[zedshaw]

Well this if fun folks, but frankly, you all have proven just how conservative programmers are. My chapter advocating something as "revolutionary" as including the lengths of strings when you process them has received more hate mail than anything I've written. And I'm the guy who gets death threats because I don't like Ruby.

If you are reading this and saying, "This guy's wrong about including the lengths of strings!" Then I ask: Why are you using any modern language? Nearly every language in use today include the lengths of strings and backing buffers in their string implementation, and you all use it and appreciate it, but when I advocate it suddenly it is heresy and deserving of vitriol.

I personally don't care what you all think, which I know insults your pride at being the smartest people in the room, but until you are willing to admit that your hatred of that chapter is based entirely on nostalgia and not on the merits of my fairly simple claim that K&R (or any) C code is error prone, then you are not going to advance the state of the art any further than the 1970s.

This is what makes me sad about computing today. You are all desperately clinging to the notion that you are radical free thinking futurists while you desperately cling to reverence for the past and are incredibly resistant to any change. If something as simple as a thought experiment to look objectively at how things are done and try something better makes you angry, then you are not free thinking futurists.

Anyway, enjoy your day folks. I'm going to go do some painting.

[johnchristopher]

Hi (sorry for hijacking the thread),

Is there a plan for a french version of learning the hard way in the future ? That would be awesome.

[zedshaw]

That'd be up to my publisher (A/W) but I do believe they roll out French versions of my book depending on market demand. How that demand happens I have no idea.

[johnchristopher]

Thank you.