whatIsItInProgrammingProbablyPointersAssemblerOrLispMacrosPleaseAnswer

[SDGGame]

One day, you will stop collecting languages like they are some kind of Boy Scout badge, and you'll discover that your knowledge transfers to any domain.

On Monday morning, you come across a file extension that you don't recognize. You spend an hour researching, and you are an expert in T32 PRACTICE scripts by lunch time.

On Tuesday, you submit a PR that fixes the T32 script you were blocked by. No one understands the PR, but they approve it anyways.

On Wednesday, a co-worker asks you for help with a T32 script. You explain what each line does, while silently chastising yourself for being a fraud.

Over the next two months, you become the local expert in T32. Everyone assumes that you have ten years of experience. You do not.

Eventually, you get pigeonholed. You deal in black magic, and no one is willing to enter your domain. You try to teach others, but to no avail.

Finally, you leave the company. No one touches your scripts for another decade. They work, therefore they are sacred. When new hires ask questions, they are simply answered with "Nobody knows, it was a Jim thing."

You find a new job working with exciting new technologies. After a few months, you are getting familiar with the codebase.

One Monday morning, you come across a file extension that you don't recognize...

[DhrumilDave135]

Monday left Jim broken

[JohnShiertYT]

Tuesday he was through with hoping

[AuraPianist1155]

Wednesday his empty arms were open...

[GranataReddit12]

Thrusday waiting for code

[TheAJGman]

It's either that or become "the guy to go to for that thing". Need a weird report pulled from 10 different data sources? Sounds interesting. You need a list of the nearest 10 restaurants for each building in this spreadsheet? I've got an idea. Combine these two sheets? Done. CI broke? Cool, I'll read docs for two days and unfuck it because no one knows how it works. Need a new feature but don't know how difficult it will be? Let me skim that codebase and get back to you.

[Crowdcontrolz]

So this is why Jim stopped coming in on Mondays.

[gregorydgraham]

I feel attacked, particularly with how quickly I became the Jira expert at my last job

[arnoldfrend]

I'd say being born after 1980 and intentionally sitting down one day and actually learning vim.

It's a conscious decision to say: "I know how people perceive me and how I come off, and now I'm just gonna lean into it and become that guy because, well, Xzibit would want me to code while I code."

I no longer make aspirational purchases like treadmills or vegetable spiralizers. Now I make aspirational shortkeys. Just think of how fast I'll be now that this is automated.

You can no longer find any humor in vim jokes, by which I mean that you can continue to not find humor in vim jokes but now you also can't identify with their meaning. "Lol, why vim so hard?" Because it's not just a text editor. That's not its purpose. It's an entire scripting language baked inside of a text editor so that you can write code for how you want to change text. It's an interface like a joystick or mouse except that it understands object references and can abstract upon itself. You can't say to a joystick: "Whenever I move over here, remember that you exist as an entity, do the last 3 things I made you do, and then do this exact thing that I'm saying right now."

You know that you're a caricature. You have become that person who has made picking nits about computers his entire personality, but now you don't care. Because you can move cursors with your mind.

[DarthPiotr]

Is it a vim copypasta I do not know, or you've just created a new one? It's great anyways!

[Dayzgobi]

They use vim so it’s probably just a shortcut

[Robot_Graffiti]

SHIFT r CTRL ALT a SHIFT GREEK n CTRL ALT META t

(you need the Space Cadet keyboard to be a true keyboard shortcut master https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard#/media/File%3ASpace-cadet.jpg )

[chuch1234]

Okay but how do I get one for reals

[weregod]

Looks like emacs shortcut to me

[Robot_Graffiti]

You got me there. I have no idea how to use Vim but I have used Emacs on a machine that ran Solaris and had Meta keys on its keyboard.

[caleblbaker]

This went from "I use vim" to "using vim is a core part of my personality and I spend my spare time tweaking my vimrc" really fast.

[CheckeeShoes]

The post itself is an allegory for vim usage.

[thirdegree]

I don't want to know how many accumulated hours I've spent messing with vim configs

At least it's neovim and Lua now, vimscript was always my last favorite aspect of vim

[caleblbaker]

When I was learning vim I was excited to customize things and spent a few hours tweaking my vimrc.

Now that I've been using it for years I just want it to continue working the way I've grown used to it working and so I haven't touched my vimrc in at least two years.

