Wednesday, November 21, 2001 11:33:55 PM
Sedona, Arizona:  

"Who are you?  What are you?  What do you do?"

I am called David.  I am a child of the Universe, part and parcel of 
it, and I have power over it.  I am a master of the physical and the 
spiritual worlds, and I know how to use them for my benefit and for 
the benefit of others.  I am a seeker of truth, and a teacher.  What 
I know is not for me alone, but for all who share truth with me.  I 
learn, and I help others learn.  What they learn is not necessarily 
what I have learned, and in sharing their discoveries with me, they 
also teach me.  We are peers.  I see no men, women, or children 
spiritually, as all are kindred souls.  I enjoy our physical 
existence, and I know it comes from an existence that transcends the 
physical.  There is more energy in the Universe than we can measure, 
and all phenomena that were rigidly prescribed in the 18th Century 
have become mutable.  All mankind knows more than it ever has before, 
and all mankind knows there is more to know than is already known.  
Yet, Aristotle noted, we know everything already.  

When I was in engineering school I took many of my math courses twice.  
It took me longer than many engineering students to understand the 
principles my teachers presented with academic clockwork precision.  
There were those who struggled harder than I, and who eventually 
turned to other disciplines.  There were those in neighboring 
disciplines who suffered the difficulty of learning the mathematical 
principles that I had come to understand.  So in the hallways, in the 
student lounges, and in the study halls, I shared what I had learned.  
I taught electronics to my classmates, programming to the freshmen, 
and calculus to the physical chemistry students.  This was done 
without visible material reward; the reward was that I understood 
the subjects more clearly myself.  

Lately I have been teaching explicitly, bringing the knowledge of 
computing at the nuts-and-bolts level to people who are interested in 
finding out how computers work, and who are interested in making them 
work in new and interesting ways.  I have been teaching programming 
in three languages.  To some students I may appear the Sage, the 
Authority, but I make it clear that I learn with them.  Every day 
there is a new discovery, a new idea that I can share with others, a 
new way to teach a computer to do my job for me.  My mission is to 
help the people become more comfortable with the technology they have 
created, and to help them create more comfortable technology.  In 
fulfilling that mission I also make myself more comfortable with 
technology, and I discover new ways to make technology more 
comfortable.  This is a cycle that creates wealth for everyone, not 
just for myself.  All gain in the long run.  


Monday, 19 November, 2001 9:21:01 AM

When you teach, you learn.  I have been going over other details of 
the article I wrote on 3 September.  Recently, during a weekly quiz, 
I took a new look at the The POSIX.1 Standard:  A Programmer's 
Guide, by Fred Zlotnick.  In it, he notes that variables starting 
with one or two underscores are reserved for system library writers, 
and that application programmers should steer clear of them.  There 
are a slew of other reserved naming forms, attempting to keep name 
space collision to a minimum.  The net result is that one should 
check the POSIX standard before making up names for one's own 
convenience, such as for header guards.  

Another thing that I have seen lately, that I violated in my work 
last spring, was that one should avoid including other headers in a 
header file "at all costs."  It appears that unexpected interactions 
can be kept to a minimum if the specific headers for each C or C++ 
source code file are included explicitly.  Jesse Liberty alerted me 
to this issue in two of his books, Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours, 
and Teach Yourself C++ for Linux in 21 Days.  


Sunday, 11 November, 2001 2:38:25 AM

Live and learn.  I wrote an article on 3 September that described  
header guards, and that proposed using them for selective extern 
declarations.  After taking another look at the situation, it seems 
that this is not a great idea.  Global variables are pretty 
undesirable, and not extensible.  From a C++ point of view, any data 
members that were publicly accessible would be undesirable at the 
outset.  So, while technically possible, my proposal would not lead 
to maintainable, extensible applications.  

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