NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/lang/c-part2/15014

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 5.7 KB

Path: solon.com!not-for-mail
From: [e-mail] (Peter Seebach)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Are you really my colleagues?!?
Date: 16 Apr 1996 13:25:20 -0500
Organization: Usenet Fact Police (Undercover)
Message-ID: <4l0omg$[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <4l0baa$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
NNTP-Posting-Host: solutions.solon.com

In article <4l0baa$[e-mail]>,
 <[e-mail]> wrote:
>I was about to say the same thing but held back as I didn't want to
>start a flame war. And I checked out the newsgroups that were
>suggested to the posters and they don't cover stuff for C or any
>programmers.

No?  comp.os.msdos.programmer should be fine for DOS programming.  I can
say with certainty that comp.unix.programmer and comp.sys.amiga.programmer are
great groups to discuss programming those systems in C.

>So where would someone get information, snippets and code
>from? I felt really put out that nobody would discuss graphics or
>music applications as its "not a part of C".

They certainly are not a part of C.  You *CANNOT* write a program in C which
does graphics or music without using a feature I don't have on at least one of
my machines.  It's impossible.  The language doesn't provide the resources to
do this.

It is horribly rude to discuss, in a group supposedly for C programmers,
techniques or libraries which are not accessible to some or many C
programmers.

How would you feel if any time you had a question about something, you were
told to just spawn a new process, allocate 32 megs of memory, and use it as a
mumble foo mumble?  It would be *useless* to you if you use DOS.  And yet,
I don't *ever* use computers where I can't spawn new processes, and I
rarely have to worry about situations where
    x = malloc(4000000);
will fail.

But advice based on those assumptions would be *useless*, so I don't post
it in this group.

Likewise, advice or questions relating to graphics devices, or "extended
memory" are useless to a lot of people.  (Worse, advice about extended memory
encourages people to waste their time learning about things they don't need
to know.  Get a real OS.)

>I am now afraid to ask
>for advice on demo programming here lest I be pushed off into the
>comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos newsgroup where they don't even discuss source
>code or the actual programming of any kind.

Here's my advice on demo programming:
Write algorithm demos.  You can show them to anyone, not just people who
happen to have the same hardware you do.

If you want to do hardware hacks, get an amiga 1200 and an assembler, and move
to Europe.  :)

>comp.sys.ibm.pc.music
>don't discuss programming either. There is no comp.sys.ibm.pc.* for
>graphics programming. Further, in the comp.programming groups one
>would get flamed for asking about programming graphics in DOS or C as
>its not to be "about a specific language".

You say this as if it's a problem.  Will you *please* think for a moment?
There are *MORE THAN TWENTY MILLION* people out there on this here Usenet.
Very few of them have the time to read hundreds of articles a day.  So,
we divide news into topical newsgroups, each (except for misc.misc) covering a
moderately specific group of issues, or even just a single issue.  You will
get more milage from USENET by learning how this works, and working with it,
than you will by whining about how not all C programmers care about a
pathetically broken toy OS.  C is a language which is, *by design* able to
run on many systems, with radically different hardware and OS's.  For this
reason, we discuss the *language* here - in comp.LANG.c - and the *system* in
a system newsgroup, such as comp.SYS.msdos.programmer.

comp.programming is intended to be free of specific language and system
constructs.  It will not become apparent until you've been programming a lot
longer, but there are some serious issues in programming which have nothing to
do with the details of any language or system.

If it weren't for all the two bit newbie morons spewing garbage about how to
save files in their favorite word processor (I am *not* making this stuff
up...), comp.programming would be one of the coolest groups in the
comp.* hierarchy.

>The other newsgroups people get referred to are of even less help.

Have you actually tried, say, comp.os.msdos.programmer,
comp.os.ms-windows.programmer, comp.unix.programmer, or whatever
else is relevant to you?  If not, don't complain.  If you haven't
read all the periodic messages in news.announce.newusers. and taken a week or
two (well, normally at least 1-3 months) to get a feel for a newsgroup, and
see what kinds of requests are considered topical in it, before posting, don't
complain.  If you haven't read and comprehended the FAQ, don't complain.

It is not our responsibility to bring you up to speed on how this system
works; all we have to do is tell you what to do (read the intro documentation)
and provide an environment in which you will, if you make good use of the
available resources, find yourself getting all sorts of incredible
information,  and flourishing as a programmer.  If you can't be bothered to
follow the rules, don't complain if nothing works out for you.  I can tell you
with certainty, from personal experience, that the net works, and that the
people you see refusing to answer stupid questions, off-topic questions, and
FAQs are all *very* helpful.

The system we have here really does work.  Try using it for a while.

-s
--
Peter Seebach - [e-mail] - Copyright 1996 Peter Seebach.
C/Unix wizard -- C/Unix questions? Send mail for help.  No, really!
Unsolicited email is not welcome, and will be billed for at consulting rates.
The *other* C FAQ - http://www.solon.com/~seebs/c/c-iaq.html