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Unpublished Slashdot Submission Dragged Into Reddit Drama About C++ Paper's Title 117

Posted by EditorDavid from the undefined-behaviors dept.
Reddit's moderators drew some criticism after "locking" a discussion about C++ paper/proposal author Andrew Tomazos. The URL (in the post with the locked discussion) had led to a submission for Slashdot's queue of potential (but unpublished) stories, which nevertheless attracted 178 upvotes on Reddit and another 85 comments. That unpublished Slashdot submission was also submitted to Hacker News, where it drew another 38 upvotes but was also eventually flagged.

Back on Reddit's C++ subreddit (which has 300,000 members), a "direct appeal" was submitted to the moderators to unlock Reddit's earlier discussion (drawing over 100 upvotes). But there's one problem with this drama, as Slashdot reader brantondaveperson pointed out. "There appears to be no independent confirmation of this story anywhere. The only references to it are this Slashdot story, and a Reddit story. Neither cite sources or provide evidence." This drew a response from the person submitting the potential story to Slashdot: You raise a valid point. The communication around this was private. The complaint about the [paper's] title, the author's response, and the decision to expel were all communicated by either private email, on private mailing lists or in private in-person meetings. These private communications could be quoted by participants in said communications. Please let us know if that would be sufficient.
The paper had already drawn some criticism in a longer blog post by programmer Izzy Muerte (which called it "a fucking cleaned up transcript of a ChatGPT conversation".) It's one of six papers submitted this year by Tomaszos to the ISO's "WG21" C++ committee. Tomazos (according to his LinkedIn profile) is "lead programmer" of videogame company Fury Games (founded by him and his wife). It also shows an earlier two-year stint as a Google senior software engineer.

There were two people claiming direct knowledge of the situation posting on Reddit. A user named kritzikratzi posted: I contacted Andrew Tomazos directly. According to him the title "The Undefined Behavior Question" caused complaints inside WG21. The Standard C++ Foundation then offered two choices (1) change the paper title (2) be expelled. Andrew Tomazos chose (2).
A Reddit user Dragdu posted: He wasn't expelled for that paper, but rather this was the last straw. And he wasn't banned from the [WG21] committee, that is borderline impossible, but rather the organization he was representing told him to fuck off and don't represent them anymore. If he can find different organization to represent, he can still attend... Tomazos has been on lot of people's shit list, because his contributions suck... He decided that the title is too important to his ViSiOn for the chatgpt BS submitted as a paper, and that he won't change the title. This was the straw that broke the camel's back and his "sponsor" told him to fuck off....
There was also some back-and-forth on Hacker News. bun_terminator: r/cpp mods just woke up, banning everyone who question... this lunatic behavior.

(Reddit moderator): We did not go on a banning spree, we banned only one person, you. After removing the comment where you insulted someone, I checked your history, noticed that you did not meaningfully participate in r/cpp outside this thread, and decided to remove someone from the community who'd only be there to cause trouble.
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Unpublished Slashdot Submission Dragged Into Reddit Drama About C++ Paper's Title More

Unpublished Slashdot Submission Dragged Into Reddit Drama About C++ Paper's Title

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  • Yeah... no, let's not do this (Score:5, Informative)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @04:06PM (#64969049) Homepage

    Let's not do this. Not here, nor anywhere.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      To equate "The Undefined Behavior Question" with Karl Marx's "On The Jewish Question" simply because they both contain the word "question" is beyond absurd. It is nothing more than people desperately looking for something to be outraged about.

      • Srsly? I figured they were just griping over the fact that the language casually permits undefined behavior and they didn't want it rubbed in their faces because they still haven't accepted the fact that C++ is the new COBOL.

        • Ironically, every part of Rust is undefined. There's no spec.

          • On the contrary, Rust is completely defined. What is it that you want out of a spec? Things that can't be changed even after you've realized they're broken anti-patterns? Here's C++ in a nutshell:

            https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/s... [xkcd.com]

            They all exist within one language whose very name is a now-discredited anti-pattern. Go, Python and Rust deliberately removed the ++ operator because it's a common source of bugs (go technically has it, but defines it as a statement rather than an operator.) One of Bjarne Stroustru

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          C is supposed to have undefined behaviour. The undefined stuff is where different CPU architectures behave differently, and defining that behaviour would introduce significant performance penalties.

          If that's not what you want, use a different language.

