The Zen of SwampTroll
Before the main thrust, as it were, first a quick plea to SS. Please stop the 'Greppler' business. It's annoying and insulting to the intelligence to hear this from a grown man who doesn't even know what a bloody regular expression is. Have you ever used grep? No, not VAX Search - I said grep. Well - have you?
(While we're at it, and although I said nothing at the time, if you ever called me 'BennieSwamp' to my face, I'd lamp you. And I'm a hippie...)
Now, for everybody else - the ones that can parse English sentences with more than a single clause, that is. I'm sure I'm not alone in trying to work out what it is about this thread that's so compulsive, other than the car-crash fascination of watching a psychotic in full flow, and having just spent a morning showing non-techie-types some basic stuff about MS Word without resorting to screaming "Just Press F1" at them, I think I've sussed some of it.
As programmers, and thus generalised problem-solvers on the whole, we're good at analysing a situation and breaking it down into its constituent parts. I'm sure most of us here are also the ones that friends / colleagues come to when they need complicated concepts explaining - even if we know bugger all about it, we're often good at simplifying for others. :)
With Doug, we appear to have hit a wall, and it's become almost a matter of pride to see who can be first to explain something that seems so obvious to us in a language that the man understands. Personally, it annoys the hell out of me that I can't just make him see in 3 sentences or less! Part of it of course is the medium - he can pick-and-choose as he likes, ignoring the questions that may shake his convictions, whilst picking up on throwaway sarcasm and treating it as verification. Even so, we've got to admit at some point that like any good koan, this is simply insoluble.
The main clue in all this is the code. Anybody still tying to explain basic concepts to this man who hasn't had a look at the source yet should do so now. You know how when you look at "The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke", which although a work of genius, is so obviously done by a psychotic? Take away the "work of genius" bit, and you've got it. It contains every single possible class of WTF ever featured on this site. It's what would have happened if Paula had been allowed to continue for 20 years. My very first post here was an attempt to explain to SS about the quality of code reflecting the quality of thinking - and at that point I'd only scanned the first 100 lines or so. Having looked at the rest now, I can only conclude that there really is no hope. We will never be able to explain anything to this man. Ever. Let's simply accept the peace of mind that brings :)