L
Lew
Tom said:
SNOBOL.
SNOBOL.
L
Lew
RedGrittyBrick said:
I've read that one. It's seminal, albeit not fully supported yet by evidence.
It raises important questions that should be further addressed.
J
John B. Matthews
T
Tom Anderson
Oh, now you're just being silly.
tom
L
Lew
Tom Anderson said:
Not at all. SNOBOL was a fairly significant language in its own way.
Perhaps that's why it was included in the Computer Science classes I
took at university. Many things we think of as modern in computer
languages, such as garbage collection, were in SNOBOL early on.
SNOBOL4 patterns, however, subsume BNF grammars,
which are equivalent to Context-free grammars and
more powerful than regular expressions. ....
SNOBOL4's programmer-defined data type facility was advanced at the time -
it is similar to the earlier Cobol's and the later Pascal's records. ....
All SNOBOL command lines are of the form
Label1 Subject Pattern = ObjectGoto Label2)
Can you spell "Perl"?
A
Arne Vajhøj
Seamus said:
That was not an insult - that was good advice.
Arne
A
Arne Vajhøj
RedGrittyBrick said:
You can definitely say that C# learned a lot from Java,
But C# has more stuff from C/C++ than Java has.
Arne
A
Arne Vajhøj
Lew said:
Funny, but not much besides that.
There are two problems with it:
1) It is based on an assumption that if people can not learn
the difficult stuff right away, then they will never learn it.
I don't think that is true. And I don't think it is consistent
with the results of research in teaching.
2) It also assume that we would be better of having 10 good
programmers instead of 10 good and 80 mediocre. That is not
the case. There are simply not enough good programmers to
the programming needed.
Arne
S
Seamus MacRae
Arne said:
Whether or not it was good advice I couldn't tell you without reading
that document in its entirety, and it appears to be large.
However the matter at issue was whether it was an insult. As stated, it
implies that the original poster's question was not a smart one, thereby
implying that it was a dumb one. "You ask dumb questions" certainly is
an insult. Furthermore, it doesn't even merely imply that; it implies
"Stop asking dumb questions", which is demanding as well as insulting.
It's quite likely that anuj184 will oblige by never posting here again
after getting a reception like that.
Additional disrespect from Jak takes the form of his not even dignifying
the original poster with an actual answer of some sort to his question,
implying "I won't answer your dumb questions -- smarten them up first".
If I were anuj184 I would be very offended to receive an answer like
Jak's. Therefore I was offended on his behalf.
A
Arne Vajhøj
Seamus said:
You should read it before you make up your mind about it.
Bad logic.
You assume that there are only smart and dumb question. That is not
the case.
Arne
L
Lew
That type of unwillingness to study is deleterious to advancement in the field
of software development. However there is an awful lot of valuable material
out there. One thing that can help is
Also, the definitions of "smart" are many - the context of the referenced
article isn't "everyone will think you're clever" but "your question will
elicit information that helps you". In other words, it's not about appearing
smart but being smart. In other words, it's not about ego, it's about
effectiveness.
By empowering the OP to obtain helpful information, to actually be smart, and
to be effective, Arne was helping.
There are too many people in this forum acting as self-appointed guardians of
hurt feelings, falsely flinging accusations of bad intent and inferring all
kinds of implications of imprecation instead of looking at the actual content
of well-meaning and practical advice. These people need to get off their
respective high horses and get on with the much more empowering business of
helping the rest of us see the value in these important nuggets of wisdom,
such as resides in Arne's helpful advice quoted at the top of this post.
Stop being such namby-pambies and get on with good programming. There's no
crying in baseball.
of software development. However there is an awful lot of valuable material
out there. One thing that can help is
Also, the definitions of "smart" are many - the context of the referenced
article isn't "everyone will think you're clever" but "your question will
elicit information that helps you". In other words, it's not about appearing
smart but being smart. In other words, it's not about ego, it's about
effectiveness.
By empowering the OP to obtain helpful information, to actually be smart, and
to be effective, Arne was helping.
There are too many people in this forum acting as self-appointed guardians of
hurt feelings, falsely flinging accusations of bad intent and inferring all
kinds of implications of imprecation instead of looking at the actual content
of well-meaning and practical advice. These people need to get off their
respective high horses and get on with the much more empowering business of
helping the rest of us see the value in these important nuggets of wisdom,
such as resides in Arne's helpful advice quoted at the top of this post.
Stop being such namby-pambies and get on with good programming. There's no
crying in baseball.
S
Seamus MacRae
Arne said:
I had no need to make up my mind about it, since it was irrelevant.
As long as you continue to hold the attitude that logic is bad, Arne,
you will continue to be incapable of reason.
I repeat: an ordinary human being who, upon asking a question, is sent
away with only some instructions to go read a "smart questions" FAQ,
will interpret that as an admonishment for having posted a dumb
question. Everything else that I said follows from that observation.
S
Seamus MacRae
Lew said:
Unwillingness to study something that is not presently relevant, while
busy with other things, is nothing of the sort. Rather, it is normal.
Perhaps you go off on a tangent every time a URL is posted, but few
others do so.
Of course, this suggests a simple experiment, which will do one of two
equally-desirable things: prove you a hypocrite, or get rid of you for
quite awhile.
