work, such as
quertyuiop.

I don't do dirty work for Mr Heathfield or anyone else.
I try to remain anonymous because I live in physical proximity to you.
You can harass Mr Heathfield online, but he doesn't have to fear
having you throwing a fit at him on the ferry.