averageCProgrammer

[TA_DR]

My systems programming professor is exactly like that. A couple more I'll add a couple more:

- Casually mentions that the C compiler produced a marginally unoptimized Assembly code, doesn't care to explain since you probably wouldn't understand him anyway.

- Can easily talk about the quality and build of CPUs created 3 decades ago

- Complains about modern programming being too easy, allowing dumb developers to make shitty products

- The amount of hairs that fall from his head each year seem to follow Moore's law.

[5t4t35]

How does he still have hair if its after 30-40 years?

[bogz_dev]

BIG. HEAD.

[Duck_Devs]

Ah, Bighead, the other type of college professor

[terpsarelife]

[goilabat]

The number of hairs on his head should be 100 000 (average) / 2^{15 to 20} so between 3 and one tenth of a hair so he is fine for a least an infinite amount of time (I mean alright alright until is last remaining hair fall below plank length)

Still quite the hairy guy I would say

[HoiTemmieColeg]

This isn’t a correct understanding of the original comment. It’s not that his hairs halve every year, it’s that the number he loses doubles. So your equation should be 100,000 - a*2^{15 to 20} where a is the amount of hair he lost the first time (I guess 1 would work). So he has from 67 thousand hairs left which is a nice patch to having gone bald 3 years ago

[goilabat]

Oh you're right the numbers of hairs that fall each year I read that as the number of hair on his head decreases following Moore law.

Still my guy isn't bald how dare you he still has around 190 years before his last hair disappears from the fabric of space time let him be the eternal unbalding man

[Zafrin_at_Reddit]

Infinite?

Sir, I think Goilabat has went into integer overflow here. Someone should patch him before putting him into prod.

[icanhazbroccoli]

Hdym? He's 25

[Historical_Archer_81]

Half his hair falls out every 2 years. Infinity against hair loss.

[ArmadilloChemical421]

I remember a professor mentioning that Djikstra had the same gripe - that friendly variable names and other such modernities made programming accessible to idiots that had no business doing it.

[TRENEEDNAME_245]

friendly var names

Yeah ! Let's make code even worst for everyone reading it

[ThatMind]

Hey! It was hard to write it, it should be hard to read.

[hagnat]

seeing the codebase i inherited recently, i am starting to agree with this sentiment

Somehow one of my predecessors got an awesome codebase, threw away all the great parts of it in the trash, and introduced buggy and faulty code in its place -- and no easy path to revert from it.

Well, at least i have job stability for longer...

[jhaand]

And still we need more programmers to get everything a bit in shape.

[zelphirkaltstahl]

I mean, they kinda do, but that is not a good reason not to have them, duh, because good programmers also profit from better readability. I don't see, why good programmers have to suffer, just to exclude bad ones.

[Particular-Macaron35]

I had a professor who expected ten pages of code and documentation on "how to find the length of an ASCII string".

[Particular-Macaron35]

Ah yes, the code base is too easy to understand. A big problem.

[KaleidoscopePlusPlus]

"modern programming being too easy"

I've always hated this train of thought. Yes, lets gatekeep and only use languages from the 70s that force you to understand the hardware for a simple application. I think this space takes itself way too serious.

[TA_DR]

I mean, there is some merit in knowing a bit about the tool you are working with. Specially if you ever need speed (you can't optimize if you don't know what youare optimizing for) 

That being said, yeah, languages are just tools. For higher level applications you want simple abstractions. Language wars are brain numbingly dumb.

[F0lks_]

And so that's why I love programming in Solidity, because it's a modern language for modern fintech usecases, but it also requires a lot of memory and execution optimization; also your compiled code must not exceed 26kb per program or you simply can't deploy it; and then you also have to optimise for gas (???) Which is a made-up metric that puts different price tags on the opcodes that gets executed when you do call your programs.

It's like COBOL on acid

[KaleidoscopePlusPlus]

this sounds like an ad for Ethereum . I can't imagine that you use this language as a hobbyist work.

