Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 20:28:17 -0500 Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 18:28:07 -0700 From: Patricia Shanahan User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Thunderbird/3.1.9 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Java puzzler References: <871987d9-1034-441d-9d33-b2dd6b4de234@glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Lines: 38 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 75.8.126.96 X-Trace: sv3-A3nRhtlQzTwbzlxeKDC7xMvGT8IhCUrIJ/DmMgizfiq96GAL00ISYnojNliz4tMNfWMLuvl1Iu/8pF+!6DyTPs26AKS7qwt1GisA7D7HgfCswwDzXuTmknSTuF3BC5nVYW3TQFxDfik6xkaIdlGiGXQ+nLyU!yRY6iXEdRQRLiLj5MiC1lv8uaeXaoQc6Jl4q+r40shc= X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 3259 Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:4034 On 5/12/2011 9:11 AM, Lew wrote: > On 05/12/2011 11:13 AM, Patricia Shanahan wrote: >> On 5/12/2011 5:35 AM, Lew wrote: >> ... >>> Telling yourself that Lew has a "magical ability" is a foolish fiction. >>> I just am not lazy about the JLS. Maybe Patricia has one; I can believe >>> that. Not me. I'm smart, but the key is I'M AT LEAST TRYING! >> >> I'm not a useful data point for this discussion. The writers of the JLS >> benefited from the multiple decades of language specification writing >> the preceded it. For example, the syntax notation is a descendant of the >> BNF notation in the Algol 60 report. >> >> Before I started learning Java I had a combination of formal education >> and practical, on-the-job experience in reading and applying programming >> language specifications. When I started reading the JLS it was just a >> new instance of a familiar type of document. >> >> There is no way for any of us, myself included, to know how easy or >> difficult I would have found the JLS if I had read it without that >> background. > > Your experience still provides a useful example. > > Perhaps you or I do have a special skill at reading specifications. If > so, it's the special skill that distinguishes better programmers from > worse ones, and a very powerful if not actually requisite skill. I've known many really excellent programmers who never read language specifications. They worked from a combination of good secondary sources, experimentation, and asking questions when in doubt. The only time I've felt programming language specification reading was a really important skill was when I was project leader for compilers at Celerity Computing, and had to make decisions about what features to implement and how to implement them. Patricia