[cheponis]

Thanks - very much. It is an honest question - if this is a "community", wouldn't you think community members would give me the benefit of the doubt? I have never seen C++ used in my entire career. I'm MIT 6-3A '76 - maybe I'm sheltered in only hanging out with excellent programmers.

(aside: the gutless wonders who downvoted my original question did not respond to me directly at [e-mail] - I suppose those folks are having their teenage fun trying to destroy this community? I have a proposal: whenever any of the "anointed " members of this community downmod anybody, they should be <b>required</b> to provide to the original poster a) their EMAIL ADDRESS so that the poster could respond, and b) their REASON for their action. In addition, I believe that NOBODY should be allowed more downmodding than upmodding - that is, you have to have "upmod points" before you're allowed to downmod - even if you are a Chosen One in the Secret Handshake Society of the YC Cult.)

[icey]

You might want to toughen up a little bit before you open your mouth on the internet. Seriously, people are going to disagree from you from time to time.

[cheponis]

They would be, of course, wrong. ;-)