[Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D

[Don]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 04/10/2011 06:29 PM, Don wrote:
>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 04/09/2011 09:27 PM, dsimcha wrote:
>>>> On 4/9/2011 10:22 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>> On 04/09/2011 08:31 PM, dsimcha wrote:
>>>>>> On 4/9/2011 7:56 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>>>> I think the article's title is missing a comma btw.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Andrei
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Where?
>>>>>
>>>>> Where could it ever be? After "parallelism".
>>>>>
>>>>> Andrei
>>>>
>>>> Actually, I specifically remember learning about this grammar rule in
>>>> middle school. When listing stuff, the comma before the "and" is
>>>> optional. Putting it and not putting it are both correct.
>>>
>>> I see. I go by "Bugs in Writing" (awesome book)
>>
>> Ugh. I have a profound hatred for that book. Rule of thumb: if any style
>> guide warns agains split infinitives, burn it.
> 
> You may want to reconsider. This is one book that most everybody who is 
> in the writing business in any capacity agrees with: my editor, 
> heavyweight technical writers, my advisor and a few other professors...

My experience is quite different. Maybe it's different in the US (I 
encountered the book from an American colleague, I've never seen it used 
by anyone else).


> Besides you can't discount the book on account of one item you disagree 
> with. The book has hundreds of items, and it is near inevitable one will 
> find an issue a couple of them.
> 
> Andrei

For sure, but it was not the only item. The recommendation is use 'that' 
vs 'which' was an even more offensive item. There were several 
recommendations in that book which I thought were dreadful. I also read 
a couple of scathing criticisms of that book. (I think one was in Bill 
Bryson's excellent 'Mother Tongue').
In fairness, it had a few good examples, but in general I could not 
stomach the snobbish pedantry in that book. I've read too much 
functional grammar to take arbitrary normative rules seriously, when 
they are not backed up by an extensive corpus. (Which is why I recommend 
'split infinitives' as a good litmus test -- if they say "don't do it", 
they haven't used a corpus).