[MODERATION]
This was moved from the strcpy() thread to avoid hijacking of the thread.
I knew that replying to my message was surely going to lead to hijacking and moderation undefined behavior. We may delete this thread later, or may be not. We may make it a sticky. Or do nothing. Who knows.
Miguel
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I know you said don't respond this thread but I am glad you finally noticed. I would like to know what people's opinion is about pure programming discussions here, because for me it is completely off-topic. Maybe it is the culture here but that doesn't make it right. Whenever there is 'c/asm programming language' discussion remotely related to chess, people come out from their hidings to lecture us , only problem is it is in the wrong forum. I don't know the right technical word for it, but it is "a case of feeling pumped up in a forum you think you will get away with anything, well mainly because it isn't the right forum". Very much like bragging about your soccer skills to a bunch of volley ball players, very pretentious. I am sure this useless strcpy() discussion would have ended very quickly if it was asked in stackoverflow.
Next up, 'I use goto, do you?'. This is gonna bring out the 'programing stylists'. And before you ask, I use them a lot in my iterative search, so this is 'on topic'.
About off-topic threads [pruned branch]
Moderators: hgm, Rebel, chrisw
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Re: strcpy() revisited
Is there a charter for this forum that explains the acceptable topics? I can't find it on the starting page, could someone please refer me to it? This subforum is titled "Programming and Technical Discussion" and the threads you were referring to covered that general topic. If they ran for too long, perhaps that was due to the heatedness of the debate and the stubborness of the participants, but it wasn't totally unrelated to chess programming, IMO.Daniel Shawul wrote:I know you said don't respond this thread but I am glad you finally noticed. I would like to know what people's opinion is about pure programming discussions here, because for me it is completely off-topic. Maybe it is the culture here but that doesn't make it right.
BTW, you also participated in discussions (Winboard Alien e.g. that ran for 31 pages) that are only of marginal interest to many participants here. There are also betting pools on perft(13) that ran for even longer. Do you see any complaining about that? If you don't like a topic, why not just ignore it?
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Re: strcpy() revisited
I'm surprised too by the attitude of Lucas and Daniel, and perhaps others who felt the same but didn't speak up.
There's plenty of ignorance about these topics among programmers, that's no surprise. But their arguments sound like "I don't care about this so other programmers shouldn't either".
Don't you write chess engines in C or C++ ? Don't you think its important to know whether what you are writing is actually legal C or C++ code that will work on future compilers?
There's plenty of ignorance about these topics among programmers, that's no surprise. But their arguments sound like "I don't care about this so other programmers shouldn't either".
Don't you write chess engines in C or C++ ? Don't you think its important to know whether what you are writing is actually legal C or C++ code that will work on future compilers?
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Re: strcpy() revisited
When it says programming and technical discussions, it is meant chess programming and technical discussions. The same goes for 'Tournaments and matches' otherwise we will have daily soccer tournament results.Rein Halbersma wrote:Is there a charter for this forum that explains the acceptable topics? I can't find it on the starting page, could someone please refer me to it? This subforum is titled "Programming and Technical Discussion" and the threads you were referring to covered that general topic. If they ran for too long, perhaps that was due to the heatedness of the debate and the stubborness of the participants, but it wasn't totally unrelated to chess programming, IMO.Daniel Shawul wrote:I know you said don't respond this thread but I am glad you finally noticed. I would like to know what people's opinion is about pure programming discussions here, because for me it is completely off-topic. Maybe it is the culture here but that doesn't make it right.
About stubbornness, yes that is exactly it. There is no way you can force anyone here to admit mistakes, but instead you get ton of trolling. If this discussion proceeded anywhere else with a reasonable group of programmers, the ridicule will be too much for anyone to go on.
Sorry but still a *chess* programming discussion, which is missing in strcpy() discussions.BTW, you also participated in discussions (Winboard Alien e.g. that ran for 31 pages) that are only of marginal interest to many participants here.
Again perft is *chess* programming discussion. You are confusing not being popular with something that is completely off-topic.There are also betting pools on perft(13) that ran for even longer. Do you see any complaining about that? If you don't like a topic, why not just ignore it?
