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<DIV><SPAN class=656211319-12102005>It's more like a geologist who likes to do
field work from time to time.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=656211319-12102005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=656211319-12102005></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma
size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B> Josh More
[mailto:morej@alliancetechnologies.net] <BR><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, October 12,
2005 2:07 PM<BR><B>To:</B> cialug@cialug.org<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Cialug]
Learning the 'C' language<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>You bring up some very fine points. And I fully agree with most of
them. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>My main concern is that there are a lot of similar projects out there
because </DIV>
<DIV>the original project was poorly designed and/or commented. I would
like to </DIV>
<DIV>see people put more time into making projects more open. 'Open' in
this </DIV>
<DIV>case means 'accepting of contributions from others'. I am very
concerned </DIV>
<DIV>about the "You must know _____" meritocracy that I see in the open source
</DIV>
<DIV>communities. I worry that if we keep up this semi-hostile attitude
that the </DIV>
<DIV>open source movement will start losing momentum. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>With regards to your point of discouraging it, I wholeheartedly agree.
</DIV>
<DIV>I was not trying to discourage the desire to learn C. I just think
that </DIV>
<DIV>Nate has skills that he could use that would impact projects much more
</DIV>
<DIV>strongly than just adding another programmer. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>To my mind, it's like a CEO learning about cows so that he can go flip
</DIV>
<DIV>burgers at McDonald's. (Exaggerated for effect.) </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR><BR>-- <BR>-Josh More, RHCE, CISSP,
NCLP<BR>morej@alliancetechnologies.net<BR>515-245-7701<BR><BR>>>>mrdovey@iedu.com
10/12/05 9:52 am >>><BR>Josh More wrote:<BR><BR>| I would argue
that the one thing that the open source world doesn't<BR>| need is more
C/C++ coders.<BR>| If you want to contribute to a project in meaningful
ways, I would<BR>| suggest:<BR>|<BR>| * Morph the code into a comment
style that works with NaturalDocs,<BR>| so that other programmers can have
an API reference.<BR>| * Adjust the end user documentation so that it is
useful<BR>| * Start political manuvering to combine similar projects and
share<BR>| resources<BR>| * Provide project management to help the
devs agree on priorities<BR>| and meet deadlines.<BR><BR>Hmm. Ok, I'll
argue with you. I think you're partially right - in that<BR>people who _only_
know how to write compilable code (in any language)<BR>are minimally useful. The
same is true of those people who can't grasp<BR>that C and C++ are very
different languages with only cosmetic<BR>similarities and fundamentally
different paradigms (a detail that<BR>even/especially Dennis and Bjarne have
agreed on in both<BR>news:comp.lang.c and news:comp.lang.c++).<BR><BR>I'll argue
further that more damage has been done to projects by<BR>clueless designers and
clueless documentation producers than by anyone<BR>else involved. The former are
productivity wasters of the worst kind and<BR>the latter spoil the usefulness of
even the highest quality work for<BR>anyone subsequently involved.<BR><BR>Part
of the cluefulness required is a knowledge of "how things work" in<BR>order to
be able to even begin to understand "what it takes". To attempt<BR>to design
software without that knowledge - or to document it - leads<BR>directly to
"faking it" (and indirectly to such phenomena as "Halt,<BR>retry, fail?"
messages).<BR><BR>It seems to me counter-productive to discourage anyone
(especially<BR>volunteers) seeking to increase their knowledge, experience,
and<BR>involvement - or to shunt them away from where their interests
lie.<BR><BR>But then, I've never had much success convincing geeks to
"Start<BR>political manuvering" - YMMV.<BR><BR>Morris Dovey<BR><BR><BR>Cialug
mailing
list<BR>Cialug@cialug.org<BR>http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug<BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>