Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard 1466

David Wagner ... snip ...

None (well, very few) of us ever stopped after a circuit didn't work or a program idea didn't pan out and wrote a discourse on it. We just junked it, made a mental note not to try that again, at least in that form for that purpose, and went on to something else.

A notable exception in the software arena was a series of 'Style' booklets-pamphlets that appeared about 20 or 25 years ago. They didn't really analyse the bad things, but showed how to avoid such horrors.

Now, having accumulated and forgotten many horror stories, we can fairly safely say "That son't work" in many cases, without being able to dredge up specific reasons. Once in a while we are wrong, but more often we are bang on.

In JMFBAHs case (not really knowing her) she watched her 'bitgods' do things with the bits over many years, without really appreciating the nuances of the sport. She did appreciate and learn from the interactions involved, and contributed thereto. Of course she, like many of us, has her own set of personal biases. (Her politics are awful.)

Your task, should you care to accept it, is to generate and apply appropriate weights to both the subjects and those expounding them. Neither 0 nor infinity is ever appropriate, although I can conceive of a use for negative weights.

-- "If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson