Is this a true statement?

[David C. Ullrich]

On 24 Jun 2001 14:18:22 GMT, carlf at panix.com (Carl Fink) wrote:

>In article <3b35ed3b.1401529 at nntp.sprynet.com>, David C. Ullrich wrote:
>
>Are you trolling or just having trouble with English?

Are you trying to be insulting or just having trouble 
with English yourself? You accused me of _intentionally_
missing the distinction between "writing a file" and
"writing a program", but when I ask for an exlplanation
of the difference you don't give one.

(Probably you thought that what's below clarifies the
distinction.)

>> I may well be misunderstanding something, but it's not deliberate.
>> What _is_ the distinction between "write to a file" and
>> "create a new program"? (I'm assuming that the "program"
>> in question is the device driver. _Is_ that something other
>> than a file? And if not then what does a C program that
>> writes device drivers do, other than write a file?)
>
>But "writing a device driver" isn't something the *program* does at
>all.  It's something a *programmer* does.  The programmer, working in
>Python, could technically write a device driver, but for practical
>purposes wouldn't be "using" Python to create the driver.  He/she
>would be writing the device driver in pure machine language and the
>only use of Python would be to perform a file write operation.
>
>"Writing a device driver", I repeat, is what the *programmer* does,
>not what the *program that writes the actual file* does.

So Python cannot write a device driver without a programmer
telling it exactly what to do. That's certainly true. But
I don't know why you would think _I_ was trolling here -
seems to me that if this is how we're using the words then
Python cannot do anything, and neither can C. (Which is
why I had no idea we were using the words this way.)

Or is writing a device driver something that C can do
without a programmer?

>-- 
>Carl Fink		carlf at dm.net



David C. Ullrich
*********************
"Sometimes you can have access violations all the 
time and the program still works." (Michael Caracena, 
comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc 5/1/01)