Title: ACCU: The Early Days (Part 2)

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 10 May 2018 18:35:50 +01:00 or Thu, 10 May 2018 18:35:50 +01:00

Summary: Francis Glassborow continues his look at the history of ACCU.

Body: 

I left off these reminiscences with me being Membership Secretary and the new formed committee agreeing to publish C Vu four times a year. A regular publication schedule is important because it helps get material to publish. Deadlines focus the minds of potential contributors.

We had set the date for an AGM for late spring and the publication date for the next issue of C Vu to be just prior to the AGM. When the day arrived, I discovered that the next issue was only in draft and had not been printed. I had no desire to face the membership with such an immediate failure and threw enough of a fit to persuade the Chair (Martin Houston) to take the print-out and get enough copies photo-copied to ensure that all attendees at the meeting had a copy.

I was even more annoyed when the editor of C Vu said that the next issue would be late because he was going to be in the US in the weeks prior to the scheduled publication date.

New members were going to be finding someone to ask about why they had not had the scheduled issue. Almost certainly that would be the membership secretary, as they would think something had gone wrong with their membership.

After some thought, I turned up to the next committee meeting with an offer that they would be unable to refuse. I volunteered to produce C Vu and guaranteed that there would be 6 issues a year and that each issue would be a minimum of 32 A5 pages even if I had to write them myself.

In the event, the smallest issue I ever produced was 48 pages and as time went by the font size went down so that I could publish everything that was offered. I had a strict policy that if a member could be bothered to write, I would find a way to publish. I think our youngest contributor was about 14 and some of the articles were pretty naïve by modern standards but it got people involved. I seem to remember publishing an issue with 80 pages and the average was around 64.

I only once declined to publish an article. That was from someone with a weird idea of mapping the elements of C onto the human brain. I could not make any sense of it and I doubt that the membership would have been able to either. The author was not pleased and accused me of censorship. I just ignored his rantings and eventually heard no more from him.

As I had retired (through stress related ill-health) from teaching, it did not worry me if I sometimes made a fool of myself (like the editorial where I meant to write ‘time in lieu’ but actually wrote ‘time in loo’ – spell checkers have limitations) or exhibited ignorance. However, I did have a couple of regular columnists who needed some protection. The Harpist, now dead as a victim of some Middle Eastern conflict, could not write under his own name because his work in the security services prohibited it. Then there was George Wendle (no, that was not his name, and we chose it after searching the nascent internet to ensure that there was no such person (there still isn’t, as far as I can check). In George’s case, his employer would have started claiming IP over his writing (yes, some employers can be very unhelpful).

At that same auspicious committee meeting where I became editor of C Vu, I discovered that any British citizen could attend the lowest level of BSI Committees as long as the convenor was happy with their attendance. Neil Martin was convenor of the C committee and so I started attending those meetings. Soon after, there was the first London meeting of WG21 (the ISO work group for C++, the newcomer on the block). By this time CUG(UK) was broadening out to include some C++, so I arranged to attend that meeting for a couple of days. It was an interesting experience, watching these experts debate language issues. On the second day, I noted that Bjarne Stroustrup was sitting a couple of rows behind me. I had recently read and reviewed the 2nd edition of The C++ Programming Language. I thought it would be nice if we offered him honorary membership of CUG(UK) and so went over to him at one of the breaks and introduced myself and made the offer (as a deputy head had told me many years before ‘if you do not ask you do not get, and the worst that can happen is that you get a “no”’) He accepted the offer. Somewhere in the brief ensuing conversation, I mentioned that I had just finished reviewing the 2nd edition and had found it much more readable than the first. He advised me that writing was a learning experience. He also pointed out that the structure of The C++ Programming Language was based on K&R who, I understand, were just down the corridor at AT&T Research.

Somewhere around this time, Will Watts, who was then editor of .EXE Magazine (the ‘.’ Eventually got dropped from the title), contacted me and invited me to try out as a columnist on C. The idea being that I would write 500 words on C and that a member of the European C++ User Group (more about that another time) would write 500 words on C++. What I had not realised at that time was that 500 words meant 500+/- 3. Any more or less and I would have to edit my column to fit. I can tell you that having to write to such strict word counts is a great learning experience and I owe a great deal to Will for taking on an inexperienced writer and helping me hone my writing skills. I continued that column until .EXE stopped publication. I can remember Will letting me know that my current column (which was 2000 words by then) would be the last and his relief when he realised that it was my hundredth column.

Next time I will write about how CUG(UK) became ACCU and how Overload came to be.

Notes: 

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