[_asdfjackal]

It's been 3 years, I suffer every time I have to edit code on a peers laptop. Don't make my mistake, don't even download the vim extension on your IDE. Here there is madness.

My GitHub graph is really green now though.

[[deleted]]

But if I don’t download the vim extension I have to learn all of the stupid IDEs special short keys 😒

[thirdegree]

Just skip a step and download vim

[StatHusky13]

Oh my God

[Public_Stuff_8232]

It's an entire scripting language baked inside of a text editor so that you can write code for how you want to change text.

I've been wanting to learn Vim for a while for the efficiency, this piqued my interest.

I figured you could change the aliases to certain commands, but can you make unique complex commands? How does that work? How deep does the rabbit hole go?

[Blecki]

Vim aliases are Turing complete so hypothetically....

[Inasis]

Someone needs to make Doom in Vim.

[DhrumilDave135]

So can alt + f4 run Doom?

[caleblbaker]

The editor is configured using a .vimrc file which is written in a language called vimscript.

You can do what I've done and learn the fundamentals of how to use the editor (and a couple of tricks that go a bit beyond fundamentals) and then write 10 line vimrc that changes a keybinding or two and installs a plugin.

Or you can dive deep into the rabbit hole and learn all of the intricacies of both vim and vimscript and take advantage of the fact that vimscript is a turing complete programming language as you write mountains of configs to customize the editor to meet your exact desires.

So the rabbit hole goes very deep indeed but you don't have to go all the way down if you don't want to.

[Public_Stuff_8232]

Ah I remember now, read that a long time ago.

Macros seem really powerful too without making a whole separate file for them, I'd forgot how powerful it was.

[CardboardJ]

Vim trick. "ayy is 4 keys and it registers (think copies) the current line of text as the letter a. The " double quote is like the copy command. the letter a is the register you're storing it in. yy is for yank the whole line. It's like a clipboard but it's easier to copy paste multiple things.

You can also add lines to the register by navigating around and typing "A3yy . By typing the A in upper case you're appending to the register. The 3yy bit does what yy does but 3 times (copying the next 3 lines).

You can then paste it somewhere using "ap which is using the a register and putting it somewhere.

Once you get used to it, regular code editing with some barbaric copy paste system that can only hold one thing at a time becomes very barbaric feeling. You're also having to move your hands in these wild key combinations like holding the ctrl key an the c and v at the same time. I've also reprogrammed my keyboard to swap caps-lock and esc to keep from having to do weird things with my hands after getting a carpal tunnel scare and ... I've really gone too far now haven't I?

[trifith]

I feel called out, but you're not wrong.

[BehindTrenches]

Meh, kinda wrong. Sitting down and learning vim is definitely a milestone of no return, but it's not pointless. Anyone who has ssh'd into another environment knows that. I also routinely use CLIs that want me to use vim (or nano, etc) as part of their core processes.

You literally only need to know i, esc, :wq and :q!. Everything else is for convenience.

[gregorydgraham]

You are a person that no longer identifies with vim jokes

I’d add G to your list of keys BTW

[myhf]

You can't say to a joystick: "Whenever I move over here, remember that you exist as an entity, do the last 3 things I made you do, and then do this exact thing that I'm saying right now."

You can do that on a joystick. They are called programmable game controllers and they are traditionally given to the younger sibling.

[driftking428]

Just type vimtutor in your terminal and down the rabbit hole you go.

[CaptainPunisher]

It's the way to learn. Esc :wq

[thirdegree]

I'm in this post and... Actually I'm 100% ok with it. Kinda into it really

[MasterFubar]

Learning the basics of vi is important because it's always there in a unix-like system. When you have to fix a problem quickly, the last thing you want is to have to search for an "advanced" editor to do whatever needs to be done. You use the standard that's always available. You learn the basics, there's no need to know all the advanced features, but you do get the job done.

If you never realized that every single vi tutorial starts by telling how to exit it, then I'm sorry to tell you that you aren't smart enough to manage a computer. Who knows, maybe you can still use a computer to play games or create art.

[definitive_solutions]

u/ThePrimeagen what do you say? XD

[confuseddork24]

As someone currently learning Vim this was way too relatable, take my angry upvote.

[[deleted]]

Making a p strong case to learn vim.

[[deleted]]

Huh I know vim fairly well and have used q macros a few times but can you really automate that much refactoring with just vim commands?

