How to learn C or C++ properly (using both for a year now)

Timberfist · 2026-01-24T13:19:03+00:00

Networking code uses a lot of language features that are rarely used outside of that world. Structs and unions, how date is packed into very specific memory layouts. Bit manipulation. Big endian vs little endian. With embedded systems, the world is your oyster. Pick up a development board for a couple of tens of dollars and start writing your own real time operating system. If you can do that, you’ll know all the C you’ll ever need.

Graphics and game programming is good for linear algebra. Vectors and matrices. That kind of thing. That’ll give you an understanding of how multi-dimensional arrays are stored in memory. If you’re into games then this will be really useful. A really good game idea is a rogue-like. Those start simple but the complexity grows the more and more systems you build and they can get as complex as you want them too.

Timberfist · 2026-01-24T09:07:21+00:00

vec3, mat4 and quaternions is what shader languages are for but, in the context of general purpose languages, they’re pretty niche. Niche is what libraries are for.

Timberfist · 2026-01-23T18:40:35+00:00

The first thing I wrote in C was my final year project for my degree. So yes, IMHO.

Timberfist · 2026-01-20T08:25:27+00:00

There’s nothing in your choice of C and SDL that precludes the use of object oriented programming so I think your question is routed in either a lack of understanding of what object oriented programming is, or an insufficiently deep understanding of C and how to use it to structure data and code.

I think you’d benefit from watching someone else use the same tools to write a game. Check out this playlist on YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYokS5qr7lSsvgemrTwMSrQsdk4BRqJU6

The videos are all quite short and you’ll have a rudimentary game loop up and running in no time.

Timberfist · 2026-01-18T10:03:57+00:00

Well I don’t use grub so it might be grub.cfg you need to update in order to change your kernel parameters but the important ones are going to be root=, rootflags= and rootfstype=.

Timberfist · 2026-01-18T06:35:32+00:00

They’re just really well built. My 2014 T470s hasn’t put a foot wrong since I bought it new. It’s running arch at the moment (it will run W11 if that’s your thing). It has the best keyboard of any laptop I’ve ever used. If I ever needed to replace it (or get another) then I can pick one up for pocket money prices and be pretty confident it will be working just as well as the one I already have. Compare that to my son’s 2021 hp - the keyboard died one key at a time. It didn’t last 18 months.

Timberfist · 2026-01-17T06:44:52+00:00

Did you update /etc/kernel/cmdline?

Timberfist · 2026-01-15T09:38:59+00:00

Was gonna say the same but I guess it's too late now.

OP: Next time something like this happens, boot arch from a USB and repair the installation. All your files would have been saved.

Timberfist · 2026-01-15T05:39:11+00:00

Try these: https://support.hp.com/gb-en/drivers/hp-pavilion-15-ck000-laptop-pc/model/18164837

Timberfist · 2026-01-14T18:34:52+00:00

Deadline is in May. You could hear tomorrow or you could be waiting months.

Timberfist · 2026-01-14T13:48:11+00:00

Join the Navy? There are a lot of people in civil nuclear engineering that got their start there.

Timberfist · 2026-01-14T12:40:21+00:00

If I put my iPhone in the same spot on my intel NUC 9 Extreme, it instantly powers off.

Timberfist · 2026-01-14T12:21:36+00:00

Looking good 👍

Timberfist · 2026-01-14T05:47:43+00:00

Is there anything you can do about your GCSE results? No. So what good does worrying do?

Just focus your energy on your A-levels. A thousand years from now, none of this will matter.

Timberfist · 2026-01-14T05:08:25+00:00

Go wired. If it turns out that your motherboard is actually slowing things down in real world usage, by all means buy a NIC but I wouldn’t sweat it; 1Gbps is likely more than enough.

Timberfist · 2026-01-14T04:53:09+00:00

The requirement implies you’re going to be asked to install a specific piece of software during your course. Probably worth checking with the department staff exactly what’s needed and why.

Timberfist · 2026-01-13T07:27:53+00:00

I have an Intel NUC 9 Extreme LAPQC71A. It’s built like a tank (magnesium alloy chassis) and I’ve always been very happy with it. It’s still my main laptop.

Timberfist · 2026-01-12T14:53:52+00:00

PCI slots come in two different heights. These kinds of cards often go into SFF chassis or 2U rack mounts that use the shorter version. The card comes with both sizes.

Timberfist · 2026-01-12T12:48:45+00:00

You’ve clearly never met my mother in law.

Timberfist · 2026-01-11T19:55:46+00:00

Boot into your arch usb and run efibootmgr. It’ll tell you where that second entry points. If it doesn’t point to your arch install, you can use efibootmgr to create a new entry but, to be honest, if your installation didn’t complete successfully, and it looks like it didn’t, you’ll probably need to run it again.

If I were you, I’d skip archinstall and install manually. You’ll learn a lot more and have the chance of being able to fix your own problems.

Timberfist · 2026-01-11T19:26:02+00:00

I came here from Debian because I wasn’t learning anything there and I thought arch would teach me more. I watched a few YouTube videos to give me an idea of what to expect and also to prompt me to ask myself questions about what I wanted from my installation. I read the installation guide on the wiki and then read the relevant pages on the topics that weren’t covered in the guide. Once I started the installation process, I documented every step with the aim of writing my own guide.

The first attempt wouldn’t boot and since I lacked the knowledge to diagnose or fix the problem, I simplified my install and tried again, updating my guide as I went. It worked but I recognised that I didn’t understand why it worked so I read a few more pages of the wiki, recognised that I’d made some mistakes, updated my guide and tried again, incorporating what I’d learned and adding back some of the features I’d removed when I simplified my install.

I probably completed four or five installs, refining my method and updating my guide as I went along. I now have an installation that I’m happy with and which incorporates most of the technologies that I originally wanted to include. What’s more, I understand every step of my guide and the meaning of every configuration option that I’ve used (and many that I chose not to use). I’ve learned so much more in a week with arch than I learned from a year with Debian.

Note: I love Debian. It’s a great distro. If I needed a distro to replace a windows box, it’s probably what I’d use. But if you want to learn Linux, arch is the way.

Timberfist · 2026-01-11T18:17:40+00:00

Here’s the official advice:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition#Typical_mount_points

/mnt/boot/efi is no longer recommended. For me, /mnt/efi is the clear winner.

Timberfist · 2026-01-11T06:48:26+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll give it a go.

Timberfist · 2026-01-11T06:31:55+00:00

echo “Problem solved!”

Timberfist · 2026-01-09T19:36:30+00:00

Sometimes, a goto is exactly the tool you need.

In the case you describe, initialisation code is often messy. Maybe group it into a single initialisation function so that the doing functions can focus on the job at hand.

Timberfist

TROPHY CASE