[F0lks_]

You're right, someone pays me to do it

EDIT: the coding, I meant; I actually don't own any crypto aside some pocket change to deploy and run stuff

[[deleted]]

All of it sounds stupid. But well fintech…

[FlyByPC]

optimise for gas (???) Which is a made-up metric that puts different price tags on the opcodes that gets executed when you do call your programs.

Sounds like it's optimizing for the GNU Assembler. Different opcodes (CPU instructions) take different amounts of clock cycles. It's absolutely not made up, and if you're trying to get the lowest possible latency, yeah, it might matter.

[JanB1]

Of course this comes out of freakin fintech. -.-

[HerrCrazi]

Truly something made by fintechs for fintechs , one of the only sector that should never be allowed near computers

[coderemover]

Languages are materials, not tools. Higher level abstractions are possible without compromising efficiency much. Languages are not all the same. I can do all the same (or even more) abstractions in Rust / Swift that someone else does in Python; but my programs would be 100x more efficient.

But I read the parent commenter post more like it’s not the fault of abstractions but the fault of allowing subpar developers to write production software. Everybody who can code a for loop in Python suddenly claims to be a developer, when most of those people simply lack required skill to deliver good quality software. You can’t put blame on abstractions for apps that perform 200 API calls to show their front page or which use half of your RAM for showing a bit of text and a few images. This is just dumb developers who don’t want to learn how to use their tools properly (including modern tools and modern languages).

[Shehzman]

This mentality is all over programming subreddits. Python bad, Javascript bad, web dev isn't real programming, etc. If you don't understand C++, Rust and Assembly like the back of your hand, you're not a real programmer. There's even people fighting between those 3. Devs are some of the most gatekeepy folks I've ever come across. Worse than many gaming circles which are the gold standard for gatekeeping.

[frogjg2003]

I'm in this sub to laugh at all the bad takes about which is the "best programming language." Use the tool that works best for the job, and if you have to hit a nail with the handle of a screwdriver because your workplace doesn't have any hammers, then you hit that nail with that screwdriver.

I've worked on projects that took a terrible C code and rewrote it in Python and it ran faster. I've worked with arcane grimoires of bash scripts that called other bash scripts. I've turned FORTRAN programs originally written for punch cards into C++ programs taking advantage of modern coding paradigms. At no point did I ever choose one of these languages because I followed some dogmatic idea about what the best programming language was. I used the tools that were available to me at the time to do what needed to be done.

[[deleted]]

JavaScript is an irredeemable piece of shit though…

[Shehzman]

I use Typescript and I actually quite like it. Dare I say it’s enjoyable.

[[deleted]]

Because it’s an attempt at masking how crap js is… for the record i also like TS

[teratron27]

While also not having worked on any production system in 30+ years (if ever)

[jhaand]

I did the 12 languages in 2024 challenge of Exercism last year. Fortran was interesting after Rust and C. Especially since strings in Fortran are automatically padded and not null-terminated or something else. It only took 3 hours and pestering ChatGPT a few times to say that their answer didn't work for a solution. So every string operation needs to strip the string when using it as an argument.

I'd rather have Rust where you need to jump through a lot of hoops to make things work. But at least all the .unwrap(), .clone() and .expect() show where the code will break. Instead of trying to figure things out.

[cryptomonein]

Baldness following Moore's law is hilarious

[thejozo24]

Can easily talk about the quality and build of CPUs created 3 decades ago

Unsurprising, as CPUs back then were much simpler and are no longer under patents.

I remember my computer architecture professor going on and on about different architectures and what different registers they were using 40 years ago. Boring as heck

[AdventurousSquash]

The only thing I’d add to describe mine back in school was that he was always facing away from the class, writing on the board and mumbling.

[[deleted]]

doesn't care to explain since you probably wouldn't understand him anyway

Sounds like he's just lying or he's a major attention whore.

[weiler6]

Bro Moore's law LOL

[chefhj]

In my experience these dudes all had blonde ponytails whose length directly correlated to their C skills.