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Re: strcpy() revisited
Waylie, I am sure you are more knowledgeable in C/C++ than us, but all I am saying is that strcpy() is off-topic. I am sure you have contributed to the on-topic bit-twiddling discussions with bitboards (which I am not exactly in love with) but those are completely on-topic. I get that, but strcpy() and other discussion about 'C/asm programing threads' that seem to attract a lot of attention are off-topic IMO. If this message board is broadcast to members by email, surely many will be disappointed with the content and classify it as spam. E.g. Computer Go forum. Atleast the lockless scheme discussion , that is rightly branched off strcpy(), is on topic. But the fact that somehow resulted from an off-topic discussion is not an excuse. I am sure I can twist and turn my imaginary 'I use goto, do you?' discussion to finally land at 'Is LMR important?' question somehow Anyway I understand there is a culture of pure programing discussions here, but if that is the case let it be stated in the Charter, and there is definitely no need to 'revisit' an already annoying off-topic thread IMHO.wgarvin wrote:I'm surprised too by the attitude of Lucas and Daniel, and perhaps others who felt the same but didn't speak up.
There's plenty of ignorance about these topics among programmers, that's no surprise. But their arguments sound like "I don't care about this so other programmers shouldn't either".
Don't you write chess engines in C or C++ ? Don't you think its important to know whether what you are writing is actually legal C or C++ code that will work on future compilers?
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Re: strcpy() revisited
Now that this thread has been hijacked anyway...
This part of the forum is about chess programming. It seems normal to me that now and then a programming topic is discussed that is not specifically tied to chess, but that most chess programmers inevitably will have to deal with at some point.
I remember a thread with the title "GCC 4.8 made me chose Clang" (who started it again?). Should that thread have been flagged as off-topic?
Other "off-topic" programming threads are "MEM_LARGE_PAGES", "LLVM toolchain on Windows" (started in some other part of this forum and moved to this "programming forum" upon request), "64bit compile", "
Clang vs GCC [stockfish 4]" (was not about SF), "Writing to a Text File (Thread Safe)", "Speech synthesis", "Symbolic: I/O handling and sample logfile" (as much about Symbolic as the strcpy() threads about crafty), "You can't beat a good compiler... right?", "goto thread (split)", "Barbara Hecker's YouTube channel".
Most of these threads have attracted interest. The original strcpy() thread attracted even more interest, but is that a bad thing? The level of stubbornness is indeed appalling, but that isn't specific to the "off-topicness" of the thread.
I would say it is wrong if a thread starts out chess related and then completely diverges into attacks based on religious views against e.g. the choice of programming language. But this thread (or rather, the original thread, I do agree there was little reason to spawn this 2nd thread on the same topic), has been from the start about "undefined behavior" and what that means for (chess) programmers.
To summarise, I really don't see the big deal here. If you're not interested in a small percentage of the topics, just ignore those.
This part of the forum is about chess programming. It seems normal to me that now and then a programming topic is discussed that is not specifically tied to chess, but that most chess programmers inevitably will have to deal with at some point.
I remember a thread with the title "GCC 4.8 made me chose Clang" (who started it again?). Should that thread have been flagged as off-topic?
Other "off-topic" programming threads are "MEM_LARGE_PAGES", "LLVM toolchain on Windows" (started in some other part of this forum and moved to this "programming forum" upon request), "64bit compile", "
Clang vs GCC [stockfish 4]" (was not about SF), "Writing to a Text File (Thread Safe)", "Speech synthesis", "Symbolic: I/O handling and sample logfile" (as much about Symbolic as the strcpy() threads about crafty), "You can't beat a good compiler... right?", "goto thread (split)", "Barbara Hecker's YouTube channel".
Most of these threads have attracted interest. The original strcpy() thread attracted even more interest, but is that a bad thing? The level of stubbornness is indeed appalling, but that isn't specific to the "off-topicness" of the thread.
I would say it is wrong if a thread starts out chess related and then completely diverges into attacks based on religious views against e.g. the choice of programming language. But this thread (or rather, the original thread, I do agree there was little reason to spawn this 2nd thread on the same topic), has been from the start about "undefined behavior" and what that means for (chess) programmers.
To summarise, I really don't see the big deal here. If you're not interested in a small percentage of the topics, just ignore those.
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Re: About off-topic threads [pruned branch]
Why don't you do what I do? If you are not interested, don't read. I don't read every thread here. I'm not interested in every topic here. I read what attracts my attention, and skip that which does not. Programming topics like optimization are directly pertinent to anyone that is trying to extract every last node per second from their chess engine. Seeing the pitfalls as well as the good things can be beneficial. If your programming skills are beyond the discussion, don't look. Nobody takes offense I hope. Otherwise I have offended many by not reading certain threads.Daniel Shawul wrote:[MODERATION]
This was moved from the strcpy() thread to avoid hijacking of the thread.
