XPost: comp.lang.c++

On 17/07/2024 02:07, Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 7/15/2024 7:53 PM, John McCue wrote:

This is OT, usually I would ignore, but :)

I have never done that over the many decades I have
been a programmer.  I would suggest you do no more then
say 12 hours straight.  Mistakes will happen plus, this
will affect your health.

Just a friendly warning.

Not OT, most programmers love music.  The arithmetic of music draws our attention to it.

It is /completely/ OT for these groups. Most programmers are humans,
and most humans are fond of music. This is not exactly a revelation.

IMHO, an occasional totally off-topic thread in technical groups is no
bad thing. But don't pretend it is relevant to anything.

A discussion of programming environments might be considered somewhat technical. Is it better to have a some background music, or silence
when programming? Is it better to have many shorter sessions or a few
long ones? Is an all-nighter a good idea or not? Is this dependent on
the programmer in question, the way they work (individuals or teams),
the type of project, the development stage (design, coding, debugging,
testing, documentation) ?

And a discussion about people's programming history and background can
be interesting and somewhat topical. Does it make a difference if you
learned C or C++ at university or are self-taught in the language? Does
a background with BASIC on home computers help, compared to, say,
FORTRAN or BCPL on big machines? Do people who learned C++98 carry over
old habits to modern C++ programming? Should C++ programmers first
learn assembly to understand the underlying machine, should they first
learn Haskell to learn to think of their code mathematically?

And we all like to talk about the good old days of ZX Spectrums with
chewing gum keyboards and wobbly ram packs. That would be totally off
topic, however. Some regulars, including me, think that's okay on
occasion - others think it is never a good thing in these Usenet groups,
and such threads will annoy them. You can't please everyone all the
time, of course, and no one should be expected to try.

But a thread apparently dedicated to "I like this music" is as inane and pointless as the Chris/Bonita pissing matches we see regularly in
c.l.c++. And random youtube links just make it even worse. No one is
at all interested in what music other people like - even those that have
posted about what /they/ like.


Now, if Chris can get in the habit of putting his mindless "for some
reason this made me think of ... youtube ... " posts in this thread
alone, and not interspersed in real threads, then this OT thread would
be a great thing. (Chris also makes topical and sensible posts - it's
only his addiction to posting youtube links that is annoying.)

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XPost: comp.lang.c++

On 17/07/2024 22:42, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:

On 7/17/2024 12:45 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 17/07/2024 02:07, Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 7/15/2024 7:53 PM, John McCue wrote:

This is OT, usually I would ignore, but :)

I have never done that over the many decades I have
been a programmer.  I would suggest you do no more then
say 12 hours straight.  Mistakes will happen plus, this
will affect your health.

Just a friendly warning.

Not OT, most programmers love music.  The arithmetic of music draws
our attention to it.

What about using C++ to create music (say, MIDI for now) that you can
listen to while creating other music and/or other fun things indeed?

What about not posting random youtube links at all?

Please understand the topicality of these groups - then you can make a conscious decision to stretch the topicality if you think it is
appropriate, instead of just spilling every stray thought that passes
through your head. (Again - I personally am not as rigid about sticking
to topicality as some regulars, but I think it is important not to get
carried away, and it is important to know when something is not even
close to topical. Technical groups need to maintain a level of focus or
they either disappear entirely, or descend into cesspits like sci.electronics.design.)

These groups are about the /languages/ C and C++. They are not about
programs that happen to be written in those languages, and certainly not
about what was created using programs that happened to be written in
those languages.

So if you've written a program in C++, it is topical to discuss
particular aspects of the code that you think were hard, or interesting,
or that you have questions about, or that use unusual techniques that
you want to share with others. The complete program is not topical, nor
are its uses.

Can you appreciate the difference?

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XPost: comp.lang.c++

On 18/07/2024 20:43, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:

On 7/18/2024 12:31 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 17/07/2024 22:42, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:

On 7/17/2024 12:45 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 17/07/2024 02:07, Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 7/15/2024 7:53 PM, John McCue wrote:

This is OT, usually I would ignore, but :)

I have never done that over the many decades I have
been a programmer.  I would suggest you do no more then
say 12 hours straight.  Mistakes will happen plus, this
will affect your health.

Just a friendly warning.

Not OT, most programmers love music.  The arithmetic of music draws >>>>> our attention to it.

What about using C++ to create music (say, MIDI for now) that you can
listen to while creating other music and/or other fun things indeed?

What about not posting random youtube links at all?

They are not random... I used to give a link without any title
information. So that was bad.

There is no information content in them, no pattern, no purpose - they
are just noise here, based on random thoughts you have at the time.
Would it have made any difference to people in these groups if the links
had come from some youtube random link generator? I don't think so. So
they are random.

Giving the links a title does mean that we can all see they are random
and pointless without clicking on them (not that people did that anyway).

Now, if the links were titled "This is the best explanation of CRTP I
have seen" or "This video shows the real-world effects of C++ execution policies", then that would be fine. But they are not so titled.

Chris, you post some interesting and thoughtful things at times. You
have long experience, and you are energetic about sharing it. But far
too often, you communicate as if this were a social media site for bored teenagers. A Usenet group is not a formal academic forum, but most
regulars prefer a higher signal to noise ratio than you manage with your incessant nonsense posts.

Please understand the topicality of these groups - then you can make a
conscious decision to stretch the topicality if you think it is
appropriate, instead of just spilling every stray thought that passes
through your head.  (Again - I personally am not as rigid about
sticking to topicality as some regulars, but I think it is important
not to get carried away, and it is important to know when something is
not even close to topical.  Technical groups need to maintain a level
of focus or they either disappear entirely, or descend into cesspits
like sci.electronics.design.)

Have you ever written a C++ program to generate music in wav and/or midi form?

No. And if I had, it would not be relevant here.

As I have said many times, a /little/ bit of OT discussion is, IMHO,
fine. You write some interesting programs, and some people are going to
be interested in them. So if you have written some code that you think
others will want to hear about, then you might /occasionally/ start a
new OT thread about it. Talk about the code. If there is interest and
a thread forms, fine.

But imagine what would happen if /everyone/ in this group posted about
every program they have written in C or C++, as well as posts with links
to every youtube video they found interesting. Clearly that would be a complete mess, destroying the group. So why should /you/ get to post
like that? What makes you think you are so special that other people
have to read about ever little fleeting thought that passes through your
mind?

These groups are about the /languages/ C and C++.  They are not about
programs that happen to be written in those languages, and certainly
not about what was created using programs that happened to be written
in those languages.

So if you've written a program in C++, it is topical to discuss
particular aspects of the code that you think were hard, or
interesting, or that you have questions about, or that use unusual
techniques that you want to share with others.  The complete program
is not topical, nor are its uses.

Can you appreciate the difference?

Yes.

Really?

Well, I am now trying to give the titles the youtube links I post,
did you notice that?

Yes. I do appreciate that - it makes them less obnoxious, but no more relevant.

They are not random.

Of course they are. They might not seem random to /you/, but that's
irrelevant - they are functionally random to anyone else who sees them.

I'm glad you are having fun with your programming, but we don't need to
hear about it.

Keeping all of this contained in this thread should be easy for others
to just block, ignore, ect...?

That is certainly true, and it is (to me, anyway) very much less
annoying when these kinds of posts are kept in one thread, and don't
mess up interesting topical threads.

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