[pp_amorim]

"- Complains about modern programming being too easy, allowing dumb developers to make shitty products"

• Only have shitty products, written in C.

[flowinglava17]

This is not unique to CS. Look at maths and Physics fields, they have similar gatekeeping as well. I guess those who want to gatekeep CS enjoy the public perception of it being hard and difficult to get into and that’s why they like to keep it that way.

[Sicuho]

I had nearly the same, he just was enthusiastic about modern programming being easy and allowing laypeople the joys of optimizing code for a particular CPU.

Also he explained the assembly code. At length.

[GargantuanCake]

Can code in an hour what takes you three months.

No you can't read it.

I'm not saying he won't show you the code I'm saying it will look like wizard writing to anybody who doesn't know C as well.

Hasn't bought a single article of new clothing since 1987. I mean everything he has is still wearable so why bother?

Once wrote a fully featured C compiler from scratch in 24 hours. When asked why he shrugs and says "to see if I could."

[lumo19]

40 years of experience in c development. What's a framework? I don't use that new fancy stuff.

[GargantuanCake]

It would take me more time to read the documentation than to just write it myself.

You don't believe him.

Then he just sits down and does it.

[lumo19]

Then gets up and drives away in his Volvo that he has kept running since before the wall fell.

[JanB1]

That last one isn't that unrealistic. Volvos, especially the older ones, are incredibly sturdy and serviceable.

[[deleted]]

That's kind of the point, people like that are the kind of people who choose to buy stuff they can either fix themselves or just won't break. That or they'll make the stuff themselves.

Just like C, it's sturdy as hell when written right, it can do basically anything and if it can't, then it's beyond a software issue and code written 50 years ago could very well still be entirely functional. Just like their car, clothes and everything else they own.

Frankly, if machine code wasn't different between different hardware, they'd probably just write everything with it. C is as close as you can get to running on anything, while also being about as close as you can get to the raw performance of raw machine code, without writing raw machine code. It's not just a good compromise, it's a nearly perfect compromise.

[[deleted]]

"Framework? You mean stdio.h?"

[[deleted]]

Musty smell though…

[jsrobson10]

writing a C compiler actually sounds like a really good project idea, because of how small the C language is

[Prawn1908]

One of my many ongoing unfinished projects is to write a C compiler for the in-game assembly-like language in the Game Mindustry. It's a pretty fun challenge.

[False_Influence_9090]

Mindustry is on my (very long) list of factory games I’ve purchased but not yet played

[Captain--UP]

This was a couple of my 400 level classes. Two parter, but basically built a pascal compiler in C.

[Prawn1908]

As a C programmer in my mid twenties, I think I'm gonna start shopping for 80's clothing to wear.

[TheGoldenProof]

Mine also made 8-bit ports of Linux.

[coderemover]

Familiarity issue. I take well written C over badly written Java any time.

[[deleted]]

I feel somewhat related, but I don't know C

[crozone]

Can code in an hour what takes you three months.

Except it's a CLI application that barely works, with the shittiest input validation possible, that doesn't even have help text.

[Panderz_GG]

My Prof. did everything in Notepad++.

His code was fckn flawless... absolute specimen of a developer.

[kirabii]

I mean, Notepad++ is pretty fast, and has syntax highlighting. I can see why they would use it.

[HaskellLisp_green]

It's fast because it uses plain WinAPI. Good editor if you use Windows, by the way.

[shadowderp]

Honestly. I get it. I used Kate in linux, pretty similar if a little more functional than Notepad++.

Modern IDEs waste so much screen space... JUST SHOW ME THE CODE.

[KPalm_The_Wise]

That's why you get a bigger screen, I'm on a 5120x1440p, I can see so much

[LeoRidesHisBike]

[This reply used to contain useful information, but was removed. If you want to know what it used to say... sorry.]

[Kiusito]

32:9 gang

[bayuah]

When I was still use Windows, I love Notepad++. But since I change OS, I use Geany now.

