About off-topic threads [pruned branch]

[Daniel Shawul]

And the fact remains strcpy() is off-topic, whether it is a culture here or not.

The rest is like I said it, a bunch of desperate programmers, trying to look smart, beating their chest to irrelevant crowd of people. Lets see your wizardy in 'C programing forums', 'C++ programing forums'. Anyone who has visited a fair amount programing forums knows what is going on here is an ego-trip between self-proclaimed experts..

[syzygy]

As I mentioned before, there is definately a culture of pure programing discussions here, but that doesn't make it right.

Who defines what is right and what is wrong? Formal standards do not give the answer here.

There is a culture of pure programming discussions. Is there any good reason that this culture should change?

My opinion is that there is just way too many programers here, who equate chess_programing=programing and take every opportunity here even strcpy(), to discuss about programing languages, operating systems, C++ quirks
etc.

Maybe this forum is just not for you?

Or, slightly friendlier: not just for you...

I think I'll stick to my version

[Daniel Shawul]

This was moved from the strcpy() thread to avoid hijacking of the thread.
I knew that replying to my message was surely going to lead to hijacking and moderation undefined behavior. We may delete this thread later, or may be not. We may make it a sticky. Or do nothing. Who knows.
Miguel

Well it seems to me mods have to make the decision based on the charter, not opinons of the members. You agreed that the strcpy() discussion is off-topic but was tolerated for a while, and also that the revisiting was annoying for some who reported it as spam? So is the charter decided by voting of what the members want to discuss or is it just chess-programing as one would expect? I think it is good to know of what the mods think about this topic, because it would clear up further misunderstandings next time someone brags about 'c/asm programing skills'.

[mar]

The rest is like I said it, a bunch of desperate programmers, trying to look smart, beating their chest to irrelevant crowd of people. Lets see your wizardy in 'C programing forums', 'C++ programing forums'. Anyone who has visited a fair amount programing forums knows what is going on here is an ego-trip between self-proclaimed experts..

While I agree with you that programming should be primarily about algorithms and design and not about fancy language constructs
and that programming laguage is just a tool, what's wrong about discussing circumstances under which it can break?
How can you judge others while knowing absolutely nothing about other projects they worked on?
But you are certainly an expert in insulting others.

[wgarvin]

And the fact remains strcpy() is off-topic, whether it is a culture here or not.

The rest is like I said it, a bunch of desperate programmers, trying to look smart, beating their chest to irrelevant crowd of people. Lets see your wizardy in 'C programing forums', 'C++ programing forums'. Anyone who has visited a fair amount programing forums knows what is going on here is an ego-trip between self-proclaimed experts..

Just speaking for myself, that was not the purpose of my own posts about undefined behavior at all.

I want programmers to know about it and know how badly it can mangle their programs if they don't respect it. Now of course you can't teach people who don't want to learn, so you and others who don't want to read the posts won't learn anything from them. And that is fine, if they are just self-taught programmers pursuing a fun hobby. My ego can survive you not caring about this topic.

If they are professional programmers working on anything remotely important, then they really ought to know about this stuff, even though a lot of programmers don't seem to know much about it. I certainly wouldn't want to ride in a car or airplane or medical device programmed in C or C++ by people who didn't know or didn't care about undefined behavior.

[rbarreira]

Let's have a thread complaining and insulting forum members. Yeah, that's better.

[Daniel Shawul]

And the fact remains strcpy() is off-topic, whether it is a culture here or not.

The rest is like I said it, a bunch of desperate programmers, trying to look smart, beating their chest to irrelevant crowd of people. Lets see your wizardy in 'C programing forums', 'C++ programing forums'. Anyone who has visited a fair amount programing forums knows what is going on here is an ego-trip between self-proclaimed experts..

Just speaking for myself, that was not the purpose of my own posts about undefined behavior at all.