That said, study away:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trigonometry
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Fermat's_last_theorem
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Real_analysis/Cover
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Residue_Theory
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special_relativity
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C++_Programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-Programmer's_Tutorial_for_Python_3.0
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Tcl_Programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/XForms
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming_Mac_OS_X_with_Cocoa_for_beginners
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/pub/beta-0.1/principles-macroeconomics
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/pub/1.0/exploring-business
http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Book:Human_Evolutionary_Biology
http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Book:On_the_Origin_of_Species
http://textbookrevolution.org/index..._a_Beginning_Course_in_Ground-Water_Hydrology
http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Book:Abstract_Algebra:_Theory_and_Applications
If you'd like I'm sure I can locate more like these, and from more sites
too.
Perhaps you should start with this one before proceeding through the
others listed above. That way, you might even be done, and therefore
qualified to post new followups to this thread, by Christmas.
I assume nothing of the sort, of course. My point, which has flown
completely over both your heads, is that sending someone away with just
a link to a "smart questions FAQ" is going to be interpreted by many as
an admonishment for asking a dumb question. Whether that's the face
value or not, that's what will be read from between the lines.
In other words, it's not an implication that the original poster LOOKS
dumb, it's an insinuation that the original poster IS dumb.
That does not help your case.
If I post a link in reply to that to a book of remedial lessons in
manners and etiquette, would you consider me to be helping or being
rude, or perhaps even both? Would you not consider me to have
implicitly, and publicly, accused you of being rude?
Especially if what I wrote also completely ignored the content of what
you'd said, or did not answer the question you'd asked?
Really? As far as I am aware there are two.
Intent was not my concern, only effect.
People read between the lines. Maybe they shouldn't; opinions will
disagree, probably violently, about that. Regardless, though, people *do*.
Perhaps you are a self-debasing penitent who devotes himself utterly to
his work and his effectiveness and to "nuggets of wisdom", but most of
us here in the real world have egos, and prefer diplomacy to the kind of
bluntness displayed by Jak.
It is not your place to dictate that everyone here should have the same
egoless, flagellant devotion to the subject material that you pretend to
possess.
And I do say pretend; your holier-than-thou remarks, occasional descents
into vitriolic flamage and even outright spittle-flying rage, and
preachy tendencies strike me as a shell built around a hollow of insecurity.
That is what comes of denying the normal and healthy needs of your ego
for too long and aspiring to be an emotionless machine.
Perhaps we are doing both?
Baseball appears to be irrelevant.
A
Arved Sandstrom
Seamus MacRae wrote:
[ SNIP ]
Given the fact that the OP's English is as bad as it is, it's pretty
hard to guess how they would interpret "smart" in "smart-questions".
I'll concede that a lot of (maybe most) English speakers would in fact
take that advice as a junior slap on the wrist for having asked a pretty
useless question...which in fact is what it was. Even a non-English
speaker should realize that if they asked that same question in their
native language that it's quite badly posed.
Hopefully most people can make the distinction between their own
intelligence, and the intelligence of questions that they have formulated.
I would have directed the OP to the same link, albeit with some
boilerplate to soften the perceived snub.
AHS
[ SNIP ]
Given the fact that the OP's English is as bad as it is, it's pretty
hard to guess how they would interpret "smart" in "smart-questions".
I'll concede that a lot of (maybe most) English speakers would in fact
take that advice as a junior slap on the wrist for having asked a pretty
useless question...which in fact is what it was. Even a non-English
speaker should realize that if they asked that same question in their
native language that it's quite badly posed.
Hopefully most people can make the distinction between their own
intelligence, and the intelligence of questions that they have formulated.
I would have directed the OP to the same link, albeit with some
boilerplate to soften the perceived snub.
AHS
J
John B. Matthews
Seamus MacRae said:
It is good advice. The referenced article directly addresses the matter
of feeling insulted: "Nor is it useful to insist you've been personally
insulted when someone comments that one of your claims was wrong..." I
often find such clarifications immensely valuable. I am reluctant to
acknowledge how long it took me to understand this.
[...]
Ah, trolling by proxy.
S
Seamus MacRae
Arved said:
That would be wise. The title of that link, and of the document it links
to, is a little unfortunate due to its bluntness. Renaming it "how to
ask effective questions" and "effective-questions.html" might have been
a good idea, but it's too late to change at least the URL now; the
document's age makes it likely that doing so would break a lot of links.
COPYING it there and renaming that copy, on the other hand ...
S
Seamus MacRae
John said:
If, perhaps, phrased somewhat undiplomatically.
What is or is not "useful" is not the issue here. How normal human
beings will react is, and it is frequently the case that in the presence
of certain types of provocation, people do indeed often react in ways
that are not especially useful. Of course, it follows that in the
absence of an adversarial motive, and especially in the presence of a
cooperative one, such types of provocation are therefore rarely useful.
If advice is like a pill, offered with the honest intention of
benefiting the health of the recipient, it is more likely to achieve the
intended effects if it is coated or flavored so as not to have a bitter
taste.
Ergo, as a matter of pragmatism, and it is utility that seems to be your
chief concern given the portion of the document you elected to quote,
phrasing any advice or admonition too bluntly is likely to be sub-optimal.
Posting a personal attack is also likely to be sub-optimal.