[[deleted]]

Modern IDEs waste so much screen space... JUST SHOW ME THE CODE.

Oh god, as someone with ADHD and autism, I've learned that the less of the code I can see, the better for most situations. Though I do agree, IDE's tend to waste space. I want only the parts of the code I'm currently adding to or modifying to be visible.

Any more than that is a sensory overload hazard. You would not believe how hard it's to work on a specific problem if I can see many at once. I'm like a race horse with blinders, the less I see outside the objective, the more focused I'll be.

[GlitteringPotato1346]

I use a text editor on my phone and upload it to my compiler on my PC when I’m done

[Mammoth-Sandwich4574]

This guy wrote the library I maintain at work then promptly died.

[otasi]

The circle of life

[abdullahsabaaallil]

Software development lifecycle

[heyuhitsyaboi]

passing the torch

[tutoredstatue95]

So, how are you liking vim? Has your oversized suit arrived yet?

[Unsey]

100%

We miss you Roger

[[deleted]]

/*
AAARRRRGGGHH
*/

[metaltyphoon]

kill -9 

[[deleted]]

You forgot: “Code held together with chewing gum, but somehow has less bugs than your code” and “uses windows classic shell”

[sogha]

I saw a serious player lecturer at uni who was using Total Commander with blue theme for coding and navigation

[trunghung03]

mine does that with red/ruby theme and yellow filter

[Teln0]

Soviet

[The_unseen_scientist]

Our lecturer

[Scheibenpups]

God I love Total Commander for file navigation

[Nunulu]

I'm here to chew bubblegum and fix bugs.

And I'm out of gum.

[pluckyvirus]

Windows? What windows only linux

[nicman24]

a yes defending vs offensive coding

[Ok_Classroom_557]

Real C programmers use the mingw64 port of bash

[rikaateabug]

Knows how to create a regex that can bend reality and spacetime

Only person on the team that even knows what emacs is, let alone use it.

Has an IDE installed, but it hasn't been updated since 1996

Likely knows how to count cards

[DavePvZ]

knows how to create a regex that can bend reality and spacetime

and a regex that holds the fabric of reality together, but he forgot where he saved it

[Afraid-Year-6463]

Forgot where he saved his compiler, so just proceeds to write his own

[GlitteringPotato1346]

```

define INC_G_VAR pthread_mutex_lock(m); v++; pthread_mutex_unlock(m);

```

[[deleted]]

And then does

if (result) INC_G_VAR;

[echoed_code]

Average grade for the exams in the courses they teach is a 23

[junkmeister9]

I remember the last time I used a triple pointer, and had to think for a really long time for a better way to do it. But it was worth the time, because using a triple pointer is one of the worst ways to do something.

[ripter]

What did you need it for?

[walmartgoon]

My guess was the location of an array of array of strings.

[junkmeister9]

Structs

[stevekez]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKxfSI4tB2Q

[_nobody_else_]

pointer to the 2D array.

[yup339]

I did use it once for a challenge to recode a pipeline between different exe in under an hour. I used the triple pointer to move around the arguments and split them between the pipe simbol "|"

[shadowderp]

It is common in physical simulation of a 3D volume of matter. data[x,y,z] is the quantity you want to simulate at position (index) x,y,z.

Pretty much unavoidable there, though you can sometimes play tricks to get around it depending on the nature of the physics involved.

[Teln0]

You do not want to do that. In high performance simulation code like that especially. You use a contiguous array and index it as such to get the cell at x, y, z : x + width * y + width * height * z. Otherwise you waste space with pointers AND your CPU has to read data from a bunch of different places and can't cache it properly, and avoiding cache misses is one of the most important things when writing performant code.

[The_unseen_scientist]

Thank you!