I want programmers to know about it and know how badly it can mangle their programs if they don't respect it. Now of course you can't teach people who don't want to learn, so you and others who don't want to read the posts won't learn anything from them. And that is fine, if they are just self-taught programmers pursuing a fun hobby. My ego can survive you not caring about this topic.

If they are professional programmers working on anything remotely important, then they really ought to know about this stuff, even though a lot of programmers don't seem to know much about it. I certainly wouldn't want to ride in a car or airplane or medical device programmed in C or C++ by people who didn't know or didn't care about undefined behavior.

Ok I understand your intentions but beware that an advice offered that is not requested for may be interpreted the other way. To me discussion of programming languages is not the topic of this forum, and is infact impossible to do with the hundreds of programming languages we have. So the best one can do is stick with chess programming and help out those who ask for programming help and not extend help about the effects of obscure undefined behaviours in C. Programming language is simply a tool to achieve the task of chess_programming, not the goal by itself. Whenever this c/asm discussions come up, I ask myself how one could summarize it for future chess programmers. You absolutely learn nothing from strcpy()'s undefined behavior as a chess programmer, but may be it helps to know about the details as a programmer. Once the strcpy() fever is settled, maybe we can try to summarize it for documentation and see what it would be worth? My guess is that it is certainly not something that deserves 30 pages of one-liners in a programming forum let alone in a chess programming forum. Imagine these messages were emailed to subscribed users to a chess programming forum, just like Computer Go forum is. It would be too annoying for those that are there for the game programming discussions.

[Daniel Shawul]

The rest is like I said it, a bunch of desperate programmers, trying to look smart, beating their chest to irrelevant crowd of people. Lets see your wizardy in 'C programing forums', 'C++ programing forums'. Anyone who has visited a fair amount programing forums knows what is going on here is an ego-trip between self-proclaimed experts..

While I agree with you that programming should be primarily about algorithms and design and not about fancy language constructs
and that programming language is just a tool, what's wrong about discussing circumstances under which it can break?
How can you judge others while knowing absolutely nothing about other projects they worked on?
But you are certainly an expert in insulting others.

Please note the discussion is about strcpy(), not the branch about lockless hashtable undefined behaviour. What is your summary of the original strcpy() thread and the revisited strcpy() thread as is relevant to chess programmers? You would have a hard time justifying that 30 pages of discussion if you are being honest.

To be fair, this purely programming discussion is not the first one here as I have already mentioned, but that doesn't make it right. AFAIK off-topic programming discussions are allowed with-in reason (the best the charter says), which does not imply discussing something as boring as visiting strcpy() and revisiting it with 30 pages of one-liners.

[mar]

Please note the discussion is about strcpy(), not the branch about lockless hashtable undefined behaviour. What is your summary of the original strcpy() thread and the revisited strcpy() thread as is relevant to chess programmers? You would have a hard time justifying that 30 pages of discussion if you are being honest.

I think that 30 pages is perhaps too much, the only relevance to chess programming being undefined behavior in general. One thread and 3 pages would do. I personally find the lockless hashtable thread much more interesting. What had to be said has already been (repeatedly) said multiple times. I stop here.

[Rein Halbersma]

Please note the discussion is about strcpy(), not the branch about lockless hashtable undefined behaviour. What is your summary of the original strcpy() thread and the revisited strcpy() thread as is relevant to chess programmers? You would have a hard time justifying that 30 pages of discussion if you are being honest.

I think that 30 pages is perhaps too much, the only relevance to chess programming being undefined behavior in general. One thread and 3 pages would do. I personally find the lockless hashtable thread much more interesting. What had to be said has already been (repeatedly) said multiple times. I stop here.

I have to admit that the 30+ pages on strcpy(), while fun in the heat of the debate, can easily be deleted without posterity losing much insight. So moderators, go right ahead. I'd like to start another thread with Chuck Norris style facts about Bob's ways of dealing with Undefined Behavior, but I guess that would not be allowed to survive for very long