general comment on CLA

general comment on CLA

[Robert Dewar]

Am I the only one who feels that CLA seems taken over by cross-posted
junk language wars?

I am about to decide that CLA is no longer worth following, but if other
people feel that these kinds of threads are reasonable, fine.

Robert Dewar

Re: general comment on CLA

[Brian Rogoff]

I agree, but I don't think leaving the ng to the Eiffel/Java/C++/...
language wars is the right thing to do. Some language comparison posts are 
appropriate, though I wish people making the comparisons had at least
minimal familiarity with the languages being compared. Right now I just 
manually delete most junk postings.   

I find it sad that a lot of people who used to post in years past
(S.Barbey, M. Kempe, and Rob Nebbe immediately come to mind) seem to 
have left. I for one learned much from their postings. Hopefully you 
won't join them.

-- Brian

On 18 Sep 1997, Robert Dewar wrote:

> Am I the only one who feels that CLA seems taken over by cross-posted
> junk language wars?
> 
> I am about to decide that CLA is no longer worth following, but if other
> people feel that these kinds of threads are reasonable, fine.
> 
> Robert Dewar
> 
> 
> 

Re: general comment on CLA

[Robert A Duff]

>On 18 Sep 1997, Robert Dewar wrote:
>> I am about to decide that CLA is no longer worth following, but if other
>> people feel that these kinds of threads are reasonable, fine.

It's not *that* bad, Robert.  Don't go away.

Yes, the cross-posted language wars contain mostly nonsense posted by
people who don't know what they're talking about, but they do contain
*some* useful discussion.  For example, I find the argument about
Ada-style exception handling vs Eiffel's "retry" thing somewhat
interesting.  And separate specs vs short-flat tools (although that one
is getting repetetive).  At least it's Eiffel vs Ada, which have enough
in common that the differences are worth discussing.  If it bores you,
kill-file it.

All in all, I'd say comp.lang.ada has better signal-to-noise than any
newsgroup I've read (except comp.compilers, which is moderated, so
language comparisons get squelched if they start getting too
"war"-like).

Just be glad that the Ada vs Red language "war" isn't crossposted to
comp.lang.red.  ;-)

- Bob

Moderation? :-( (Was Re: general comment on CLA)

[Brian Rogoff]

On Fri, 19 Sep 1997, Robert A Duff wrote:
> >On 18 Sep 1997, Robert Dewar wrote:
> >> I am about to decide that CLA is no longer worth following, but if other
> >> people feel that these kinds of threads are reasonable, fine.
> 
> It's not *that* bad, Robert.  Don't go away.

De gustibus non est disputandum (except on the Internet). FWIW, I agree 
with Robert. (You'll have to do some overload resolution to determine which
one :-). I *hate* to suggest it, but maybe it is time for a moderated cla. 
I used to read c.l.scheme, which had a similarly high SNR, but thats going
down fast too. Expect every Java programmer who can spell ADA will be
posting their opinion on the American Dental Association here as soon as 
they learn about Ada -> JVM compilers. 

> All in all, I'd say comp.lang.ada has better signal-to-noise than any
> newsgroup I've read (except comp.compilers, which is moderated, so
> language comparisons get squelched if they start getting too
> "war"-like).

This sounds like an argument for going to a moderated NG :-(. 

One argument for the contrary though, is that reading some of the slams on 
Ada from the Eiffel community really made me glad I decided to look into
Ada a few years ago, since many of the things that Eiffelists find awful 
about Ada (modules /= types, separation of spec and body, Ada exceptions,
...) are things I really like in Ada. Peter Hermann made a similar
observation, though I don't know if this justifies all of the crossposting.

-- Brian
 

Re: Moderation? :-( (Was Re: general comment on CLA)

[Robert S. White]

In article <Pine.SGI.3.95.970920122419.5046A-100000@shellx.best.com>, 
bpr@shellx.best.com says...

>... though I don't know if this justifies all of the crossposting.

 Ok OK, I _promise_ never to reply to one of those cross-posted
lanuguage-wars monsters (threads) again.  Let them die out!  
Anything to keep the CLA S/N ratio high :)
_____________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White         -- An embedded systems software engineer
e-mail reply to reverse of: ia us lib cedar-rapids crpl shift2 whiter

Re: general comment on CLA

[Joerg Rodemann]

Brian Rogoff (bpr@shellx.best.com) wrote:

> I agree, but I don't think leaving the ng to the Eiffel/Java/C++/...
> language wars is the right thing to do. Some language comparison posts are 
> appropriate, though I wish people making the comparisons had at least
> minimal familiarity with the languages being compared. Right now I just 
> manually delete most junk postings.   

> On 18 Sep 1997, Robert Dewar wrote:

> > Am I the only one who feels that CLA seems taken over by cross-posted
> > junk language wars?
> > 
> > I am about to decide that CLA is no longer worth following, but if other
> > people feel that these kinds of threads are reasonable, fine.