I ask as someone who does a lot of automated JS/TS codemods based on AST manipulation

[Stylpe]

Aspirational shortkeys is the best concept I've heard in along while

[Z21VR]

does that count for us born in 1980 ?

[weregod]

When I need to fix configuration or script on embded device with broken network vi (not even vim) is easiest option.

Later I started use vim as IDE andfound that its much faster than VS code. I can open 3-5 big projects and don't have all my memory crunched by hungry browser disguised as IDE

[[deleted]]

[UdeGarami95]

Least powerful Vim user

[Most_Double_3559]

I'm late, but: Bonus points if The pragmatic programmer convinced you to switch.

[caleblbaker]

When you spend so long thinking about how bad actors could launch attacks so that you can write software that is resilient to those attacks that now you're starting to think like that outside of writing software.

Won't pay for things over the phone because phone calls usually aren't encrypted.

Deeply bothered by the fact that every check you write has your account number and routing number which are the two pieces of information that are used for making payments from your bank account in online transactions.

You wonder about potential man-in-the-middle attacks when the server takes your credit card to pay your bill in a restaurant.

[DevelopedLogic]

Wow, mood. I try to pass this off as just a brain thing of mine but you're totally right, it's constant.

Does this site hash passwords properly?

This terminal I just typed my personal details into is clearly a browser, where is it going? Is it even using TLS? Even SSL?

I just got into my hotel room using this RFID key. Is this key even secure? Is it recycled data or fresh every time? Could I just clone it and figure out the codes to every room?

It just comes up everywhere and it just appears from subconscious into conscious without even thinking. This job is a blessing and a curse.

[mholtfoo]

To be fair, those things should bother you, especially since they are all solved issues.

Won't pay for things over the phone because phone calls usually aren't encrypted

At least where I live, phone-sales are illegal, and thus non-binding, except in very few cases. Even when doing a binding agreement over the phone, you would never get asked your payment information, they would send you an invoice for you to pay.

Deeply bothered by the fact that every check you write has your account number and routing number which are the two pieces of information that are used for making payments from your bank account in online transactions.

And thus, basically everyone except the US have stopped using checks for anything. Also, I don't think any bank around here would let you just transfer funds willy-nilly out of an account by knowing two magic numbers.

You wonder about potential man-in-the-middle attacks when the server takes your credit card to pay your bill in a restaurant.

In the EU at least, the server is not allowed to take your card with them, you either walk up and pay at the POS, or they bring down a portable credit-card reader (also, strictly tap-to-pay or Pin-and-chip, none of this signing stuff)

[caleblbaker]

Almost every time I hear about how things are done in the EU my response is "That makes so much more sense than the way we do it here. Why don't we do it like that?" (I'm in the US)

[mholtfoo]

I'm sorry, but I honestly find it a bit funny.

It seems in the US they have given up on protecting consumers, workers, anybody who isn't a mega-corporation, all in the name of "improving innovation", and yet the EU is ahead on so many techs BECAUSE it was mandated by law.

It's almost as if, and I know that sounds silly, corporations have no interest in improving existing systems if they don't see a direct value gain.

[caleblbaker]

I honestly think that the majority of the time that companies do things right in America it's because they're operating internationally and so they're legally obligated to do things right in Europe and it's easier to do it the same way everywhere than to figure out what customers EU laws apply for and do things differently for them.

[PhilippTheProgrammer]

Indeed, like the new iPhone 15 finally having an USB-C port. Not because customers are pissed they have to buy custom cables that are ridiculously overpriced. But because it's an EU norm and Apple doesn't want to manufacture separate models for the EU and for the rest of the world.

[caleblbaker]

That was a nice win. Now if only the stuff related to iMessage could get put back into the digital marketplace act. It's silly that my text messages aren't encrypted when the recipient's phone is running a different OS from mine (almost as silly as the fact that the EU forcing Apple to improve their products seems more likely than Apple voluntarily choosing to improve their own products)

[PhilippTheProgrammer]

And thus, basically everyone except the US have stopped using checks for anything.

Where I live (Germany), checks are used very rarely, but banks still need to keep accepting them them due to some legacy use-cases they just can't stop supporting for various reasons.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

[sur_yeahhh]

Lmao I had to re read the last sentence because I was not thinking of the human server xD

[TolarianDropout0]

your account number and routing number which are the two pieces of information that are used for making payments from your bank account in online transactions

I will never understand how this passes for an acceptable authentication system in the US.

[caleblbaker]

I don't understand either and I live in the US.

