Path: ...!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Top 10 most common hard skills listed on resumes...
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2024 10:05:33 +0200
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 86
Message-ID: <vce1kd$3vqbi$2@dont-email.me>
References: <vab101$3er$1@reader1.panix.com> <vapitn$3u1ub$1@dont-email.me>
 <87o75bwlp8.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <vaps06$3vg8l$1@dont-email.me>
 <871q27weeh.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <20240829083200.195@kylheku.com>
 <87v7zjuyd8.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <20240829084851.962@kylheku.com>
 <87mskvuxe9.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <vaq9tu$1te8$1@dont-email.me>
 <vbci8r$1c9e8$1@paganini.bofh.team> <vbcs65$eabn$1@dont-email.me>
 <vbekut$1kd24$1@paganini.bofh.team> <vbepcb$q6p2$1@dont-email.me>
 <vbgb5q$1ruv8$1@paganini.bofh.team> <vbhbbb$1blt4$1@dont-email.me>
 <87tteqktr8.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <vbkjqk$201ms$1@dont-email.me>
 <87ttenk2nq.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <vbps3c$31s4d$1@dont-email.me>
 <875xr3jaz0.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <867cbccn78.fsf@linuxsc.com>
 <vc8vgr$2one0$1@dont-email.me> <20240916042822.629@kylheku.com>
 <vc9cjc$2s6vu$1@dont-email.me> <vc9lq5$2u802$1@dont-email.me>
 <vc9ov4$2uqam$3@dont-email.me> <vccgj0$3knaq$1@dont-email.me>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2024 10:05:33 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="67ce7a064b85d4c7b6ffde78ca18f456";
	logging-data="4188530"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+blPBavnJb8DmpEruj2HkoarwY9h47OO8="
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/102.11.0
Cancel-Lock: sha1:91TFZz22w6KrMzwWVzMfBiLRp7I=
Content-Language: en-GB
In-Reply-To: <vccgj0$3knaq$1@dont-email.me>
Bytes: 6320

On 17/09/2024 20:08, James Kuyper wrote:
> On 9/16/24 13:13, David Brown wrote:
>> On 16/09/2024 18:19, James Kuyper wrote:
> ...
>>> The C standard is also incapable of being wrong, but in a very different
>>> sense - the C standard defines C, there is no alternative to compare it
>>> with, in order to say that the C standard is wrong. The C standard might
>>> be inconsistent, unimplementable, badly designed, or incomprehensible,
>>> among many other defects if might have - but as the official definition
>>> of C, it cannot be wrong.
>>> Any such defects can be corrected by filing a defect report and
>>> convincing the committee that the report is correct. If they agree, the
>>> next version of the standard is likely to contain revised wording to
>>> address the issue. Try doing that with the Bible.
>>
>> At the risk of offending people, I'd say this /has/ been done with the
>> Bible countless times.  There are dozens of major versions of the Bible
>> with different selections of books and sections of the books.  There are
>> hundreds of translations for each version, even counting just
>> translations into English, based on different source texts and very
>> different styles of translation.  And that's before you get to major
>> re-writes, like Mormonism (though perhaps that's more akin to moving
>> from C to Rust).
> 
> There's a key difference: there's a central authority responsible for C,
> the ISO C committee. Defect reports must be filed with them, and new
> versions of the C standard are issued by them.

There is that difference, yes.  But the central authority is quite aloof 
- few of them deign to communicate directly to us mere mortals very 
often, and it is not uncommon to hear in discussions about the standards 
"when they wrote /this/, they really meant /that/" or fixed beliefs 
about how parts of the standard are to be interpreted.

And there was a central (very human) authority responsible for the 
original formation of the Bible - not for writing the individual books, 
but at least for choosing which books were included in the anthology.


However, the C standards have a much clearer and more realistic 
procedure for changes - both small fixes (defect reports) and major 
changes (new versions).

> 
> The different versions of the Bible that you refer to generally
> correspond to schisms in the community of Believers, with one version of
> the Bible accepted by one side of the split, and a different version by
> the other side, with neither side accepting the authority of the other
> to determine which version is correct.

Yes.

But even within the groups that nominally accept the same version of the 
Bible, there are subgroups that rely on different translations with 
significantly different interpretations or implications.

> 
> The authority for the Bible that corresponds to the C committee for the
> C standard should be God, but to an atheist like me, it's not clear that
> He's playing any active public role in clarifying which version of the
> Bible should be used. If He's taking any active role, it would appear to
> be in the form of telling individual Believers which version they should
> believe, with different Believers reporting having gotten different
> advice from Him on the matter.
> 
>> Unlike C, it is not a nice linear progression with each new version
>> superseding the previous versions.  But we still do see some "C90
>> fanatics" that are as convinced in their viewpoint as some King James fans!
> 
> The C90 fanatics do seem to be a good analogy to the Christian
> schismatics. They basically don't accept the authority of ISO to change
> the C standard, despite the fact that it became a standard under ISO
> auspices. However, they are not organized into a coherent group like the
> schismatic churches have been.
> 

I think that for any belief or cause - good or bad, real or imagined - 
there are always some people who follow it so fanatically that it is 
their fanaticism that dominates, not the belief or cause.


Perhaps we have milked this comparison enough - it's not really good 
c.l.c. topicality.  I personally find religious history and related 
topics fascinating, and am easily drawn into discussions about it, but 
there are no doubt more appropriate arenas.