Comment by Rochus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Rochus | Hacker News Reader

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> edited to tone down a bit

How generous. The comment reminds me of this passage in C. Northcote Parkinson's famous 1957 book:

"The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take. He becomes fussy about filing, keen on seeing that pencils are sharpened, eager to ensure that the windows are open (or shut), and apt to use two or three different-colored inks."

How can it be that in HN a comment like this, which is all about trivialities and the personal sensitivities of the commentator, and which contributes nothing relevant to the matter at hand, receives the most upvotes? Is this comment somehow pinned to the top instead?

Many here seem just disparaging about Reddit, but if you want to see an actually useful and intelligent comment from someone who actually knows something about the subject, take a look here: https://old.reddit.com/r/C_Programming/comments/18fzr1a/a_pu.... I'd expect at least that level from comments on HN.

>How can it be that in HN a comment like this, which is all about trivialities and the personal sensitivities of the commentator, and which contributes nothing relevant to the matter at hand, receives the most upvotes? Is this comment somehow pinned to the top instead?

I feel like purposely emphasizing C89 in your project name is meant to highlight some sort of greybeard or serious hacker aspect to it. Presumably the poster was thinking along the lines of "if you're trying to show how proficient you are with a sharp knife, here's a list of all the ways you cut yourself with it."

For me C89 means 'will build anywhere' whereas C99+ means 'may or may not build anywhere', rather than a value judgement about the author. But my background was in firmware where sometimes you were using custom compilers or very old compilers.

As someone whose idea of fun is trying to compile open source software on OS X / PowerPC, portability has a special place in my heart. While I view open source software as a "gift to the world", C89 + MIT is at the far end of the spectrum of how generous that gift is.

https://imgflip.com/i/89b05r

It's a library, one of the goals of which is compatibility with the many C89 compilers still in use today, so how else should I name it? And why is it bad or provoking to have a gray beard (which sounds a lot like age discrimination to me) or to highlight a "serious hacker aspect"?

> It's a library […] C89 […] how else should I name it?

It's unfortunate that you pose this as a rhetorical question, it has an actual answer: replace "pure C89" with "C89 compatible", wrap it in braces, and move it to the end of the title.

The message you're communicating by putting "pure C89" right front is very different from having a "(C89 compatible)" at the end: the former sounds like C89 is somehow an unequivocally good thing ("pure") while the latter makes clear that it is to address an unfortunate reality of engineering life. It would also distance you from C style and quality focused comments.

> which is all about trivialities and the personal sensitivities of the commentator, and which contributes nothing relevant to the matter at hand

The select API concern seems relevant and actionable.

> replace "pure C89" with "C89 compatible"

Not even English has the "purity" that you subliminally presuppose in your (entirely unnecessary) assertions. See e.g. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pure?utm_campaign.... And not a single one of your arguments had to do with "language purity"; instead you nit-picked about naming and features you miss; so what? But hey, it's open source: impress the world with your own version of the library.

These aren't really my judgements, I'm just guessing why you got some criticisms.

I didn't consider the aspect of which modern toolchains are still attached to C89, but using a language spec that's 35 years old has some relationship to the grayness of one's beard. But in any case I used the term greybeard to evoke the aesthetic of "fuck modernity, embrace terse C, suckless software" etc.

> I feel like purposely emphasizing C89 in your project name is meant to highlight some sort of greybeard or serious hacker aspect to it.

Or indicating that it will work if you want to fold the code into a C89 project, which is not exactly a rare concern.

What's the name of the book?

"Parkinson's Law And Other Studies in Administration" - a very enlightening book that has lost none of its relevance.

Oh shit it me. Thank you! Time for me to reflect on this for a bit…

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