          C++ is just a bad idea for a whole variety of reasons that I won't get into.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          Srsly? I figured they were just griping over the fact that the language casually permits undefined behavior and they didn't want it rubbed in their faces because they still haven't accepted the fact that C++ is the new COBOL.

          I have always thought that java was the newer COBOL.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cito ( 1725214 )

        Another case of the woke mentally retarded.

      • Wait, THAT's the objection to the paper title? This has to be a troll.

  • Maybe I'm just not caffeinated enough... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @04:09PM (#64969055)

    I read through that entire summary, but I still have no idea what this is actually about.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      internet drama

    • The Unpublished Submission (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @04:21PM (#64969089)
      Maybe they should have published it in TFS at least, to avoid such confusion:

      suntzu3000 [slashdot.org] writes:

      Andrew Tomazos, a long-time contributor to the ISO C++ standards committee, recently published a technical paper titled The Undefined Behavior Question [open-std.org]. The paper explores the semantics of undefined behavior in C++ and examines this topic in the context of related research. However, controversy arose regarding the paper's title.

      Some critics pointed out similarities between the title and Karl Marx's 1844 essay On The Jewish Question [marxists.org], as well as the historical implications of the Jewish Question [wikipedia.org], a term associated with debates and events leading up to World War II. This led to accusations that the title was "historically insensitive."

      In response to requests to change the title, Mr. Tomazos declined, stating that "We cannot allow such an important word as 'question' to become a form of hate speech." He argued that the term was used in its plain, technical sense and had no connection to the historical context cited by critics.

      Following this decision, Mr. Tomazos was expelled from the Standard C++ Foundation, and his membership in the ISO WG21 C++ Standards Committee was revoked.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

        Me: Should I learn Rust now or brush up on modern C++?
        Me: /reads this about paranoid Leftists running C++/
        Me: Well that settles it.

        It appears that the White House warning about unsafe languages has driven the C++ community mad.

        This installment is just the latest example.

        I don't even care technically. A safe subset of C++ would have been welcome by almost everybody. Like I haven't had to update codebases a dozen times to get warning-free compiles. 95% of those warnings were legit too.

        "Asking tough question

      • I didn't know about that Marx essay, but I'm certainly offended by the C++ paper title, because it reminds me of the Karelian question [wikipedia.org]. I really wanted to be a C++ programmer, but now I'm forced to stay away from the language that disrespects my Karelian roots.

        • Right, that's a great example. 'The X Question' is a common phrase to describe political issues of the day, usually those that would involve great change. Just because one side of some of those questions became strongly accepted ("The Woman Question" in early feminism, "The Negro Question" during emancipation) does not mean any such phrase is offensive. It's used in a technical sense.

        • I am reminded of "The million dollar question", and that makes me upset because millionaires shouldn't exist, because capitalism is evil.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mirddes ( 798147 )

        what the actual fuck are these people thinking? if we cannot have rational conversations using plain language what hope is there?

      • Wow. Good thing he didn't follow-up his technical paper with a modest proposal.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Calydor ( 739835 )

        So because Marx wrote that thing 180 years ago we can never again name anything The X Question?

        • Yes, that obsession of over policing speech, especially focusing on form over the actual content or intent is batshit crazy.

          The thing that hurts me most in that is that that kind of braindead behavior most of the time comes from my camp. At least from people who supposedly share most of my values. And people who should have read 1984, and who should have taken it as a warning, not as a manual.

    • Re:Maybe I'm just not caffeinated enough... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @04:40PM (#64969107)

      There is a small NGO called "The Standard C++ foundation" https://isocpp.org/about [isocpp.org] . One director is Stroustrup, one funder is Microsoft. Andrew Tomazos is a programmer paid by them to work on the C++ standard. Tomazos wrote a paper entitled "On undefined behavior question".

      The paper is the transcript of a conversation with ChatGPT, where he asks questions like "give examples of UB in C++", "how should C++26 answer The Question" https://wg21.link/p3403 [wg21.link]

      (My opinion is) the paper is an obvious piece of shit. Ways to make it a good paper necessarily include modifying the title (e.g. "A conversation with chatGPT about ..."). Other things would be needed IMO, such as include a discussion about the factual accuracy of what ChatGPT said, or a human-produced bibliographical review; but at a minimum modifying the title is required, because right now it is obviously incomplete and misleading.

      Tomazos probably has some specific controversial ideas about what C++26 should look like, and as he found an unexpected support from the answers of ChatGPT, he sought to try and convince the ISO committee that his opinions are correct.

