NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/lang/c-part1/4448

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 1.8 KB

Path: Rezonet.net!news
From: [e-mail] (Ray Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Off topic post
Date: 3 Feb 1996 00:35:37 GMT
Organization: Ultimate Technographics Inc.
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In referenced article, Peter Seebach says...
> [much snipped]
>The central problem is, of course, that there is often no way for a
>novice user to determine whether or not the problem they have is
>dependant on OS specific semantics, or on the C language.
> {much more snipped]

If you add to that the fact that many novice programmers are not aware
as to what are OS specific, rather than 'C' language, semantics, we get
to the root of the discussion.

A novice who is not much beyond the "Hello world" stage can hardly be
expected to scan and understand the standard to determine these
things.  Whether we think he should or not, the reality is he *wont*.

So how should we treat him in this newsgroup?

If the concensus is that in this newsgroup we are only to concern
ourselves with questions about pure language topics, then to keep these
unwanted posters aware, I would suggest the only thing to do would be
to rename the group comp.lang.standard-c, or whatever, and create a new
newsgroup comp.lang.c.questions, which would be more open to such
posters who are trying to write programs on real machines.
--
Ray Dunn (opinions are my own) | Phone: [phone]
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