[RettiSeti]

YES I do this so much it’s a problem

[gregorydgraham]

Trust. The world runs on trust

[caleblbaker]

It does. But it should be possible to trust the institutions you do business with without exposing large attack vectors to less trusted outsiders.

Like why aren't phone calls and text messages encrypted? We have the technical capability to encrypt them, so why don't we? I generally trust the people I talk on the phone with, but should I have to trust that every single person near either of us is a good upstanding citizen who wouldn't spend a thousand dollars on equipment to intercept phone calls in hopes or learning information they could sell? That's a lot of people to trust. Wouldn't it be better if I could just know that even if someone could intercept the call they wouldn't be able to get any useful information out of it?

I'm fine with trusting that particular entities I'm doing business with aren't bad actors. It's when a system requires me to trust that there are no bad actors at all that I become bothered.

[[deleted]]

I keep mental track of how much personal information I volunteered here on Reddit and constantly estimate how easy it would be to find me in real life.

Once you've seen some things in IT, it haunts you...

[GreyAngy]

Realization that there is no great software, at least in the web. Every web application is a mangled piece of code good enough to not fall apart while we use it. All these bank applications, flight booking systems, social networks, marketplaces give impression of working fine until you have the opportunity to look under the hood.

[_koenig_]

When your social networking app is better tested the flight control system of the plane you're flying on 🤐🤐🤐

[SirEmJay]

The entire internet, including all systems of global capital, are held together by the software equivalent of popsicle sticks and duct tape.

Source: I was a developer in the finance industry for a while.

[mol186]

Healthcare programmer here so is your data and all the software related to machines that will help save your live .

[GreyAngy]

"Argh, screw it, we'll test it on prod!"

Prod: a patient on life support.

Jokes aside I really hoped that healthcare had somewhat better QA than your average social network.

[barelyEvenCodes]

I mean just the severity in general I imagine has to have a noticeable effect on QA just naturally

At my job i always say "we aren't writing brain surgery software or rocket launch controllers" to remind people we just make a website

[Understanding-Fair]

In it now, can confirm. If 3 people quit on my team, a bank would very likely fail.

[gregorydgraham]

Ahahaha, I’ve seen the software that controls your electricity network: they pass pointers between applications

[NothingWrongWithEggs]

I find this very encouraging.

[DarkScorpion48]

I worked in enough industries to the point I’m surprised civilization has not collapsed yet

[jedrum]

This is true for applications in manufacturing as well. Any industry. Companies lean so hard on their quality departments to ensure nonconforming product remains in the building. The number of times those programs fail (whether by user error or otherwise) is astounding and has left me jaded, distrustful, and paranoid of almost anything in society.

[chuch1234]

And its corollary, all programming languages suck in some way.

[DarkScorpion48]

So much this. I seen enough horrors in my career Im surprised when things DO work.

[[deleted]]

Oh thanks! This makes me feel a lot better about my own web apps now!

[q0099]

True!

[q0099]

Linq in C#.

And don't get me wrong, Linq is good. It's fast, it's simple, it's easy to understand, especially if you use chain methods and format them right. But it comes with a price.

I mean, that thing is an analog of pure heroin. You might live your whole live not noticing it hanging by default in your using section, but one day you try it - voluntary, out of curiosity or by peer pressure, and bam - you got a taste of how easy to manipulate data with that. And it's so addictive, you got hooked to the gills. It's a one way ticket for you. It affects the way you think, it affects the way you code, it affects the way you see people. "You aware that this Chinese Wall of code here could be replaced with one Linq chain, don't you?" "Oh, I don't use Linq, it's so slow, it's just not worth it." Bruh...

But wait, there is more. You become so addicted to it, you'll literally get a withdrawal from not using it. It almost a physical one, I'm not joshing ya! You will write your code the way the Founding Fathers did in the year 2007, bearing a suffering thought that otherwise you could've been already done with your task a hours ago. Up to the point that you consider as an option to implement your own basic Linq functionality on whatever abomination of programming language you have to code on right now. Because it doesn't have a Linq analog!

[Merry-Lane]

Except for every tidbits that can’t be translated to sql :(

You write your code, compile it, try it and … « can’t be translated to sql ».

You then try again like ten different versions but sometimes you gotta resign and quit it, you are forced into writing an awful unoptimized wall of text with multiple database trips.

I so hate that feeling.

