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From: ugfailau@sunybcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: What's Wrong here?
Message-ID: <6996@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 02:02:18 EST
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.6996
Posted: Fri Dec  4 02:02:18 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Dec-87 21:59:32 EST
References: <278@westmark.UUCP> <6755@brl-smoke.ARPA> <6855@sunybcs.UUCP> <6949@sunybcs.UUCP> <1958@frog.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@sunybcs.UUCP
Reply-To: ugfailau@joey.UUCP (Fai Lau)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 80
Xref: utgpu comp.lang.c:5407 comp.sys.ibm.pc:9213


	It is getting ridiculous. I will make my absolute last
post regarding this incident. I apologize for my last outburst.
As I said it was very inappropriate to post flame the way
I did in this news group, especially in such bad faith.
This is, after all, not the Insult Board of my school, which
I once took much pleasures in and from which I have retired. I
was very angry with Doug's name-calling post so I though that
that would be a pretty good excuse to try my skill, or whatever's
left of it. Again, I think my post was excessive. So in order
to be fair, I'll swallow John Woods' more juvenile portion of
his post without any rebuttal. And I don't want to see another
thing regarding this incident again.
	I wish I could move this article to soc.insult and
truly indulge myself at John Woods' expense, but then such
news group doesn't exist.  So I'll have to settle, and so
will everybody.

In article <1958@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP (John Woods, Software) writes:
>
>I find this truly amazing.  One of the most professional fonts of wisdom
>on comp.lang.c (namely Doug) is being flamed by some idiot who clearly doesn't
>understand anything more complicated than how to boot his PC.
>
>In short, it IS NOT defined, your opinion is worthless, and evidently
>you weren't interested in understanding what you were talking about,
>either.  (What "system point of view"?) Try shutting up until you do.
>
	System point of view means to consider the behavior of
a software (or particular, a language) as a subset of the system.
There are many definitions regarding how many softwares ought
to behavior in an ideal environment, on paper, in theory,
according to formulas. But in the real world we have to
implement such ideals in an un-ideal machines, and used
by 'imperfect' humans. As a result there are things
ending up being different from the deffinitions and the theories.
For example, Lisp. The concept of Lisp looks like it's
the best thing ever happened to AI research (at least
when it first came out), and we certainly admired its
potentials at one time. Lisp is widely used today.
And you know what happens? It's just another programming
language. We recurse like a bat out of hell, and then
find out what a pain on the butt it could be keeping
track of those lists within lists. And we start using
setqs, iteration whenever it's more convenient.
Just how much spirit is left?  Are the original
wine and roses evident in our codes?
	Another example. When Modula-1 first came out, it was
supposed to be a very structured language which would
replace Pascal, and which would provide good low level access.
It incorporated data abstraction, the idea of modules,
better scope and extend controls, etc.. and the result should
be something less error prone and more complete. But so what?
Have Do you seen Turbo Modula-2? I've tried Modula-2 on mainframe.
What looks good on paper doesn't necessary work
well in the real world.
	So what am I getting at? Strict language definition
looks good in a text book. And it would be nice to be
followed precisely in the developing of theories. But
in the real world you cannot separate the language
from the machine it is being implemented in. Granted
portability may suffer if a programmer went beyond
what's in the book in his command of a language,
but if the circumstances allow it should not be
forbidden, or even discouraged. And of course it
is frequently done. Personally I don't like doing
things by the books. And I believe certain definitions
of a language is most useful when it is defined under
the circumstances where *you* use it.

>Wise words.  Remember them yourself, or get ready to be spanked by everyone
>on USENET who knows what they're talking about.  That's fewer than it should
>be, but more than you would want.
>
	See I swallowed it!

Fai  Lau
SUNY at Buffalo (The Arctic Wonderland)
UUCP: ..{mit-ems|watmath|rocksanne}!sunybcs!ugfailau
BI: ugfailau@sunybcs