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"if your'e using it as a noun, by the way, you are wrong - I think student needs to be possessive." Exactly. And you need an apostrophe to indicate that if you

"if your'e using it as a noun, by the way, you are wrong - I think student needs to be possessive." Exactly. And you need an apostrophe to indicate that if you want your readers to parse the sentence properly. "I saw an EE student's C Code once" (student is singular) or " I saw some EE students' C code once" (students are plural). I've seen some grammar books recommend an extra s anyway for the latter case as in "I saw some students's C code once" though I suspect that is unused these days. [1] "why are we attacking people's grammar. It's irrelevant to the discussion!" This. Speaking or writing 100% grammatically correct English (assuming such a beast exists, which is a separate discussion) or making a typo here and there is irrelevant to someone's competence as a programmer. Using minor grammatical errors to judge people as incompetent is, at the least, foolish. I don't think strcredzero is incompetent because he missed an apostrophe or wrote an ill formed sentence. But by the same token I don't think Aditya is incompetent as a programmer (which was the topic under discussion btw - EE students being good programmers or not) just because he said "lot competent". Give the guy a break. [1] From Strunk's "Elements of Style" "Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write, Charles's friend Burns's poems the witch's malice This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press."

stcredzero 17y ago
Who ever said anyone was a bad programmer? This is the same irony as the "qualaty" initiative from Dilbert. At that point it was an ironic and relevant quip. It's you guys that turned it into ego bashing -- while displaying grammatical incompetence even as you incorrectly criticize my grammar. Incidentally you're still wrong. Ambiguously parse-able English sentences are still grammatically correct if one of the possibilities is correct. Oh, and you assumed student was a noun when it's an adjective in your analysis. Sheesh! Is English your 1st language? "Student code" where student is a noun acting as adjective is a commonly accepted pattern of use in North America and Britain.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "you assumed student was a noun when it's an adjective in your analysis. Sheesh! " Well that reflects on how well you structure your sentences as a writer doesn't it? Why take the attitude of "my sentence looks completely ill structured but it has multiple possible parses and I know one of them is right and I leave you to figure out which one vs writing clearly in the first place and meanwhile I'll "ironically quip" on some other fellow's minor errors vs sticking to the argument at hand"? "Is English your 1st language?" I already said it wasn't. And I don't need to have it as my first language to show you your sentence structure is sucky. Everyone who has English as a first language doesn't write it well. Conversely some people who have English as a their n-th language speak or write well. So what? " "Student code" where student is a noun acting as adjective is a commonly accepted pattern of use in North America and Britain." And "lot competent" is Indian English. again, so what? Who said adherence to "North American English" is the metric of programming competence of EE students (which was what Aditya was talking about) and you explicitly pointed his sentence as "ironic"? I quote "Aditya:- So trust me, we're lot competent. StrcredZero: Ironically, this needs editing."" It is hard to read your "ironically" as anything other than "you are not as competent as you claim and your sentence structure reveals it" . What was the "irony" here? Bigotry and irony are different. But, whatever, I tire of this bickering and this thread is overlong. I rest my case and yield you the field and the (dubious) victory! [Exit thread]
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    It is hard to read your "ironically" as anything other than "you are not as competent as you claim and your sentence structure reveals it" . What was the "irony" here? Apparently you have a penchant for jumping to conclusions, then behaving defensively when your shortcomings are pointed out. Thanks for revealing yourself so cheaply and easily.

stcredzero 17y ago

Who ever said anyone was a bad programmer? This is the same irony as the "qualaty" initiative from Dilbert. At that point it was an ironic and relevant quip. It's you guys that turned it into ego bashing -- while displaying grammatical incompetence even as you incorrectly criticize my grammar. Incidentally you're still wrong. Ambiguously parse-able English sentences are still grammatically correct if one of the possibilities is correct. Oh, and you assumed student was a noun when it's an adjective in your analysis. Sheesh! Is English your 1st language? "Student code" where student is a noun acting as adjective is a commonly accepted pattern of use in North America and Britain.

plinkplonk 17y ago
"you assumed student was a noun when it's an adjective in your analysis. Sheesh! " Well that reflects on how well you structure your sentences as a writer doesn't it? Why take the attitude of "my sentence looks completely ill structured but it has multiple possible parses and I know one of them is right and I leave you to figure out which one vs writing clearly in the first place and meanwhile I'll "ironically quip" on some other fellow's minor errors vs sticking to the argument at hand"? "Is English your 1st language?" I already said it wasn't. And I don't need to have it as my first language to show you your sentence structure is sucky. Everyone who has English as a first language doesn't write it well. Conversely some people who have English as a their n-th language speak or write well. So what? " "Student code" where student is a noun acting as adjective is a commonly accepted pattern of use in North America and Britain." And "lot competent" is Indian English. again, so what? Who said adherence to "North American English" is the metric of programming competence of EE students (which was what Aditya was talking about) and you explicitly pointed his sentence as "ironic"? I quote "Aditya:- So trust me, we're lot competent. StrcredZero: Ironically, this needs editing."" It is hard to read your "ironically" as anything other than "you are not as competent as you claim and your sentence structure reveals it" . What was the "irony" here? Bigotry and irony are different. But, whatever, I tire of this bickering and this thread is overlong. I rest my case and yield you the field and the (dubious) victory! [Exit thread]
- stcredzero 17y ago
  It is hard to read your "ironically" as anything other than "you are not as competent as you claim and your sentence structure reveals it" . What was the "irony" here? Apparently you have a penchant for jumping to conclusions, then behaving defensively when your shortcomings are pointed out. Thanks for revealing yourself so cheaply and easily.