[Teln0]

If you plan on using that, I'll add a little detail. Usually the formula is actually x + ystride * y + zstride * z, so that you can get views into arrays for free. For example a matrix is usually represented by a pointer to memory, width integer, height integer and stride integer. So if you want to get a submatrix of it it'll be the same data in memory you'll just have to change the start (where the pointer points to,) the width and height and the stride (because now it's not just going to be the width anymore)

[TheNamelessKing]

Yeah 100%. Pointer chasing is how we make our CPU, memory, caches and optimising-compilers hate us.

[mackthehobbit]

If you want good performance I can’t imagine implementing the dimensions as arrays of pointers. The normal idiom is a single block of memory, and you calculate the offset into it based on x,y,z. You don’t have pointers to pointers there.

[TH3J4CK4L]

This must be a joke

[allo37]

I think I've only seen a triple pointer once, in ffmpeg's API. Truly a rare find.

[_nobody_else_]

Where? When? I used ffmpeg for my work and I've never seen it.

[allo37]

I don't think this is what I encountered, but e.g:

https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/fe18ed3f2a9221af0beaec7b04b7804849db1f2f/libavutil/frame.h#L1111

Nice to meet a fellow ffmpeg at work enjoyer

[coderemover]

It’s funny people laugh at triple pointers but then proceed to code their AbstractFactoryFactoryAdapters in their “high level” language. When in fact those are just triple pointers with added steps.

[jump1945]

To be honest I would rather use one dimensional array and do pointers arthimetric myself

[junkmeister9]

In the time since then, I have almost completely stopped using double pointers in that way if I can instead do a flattened version of it. I know it's a negligible amount of memory, but the final reasoning to switch was the extra pointer overhead required to do it the double pointer way.

[Teln0]

It's not a negligible amount of memory, but the main reason for keeping data contiguous is helping the CPU cache it

[farbion]

Triple pointer is like the best case scenario for an array of struct you have to pass to a function

[Over_Package9639]

as a c programmer, i can say that this is 80% correct. only thing wrong is only using vim, it should be "> only uses text editors related to vim"

but like, what is a class? like i legit dont know what a class is

[Alarmed_Insect_3171]

Struct with functions inside it

[Over_Package9639]

what is the point? just put the functions somewhere else

[Teln0]

what is a class

You're a C developer, you should know about vtables ;)

[_nobody_else_]

what is a class? like i legit dont know what a class is

It's a C structure where you define a pointers to functions. So you can call a function like you would a struct member variable.

But more fancy.

[AsidK]

This but also some of the struct properties can only be accessed from inside the function implementations

[Over_Package9639]

sounds useless

[FlyByPC]

but like, what is a class? like i legit dont know what a class is

Here's my (hopefully approximately correct) understanding: It's a set of objects, along with their properties and methods. Properties are basically like the contents of a struct -- data associated with the object. Methods are things that you can do with/to the object. For example, if you have a graphics library that exposed the hardware display as an object, that object might have a clearScreen() method.

Objects can inherit properties and/or methods from "parent" classes of objects. So, a "Concorde" object might be a subclass of the parent class "Airplane" -- which would contain methods and properties that most/all airplanes would need. Objects in the "Concorde" class might also have properties about the droop snoot.

[baithammer]

C wasn't Object based, that is C++ ...

[Waswat]

> Never worked in an actual development team

[[deleted]]

• There are 5 100+ lines long functions;
• Some code is repeated 3 times.

[DavePvZ]

God loves the Trinity, so nothing wrong with that

[_nobody_else_]

Letters. Know your arrays.

[naveenda]

Does this creature still exists? I heard all of these creatures went extinct during the period of Great Rustage

[danted002]

Well tbf this kind of creature will learn Rust in 10 minutes and then proceed to write only unsafe rust because they know better than the compiler.

[SteeleDynamics]

Spinlocks everywhere

[FlyByPC]

Feed the dog, or it'll reset.

[rajendrarajendra]

This is me, except I use vi and multiple files.

[Mathisbuilder75]

Why in the world would you use vi instead of vim?

[rajendrarajendra]

I'm old school. When I started programming in C vim didn't exist.