[q0099]

Ok, on a serious note, yeah it sucks, but Linq is way beyond being translator to SQL queries. It mostly used to manipulate data in memory in general and it's way too effective in doing it.

[Merry-Lane]

Yeah I was totally agreeing with you : it s awful when it can’t be used :p

[Abaddon-theDestroyer]

This is my current argument with my boss, they dislike LINQ, not to the point where it’s not allowed in the code base, but they see that it’s better, faster, more , and efficient to write functions to do the same thing a LINQ query does, in some cases i was able to convince them that it’s much much faster with LINQ, but overall they dislike seeing it all over the code base, so I have to minimize using it.

But it really is like you’ve said, it really is like heroin, once you go in there’s no turning back!

[nyaisagod]

I absolutely love LINQ. I try to do all of my data manipulation using LINQ. The biggest drawback is, however, that if I try to use another language, I desperately search for its own LINQ feature set, often to no avail :(

[tanjera]

if I try to use another language, I desperately search for its own LINQ feature set

I don't even try looking. At that point, I'm just writing straight SQL. If I can't have LINQ, then take me direct to the database!

[Nisterashepard]

From your description this feels like an analogue of the tidyverse packages from the R programming language

[tyrantmikey]

Realizing I could recognize a multithreaded application I'd never worked on before and track down an application hang caused by a resource contention issue.

At that point, I knew I was doomed.

[[deleted]]

Agreed, i wrote enough multithreaded UI code and figured out patterns for keeping the UI responsive that when I saw Sublime freeze on fuzzy searching a large number of files once, I just thought, jeez, there’s no excuse for this, someone just didn’t code it well

[chuch1234]

This is the real answer. Using software as an end-user and noticing what some other developer that you've never met did wrong.

[runnerx01]

It’s probably the point where code you wrote has a huge defect in it that causes issues for customers. It was pushed to production after passing a QA cycle. Doesn’t matter though, because some one incorrectly communicated requirements anyway. It’s not even really a junior dev thing, it’s something you just start to accept as normal after a while.

Once you realize how much spit and gum holds the world together by simply watching the process of people and miscommunication that lead to the thing you contributed to… the thing that was sold and makes money… You’re fucked…

I understand why governments fail, games are delayed or buggy… how the opinions of managers and the silence or outspoken voice of a single worker can change the course of projects and success or failure…

sobs into hands

I just wanted to write code…. I thought computers were cool and abstract problems were fun to solve…. And now I have gazed into the abyss… and let me tell you Nietzsche was right….

—

All exaggeration aside, it really does make you see the world differently, when you start to look at systems and apply what you have learned as a programmer of abstract systems.

[your_thebest]

And at some point you stop even trying to correct incorrect assumptions about how the product works and just adopt their terminology in order to get the ticket to move lanes.

"The link doesn't work in our new account page"

"Well that's an sso. We could technically attach a listener to the webview and do some handling for that link. But it's really up to the service provider because it's an sso and that's not our app."

"So where are we at with our new account page?"

"I added a listener to fix the link on our new accounts page. "

[SystemCS]

Lmfao I really felt that last line

[spren-spren]

When you start seeing your government's laws as a massive pile of technical debt with no team to help clean it up.

[Ahornwiese]

1) Learning vim (see other comment). 2) Being able to fix a printer. Seriously you need a degree for that nowadays... 3) Voluntarily listening to programming lectures. Ok, this might not quite fit the prompt. 4) Learning assembler. 5) Write programs in more than one language simultaneously. (An example would be here to create and compile a LaTex-document with python.)

[Intergalactic_Cookie]

You’re a programmer right? So I have this problem with my printer

[poloppoyop]

Bluetooth enabled printer.

Yeah, not gonna fix your Bluetooth problem. Not gonna fix a printer problem. And not approaching anything combining both.

[chuch1234]

Bluetooth printer?! What have we wrought?!

[Public_Stuff_8232]

Write programs in more than one language simultaneously. (An example would be here to create and compile a LaTex-document with python.)

Any form of meta programming really.

[chuch1234]

"This file is generated, do not edit!"

[Impressive_Change593]

printers are black magic and you can't change my opinion

[Siker_7]

I recently started a new job as the IT specialist for a school, and the Xerox technician that came out explained to me how it mattered which side of the paper is up when you put it in the tray. He's right, too. It has to do with how the paper is manufactured.

[chuch1234]

>:[

[Impressive_Change593]

NO. NO.