It really would be a sad story for c.l.a. and a shame for all who partici-
pated in those lengthy Eiffel-Ada-threads (including me) if it leads to
the loss of a valuable member of this newsgroup. Certainly there was a lot
of repetition as well as some harsh words that did not seem appropriate.
However some of the postings lead to some interesting thoughts and insights
for me. Also it illustrated how strongly the terminology and way of thinking
is influenced by a regular use of just one language. (Hope I am not becoming
somewhat c-ish. :-) ).

So I would hope that we do not loose valuable input for this group by getting
to involved in such language wars. At some point this newsgroup would then
become totally uninteresting and not a good promotion for Ada since this
newsgroup may often --- at least for students --- be one of the entry points
towards this beautiful (but not perfect) language.

Regards

Joerg
--
rodemann@mathematik.uni-ulm.de | Dipl.-Phys. Joerg S. Rodemann
Phone: ++49-(0)711-5090670     | Flurstrasse 21, D-70372 Stuttgart, Germany
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
rodemann@rus.uni-stuttgart.de  | University of Stuttgart, Computing Center
Phone: ++49-(0)711-685-5815    | Visualization Department, Office: 0.304
Fax:   ++49-(0)711-678-7626    | Allmandring 30a, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany

Re: general comment on CLA

[Tom Moran]

>I am about to decide that CLA is no longer worth following
Non carborundum illegitimati, as they say.
Newsgroups are (potentially) too valuable to give up just because of
the trash.  

Re: general comment on CLA

[John Herro]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> I am about to decide that CLA
> is no longer worth following
     Remember that reverend who was a self-righteous flamer?  Together
we've been through MUCH worse than language wars.  Thank God for the delete
button!
- John Herro
Software Innovations Technology
http://members.aol.com/AdaTutor
ftp://members.aol.com/AdaTutor

Re: general comment on CLA

[Robert Dewar]

John said

<<     Remember that reverend who was a self-righteous flamer?  Together
we've been through MUCH worse than language wars.  Thank God for the delete
button!>>

This is different for a number of reasons. First the total number of messages
from CJIII was small, and they were easily ignored. Second, kill files worked
fairly well. But this cross-posted suff keeps changing subject lines, and
involves a giant cast of Eiffel etc characters who are not so easy to kill.

Re: general comment on CLA

[John Herro]

Robert Dewar said
> But this cross-posted suff ...
> [is] not so easy to kill.

I don't know about most news readers, but the one built into the AOL
software automatically organizes all the postings by threads, and to delete
a whole thread, I need only click on the name of the thread and the delete
button.   (On the other hand, so far as I know the AOL software doesn't
support kill files.)

- John Herro
Software Innovations Technology
http://members.aol.com/AdaTutor
ftp://members.aol.com/AdaTutor

Re: general comment on CLA

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <dewar.874621342@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Am I the only one who feels that CLA seems taken over by cross-posted
> junk language wars?

I strongly agree.  Those discussions need their own home (perhaps there
is such a group, but I am not familiar with it).  (Off topic, I would
not mind a newsreader that totally ignored posts addressed to more than
N groups.)

> I am about to decide that CLA is no longer worth following, but if other
> people feel that these kinds of threads are reasonable, fine.

Well, Robert Dewar, that to me seems totally illogical !!! :-)

Basing your participation (which I value) on others wanting the garbage
threads seems to say you will participate in anything labeled CLA so long
as those participating in it (aside from you) agree on the content.

I would much prefer that those who are interested in less of the non-Ada
content consider ways of reducing it.  Of course that is not appropriate
without a sense that more than 3 people feel this way.

Larry Kilgallen

Re: general comment on CLA

[Robert A Duff]

In article <1997Sep19.103110.1@eisner>,
Larry Kilgallen <kilgallen@eisner.decus.org> wrote:
>I strongly agree.  Those discussions need their own home (perhaps there
>is such a group, but I am not familiar with it).

There's comp.lang.misc.  Periodically, somebody posts a note there
saying, "I'm thinking of learning how to program.  Which language should
I learn first?"  And this results in an endless series of inane rants,
including several libelous comments about Bertrand Meyer or Grady Booch.

And there's comp.lang.object, which sometimes contains discussions/wars
about OO languages.  (If you think Ada-vs-Eiffel is bad, you should see
C++ vs Smalltalk!)

Best of all is comp.compilers.  The moderator allows a limited amount of
language discussion, but mostly it's about *implementing* languages.

>...  (Off topic, I would
>not mind a newsreader that totally ignored posts addressed to more than
>N groups.)

My kill file kills anything posted to more than 3 groups, and anything
with ALL CAPS words in the title (which is usually something like FREE
MONEY AVAILABLE, or worse).

>I would much prefer that those who are interested in less of the non-Ada
>content consider ways of reducing it.  Of course that is not appropriate
>without a sense that more than 3 people feel this way.

I like language comparison discussions, and if one of the languages is
Ada, that seems on-topic for comp.lang.ada.  I just wish people would
refrain from posting misinformation and religious zealotry (which seems
to go up roughly as the square of the number of cross-posted groups).
And I wish everyone would be polite.