      He posted the ChatGPT conversation to the ISO committee. The Standard C++ Foundation found the whole thing to be an embarrassment. He declined the option to modify the the title, and got fired. He still can attend the ISO committee, if he finds another employer ready to support him.

      I only read a small bit. I did not try understand the part where reddit is involved.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Tomazos wrote a paper entitled "On undefined behavior question".

        Actually entitled The Undefined Behavior Question [open-std.org].

        I'm beginning to think that some people's need to appear slighted are making them see offenses that aren't really there. I'm leaving it up to the reader as to whether I think C++ needs more work or I'm being anti-Semitic. Go ahead. You have two opportunities.

      • I skimmed the summary too and was like 'wtf', it's a bunch of drama with no details. Yours is much clearer.

      • Thanks! Read the paper and it's a bunch of AI slop, presumably they couldn't reject it for being AI slop so they had to come up with some ridiculous alternative reason instead.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Uecker ( 1842596 )

        As the person who wrote the original paper for C ended up co-author on the main paper of Andrew (but not of the paper in question). I do not think this paper was written by ChatGPT. Andrew also denies it (on Reddit). The technical content seems ok to me and when this paper was discussed in a subcommittee of C++ which I attended as a guest, nobody complained about the title or the content. I agree the title is unfortunate.

    • The explanation (Score:2, Informative)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 )

      Someone submitted a paper [open-std.org] with the title "The Undefined Behavior Question". It talks about about whether an undefined behaviour in the C++ language should affect the visible results of previous code; ie - whether undefined behaviour should have visible side effects. (I think, it's pretty... um... well, let's just say that's the impression I got.)

      The title was thought to be too close to "The Jewish Question", a hot topic of debate in the 19th and 20th century, culminating in Nazi Germany with the "Final Solu

      • There are plenty of alternatives that are less controversial than master/slave. Leader/follower, primary/secondary. It's worth picking one of those just to avoid the drama.

        • Re: The explanation (Score:5, Insightful)

          by hey00 ( 5046921 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @08:18AM (#64970291)

          No it's not worth it, because there is no appeasing that kind of people. Every time you yield to one of their demands, they will find another thing to be offended by.

          Today is master slave, so you pick leader follower. But tomorrow, they'll come after leader follower because it implies two classes of processes, with one being second class, like how blacks were second class citizens once.

          Their whole raison d'Ãtre is too ne offended by something, they don't care about the actual meaning and intent behind the words, they always will find some asinine 6 levels connection to some -ism for some innocuous words.

          Until we end up with with a language expunged of every nuance and emotion. People already self censor themselves like crazy on social media, muting any swear words, even replacing words like "death" with "unalive" to not anger the almighty algorithm that's beentaken over by political correctness. Autocorrect keyboards start to not even recognize swear words like fuck or shit.

          The only valid response to those people is to tell them to remove the stick they have up their asses and to fuck off. And if they are offended by it, good, because for once in their lives, they correctly grasped the intent behind the words.

          • The nice thing about having a list of words to be avoided and recommended replacements is that there isn't much opportunity for scope creep without making it obvious that's what it is. Naming is hard but it doesn't affect engineering directly, except as it applies to readability. Now, something like not having two classes of program----that's an engineering issue.

            • You think they care about it being obvious or not? They don't. The list has been increasing and changing every year and it hasn't stopped them. On the contrary, it being every changing ensure they'll always have new stuff to be offended by.

              And in some cases, like in the algorithm, the list is secret. Have you seen the content and length of the suspected list of words that give you the algorithmic death penalty on YouTube? It's fucking insanity.

              • YouTube content moderation is an entirely different thing than code naming. For one thing, YouTube has an adversarial threat model, while code naming has a collaborative bonus. Completely different animals.

                • I don't think they are that different. They both are the result of political correctness going up to 11. The people who complain about master slave are the same as the ones who harass brands who sponsor "problematic" people or who pushed apple from the inside to replace the evil gun emoji with a water gun.

                  • There are words that are, by social consensus, inappropriate for polite society to use. I see no problem with that set of words adapting to the times now and then.

                    • First, even assuming there was a consensus, it applies for some circumstances and circles. I won't use swear words around kids, for example, but that's it, no words is completely inappropriate in all contexts.

                      Second, there is no consensus, only a handful of power hungry perpetually offended who managed to bully other people.

                      You remind me of the morons who cheered when those assholes got a teacher fired when she used the word ni-gger to talk about the meaning of words, with clearly zero malicious intent.

