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Let me tell you a story about a guy named Jed...
A long long time ago (pre-ANSI C), in a galaxy far far away I had worked for a company that had to develop internal "C" coding standards and "Jed" worked on one aspect of the standard while I worked on another. We would hold weekly meetings to reconcile our differences. In attendance, we had other professionals for simple sanity checking and to gain insights from different points of view.
Chris was one of our attendees and was a very experienced software veteran who had plenty of code in various satellite systems orbiting our planet today. By then, Chris was in upper management and graced us with his wisdom when he could.
Well during one of our weekly meetings, "Jed" and I got into a simple disagreement on a Rule about header files. We were at an impasse, so we waited for Chris to arrive and have him make the final decision: about five of us professional engineers were in the room.
When Chris arrived, he heard the arguments, and quickly announced that I was right. (Hence, Jed was wrong).
Well, Jed freaked out and wanted to take the guy outside and teach him a lesson! ... Jed was red-faced, quickly stood up, even took a step towards Chris, and said "Chris, lets just step outside and settle this! I am right and you don't know what you're talking about!" etc etc.
The other attendees and I were duly impressed over Jed's technique of handling technical disagreements. Especially with upper management.
Instead of Jed trying to learn that he *might* be wrong, Jed leaped into the confrontation method of getting his way. Bullies do this because they lack the brain-power to reason through a disagreement. It is a childish trait.
Children are at a huge disadvantage when arguing with "an adult" (or somebody who is much smarter than they are) and they will become very frustrated over their strong desire to assert themselves and their inability to win the mental sparring. They will get physical and/or verbally abusive. Some people out grow this, and some don't.
I think Jed showed his 'abilities' quite well. I find that this is true with so many people on so many subjects. I've seen this behavior many times over. I've seen it here on this forum.
When an "Original Poster", asks a question and people try to answer it (after much refinement of the OP's question) you get these side-bar posts where somebody will start attacking another poster's efforts. And I mean 'attack' and not augment or refine.
I don't have a problem with correcting or clarifying others, or even the occasional sprinkling of sarcasm, but when it is ALWAYS devolves into some vindictive vitriol between a brisling poster and the rest of 'us,' I wonder if it is out of ignorance, malice, or some twisted form of self-entertainment. All three of which are adolescent behaviors. (en.wikipedia.org/.../Adolescence)
Since the regular players here are detail oriented and thus they are savvy enough to know who I'm talking about, I don't think I have to name names.
He is critical enough to figure it out himself, so I would expect that the offender would read this and ask himself if he is demonstrating Ignorance, Malice, Entertainment, or is he being an adult and providing a constructive post before he does so.
And, I hope his "Mea Clupea" (en.wikipedia.org/.../Mea_culpa) will be a silent one, because I'm kind of tired of reading his Hostile Postings (HP).
</rant> --Cpt. Vince Foster 2nd Cannon Place Fort Marcy Park, VA
This is an open forum, which bared a certain cost. People can and do occasionally post mistakes (me included) and personal opinions are sometimes introduced as facts. These can be attributed to the shortcomings of people in general and software developers in particular. So, I am big supporter of the freedom of expression here, even by trolls (excluding really annoying people that hijack posts and the like). So I don't think that Jack Sprat is a troll. Not at all. The fact that he posts contentions opinions certainly contributes to the level of the technical debates here, as far as I can judge!
"I said 'header files shall contain no executable code'"
Before C++ templates, I would (almost) have agreed with this one. But the C++ standard have more or less forced this issue - any template function must have the implementation visible to the compiler by at least one source file that is making use of the function with the specific template parameters.
The end result is that STL has huge amounts of code in the header files. Not nice, but needed.
Besides the C++ template functions, there could still be advantageous to declare a number of small inline functions in a header file. I prefer inline functions instead of #defined code expansions.
If often create an inline_<target>.h file with a number of tiny helper functions to make my code less bound to the hardware.