- Bob

Re: general comment on CLA

[Robert Dewar]

Larry said

<<<<I strongly agree.  Those discussions need their own home (perhaps there
  is such a group, but I am not familiar with it).  (Off topic, I would
  not mind a newsreader that totally ignored posts addressed to more than
  N groups.)>>

I have investigated, and as far as I know, no newsreader has this capability.
I have on my list to hack one so it does, but goodness knows when I get
around to that.

As far as it being illogical for me to wonder whether continued 
participation in CLA is worth while, I don't see that. The value of
spending time following a newsgroup, and answering articles is in
direct proportion to the signal-to-noise ratio, and for the last few
weeks, CLA has exceeded my threshhold. I used to follow a lot of
groups, including for example OS/2 and comp.lang.cobol, but after
a while they just had far too much junk in them, and now I only
follow CLA.

Most other people at ACT abandoned CLA a long time ago, on these grounds.

Really I was trying to get a sense of how people feel about these
cross-posted threads. If generally CLA folks feel they are reasonable,
then I certainly don't want to try to impose my views, but it is
certainly not illogical for me to find it too much of a waste of time
to wade through more cross-posted stuff.

On the other hand, if others generally agree, perhaps we could conduct
a cleanup campaign :-)

Re: general comment on CLA

[Samuel Tardieu]

>>>>> "Robert" == Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> writes:

Robert> I have investigated, and as far as I know, no newsreader has
Robert> this capability.  I have on my list to hack one so it does,
Robert> but goodness knows when I get around to that.

Gnus (see http://www.gnus.org/), the (IMHO) best newsreader (and also
mailreader) so far can do this very easily and this is even a FAQ.

For people who could be interested in Gnus, it is a software running
under (X)Emacs written by Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen (lmi@gnus.org) which 
is very powerful. Since it runs under Emacs, it is available on almost 
every Unix platforms and under Windows NT.

I couldn't recommend another news software since Gnus has unique
features, such as: (some may be incorporated in other newsreaders, but 
probably not all of them)

  - adaptive scoring: if you want, Gnus can keep track of what words
    and combination of words you seem to be interested in. This way,
    it will increase the score of the threads containing these words;
    when you enter the group, the messages which are probably of
    highest interest to you are rpesented first

  - various backends: Gnus can read news and mail using NNTP, spool,
    Unix mail file, MH files, POP, IMAP, ... Your mails can be sorted
    into different groups (that have different priorities) based on
    the subject, the sender, the recipient, the body, ... Mails are
    shown just as news posts are, that is threaded, with priorities,
    with score and kill files, ...

  - some really useful backends such as the nnweb one: I can create a
    group which will consist into *any* article archived by Dejanews
    or Altavista for example containing the "Ada" word in the subject
    field. Gnus will make a HTTP connection to the search engine and
    will build an ephemeral group containing all the headers. When you 
    ask for an article, it will get it from the same source and
    present it to you

  - the current development version (called Quassia Gnus) contains a
    new "agent" which allows off-line mail and news reading and
    posting. When you're plugged in, Gnus downloads the new mails and
    news posts and sends the one it has queued for you when you were
    off-line

  - fully integrated MIME support using TM. If you get a picture by
    mail and are running XEmacs, then the picture will be presented in 
    your regular mail buffer if you are running under X

It would take too much time and space to describe all the great Gnus
features. It is really worth a try. And it is... free software :)

Gnus is part of the recent Emacs and XEmacs releases. GNUS (the former 
newsreader which has inspired Gnus) could only read news, so make sure 
you are running a pretty recent (X)Emacs.

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@ada.eu.org

Re: general comment on CLA

[Simon Wright]

dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> Really I was trying to get a sense of how people feel about these
> cross-posted threads. If generally CLA folks feel they are reasonable,
> then I certainly don't want to try to impose my views, but it is
> certainly not illogical for me to find it too much of a waste of time
> to wade through more cross-posted stuff.
> 
> On the other hand, if others generally agree, perhaps we could conduct
> a cleanup campaign :-)

I've been skipping the Eiffel ramblings except where someone
interesting (eg, Robert) has been contributing

I guess the beginnings of a cleanup campaign would be to be extra
careful when replying to crossposted articles ..

Re: general comment on CLA

[Jerry van Dijk]

In article <dewar.874621342@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu writes:

>Am I the only one who feels that CLA seems taken over by cross-posted
>junk language wars?
>
>I am about to decide that CLA is no longer worth following, but if other
>people feel that these kinds of threads are reasonable, fine.

I noticed myself skipping more and more threads lately. However, CLA is the
only general forum we have on Ada, so I at least will continue monitoring,
although I've become less of of a participant lately.

Perhaps it will get better again...

--

-- Jerry van Dijk | Leiden, Holland
-- Consultant     | Team Ada
-- Ordina Finance | jdijk@acm.org

Re: general comment on CLA

[Marc Wachowitz]

kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) wrote:
> I would
> not mind a newsreader that totally ignored posts addressed to more than
> N groups.

Gnus, the news- and mail-reader built onto GNU Emacs, can do this, and
much more which would be hard using other programs for that purpose.
(Gnus runs at least on various kinds of Unix and on Windows NT, and I
think it should work on Windows 95, too.)

-- Marc Wachowitz <mw@ipx2.rz.uni-mannheim.de>