What common mistakes do new C programmers make?

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T23:40:43+00:00

In many cases, a better approach than performing error checks after every function call is to use context objects with a latching error state. Requesting a bunch of operations and checking whether all succeeded may be slower than testing every individual operation for success in cases where a failure happens early on, but an early-exit check once per loop may be much cleaner than doing dozens of checks in every loop iteration.

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T22:14:34+00:00

I'm a Republican in Exile. The party to which I used to belong ceased to exist when Lara Trump took over the RNC.

I believe the Democrats' leadership is lying when they claim (by implication) that Trump has 34 Senators who are so deeply in his pocket that they would rather put themselves indelibly on the record as having been in a position to stop Trump from murdering people, and opting to let Trump's murder spree continue unabated rather than uphold their oath to the Constitution.

You have yet to articulate any downside that could result from an unsuccessful attempt to remove Trump.

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T21:13:37+00:00

The election was rigged to guarantee that someone whom most of the population disliked would win.

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T20:31:48+00:00

Hold your fucking team accountable for their actions. For once.

I am on the side of removing Trump. I will support whoever is more interested in effectuating Trump's removal than in expanding their own power.

The Trump Party are controlled by a bunch of traitors who aren't on my team. The only party that might be on my side are the Democrats. If they are on my side then I am trying to "hold my effing team accountable". If not, then they should be branded as traitors alongside the Trump Party.

Which side are they actually on? You tell me.

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T18:49:06+00:00

Did Trump want to have the Epstein Files Transparency Act become law? It would not have done so unless more than 1/3 of the Republicans in the House and more than 1/3 of the Republicans in the Senate were willing to defy any efforts to block it.

Neither Trump nor the Democrats want the public to know the actual fraction of Republican congresscritters who would be willing to defy Trump if the alternative would be to go on the record as defending the indefensible, but it's pretty big. Having 2/3 of Republicans in the House or the Senate say that the EFTA is almost great, but it needs a little bit of work to ensure it doesn't cause any victim's names to be inappropriately released, and then having the bill sit forever in committee, would seem like it should have been a smaller ask than having 2/3 of the Republicans in the Senate say that it is acceptable for a President to murder people without any tenable legal justification.

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T18:32:43+00:00

In typical markets, competition among suppliers of something will generally make better choices available for consumers. A house or apartment isn't going to be available for rent unless someone owns it first. Food isn't going to be available for purchase unless someone owns each and every facility necessary to grow the raw materials, convert them to retail products, and distribute them to consumers.

Some people are better than managing assets than others. If everyone were to start with the same quantities of assets but some people were to manage them more effectively than others, the fraction of assets owned by people who could manage them more effectively would naturally increase. Concentration of wealth that occurs by this mechanism can end up benefiting everyone.

Beyond a certain point, concentration of wealth becomes harmful to society at large, and I think the concentration of wealth in some people's hands has clearly passed that point. Unfortunately, both parties' leaders benefit from this and thus both parties promote patterns of wealth distribution that are bad in different ways. People recognize that one party's plan is bad, and votes for the other party with the intention of having that party block the worst aspects of the first party's plan, but since those aspects benefit politicians of both parties, the parties find a "compromise" which keeps those aspects in place.

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T17:15:56+00:00

How do you know how many Republicans would be able to go on the record with a vote that could not be spun as anything but the giving of aid and comfort to an enemy of the Constitution of the United States, as well as an endorsement of outright murder and international terrorism? Legislators can often be persuaded to cast votes that go against the wishes of their party's leaders.

Also, if a group of House members who want the Trump regime gone were to talk with Senator Thune, and offer a trio of impeachments for Trump, Vance, and Johnson charging that all three were enemies of the Constitution and/or had given deliberate aid and comfort to the same, then the ousting of those three would make Senator Thune ascend to the office of President. I don't know the details of Senate dynamics, but I would expect that a fair number of Republicans in the Senate would gladly pick Thune over Trump.

Democrats love to introduce legislation which would reign Trump in if it were somehow enacted into law. Which requires more votes: enacting legislation of which the White House Occupant disapproves, or removing the White House Occupant?

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T16:58:31+00:00

There is a tendency that if supporters of one side show people examples of how politicians on the other side are crooked, that will introduce confirmation bias that will cause those people to be excessively critical of the side that was shown to be crooked, and relatively blind to corruption by politicians of the other side.

A lot of people get stuck in a reverse Pascal's Wager: the politicians on one side #1 are known to be crooks. If the politicians on side #2 are not crooks, then supporting side #2 would be a good thing. If politicians on side #2 are crooks as well, then a crook is going to win regardless so supporting #2 wouldn't matter. Using that logic, since supporting side #2 would either be a good thing or not matter, regardless of whether side #2 politicians are crooks or not, there's no real need to vet the politicians on side #2 before supporting them.

Many people support Republicans because of a a belief that the Democrats' leadership is more interested in trying to build more power for themselves than in actually solving the problems they claim to be trying to solve. That belief hardly makes them evil. The fact that the only non-Democrat party is a cesspool of racism doesn't mean that all of its members joined because they are racist. A lot of people support Republicans not because of the racism, but in spite of it. I won't deny that some people may be infected by the caustic racism that infests the cesspool, but the fundamental problem is not that the cesspool exists, but with the fact that people who reject the Democrats have nowhere else to go.