                    • And yes, I had to add that - because even on this f- website, there's a censoring filter that prevents you from submitting a comment if you dare use the evil scary words of de-ath whose name you should not say.

                      Ate Harry Potter references still ok, or should I resign from my job in shame too?

                      F--k political correctness, -uc- censorship, and fc-k all those that support it, and those who are fine with it.

                      Oh, the censorship filter strikes again, I use "too many junk characters", oh noes, it's scary, it will hurt

        • No, the people making the drama need to be told to fuck off in no uncertain terms.

      • Objecting to a paper because it has the word "Question" in the title is the most brain-dead thing I have ever heard. Perhaps, as some have claimed, the content is crap, but anyone who objected because of the paper's title should be booted out of the organization as an unserious person who's just there to cause trouble.

    • Yeah, I have no idea. It’s like the summary was written by Vicky Pollard from Little Britain https://youtu.be/K4vgtBHpA1I?s... [youtu.be]

    • Re:Maybe I'm just not caffeinated enough... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @06:33PM (#64969325) Journal
      This is the main link [izzys.casa].

      The short thing is that people are using the C++ committee as a popularity contest, focusing on cliques and clans, with emotional arguments trying to carry the day rather than technical arguments. One person tried to use ChatGPT to maximize his personal popularity/power, but it didn't work. All this does not bode well for C++. Here's a quote from the main link:

      "These people...are typically some of the most insufferable people on this planet, and they will find any pedantic excuse to say they are right from the mathematical perspective, and they have to be right using facts and logic when in reality they’re just finding any excuse to not take someone’s work seriously."

  • Don't post drivel like this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @04:24PM (#64969095)

    Seriously. This is pure garbage. Who cares what's going on at Reddit. If I cared, I'd be over there. I'm sure there had to be something better to post then this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      Hehe, it's like an infomercial - "Wait, there's more ..."

    • Agreed. This is drama, not information.
      The thundering herds over in R-land are a bit (okay, a lot) dimmer. While the herds at HN are a bit more elitist and overconfident while hiding a few gems. At least here, there's a tradition of vocal expression, sensible moderation, and not being insta-perma-deplatformed for not professing complete agreement with the one pre-approved ideology. R-land tends to give power to Wikipedia-editor, power-hungry know-nothings and fickle, ideologically-conformist children masqu

  • This seems like garbage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @04:54PM (#64969123)

    It's just idiot drama. I'd love more activity on Slashdot, but not with unnewsworthy crap.

  • WTF is going on? (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @05:17PM (#64969153)

    Where is the story? Is there a story? Is the story that someone is having an internet argument about something that never made it to Slashdot? Like really WTF is this incoherent psychobabble?

    This has got to be the most dysfunctional summary of what sounds like a dysfunctional story I've ever seen on Slashdot.

    • Re:WTF is going on? (Score:5, Funny)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @05:24PM (#64969173)

      Where is the story? Is there a story?

      I take it the story is that /. had a brief brush with relevancy for a hot minute.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Matheus ( 586080 )

        It was worth publishing purely for the fact I got to read "fuck off" multiple times in a /. summary this morning which made me smile...

        The rest of it? Yeah pure internet squabbling BS with absolutely no merit..

        BUT dang since I've started typing: To those railing on this being woke censorship? Whatever.. they made it clear in the summary the title wasn't the issue. The crap article it was attached to along with the crap previous behavior of the author led to them being done with his crap. Period. If the auth

    • Seriously, yes. I was already feeling mentally fatigued by the time I reached the start of the second paragraph. I think that a personal record, for Slashdot articles.
      • I got downmodded, but that is literally part of the issues involved [izzys.casa].

        • Wtf is that shit? I'm not spending 105 minutes to read all that, especially when the few lines I've read strike me as the unhinged ramblings of some paranoid guy.

          Do you have a tl;dr ?

          • I wrote this summary: https://meta.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]

            Briefly, someone wants power, doesn't know how to get it, and complains about everyone in hopes of getting some power. Sometimes that works. Writes a lot in hopes of shutting down opposition.

            If you search for O(0) there's a rather entertaining anecdote in there, too.

            • I read the anecdote and your summary, I still don't get it. Mainly because the writing style of that anecdote really looks like the one I expect from the kind of people who want power, don't know how to achieve it, and try to size it by bullying.

              Is it worth reading that article? Is the author actually rational despite the unhinged writing style?

