your post is the one that should be 'passed around the office'Originally Posted by johnggold
your post is the one that should be 'passed around the office'
I suggest you try googling "for loop C++ tutorial"
1. In every case the syntax i++ not ++i is used. It's not me who is out of touch. Teaching students the difference comes a lot later, and the for loop really isn't the best place to show it for the first time.
2. The questioner clearly wants to stop a n - as shown in the worked example.
3. Programming for errors is an essential coding habit. Wikibooks have an excellent tutorial on this - emphasing checks for division by zero, for example.
See C Programming/Error handling - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks
4. Apart from silverlight I've yet to see anyone else put up code - it seems that criticising others needs a lot less effort.
Never re-write code unless the user benefits
I suggest you read Programming Principles and Practice by Bjarne Stroustrup (the creator of C++) and you will notice that he teaches to use ++i rather than i++. But hey, what does he know compared to you and your 6 staff?
Whether or not that's true, you're really trying to enrage someone there by sying that arent you! How would you feel if someone posted that in reference to you?
If you had been on this forum very long you would know that the frequent posting of code from beginners that has virtually no indentation, or completely screwed up indentation is a major point of difficulty in both the posters ability to spot their problem, and for us to do the same.
About ++i, it's not simply that you "can do this", it is a semantically less complex operation which is most preferable when writing code that uses iterators, or anywhere else operator overloading is involved. Some would even agree that it is a better habbit to use preincrement even where it does not matter, and that really a beginner should by taught preincrement rather than postincrement right from the beginning. You see it far more now than you used to because people are starting to wake up to the fact that there are good reasons to prefer it. The times, they are a changin'.
Last edited by iMalc; 08-13-2010 at 03:39 PM.
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Advice: Take only as directed - If symptoms persist, please see your debugger
Linus Torvalds: "But it clearly is the only right way. The fact that everybody else does it some other way only means that they are wrong"
I suggest you re-read what I said.
I said try googling - an independent source - not yours or mine. I did not hold up my team as the arbiters.
Never re-write code unless the user benefits
Perhaps you missed darren78's source? Professor Bjarne Stroustrup is certainly involved in teaching students at beginner level, and among his examples is the for loop code in this FAQ: How do I write this very simple program?
Furthermore, although iMalc has already mentioned it and you may know the reasoning, I suggest that you read this FAQ on Which is more efficient: i++ or ++i?
As to teaching students the difference: I believe that the difference is often taught when these operators are introduced. If not, it would make sense simply to recommend prefix operator++ over postfix. There is simply no reason to recommend the postfix form over the prefix form for standalone expressions, other than dubious appeals to tradition (and the name "C++", heh).
The questioner clearly stated:
Your example, after the bug fix, returns 1.0 if the argument is 1, and 1.0/3.0 if the argument is 2. This would seem contrary to the "worked example". Personally, I chose not to bring this up because I feel that the core of the example is the loop, not the specifics of the result, which fyoung91 could be expected to fix himself/herself. But if you want to keep talking about "once too many" and stopping at n, then I must say that my code stops at n (since i == n on its last iteration), but yours gives the wrong result for n=1, and stops at n-1 when n>1 (since i == 2 at the start of your loop).
Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Yes, I fixed that one in a previous post of mine. I missed that one the first time I glanced at it, then I read johnggold's complaints and went back to verify that the bugs he stated weren't there. I didn't actually look through the code too thoroughly as I didn't expect johnggold to miss on a good opportunity to insult someone's code to feel superior.
I still don't get it. First of all, how can you use six different styles in the same team? Isn't one of the jobs of the lead coder or whoever is in charge to make sure everyone uses the same style. I'd hate to work on a project where every call to a function you have to look up whether the name is in camel case or with underscores. Or even when you read some code - it looks ludicrous to mix styles, and generally way too hard to see where functions begin or end (ie you can't on first glance even though it should).
But that's not my point here. You are apparently an expert in reading many different styles. But yet you complain about the ++i syntax? Is there no one in your office that uses the syntax (quite surprisingly, as - as I and several others have stated before - it can be faster than the post-incrementing). But it doesn't matter if nobody in your office uses it: if everyone uses a different style and you have no problem with that, how can you have a problem with such a simplistic thing as this?
Okay, let's just say you personally don't have a problem with it but it is really for the OP's regard, as it is too hard according to a newbie as you said before as well. Well, right "silverlight"'s [sic] url to Stroustrup's FAQ, which shows that Mr. Stroustrup disagrees. Well, let's see, whose opinion do I regard higher - that of a random Internet troll or the one that made up the programming language used..?
Tough one.
If you read my post before you should've wondered why I wrote "[sic]" after "silverlight" [sic]. That was because "silverlight" is wrong. And then you probably should have checked out his real name and you would've noticed his name is "laserlight". You didn't, which means you either didn't read my post, didn't understand the "[sic]" after the name, or was so stubborn that you really don't care if you misspell a name.
Again you criticize criticizing. Yet the first one to criticize code was you about "silverlight" [sic] his code. I think that's fine - if the critics made any sense. Had you said: "your code is wrong[ly copied of mine], because you use n in your loop rather than i", then I completely agreed with your post. However you criticize stuff that, as I've shown before, is even wrong. Except for maybe your opinion on "++i": it's fine if you disagree with that style even though I have no idea what you have to do with this.