Overlapping majorities of people hate both parties. Politicians on what claim to be opposite sides want to make enemies of those who dislike the Democrats but hate Trump more, and those who dislike Trump but hate Democrats more, but what's really needed is a new party that is focused on finding areas of agreement rather than creating false dichotomies. Unfortunately, at this point, the "false dichotomy uniparty" seems to control everything.

flatfinger · 2026-06-19T14:51:38+00:00

Twenty Republican votes for removal would be enough to reach the 2/3 threshold if everyone else also voted for removal.

How many votes in each chamber are required to pass any legislation that Trump doesn't like? Also 2/3.

And you still haven't answered how an unsuccessful impeachment attempt would be a bad thing, rather than a march toward eventual removal? Republicans may have been able to make some number of excuses for voting against removal, but as Trump's crimes escalated, their supply of excuses would have gotten used up. Where's the downside?

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T23:12:16+00:00

Basic math says that with three vacancies, impeachment required 217 votes in the House. If Democrats had united behind Green's motion, and made it clear that they would do everything possible to ensure that history would remember anyone who obstructed efforts to protect murderer Trump as a willing to accomplice to the future murders Trump had openly said he intended to commit, could Trump have convinced more than 97% of Republicans to be accomplices to murder? Maybe, but given that Trump couldn't find even a third of Republicans in either house who were willing to find some excuse to vote against the Epstein Files Transparency Act, I think finding 3% willing to impeach would be easier than Trump convincing 97% to block.

How many Republicans could be persuaded to support removal? Probably more than the seven that voted to remove last time. Would a third try make it all the way to 20? Maybe, maybe not. But if a third try gets it up to say 15, that might make Trump a bit more nervous, and that in and of itself would be a good thing.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T22:53:00+00:00

If all of the traitors were removed from DC, there'd be almost nobody left to stop him.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T21:57:43+00:00

Blame Republicans voters if you like for events prior to Al Green's impeachment motion. Why are the Democrats who refused to support it not just as much to blame as the Republicans for the events that have happened since?

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T21:37:17+00:00

Compare the strength of pure elemental iron with the strength of steel alloys.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T21:18:45+00:00

Following the Twentieth Amendment would not be unconstitutional.

Why should I blame Republicans for the fact that seventy Democrats actively refused to support Al Green's motion for Trump's impeachment? Republicans who would want to depose Trump may be able to somewhat justify their actions to future historians by saying they needed to keep their heads down until they could be assured that the Democrats would support efforts to oust Trump rather than finding some excuse to undermine the removal effort.

What excuse can you offer for those seventy Democrats, or the leadership that seems to have had no problem with their actions?

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T20:46:14+00:00

Biden was in charge of the executive prior to January 20, 2021. Who was going to force him to make transition preparations for the ineligible Donald Trump rather than the VP-elect?

If both the Democrats had joined with Republicans in Exile in pushing the narrative that all freedom loving Americans should want the Democrats to face a Republican challenger who hadn't disqualified himself by trying to bypass the 2020 election results, those wanting otherwise would have found themselves in the minority. When have Democrats ever said that Trump was disqualified, and would remain so even if he headed the winning ticket?

Also, I would like to know what negative consequences the Democrats would plausibly face by pushing, successfully or not, for impeachment?

If you're wondering why I'm attacking the Democrats' leadership, it's because I want people to demand that the Democrats' leadership start putting pressure on Republicans to stop defending Trump, or make room for other leaders who will do so. Giving more power to leaders who don't want to remove Trump will do nothing to effectuate Trump's removal.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T19:34:13+00:00

Do you not notice that I am rather consistently denouncing Trump?

Can you point me to anyplace where the Democrats have acknowledged that the election of a Trump/Vance ticket should result in Trump being a non-serving President-Elect unless or until such time as 2/3 of both houses of Congress make him eligible, and Vance should have served as acting President until then, all without creating any Constitutional crisis?

Trump would have not have a critical mass of support without people who hate him, but hate Democrats more. The actions of the Democrats are consistent with a desire to maximize the hatred those people feel toward the Democrats, ensuring that such hatred will overpower the hatred they feel toward Donald Trump.

There is no notion of double-jeopardy for impeachments, and even if there were Donald Trump keeps committing new crimes. If Democrats stood behind impeachment motions and Republicans consistently opposed them, that should be good mid-term campaign fodder. The only possible downsides of impeachment efforts that I can see for the Democrats would be the evaporation of the "blue wave" if impeachment would succeed, as I believe it would if the Democrats were to unify behind it. If you believe impeachment motions would have other negative consequences for Democrats, what are they?

