Fortran - What is David F-Wit (was: Who is R.Vowels

Author

What is David F-Wit (was: Who is R.Vowels

William M. Klein

2005-08-21, 6:57 pm

In answer to your question,
"How come I have the fastest timing in the reduce_blanks benchmark,"

There are a few reasons that you (D.F-wit) win the "challenges" that you post
(in any comp.lang newsgroup ... or combination of newsgroups):

A) You do not know how to (or certainly give no evidence of knowing how to)
write a programming specification

B) Any time you do try and write a spec (for your challenges) you constantly
CHANGE the specification as you go along (usually changing the spec to meet your
program, rather than your program to meet the original spec)

C) You create challenges that are NOT "real-world" application requirements (or
are not sufficiently useful - as you design them - to solicit careful
implementation effort)

D) Your "correct" solutions (to your OWN challenges) are rarely the first (or
second, or ...) one provided. Normally, your "performance" tests are based on
sample data that allows YOUR solution to "pass" regardless of whether they
actually meet the original (or recent) specification.

E) Any post (or "challenge") from you solicits minimal response, because you are
certainly held in "zero" respect by other newsgroups.

***

The reason that I am *intentionally* cross-posting this note, is that I (and I
think several others in the PL/I newsgroup) are actually interested in hearing
if (as I suspect) D.F. is held in the same "low regard" by the Fortran newsgroup
as he is by the PL/I newsgroup. As someone who does NOT participate in the
Fortran newsgroup, I think that this is "useful" information for all concerned.
(Although his initial "solutions" are usually wrong, it certainly MIGHT be
possible that his "normal" contributions to comp.lang.fortran are useful. I
just doubt it.)

FYI,
to meet a "programming" challenge, one need not actually know multiple
languages. However, to write a programming challenge one must actually know how
to write a specification that is not worded as:

"In your programming Language A, create a program that does the same thing as
this code in Language B"
Neither is it valid to say:
"Given input-X, create a program that will produce Output-Y"
(as such specifications, unless the input and output are EXTENSIVE, don't
really tell what is needed/wanted)

Until (and unless) D.F. actually learns how (and demonstrates the ability) to
write such a specification, he is (and will continue to be) the only person who
draws "conclusions" from NEGATIVE "solutions" (better solutions) to his
challenges. (In general, I think that most programmers are sufficiently well
aware of the rules of logic, to know what can and cannot accurately be concluded
from the statements:
Here is an example of A
I have looked for (even asked for an example of B)
I have not SEEN an example of B

i.e. there is NOTHING that one can correctly assume about the existence (or lack
thereof) of "B".

P.S. Also interested in Fortran answers.
As someone who is used to "business" applications rather than
number-crunching or scientific applications, are the types of "specs" that D.F.
produces actually COMMON among Fortran "analysts" (those who create programming
specs)? I find this hard to believe, but am more than willing to admit that my
personal lack of experience in the area may prejudice what I would expect.

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"David Frank" <dave_frank@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Kg3Oe.9467$ns.5730@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>
> "Mark Yudkin" <myudkinATcompuserveDOTcom@boingboing.org> wrote in message
> news:43087d99$0$1146$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch...
>
> Really? How come I have the fastest timing in the reduce_blanks benchmark,
> the only 1 liner Count_Items, a terrific reduce_blanks function using array
> syntax that really "bugs" Vowels
> (see below) and BTW, how come you remain silent when you see psuedo PL/I CRAP
> below?
>
>
>

Richard Maine

2005-08-21, 6:57 pm

In article <kF3Oe.26558$az4.14421@fe11.news.easynews.com>,
"William M. Klein" <wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote:

> The reason that I am *intentionally* cross-posting this note, is that I (and
> I think several others in the PL/I newsgroup) are actually interested in
> hearing if (as I suspect) D.F. is held in the same "low regard" by the Fortran
> newsgroup as he is by the PL/I newsgroup. As someone who does NOT participate in the
> Fortran newsgroup, I think that this is "useful" information for all
> concerned.

Your observations seem quite to the point and similar to those made long
ago and repeatedly in comp.lang.fortran. I never bother to respond to
his various "challenges" for reasons remarkably similar to those you
mention...and others, but I don't feel it worthwhile to elaborate them
in detail.

e p chandler

2005-08-21, 6:57 pm

William M. Klein wrote:

[snip long comment on D.F.'s "challenges".

> P.S. Also interested in Fortran answers.
> As someone who is used to "business" applications rather than
> number-crunching or scientific applications, are the types of "specs" that D.F.
> produces actually COMMON among Fortran "analysts" (those who create programming
> specs)? I find this hard to believe, but am more than willing to admit that my
> personal lack of experience in the area may prejudice what I would expect.

IMO the situation is somewhat different in c.l.f. Fortran is changing
rapidly with the advent of the 90, 95 and 2003 standards, so there is
quite a bit of interest in new language features and facilities.
Whether D.F. can write a programming spec is of less interest to me
than the discussion of and the exposure to techniques now available in
modern Fortran.

While I don't much care to become involved in contests where the
"target" keeps moving almost at will, I do find discussions of related
topics such as creating data structures, memory allocation, varying
length strings, string manipulation and initialization expressions to
be thought provoking.

>From a practical point of view, I do not routinely do text, string or
character processing in Fortran, so for me the "specs" are at best
moot.

Fortran, like other languages has a rich set of built in features and
an even richer set of external libraries available for a wide variety
of tasks. When I'm actually writing programs to do real work, I spend
more of my time trying to glue existing code together to accomplish
what I want than in trying to find new and exciting ways to "peel an
onion".

Dan Nagle

2005-08-22, 7:57 am

Hello,

As a long time (well, several years now) comp.lang.fortran
lurker and occasional poster, Dave Frank is in my killfile.
There are only one or two others. This greatly improves
the signal-to-noise ratio of comp.lang.fortran ...

--=20
Cheers!

Dan Nagle
Purple Sage Computing Solutions, Inc.

On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 18:24:17 GMT, "William M. Klein"
<wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote:

Kevin G. Rhoads

2005-08-22, 7:57 am

>The reason that I am *intentionally* cross-posting this note, is that I (and I
>think several others in the PL/I newsgroup) are actually interested in hearing
>if (as I suspect) D.F. is held in the same "low regard" by the Fortran newsgroup
>as he is by the PL/I newsgroup.

As someone who follows both NGs, but mostly codes in Fortran these days, I speak
for myself in saying that while DF occasionally had some useful information, I
stopped reading any of his posts and replies to them years ago.

I don't hold him in low regard, I just try not to regard him at all (pun intentional).

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