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Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

I'll bite: argument from authority can be reversed - if Brian didn't mess up the language design, these sorts of "code drivels" wouldn't have appeared! I think you've heard that argument from many language designers already... Then we can argue that back in those times it was something progressive etc. And we are straight back with the argument I was making. When you read StackOverflow, books on Deep Learning or computation on Spark, how much drivel did you go through already? Even the language authors are sometimes confused about some unplanned side effects...

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> if Brian didn't mess up the language design, these sorts of "code drivels" wouldn't have appeared!

OK, ignoring the s/Brian/Dennis/ snafu... WTF is a "code drivel"? What are you trying to say here?

Second, your point is irrelevant: It's pointless to write a book about driving cars and fill it with a long rant about how riding motorcycles is so much better. It's a non sequitur, and false advertising. Much like how this book is presented as a good resource for learning C and is, in fact, a horrible example of precisely how little the author understood C.

> Then we can argue that back in those times it was something progressive etc.

Aside from your infelicitous attempt at English, this is wrong: This book was never good, and claiming it was insults the past.

I love intellectual debates, but this really isn't one. I just have the feeling this is an "intellectual" mob in progress. BTW, it's wonderful to attack people for their English skills; I speak 8 languages but not all of them at C2 level, despite being grad at one of top US colleges. Would you take my sincere apologies for offending you by not being on your level?

I get the impression that you're using odd phrasings deliberately, to obfuscate a point too weak to stand on its own, and to avoid responding to the points of others.

Kernighan didn’t actually design C. He wrote a book with Dennis Ritchie, who did.

> I'll bite: argument from authority can be reversed - if Brian didn't mess up the language design, these sort of "code drivels" wouldn't have appeared

i dont know, awk has its faults -- but blaming it for C?

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