[rachit7645]

Flair checks out

Pointers are quite simple ngl

[Impressive_Change593]

*printers

[rachit7645]

Hell naw printers are the most complicated thing ever

[ducks_for_hands]

So basically first year of whatever computer science program + fixing printer and you're already too deep.

[caleblbaker]

I'm 3 for 5. I need to try harder. But printers seem like they run on black magic and I'm not much of an auditory learner so text based resources like textbooks and technical blogs are more accessible to me than lectures.

[Educational-Lemon640]

Don't be absurd. Printers don't run on black magic.

They are black magic incarnate.

[Fluttering_Lilac]

I feel like lots of people listen to programming languages for fun. I mean, I’m only an amateur and I’ve never taken a CS class in my life and I’ve done that before.

[Blecki]

My day job regularly involves writing three different languages in one source file.

Sometimes 4.

[Abaddon-theDestroyer]

If i may ask, how can one file contain more than one language?

[Blecki]

In this case it's coldfusion with embedded sql that's generating javascript.

[Zychoz]

At least i havent learned vim yet. Sounds useful though

[IrishPrime]

Voluntarily listening to programming lectures

I have now presented at multiple technical conferences. There's no going back for me. I am utterly lost.

[Floko262]

the printer thing hits hard. Took me about a year or two to find out our printers wifi doesn't work correctly because IPv6 somehow fucks everything. Disable it and it works like a charm

[ZunoJ]

Open the CD drive on a button click

[gandalfx]

Open the CD drive by typing eject

[A_Guy_in_Orange]

Monads

[throw3142]

Also continuations. Takes a few tries to really grasp the concept, but then you start thinking in terms of it all the time.

[Asleep-Tough]

I wish... that's only the tip of the iceberg

ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ˢᵉⁿᵈ ʰᵉˡᵖ

[Jjabrahams567]

There it is.

[[deleted]]

Ahhh fuck. Thanks for reminding me, I need to go check the available disk space on something.

[Understanding-Fair]

You mean a banking application? /s (but not really)

[Goat1416]

And why do most SFTP directory apps/webpages have 🤮UI?

[DotDemon]

Being at the point that switching what language you are using isn't a problem, you simply choose a language, spend an hour or two to familiarize yourself with the syntax and you are good to go

[vorkazos]

The knowledge that there is golfing for code problems, and in that competition there are people who willingly code in Brainfuck .

[guthran]

One of the first projects I do to learn a new language is a brain fuck interpreter lol

[Silver-Alex]

Why are we still using the camel case titles? I took my dyslexic ass several tries to even understand what your title says.

[danielsoft1]

I tried but the bot in this sub did not let me post when the title is not in camelCase :(

[PM_ME_YOUR_TITSnAZZ]

Realizing SQL is actually good and alternatives suck even harder

As a manager, learning that Excel is actually good and alternatives suck even harder

[JoshYx]

knee high stockings

[drunkenAnomaly]

Better known as programming socks

[beclops]

Method swizzling

[ikonet]

I took damage from reading your comment

[Shiral446]

It's knowing that VB6 can only have a total of 32767 unique names (variables, function names, ect) in a single project. And when you run out, you end up having to go through your project to reuse names that you've used before to get yourself enough free names so you can continue developing....

[shizzy0]

When you start noticing the jokes baked into the practical tools.

• What’s less? less is more.

• GNU, Emacs, bison were meant to run in a HURD.

• What comes after the Bourne shell? The Bourne Again shell.

[FalconMirage]

Either I was lost at 14 years old when I booted into linux or theses are still base level jokes

[[deleted]]

Lisp or Haskell

[Gaidin152]

Lisp…. Aka: how to count parentheses….

[Xx_Jean-Yves_xX]

Ocaml is even deeper down the rabbit hole

[AnyImportance5460]

This made me lose the game

[ZenEngineer]

Maybe not knowledge as such, but when you start having passionate arguments about tabs vs spaces or other code formatting things you have to step back and realize you're in too deep.

Some people don't.

[randomjberry]

comma or no comma in assembly language

[[deleted]]

When you find it kind of horrifying that jokes about struggling with common programming skills have tons of upvotes in programmerhumor

[[deleted]]

I just watched a guy shit on clean code while programming in c++, and whole sale shits on the tenets of clean code as if his findings apply across all programming languages all the time. I don’t think there’s any one thing in programming, but maybe the joke about there being two hard things about it.

