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Comment by bandushrew | Hacker News Reader

"I cant know" is a subset of "I dont know"

"I dont know" was absolutely the correct answer.

Except from the perspective of a pragmatics linguistic analysis, "I don't know" has a social context of "There's an answer, and I don't know it."

In this case, a non-C programmer should answer "I don't know" to all of them. A person with a passing familiarity should answer similarly. A seasoned pro would be forced to answer the same. Making it a rather useless tool for distinguishing people who think they know C but are honest when faced with their limitations or those who truly know it and know the answer is undetermined, which is supposed to be the point of the exercise.

>which is supposed to be the point of the exercise.

I don't think that assumption is justified. Someone could say the point of the exercise is to illustrate that C is confusing.

You don't think the claim is justified because some might say otherwise. Some is irrelevant. Some might say lots of mutually exclusive interpretations. It's the author's intent that matters, and the context of the Author's post indicates the some interpretation isn't the author's intent. His post begins with the question "So you think you know C?". He then goes on to present a test that is, by his own words, intended identify to test takers whether or not they really understand the intricacies of C, and to think critically about that source of their knowledge "I had to learn to rely on the standard instead of folklore; to trust measurements and not presumptions; to take “things that simply work” skeptically"

Never once does the author mention that C is confusing, use the word confusing, or otherwise indicate that general idea. If you're getting that impression, it's your own reading into it. I'm not even saying you'd be incorrect, but that's not the author's intent, which was the basis of my comment.

Showing how people misunderstand the intricacies of C is much closer to "C is confusing" than "distinguishing who is honest about their limitations".

And yet its not confusing. Given the confines of any particular implementation and compiler the behavior can be known without confusion. The author never directly mentions or implies that their intent is to convey that C in confusing. Quite the contrary, they indicate their intent is to demonstrate that certain segments of people who believe they know C don't in fact understand its intricacies.

> Given the confines of any particular implementation and compiler the behavior can be known without confusion.

Only through extreme levels of compiler code inspection, as it can vary based on optimization heuristics.

> Quite the contrary, they indicate their intent is to demonstrate that certain segments of people who believe they know C don't in fact understand its intricacies.

Demonstrating that people don't know C is subtly different from an intent of testing whether people know C. The point being made is about C itself.

If what "some" might say about what the author intends is irrelevant, then what you say about what the author intends is also irrelevant, because you are just some person (unless you're the author). My point was why should I trust your interpretation of what the author intends more than anyone else's.

>"So you think you know C?"

That goes along with the interpretation that the point is to illustrate C is confusing. It would go along with something like "You think you know it, you think it's simple, well actually you don't know it, it's confusing."

>intended identify to test takers whether or not they really understand the intricacies of C, and to think critically about that source of their knowledge

Yes, its intent is to indicate to test takers that a lot of them don't really understand the intricacies of C, which demonstrates that C is more confusing than they originally thought.

>Never once does the author mention that C is confusing, use the word confusing, or otherwise indicate that general idea.

Here are some quotes that indicate the idea that C is confusing:

>C is not that simple.

>It’s only reasonable that the type of short int and an expression with the largest integer being short int would be the same. But the reasonable doesn’t mean right for C.

>Actually, it’s much more complicated than that. Take a peek at the standard, you’ll enjoy it.

>The third one is all about dark corners.

>The test is clearly provocative and may even be a little offensive.

Then the author says that he did C for 15 years and thought he knew it, but then realized he didn't. That indicates to me either that the author is saying that he's not smart, or that C is confusing. The second appears to be the point the author is actually making.

My interpretation is based directly on what the author states. Your "some" is based on a vague aggregate group whose interpretations, in aggregate, would be diverse and often contradictory and mutually exclusive. Personally, I trust the explicit an implied interpretation of the author's direct statements than you mere speculation as to what others might interpret.

If you don't like "some" then replace it with me. I interpret it as the author saying C is confusing.

My interpretation is also based on what the author states, fairly explicitly. And I don't think there's anything that explicitly contradicts my interpretation.

You say it's confusing because the author says it's not simple. The same might be said of any language. Or of any learning specialty at all. It's not synonymous with confusing. You're severely stretching the meaning of the author's words when you say the author's point was to say that C is confusing. It's what you infer because you were confused, which points to this being personal to you, not the general intent of the author.

> "I cant know" is a subset of "I dont know"

There is a world of difference between "don't know" and "can't know", as the first implies a shortcoming on the side of the developer while second one states that the question is patently meaningless to someone who does master the language.

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