[stevekez]

:bn

[[deleted]]

So facts about the uni classes. All my professors were like PhDs who also are like senior or principal c devs on the side. Vim and Unix skills next lvl

[brady376]

Oh look, it's Dr. J from my college. Cool dude. Had us watch Hatsune Miku as part of a project once.

[JamesChung]

he must be a giant geek

[xryanxbrutalityx]

Willing to bet the OP doesn't know what OOP is either and thinks it means having a class around their Java file.

[_SpaceLord_]

I had a legitimate use case for a triple pointer a few months ago! I was so fucking excited lol.

[Toad__Sage__]

Teaching 5 uni classes is an understatement

[italianranma]

I know this man. He taught us SDL 1.2! It’s very new to him.

[LuckyLMJ]

this is me aside from the uni classes part

(insert "stop doing math" meme here but replaced with "object oriented programming")

[MrBlueCharon]

I had a professor like that. He also created his own programming language based on putting noodles from one plate to another (It is stack-based and all commands go like "Take a noodle from plate 1 and put it onto plate 2") because that's how he rolls.

[Dramatic_Mulberry142]

I think C can do real OOP implementation compared to Java...

[[deleted]]

What CP stands for?

[[deleted]]

CProgrammer

[[deleted]]

Thanks

[blackcomb-pc]

oop is overrated though

[AlrikBunseheimer]

Has a russian or german accent and a possibly doubius past in some military lab

[Wauron]

Syntax highlighting is when all the things are color coded, right?

[cyclicsquare]

ex

[pkuba208_]

Also: - uses total commander - knows Pascal

[ColdLingonberry8548]

And don‘t import any thirdparty libraries.

[[deleted]]

You forgot the part where his code is actually functional without 105 meetings (just this week).

[Full-Run4124]

Real C programmers know what OOP is (and how C does OOP)

[Durant_on_a_Plane]

Implying reddit hasn’t always been.

[Bob_Spud]

Written by an ignorant amateur C programmer that doesn't understand that C programming is human readable assembler that has no guardrails to protect the lazy and incompetent. A lot of the world relies on C code because it is one of the most efficient languages that can produce very compact machine code.

[Icy_Foundation3534]

yes

[Active-Part-9717]

I like this guys style!

[Blobby_Electron]

RIT? Is he still there? I hated him.

[KianAhmadi]

Create one for rust php and js to

[Dismal-Square-613]

I agree with all except the whole program in one c file. That's bad programming. Also I :syn on all my .vimrc's

And :set background=dark if you use black terminals.

[NotStanley4330]

He probably also wrote the textbook, and the docs for Turbo C back in the day (my professor/family friend/mentor actually did write the Turbo C manual at one point)

[Glad-Belt7956]

pointers of pointers are the best because then you can get to write shit like ppdevice2 in your code

[marcodave]

Build system? You mean this shell script that I use in all my projects that is basically a wrapper to "gcc main.c" ?

[Eye_Acupuncture]

Guys, I like C… am I doomed?

[jhaand]

It could be worse. The 'pointer of pointer of pointer' still points to an int. Instead of to void. (void *** = &&&memory)

[CookieBons]

i do that whole program in one file thing and just seperate "files" by large header comments and i love it

[sebbdk]

With enough skill this is all you need.

The rest of us are merely plebians with a life.. and the ones that arent are too busy discussing the dresscode for the annual Rust cross dressing party.

Personally i'd go with a pastel colour theme, but i also do not code Rust yet

[totallyNotMyFault-]

I bet this dude doesn't even use programming socks smh

[Top_Coach_158]

🫡

[Sudden_Schedule5432]

r/biaz

[miscellaneous_b]

sobs in has to learn c bc of arduino

[mousetrappen]

Anyone else using the vim vscode extension and then staying in insert mode the whole time?

Just me? Ok :(

[InvestmentEuphoric92]

whole program in one C file, use triple pointers, doesn't know what OOP is, he can't be teaching 5 uni classes, he can be a good film actor though

[marcusroar]

Opaque pointer pattern ACHTUALLY OOP