David Cole judges that my views are infected with 'élitism and generational prejudice'. There is not much point in responding in kind. More ad hominem rhetoric will not clarify the issues involved here; but I do want to plead guilty to élitism of a sort, not certainly to élitism of some silly socio-economic sort but to intellectual élitism, yes. (Socio-economic elitism is based upon the dubious premise that there is credit to be garnered for having chosen one's grandfather well.) G. H. Hardy, a convinced socialist as well as a great mathematician, famously observed that since most people cannot do anything well, it does not much matter what they do; and in this sense it does not I suppose matter that some dullards elect to become systems programmers or, now, system administrators. Whether they should be encouraged to do so is another question about which I have a predictable opinion; but I do not think their needs should shape IBM's publications policies. IBM manuals anciently addressed why as well as how. Increasingly, they are being turned into tutorials for the unprepared, who want only to know how at a very low level of generality. The PrOp was and remains an honorable exception. It is not a perfect publication, whatever such a thing may be; but it has evolved over a now very long period of time to meet one class of needs of one class of people; and it does what it was anciently supposed to do very well. Detailed criticisms are appropriate. I register them frequently through the standard IBM channels, which are, as I have already had occasion to observe, responsive. What I am objecting to is an effort to strike down this great work of time, replacing it with one more howto for the unprepared. That there is a generational component in all this I am also ready to concede. I recently had occasion to explain the C switch statement to a very able tween. She did not understand "The switch statement is a multi-way decision that tests whether an expression matches one of a number of constant integer values , and branches accordingly." This is understandable since the switch statement, which uses a branch table, does not test anything and would be of little interest if it did. I suppose that Kernighan and Ritchie, who of course know what is involved here, judged that to explain it would be too complicated and that an explanation would not be understood anyway. They were wrong; but 'their' view, which may be that of some editor, is pernicious and will shortly be pervasive. I have no illusions that I can stop such changes; but, to borrow a phrase from Quine, I can drag my feet.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