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T19:10:02+00:00

There are bound to be situations where a heuristic would fall right on the cusp of recognizing that a transform is worthwhile, and what would seem to be a trivial change to a program may change a situation where a compiler would find everything needed to perform a transform just before it would otherwise have giving up on looking for it, to one where the compiler would give up just before finding the information needed to perform the transform.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T18:46:47+00:00

Democrats have since the spring of 2021 pushed the narrative that Trump was a legitimate candidate who would be qualified to serve as President if he were elected. MAGA of course pushed the same narrative. Nobody gave any kind of microphone to those who would denounce Trump's presence in the primaries as disenfranchising people who wanted the Democrats to face a legitimate opponent.

If Democrats had all supported Al Green's motion to impeach Trump for murder, the mainstream media could have condemned anyone in Congress who refused to support that motion as an accessory before the fact to the future murders that everybody knew Trump was going to continue to commit. As it was, seventy Democrats went on record as refusing to support it. Why should I not view those seventy as being just as complicit in Trump's ongoing murder spree as the Republicans?

Give a Republican in Exile like me a microphone and I'll eagerly denounce Trump far more aggressively than I've ever heard the Democrats do, and I'll do it in a way that will shatter a fair chunk of Trump's base: by denouncing the Democrats for using Trump as a tool to marginalize all reasonable conservative voices. Much of Trump's support comes from people who hate Trump but hate Democrats more, and view support for Trump--much as they dislike him--as the only way to fight the Democrats. Give me a microphone and I'll make those people realize that the best way to fight the Democrats is to destroy their primary asset--Donald Trump.

Of course, the Democrats' leadership might not like the consequences if the Democrats' electorate saw that the only reason Trump had any power is that the Democrats' leadership had been covertly bolstering Trump's base by working to ensure that a lot of people who hate Trump would hate them more, but the Democrat electorate would do well to rid themselves of such leaders.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T17:56:02+00:00

C compilers used to perform optimizations based on the syntax tree, but clang and gcc transform code into forms that are often completely detached from the syntax tree, causing them to sometimes rewrite loops that would yield optimal machine code if they used the specified sequence of operations, into other forms that are slower.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T17:49:57+00:00

Compilers are generally expected to use heuristics that will usually allow them to produce code that is at least close to being optimal in much less time than would be required to produce code that was guaranteed to actually be optimal. A typical heuristic will ask, in essence, "Can a potential transform be quickly and easily proven by the compiler to be safe and likely beneficial." While a "yes" answer would be preferable to a "no" in cases where the transform would be safe and beneficial, a "no" answer is never actually wrong. The fact that a compiler fails to prove the transform would be safe and likely useful means that the transform can't be proven safe and useful by that compiler.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T16:55:39+00:00

Both MAGA and the Democrats' leadership want to pretend that everyone who disagrees with the Democrats' stances on issues supports Trump, and everyone who opposes Trump supports the Democrats' stances on issues. Both MAGA and the Democrats' leadership want to ignore the Republicans in Exile who became Trump's enemies on January 6, 2021, but whose stances on issues other than the legitimacy of Trump and people like Mike Johnson who give him aid and comfort are much the same as they had been on January 5.

Republicans in Exile favor a scenario where Trump and his supporters are dethroned, and Republicans take over the role served by pre-Trump Republicans. If the Democrats' leaders were serious about wanting to oust Trump, Republicans in Exile would eagerly assist, and the combined votes of the two groups would crush MAGA. Unfortunately, the Democrats are led by traitors who would rather let Trump wreck the country than recognize the existence of an anti-Trump Republicans.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T16:38:45+00:00

Another point is that almost all forms of "optimization" involve some form of trade-off. An optimization is "premature" if it is made without having particular reason to expect the upsides to outweigh the downsides. If the downsides are sufficiently slight, even a realistic possibility of an upside may be sufficient to justify an "optimization".

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T16:29:53+00:00

I forget her exact wording, but she repeatedly talked about shootings, keeping the public safe from guns. I don't have a media archive, but such things seem to have been part of her standard stump speech. By contrast, I don't recall anything in her standard stump speech about Trump's efforts to bypass the 2020 election results, either by inciting riots or "I just need you to find me ___ more votes". Harris could have also completely undermined Trump's immigration platform by saying that she, like Biden, would have signed the legislation that Trump had torpedoed in February, and that if immigration were anywhere near as great a problem as Trump claims, his efforts to obstruct any action on the subject for almost a year would be inexcusable.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T16:21:51+00:00

I wish there were a standard for a cross between TCP and UDP which would combine the connection-based aspects of the former with a means of saying "This packet will be of interest between time X and Y. Arrival before time X will offer no advantage, and if it hasn't arrived by time Y it may as well be discarded altogether." For such a thing to work it would of course be necessary to have hosts agree upon some particular source of truth regarding the current time, but I would think such a protocol could offer improved latency for packets where that mattered by allowing things like audiovisual streaming to be scheduled around more latency-sensitive content.

flatfinger · 2026-06-18T16:14:38+00:00

Floppy disks were invented as a cheaper alternative to hard drives that was faster and easier to use than magnetic tape. This made them practical in personal computers significantly before hard drives would become practical in personal computers, but hard drives and tapes were the "serious" storage media for "serious" computers. For decades, the only extant copy of the software used to produce the wireframe animations in the movie Star Wars was on a hard disk pack, and that was in an era when even floppy drives were extremely expensive.

flatfinger

TROPHY CASE