  • This is the question that the paper addresses (albeit awkwardly):

    Should undefined operations be allowed to affect observable operations that happen before them

    I'm a little out of it, but what exactly is that talking about?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      The C++ standard is extremely literal about undefined behavior being undefined. A program that triggers undefined behavior is not guaranteed to do anything. A simple example along the lines of that question is: A program contains a function that has a side effect (say, I/O) and later triggers undefined behavior (say, a null pointer dereference). The undefined behavior means that the "happens-before" side effect might not ever occur. The question asks whether C++ should keep that level of undefinedness.

      • The example you mention is rather annoying if you're trying to debug with print statements over a serial cable. There are ways around that problem, though.

        What is the argument, though? Who has such strong opinions about what happens when you hit a null pointer dereference? It sounds like bike shedding. As long as you can get the debug output, why does it matter?

        • Since the beginning of dawn of C++, I have a small file class (class because the macro evolved into supporting ports and files, and has a destructor), that flushes every IO.

          Who has such strong opinions about what happens when you hit a null pointer dereference? it throws an exception and unwinds the stack. Depending how you do the IO, e.g. with a printf() ... it never happens.

          • Nucleus OS had a printf() that would run asynchronously in another thread to load things onto the serial port. And when it crashed, it was a hard crash (I assume depending on how your system was set up). So it was really hard to tell where the system actually crashed. Eventually I just put the print statement/flush into a mutex and called that instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            • Depending on many things, printf debugging can be super awful, and worst case: it is the only thing you can do, and it is super super awful.

              Perhaps remember, to use the #line directive, and make a macro to call your debug output to contain the file and line from where it is called. I guess you did that?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          The example I gave is an extreme one. The general argument is whether UB allows compilers to make useful optimizations that would not be allowed without having things be UB.

          For example, for code like: if (ptr) if-clause else else-clause ... *ptr ...

          If none of that code changes ptr then the compiler can omit the branch and else-clause. Or if code divides by an integer value, the compiler may transform other code assuming that the integer divisor is non-zero.

          It's a very old argument that has been made many

          • Why not just throw it in a compiler flag, like many other compiler optimizations, and be done with it? You can put it into -Ofast instead of -O3.

  • Almost seems like Reddit needs to offer ways to review actions like this.

    A place to find blocked/removed things, and the reasons behind the actions (and who did it, etc). No, Reddit cannot be assumed to deal with all cases that need this (meaning on their own, and in secret).

    • I just got banned from yet another subreddit, ironically for a comment about censorship. Reddit is lost; it's not worth trying to fix.

  • Don't feed the trolls. (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @08:13PM (#64969489) Homepage
    I have no idea what this is about since the summary reads just like a forum squabble between a troll and a moderator and the plebs for some reason backing the troll (we've all seen this, it ends badly for everyone).

    Giving this 'discussion' credit by posting it here is just feeding the trolls, to put it nicely. Slashdot should show some editorial abilities instead whatever this is. It ain't news.

  • TL;DC (Score:3)

    by dcooper_db9 ( 1044858 ) on Sunday November 24, 2024 @09:35PM (#64969619)
    They actually published a story about a story that wasn't worth publishing. I miss the days when Slashdot had editors.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Don't they have editors now, or rather, do they have editors who care about more than clicks and ad eyeballs
      • I don't think they are even thinking about clicks and eyeballs, just getting a certain number of articles posted each day.
  • > the title "The Undefined Behavior Question" caused complaints inside WG21.

    Some people seek out ways to be offended. To them, anything ending with the word "question" is a reference to the antisemitic "The Jewish Question." News: you have no right to not be offended, and are the ones who should be castigated for intolerance. Get over yourselves.

    Best comments from Reddit:

    The Hippogratic [sic] Question (Lloyd, 2009): The question of determining the genuine works of Hippocrates.

    The Coal Question (

  • What the hell is wrong with "The undefined behavior question in C++" as the title of a paper?

  • It occurs to me that the paper raises a legitimate issue that will probably never get resolved now because of some esoteric (and in my opinion invalid) association with something historically awful. Today it's C++ so maybe not a big deal. But this is the way of the future. We'll spend all our time arguing about inconsequential minutia rather than resolving actual issues.
  • ...the fact that I read the entire summary and have no idea what is going on, or that I had to get through over half the entire summary before this terrible, poorly skilled writer even bothered to mention what the offending title was ("The Undefined Behavior Question", if you care or know why this is a problem).

  • Andrew Tomazos has posted a formal statement describing the incident on his website: First-hand Account of “The Undefined Behavior Question” Incident [tomazos.com]

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