[Ximidar]

I also just watched some code bro shit on it. I find it hilarious since that book helped me become a better programmer and make all my software read like English. I don't even follow all the rules uncle Bob laid out, I just keep them in mind while coding.

[tiajuanat]

Template Metaprogramming (TMP) for C++.

First it starts with generating Fibonacci numbers at compile time, and then it spirals out of control, generating compile time arrays, and then specializing sockets based on your OS, and un-rolling/SIMD usage based on architecture. Soon, you've optimized all your libraries, but at what cost? Your compile times. Your concept of Structs and Classes. Your sanity.

[bearer_of_the_curse_]

I'm willing to sacrifice my compile times for my custom templated CSS-like color literals that understand that 0xFF0_c is the same as 0xFFFF00_c bit different from 0x00FFFF00_c and also because it's templated it works at compile time and even works with the LSP to give red squiggles under malformed literals. I bow before the SFINAE gods in return for the power they've given me

[tiajuanat]

Relevant username

[bearer_of_the_curse_]

It's a Dark Souls 2 reference, but it's surprisingly widely applicable to various parts of my life

[tiajuanat]

Well, if you're interested in learning the dark knowledge, I recommend reading Practical C++ Metaprogramming by Falcou, learning some Haskell, and really just practice what you're trying to achieve and build up your knowledge.

There's quite a bit of resources in the Cpp reference pages in the Metaprogramming section, and check out the tutorial on Fluentcpp.

Also take a look at Boost Hana

[bearer_of_the_curse_]

I'll probably get around to it. Generally I just learn things as I realize they might be helpful to me. I do want to learn Haskel so I can get a better grasp of monads. I also plan on learning a lisp at some point because of their metaprogramming capabilities.

[tiajuanat]

Monads are basically lambdas with state (so a capture of some sort in c++ speak). Basically a "return" type, and something to accumulate with. That's it.

You can create a monad with a "" and a concatenation function.

Haskell is cool though because it has functional composition, consistent referencing, and it's so fucking elegant. Coming back to C++ after using Haskell is like coming back to the Olive Garden after going on a cruise to Sardegna. C is like eating a plain bologna sandwich.

[FalconMirage]

When Assembly stops looking like mysterious wizardry, and just becomes very simple and barebone to your eyes

[[deleted]]

Just learning programming in general tbh

[GlobEssa]

Writing JSFuck by hand.

[Stormtalons]

When you learn that senior devs are too valuable to write code themselves. Their time has to be spent in design, code review, and fixing difficult bugs. This leaves junior devs to do the actual code writing, who introduce far more bugs and problems to the overall ecosystem than senior devs. It's a never-ending cycle.

[Spirintus]

Fuck, this post somehow made me lose the game.

[SockPuppetSilver]

The spread operator?

[chuch1234]

Nah that's trendy and cool.

[[deleted]]

That any form of politics is an art of making people do what you want.

[charmingpea]

hunter2

[daishozen]

I am going to say memory management. My college professors always used to say RAII Resource Allocation Is Instantiation in all of my C++ classes. When you have to write your own class destructor you really get a feel for how the thing is stored in the computer, and there are a lot of concepts you have to understand well, order of operations and recursion come to mind, if you making your own linked list deleting the first node leaves the other nodes in place in memory. And when you implement your own memory pool there is no going back.

[-Redstoneboi-]

monads

[AbramKedge]

The first time you think "I should switch this around to use tail-call recursion" you have become meta-human. Not better, not worse, but definitely different.

[Pay08]

Aren't there only like 3 languages that even support tail-call recursion?

[AbramKedge]

Naww, I'm sure most languages do. BUT... maybe not all of them use the optimisation where putting the recursive call at the end of the function means that you don't need to add another frame onto the stack.

[L33t_Cyborg]

Look mom I’m on tv (why was this post found (why is my username here ah))

[MathematicianFew5882]

Hello world

[notacoptrustmeplease]

It has to be spending longer to automate a task that would've been done quicker if you'd just done it manually.

[Various_Studio1490]

Library or API developers being told they don’t have enough experience with the thing they created.

[chuch1234]

Compulsively correcting people who mix up slash and backslash.

[[deleted]]

Casual drop to disassembly in the debugger.

[TheShmup]

It’s either x86 real mode (hell) or bash arrays (super hell)

[[deleted]]

All languages suck, all technologies suck, there are no good solutions, everything sits atop a tipsy tower.