I knew that replying to my message was surely going to lead to hijacking and moderation undefined behavior. We may delete this thread later, or may be not. We may make it a sticky. Or do nothing. Who knows.
Miguel
==========
I know you said don't respond this thread but I am glad you finally noticed. I would like to know what people's opinion is about pure programming discussions here, because for me it is completely off-topic. Maybe it is the culture here but that doesn't make it right. Whenever there is 'c/asm programming language' discussion remotely related to chess, people come out from their hidings to lecture us , only problem is it is in the wrong forum. I don't know the right technical word for it, but it is "a case of feeling pumped up in a forum you think you will get away with anything, well mainly because it isn't the right forum". Very much like bragging about your soccer skills to a bunch of volley ball players, very pretentious. I am sure this useless strcpy() discussion would have ended very quickly if it was asked in stackoverflow.
Next up, 'I use goto, do you?'. This is gonna bring out the 'programing stylists'. And before you ask, I use them a lot in my iterative search, so this is 'on topic'.
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Re: strcpy() revisited
Well at least we agree on that, that it is a chess-programing forumThis part of the forum is about chess programming. It seems normal to me that now and then a programming topic is discussed that is not specifically tied to chess, but that most chess programmers inevitably will have to deal with at some point.
I would say most of what you mentioned have some 'chessic' component, of the top of my head, Large_pages and hashtables, compiling chess engines (stockfish), parallel debugging, Sounds for GUI etc... Moreover none of these generated 30 pages of spam that made them unbearable to those who expect chess programing discussions. As I mentioned before, there is definately a culture of pure programing discussions here, but that doesn't make it right. Striclty speaking most are off-topic, because the focus in game programing is writing programs to play that game using any programing language, not studying the language itself. For my programing questions, I usually go to appropriate forums where I could get the best answers. There this strcpy() discussion will not even get new posts because it will be deemed duplicate with exisiting discussion, so you either take it or leave it. No one is going to nurse your ego.Other "off-topic" programming threads are "MEM_LARGE_PAGES", "LLVM toolchain on Windows" (started in some other part of this forum and moved to this "programming forum" upon request), "64bit compile", "
Clang vs GCC [stockfish 4]" (was not about SF), "Writing to a Text File (Thread Safe)", "Speech synthesis", "Symbolic: I/O handling and sample logfile" (as much about Symbolic as the strcpy() threads about crafty), "You can't beat a good compiler... right?", "goto thread (split)", "Barbara Hecker's YouTube channel".
My opinion is that there is just way too many programers here, who equate chess_programing=programing and take every opportunity here even strcpy(), to discuss about programing languages, operating systems, C++ quirksI would say it is wrong if a thread starts out chess related and then completely diverges into attacks based on religious views against e.g. the choice of programming language. But this thread (or rather, the original thread, I do agree there was little reason to spawn this 2nd thread on the same topic), has been from the start about "undefined behavior" and what that means for (chess) programmers.
etc. Such things when discussed in the appropriate forums probably does not lead to more than a page of discussion, so most of them end up being very pretentious, i.e. in the absences of credible experts. In other scientific programing discussions I know of, the programing language is not an issue. You are expected to know how you are going to program with any programing language you desire, so the discussions are mostly algorithmic about the problem at hand. Programing languages are just tools that anyone can learn by himself to the level he desired. No need to forcefully feed members of a non-relevant community about your wizardly programing skills, who knows you may be just an average programmer in the appropriate forum.
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Re: strcpy() revisited
Who defines what is right and what is wrong? Formal standards do not give the answer here.Daniel Shawul wrote:As I mentioned before, there is definately a culture of pure programing discussions here, but that doesn't make it right.
There is a culture of pure programming discussions. Is there any good reason that this culture should change?
Maybe this forum is just not for you?My opinion is that there is just way too many programers here, who equate chess_programing=programing and take every opportunity here even strcpy(), to discuss about programing languages, operating systems, C++ quirks
etc.
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Re: strcpy() revisited
Or, slightly friendlier: not just for you...syzygy wrote:Who defines what is right and what is wrong? Formal standards do not give the answer here.Daniel Shawul wrote:As I mentioned before, there is definately a culture of pure programing discussions here, but that doesn't make it right.
There is a culture of pure programming discussions. Is there any good reason that this culture should change?
Maybe this forum is just not for you?My opinion is that there is just way too many programers here, who equate chess_programing=programing and take every opportunity here even strcpy(), to discuss about programing languages, operating systems, C++ quirks
etc.