You keep doing this. You complain about a dozen things, everybody shows you how wrong you are and then you simply say something like "you're wrong" or "re-read what I said" or "I posted your bull........ post around the office" or something along those lines. You don't even say which of the dozens of points made you disagree with. Next time you post, please tell us what you disagree with. Why don't you quote something you disagree with?
I really didn't care. If the post was remotely a WTF I would have. And if he sounded remotely like he knew much about coding. If it was you, laserlight or anyone else on this forum I probably would've cared and I've re-read my message dozens of times until I'd understood what made it bad. But in this case I didn't even take another glance at my post, as he had already spoken too much bull for me to take him seriously. Let him post it around the office - hopefully with a link to this thread, so his coworkers can see how "smart" he really is.
(Actually, someone should link to this post on the thedailywtf.com sidebar - it's actually quite sidebar worthy imho)
With respect to indent styles: if the same readable style is consistently used throughout each file, it is generally not a problem. As johnggold mentioned, there is also the option of using code formatters to format the code according to one's preference, though I am not in favour of this as it can pose problems for things like file differencing tools if the file is not saved in a standard format.
Of course, no code formatter (except maybe a buggy one) is going to format i++ to ++i when the difference might actually matter. Furthermore, it is rude to expect that poorly formatted code posted on a forum must go through such a tool before being inspected, but perhaps we can forgive johnggold for being new to this. (But not for posts made after he reads this post.)
Look up a C++ Reference and learn How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
This thread has left me in tears. Could you post a link to your company website, to cheer me up with a good laugh?
Last edited by MWAAAHAAA; 08-14-2010 at 11:31 AM.
I feel very sorry for the other 5.I work in a team of six, with six very different styles.
We do not take kindly to 'leet coderz' around here who think they are better than everyone else. Quite honestly I would rather work with a complete noob that had a great attitude than a seasoned professional with an ego problem. IMO inflated ego's can kill a team, can force bad design decisions, and can ultimately produce lower quality code.
Last edited by VirtualAce; 08-14-2010 at 12:00 PM.
^^^ this!
I think you have it the wrong way round - it's us who feel sorry for you. As a team it's not possible to have an ego - it would soon get knocked out of you. I can only assume that a lot of contributors work on their own, with no-one around to keep them in check.
With the exception of just a couple of contributors - notably silverlight, who I've seen positively helping on several threads, the rest have the biggest egos we've come across, and between us we subscribe to quite a few forums covering the different languages we use.
Considering the apparent wealth of knowledge available, I saw scant knowledge on our fflush problem.
I have an IT graduate coming for final interview on Monday. I set him the problem as a pre-interview test, and got a better response than the so-called professionals on this forum, complete with suggested code workarounds - one of which seems to be succesful.
silverlight I have to say stands out from the crowd, as the exception to the rule, and I have seen a couple of others providing genuine help to beginners.
Never re-write code unless the user benefits
I'm a Senior Software Engineer working for a large company with a couple dozen developers alone. I oversee and mentor probably more of the rest than any of the others senior devs on our team. The skills for helping others learnt here translate to work and vice versa.
One thing you see on this forum is that whenever anyone joins, they learn a lot in their first few weeks. It doesn't matter who they are, everyone from a total newbie to a veteran of the language all learn a lot of stuff that they thought they knew but didn't. I know a lot of people on here who have come a hell of a long way. Have you ever heard the saying "The more you learn, the more you realise you don't know"? If not, you have much more to learn.
You're proven that wrong for us already, stating that you work in a team of six.
Of all the times you've hinted at your age through your many years of experience, you're only really showing one thing. That with age comes stubbornness!
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Advice: Take only as directed - If symptoms persist, please see your debugger
Linus Torvalds: "But it clearly is the only right way. The fact that everybody else does it some other way only means that they are wrong"
Sorry but this so-called professional would never work with you nor have you on a team with your current attitude. You criticize one of our own, who by the way, has been nice enough to ignore your immature bantering and criticizing, and then tell us we are the ones in the wrong? I feel you owe this thread and those in it an apology for your rude behavior. None of us are getting paid to help you out and we don't mind helping. However your attitude stinks and if you keep it you won't be well liked around here.I have an IT graduate coming for final interview on Monday. I set him the problem as a pre-interview test, and got a better response than the so-called professionals on this forum, complete with suggested code workarounds - one of which seems to be succesful.
Take it down a few notches and chill out. And, oh, think twice before you go insulting someone else's code. Finding problems with it is perfectly ok and that is what this forum is for - but stepping down to the point of insulting the code especially when it is a regular member who helps thousands of people a year is not going to win you any rewards.
Quite frankly most of us here are professionals and we have a wide range of experiences, talents, and specialties but all of that really doesn't have anything to do with the problem at hand which is: your attitude. We do not tolerate poor attitudes for long and they certainly won't gain you any more help. Being a professional, student, or hobbyist matters little when it comes to netiquette and forum manners. And if it feels like we are ganging up on you...well...we are. We don't take kindly to people who unfairly and unjustly criticize others here.
My advice would be to forget about who is what and where and just learn some manners. Think before you respond to the next person who willingly posts code to help you.
Last edited by VirtualAce; 08-14-2010 at 03:48 PM.
Not to mention can't even bother to get Laserlight's name correct.
