Re: 32-bit CRC table generation at compile time in C, was Re: The IMMEDIATE mess

J Thomas wrote:
This is something I've noticed before with you.

Oh, this should be good. After all, you know me *so* well. How many years have we worked together? Oh, that's right. Zero.

And yet, that same combination of mindset and skills may leave you as
not the best one to decide what tools are best for other people. When
you push things as far as they can go, you might wind up writing code
that lesser programmers have trouble maintaining.

Please support your statement. Point to *any* message I have *ever* written *anywhere* where I suggest I consider myself the best to decide what tools are best for others. If there is one consistent message in everything I've written in comp.lang.forth over the years is that one should pick the right tool for the job. I know only what is best for me and the projects I work on. I have *never* presumed to know what is best for others.

I expect that in practice you're careful about that. There's a skill to
writing simply, even sometimes writing a lot more code that will be
slower to read but easier to understand.

Let's cut through your nonsense and break it down:

1. Albert posts code, makes a claim, and provides an example.

2. I agree with his general claim, but find his example is poor.

3. I spend an enjoyable ten minutes solving a silly puzzle, testing it on three different compilers, and posting my results, taking care to qualify what I did as not as elegant and not as readable. I amuse myself with the perversity of creating a macro that expands to 4.8 megabytes of code from around 640 bytes of source code.

And now the best part:

4. You read my message, ignore my qualifications on the results, and come up with a grandiose statement about the quality of the code I pass on to "lesser" programmers. Such amazing insight you have-- kind of reminds me of Senator Bill Frist diagnosing Terri Schiavo not by actually interacting with her, but by watching a videotape.

Still, given your special background and skills, what's easy and
convenient for you may be less easy and convenient for others, and you
may not always know what tools would be used most enthusiastically by
others.

I find it ironic that you direct your sage advice to me-- someone who relentlessly seeks to find the best tool for the job-- in a newsgroup where the prevailing assumption is that Forth is the only tool anyone needs.
.

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