in reply to Re: DON'T USE THIS CODE
in thread File::DumbLock

So basically what you are saying is that you don't have to prove anything that you say cause all people have to do is type the right combination of words into google and browse around testing that code for a few hours to see the same thing?
No.

But what would you rather I do with the limited time I have here...

I'd rather do the latter, because it innoculates five different diseases instead of just one. Of course, what I'd really rather do is... But as long as people post crap like the beginning of this thread, I don't get to do that.

It's fundamentally unethical of me to allow bad memes to stand, so as long as I see them, it's my responsibility to point them out. Now, as long as bad memes keep getting posted in this unmoderated forum, my destiny is predetermined. So, either moderate the forum, or let me post-moderate it as I have.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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Re: Re: Re: DON'T USE THIS CODE
by ignatz (Vicar) on Sep 16, 2002 at 15:30 UTC
    Back in my days on debate teams we had a term for an argument without proof: it didn't pull. That meant that it carried no weight. Five posts that say something sucks without showing why are five wasted posts in my book.

    People learn a lot more by being shown the why of something than from just being hit upside the head and told not to do it, no matter how experienced the person doing the hitting. 

    ()-()
 \"/
  `
[reply]
      People learn a lot more by being shown the why of something than from just being hit upside the head and told not to do it, no matter how experienced the person doing the hitting.
      No, you're missing the purpose of my "don't do this" post.

      Going back to the innoculation metaphor, I'm providing emergency-room treatment. Surely, this is not a substitute for a person going out to learn how to avoid catching communicable diseases. That happens later (or hopefully earlier).

      Getting back to the literal issue here, I'm just saying "stop, don't". And that's a first round of response. But I'm not about to quote the plenty existing literature about why the solution is broken. If there was something not well known about why the solution is broken, I'd have provided more pointers. If you review my posts, you'll see that I've done that frequently.

      But knowing that you have to do an atomic operation to provide a lock is fairly basic knowledge. And as I showed in my google reference, the first dozen hits for "perl lock" were all quite informed, so there's almost no excuse for the code that triggered my outburst, except that this is a KLB (in #perl parlance) and will likely lead others astray unless muzzled until they get a clue.

      -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[reply]
        Is it possible that PM needs the Monks of the Round Table whom merlyn could advise of the horrid mistake being made by King Author, and could take the time to provide corrective assistance with a gentler hand?

        Perhaps merlyn, whence stumbling upon dangerous code, could then post a warning, e.g. "This code may have dangerous side-effects and is awaiting review by the Monks of the Round Table."

        --
        May the Source be with you.

        You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart.

[reply]

In Section Code Catacombs