General > General Technical Chat

Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?

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Richard Crowley:

--- Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on November 07, 2018, 02:57:53 pm ---The other day I went to a restaurant. The food was not good so the chef asked me how many meals I cooked.
He sure showed me.
Hint: your "argument" is nonsense
--- End quote ---

Wow, speaking of nonsense......

rhb:
I had a quick scan of my library.  I have at least 5 of Don's books.  Quite likely 7 or 8.  The only author from that period who  comes close to Don is Joseph Carr with John Lenk a distant 3rd.

Don is probably the most successful ($$$$) general audience electronics writer ever by a very wide margin. If you're that successful you do what *you* want to do.  Not what someone else wants you to do.

The OP obviously has no grasp of what electronics was like in 1974 when the TTL Cookbook came out.  That was 2 years before Ed Roberts introduced the Altair 8800.  The microprocessor did not even exist.  I sat in on an Electronics 101 course as a break from looking through a microscope all day.  The instructor was a semiconductor physicist who designed and built a computer from scratch using TTL logic.  By the time he finished it, the 8080 had come out and it was hopelessly obsolete.

I doubt that there was anyone of significance to hobbyists technically that did not have several of Don's books.  Jobs wouldn't, but Wozniak would.  The TV Typewriter book was published in 1976, the year the Altair was introduced.  If you had an Altair you had Don's book.

Don's books were full of clever tips like using a memory chip to implement complex arbitrary logic which is exactly what FPGAs do today.  Don understood and wrote to his audience better than any other author on digital electronics.  Carr's focus is RF and Lenk's was repair.

I think the cook's was response was a polite "f*** off punk".  Doubtless the OP demanded to see the chef and it was the only response the chef could think of.

In Vacuo Veritas:

--- Quote from: Richard Crowley on November 07, 2018, 06:11:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on November 07, 2018, 02:57:53 pm ---The other day I went to a restaurant. The food was not good so the chef asked me how many meals I cooked.
He sure showed me.
Hint: your "argument" is nonsense
--- End quote ---

Wow, speaking of nonsense......

--- End quote ---

Having a hard time following my reply? Asking someone else how well they can cook has noting to do with the meal in front of them.
Just like asking how many articles I wrote has nothing to do with what I think of someone else's articles.

If I used your logic, I could never criticize a car unless I built one (or even more), etc.

Is that so hard to grasp?

Simon:
why is it your threads are always controversial? you are a right pain in the ass on this forum. One day you will push me to get my hammer out!

CatalinaWOW:

--- Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on November 07, 2018, 06:42:54 pm ---
--- Quote from: Richard Crowley on November 07, 2018, 06:11:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on November 07, 2018, 02:57:53 pm ---The other day I went to a restaurant. The food was not good so the chef asked me how many meals I cooked.
He sure showed me.
Hint: your "argument" is nonsense
--- End quote ---

Wow, speaking of nonsense......

--- End quote ---

Having a hard time following my reply? Asking someone else how well they can cook has noting to do with the meal in front of them.
Just like asking how many articles I wrote has nothing to do with what I think of someone else's articles.

If I used your logic, I could never criticize a car unless I built one (or even more), etc.

Is that so hard to grasp?

--- End quote ---

Perhaps you will understand your argument turned around.   People paid for those writings of Don Lancaster.  No one sells that much material if those buying don't find value in it.  I personally didn't like everything he wrote, but found way more than half to be of interest.  The remainder was mostly good enough stuff, just not of interest to me.  Stuff like his PostScript mania.  In your terms that is like saying I enjoyed the appetizer and main course but didn't care for the deserts.  Does that make a bad cook?  Other people at the table liked the desert but didn't care for the appetizer.

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