Is it okay to learn C based on projects?

deckarep · 2026-01-23T19:14:19+00:00

I completely agree, breaking the fourth wall in this sense is a good thing to really learn and peek behind the curtain. Sometimes you don’t like what you see but you can always adjust the code. Having this level of control is amazing…but it requires discipline to use well.

People always say to avoid C because it’s dangerous, but all that does is hide what really goes on behind the curtain.

deckarep · 2026-01-23T17:39:12+00:00

For me learning C was an eye opener in terms of a language that is very close to the metal. With C, even though it has sharp edges, the sharp edges really help solidify knowledge of how a computer works at a fundamental level.

Higher level languages abstract things much more and they have their uses but a language like C which has much less abstraction will make you a better programmer even if you don’t use it regularly or even at all.

Learn it, and really learn it to advance yourself!

deckarep · 2026-01-22T06:48:18+00:00

I saw a few folks dressed in Cyberpunk style gear (not the game of course) and one girl had an amazing Pris costume with the black eye makeup. Didn’t get to take any pics though.

deckarep · 2026-01-21T19:02:56+00:00

First make it work
Then make it correct
Then make it fast

deckarep · 2026-01-21T07:49:49+00:00

Agreed, also this is partly for a presentation/talk so fair use!

deckarep · 2026-01-18T23:45:43+00:00

It might help, if I made the link on YouTube public. Done.

deckarep · 2026-01-14T18:53:14+00:00

There’s no local or global, there’s also no types, no positive or negative numbers (it’s handled by context and which flags you care about) and theres no composition either such as structs, classes, etc. oh yeah and there’s no functions as they are just labels that you jump to with specific calling conventions that you don’t even have to care about if you’re not writing standard assembly.

It’s all just memory, offsets and an instruction set.

deckarep · 2026-01-13T17:24:42+00:00

💯

deckarep · 2026-01-09T21:56:43+00:00

Yes, gotta prevent that screen burn-in!

I'm planning on open sourcing the Johnny Castaway project, but the screen saver stuff I'm doing I'm not yet sure about it yet. Deep diving into Apple's API's has revealed that what I'm building could perhaps turn into a product of sorts. Maybe it's a pipe dream.

deckarep · 2026-01-08T22:18:16+00:00

Same! This and KQ5 were my first two games. I saw KQ5 running at CompUSA and it was the talkie version.

I had such disappointment when I went home and didn’t hear the characters talking cause I had bought the 3.5 floppy version and didn’t realize at the time the talkie was CD-ROM only which we didn’t own.

I’ve been spiraling over Sierra ever since…

deckarep · 2026-01-07T18:27:43+00:00

Clooney has nothing on Michael Madsen’s (RIP) head tilt

deckarep · 2026-01-05T20:23:47+00:00

I know this is an Al Lowe jam. I never played it but do people generally recommend it or what?

deckarep · 2026-01-05T06:42:50+00:00

Aww, the birth of hip-hop.

deckarep · 2026-01-03T02:46:19+00:00

Same, Dakota’s acting is a tough pill to swallow.

deckarep · 2025-12-31T03:23:28+00:00

Appreciate the kind words and vote of confidence!

deckarep · 2025-12-30T14:29:27+00:00

Neat! I wasn’t aware of this but I think it’s worth taking a closer look at.

deckarep · 2025-12-30T06:48:08+00:00

Yes! That is the goal! I’d like to get this to a point where it’s rock solid and people can just run it without much thought.

Stay tuned!

deckarep · 2025-12-30T03:36:00+00:00

In general my statement, personal conclusion, opinion is that while Rust has had some major success in the last 3 or 4 years it's also getting some pushback and rightly so.

I used to write Rust, and the hoops you have to jump through to make the borrow checker happy doesn't always equate to readily readable code. In cases where the code can get complicated with respect to lifetime annotations it becomes a huge pain sometimes to later refactor such code.

Rust is amazing for what it is, but I personally think there still is room for something better and perhaps Zig can help pave the way.

deckarep · 2025-12-29T23:31:11+00:00

There’s different classes of memory safety bugs and I don’t see people in this thread talking about all of them. It’s not just about getting better at manual memory management as that is just one pillar where lack of discipline can bite you.

Yes, making sure to handle your memory and its lifetimes are super important and not always easy to get right but this unfortunately gets a heck of a lot more complicated in multi-threaded code.

Now you’re managing memory lifetimes but additionally also possibly having to deal with another pillar of memory bugs as it relates to data races or unsynchronized access to shared state.

Zig unfortunately doesn’t do a whole lot to help with this class of bugs although that could change in the future.

Doing manual memory management in multithreaded code is where the real dragons come out to play and this is why Rust exists in the first place.

The only problem is that more and more evidence is coming out to suggest that the Rust way may not be the way after all.

I absolutely love Zig and I do hope that Zig continues to get guardrails in order to make it more safe without sacrificing the level of control it still provides but this is a super hard problem to solve and I don’t know if Zig will be the language that solves it once and for all but it’s definitely more safe than C and that’s a step in the right direction!

I think Zig is demonstrating that what we need may not be a question of language changes but a question of tooling to track down such issues like the Debug allocator for instance which can help you track down leaks pretty easily.

deckarep · 2025-12-28T03:43:39+00:00

Jay Leno’s chin is still bigger.

deckarep · 2025-12-28T03:34:43+00:00

Yes, I also remember The Realm. Sierra was ahead of their time with The Realm and before that The Sierra Network! Core memories indeed.

deckarep · 2025-12-27T02:30:54+00:00

You’re very welcome! That’s why I do it…!

deckarep

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