In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Peter Lairo wrote:
>
> Except for that the suggestion was directed at *me* as a "suggestion" on
> what I should be doing insted of voicing my opinion on what *I* think is
> important.
Well, yes. That's why people give advice (one hopes); to point out that
it might be better to do x than y. I realize you feel this keyword is
important, but I'm inclined to agree with Asa, who, after all, has been in
contact with a lot of people who want to help but have limited or no
experience with programming or with our codebase, but want to do something
to help.
> And as I have pointed out countless times, I am no
> programmer! How on earth would I then be able to even look at the code
> (I have ono clue), let along find code that would serve as a good
> example.
I'm not a programmer either, in the sense that I couldn't produce a C++
patch without a lot of blind cut-and-paste, but I do have a grasp of basic
C-like syntax (Javascript, Java, C++, C, ad nauseam have basically the
same syntax if you look at how they do comments, group functions, write
conditionals, etc.), and I know that was my reaction when I first started
looking at the code. "What are all these functions getting called?
What's a PRUnichar? Why can't they use normal variable types? These must
be pointers-aack, I can't do pointers." But I kept on looking at areas
where I thought I knew what the program must be doing, read the comments,
looked at the patches, etc., and now I have a reasonable idea of what's
going on in the code I've studied. It's not impossible.
> The statement was *meant* to be cynical - whether it is a good
> suggestion for *others* or not. That is clear. And that is why I will no
> longer pursue this issue :(
I think you underestimate yourself, Peter.
--
Chris Hoess
