[sac-forum] Re: Paul's Programming

AJ,
You are really a nice guy, but in this I respectfully have to say I 
think you are a little too extreme in your response below (and I know I 
myself have been extreme in the past which I regret). There is more to 
astronomy than visual observing, your expertise, and the club should 
embrace more than just visual observing. As I said in a previous message 
there are programming applications in astronomy and so there is some 
relevance of this topic to this forum. You know the subject of the 
message, i.e., Paul's Programming, and knowing the topic all you have to 
do is not open any message with that subject in the title. Also, the 
issue of not being on topic had been discussed before (was it in 
Az-Observing?) and it was concluded there is no harm if something is a 
little off topic once in awhile. Besides, I personally find these 
discussions interesting and relevant because some day I may be writing a 
program to control a telescope, or a part of a telescope or instrument, 
and learning from other astronomers the existence and capabilities of 
programming languages is helpful.

Respectfully, my opinion for the good of the club.
Stan

AJ Crayon wrote:

> 
>Paul, THAT'S ENOUGH OF THIS PROGRAMMING DISCUSSION.  IN CASE YOU HAVE
>FORGOTTEN THIS IS AN ASTRONOMY LIST NOT A DISCUSSION ABOUT PROGRAMMING
>LANGUAGES!!!
>
>I DON'T WANT THIS ON THIS LIST, GAVEL THIS TO A CLOSE.
>
>DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT GAVEL TO A CLOSE MEANS!!
>
>aj
>
>Paul Dickson wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 09:48:13 -0800, Stanley A. Gorodenski wrote: What is
>youropinion of C? It has a reputation of being very fast and easy to learn,
>and I know of one case where it is being used in academic research to write
>programs for phyogenetic studies because it is so fast. Short answer:
>High-level assembly language. Longer: You end up spending far more time
>coding the details of how to load and store data than you do solving the
>problem. This detail is important for operating systems and other embedded
>applications, but most applications don't need this level of detail. C is
>notan easy language to learn how to use correctly. It's pretty trivial if
>youdon't use pointers. But since C passes data to functions using
>pass-by-value, you can't do much without pointers. Especially if you don't
>know in advance how much data you'll be working with. At that point you
>startallocating memory for buffers and lists. You have a headache just
>waiting to happen. -Paul 
>
>
>
>  
>

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