Sean Middleditch

The thing that made C finally tolerable to me for use in larger codebases is that I can now write a very high-quality type-safe dynamic array, with sane memory management. (C23 + extensions are necessary.) Some demo code is linked below. This is only possible thanks to @thephd@pony.social driving typeof and defer to the standard. @uecker@mastodon.social and @erisceleste@tech.lgbt also pushed or are pushing things into the standard that help massively, such as if-declarations and tagless structure compatibility. Statement expressions (or closures) are the last necessity that aren't yet for sure inbound to the standard, so far as I know, but statement expressions are ubiquitous enough that I don't care. None of this works in Microsoft's C compiler ofc, but frankly IMO there's really no reason to even try to use their toolchain anymore given that clang-cl and msys2 both exist. Something like Cake could maybe be used if MS toolchain support is critical (I haven't tried it), assuming that Cake is keeping up with C29 and onward. This code here is all commented with examples and has some small demo code; the actual header I use in real projects is only ~200 lines with all features implemented. https://godbolt.org/z/17rf3v3TW I was going to write up a big description of the reasoning for this specific approach and all the crimes -- I mean techniques -- used, but I realize I haven't touched my blog in years and I need to find a new non-github host to migrate it to first. The trickiest bit to wrangle I think was how I got the range-based loop macros to work at my target quality bar. The solution presented here requires if-declaration support (Clang trunk), though my actual code uses some nested for-loop abuse (works in Clang 22, though labeled continue won't work correctly). The if-statements will also result in better -O0 codegen, so I'm looking forward to eventually getting my mitts on that in a deployed toolchain. Anyway, enjoy this glimpse into the workings of my madness. (Someday I'll write up how my strbuf_t is implemented, because it's the other workhorse that I rely on heavily to make modern C coding tolerable. It doesn't use many macros or any cutting-edge C features, though, so it's not nearly as interesting. tl;dr is that defer statements make using it sane.)

@floooh@mastodon.gamedev.place Just wait until @erin_catto@mastodon.gamedev.place writes Box4D next. :P

@aeva @cwebber Benefit the general public!? That's absolutely not what the people who invented money wanted it used for.

@ligniform@infosec.exchange I don't know anything about Chick fil A specifically, but rewards programs like "every 10th sammich is free" are common, and often require an app or a phone number or something to be used for every purchase in order to accrue/spend points and discounts. Insidious things like "free coffee on your birthday" or "we'll text you a coupon" or whatnot so the programs get real and very personal data. Same as grocery stores all having rewards programs folks have to sign up for to pay the real price and not pay a "you didn't give us your data" tax on pantry items. I enter my wife's phone number on nearly every purchase at our local Safeway, for example, because it usually reduces the total by $2-$10, depending on what I'm getting. I'm financially well-off enough that I could ignore $10 off on grocery bills if I wanted to, but a very large percentage of people could not. The game is rigged, and folks basically end up being "forced" to create accounts nobody wants just to not get fucked.

@clive Just ask ChatGPT to download some more RAM for you. /s

@icculus@mastodon.gamedev.place @nothings@mastodon.gamedev.place I've seen a few other projects put something like an AGENTS_NOT_PERMITTED.md file with a link to the policy next to the regular agents file, so it's at least more obvious at a glance why the agents file is there. No, the tools don't actually recognize that file in anyway. It's just a signal for humans to reduce knee jerk reactions to the agents file presence without having read it.

@vitaut "It would be a real shame if this architecture here weren't so sound and reliable like. Might be you needs an architect to make sure it won't collapse under load."

I left out her initial "I miss that game you played, Blood Rage" and our exchange about how Blood Rage is a tabletop game and not on a console, so I had "something like 'Blood Rage'" as an additional clue, but still. It was "had a hat" that made it click. 😅

@nixCraft If you're referencing that Reddit post that was making the rounds: no, that was not a real thing, it was a satire post with a "Humor" tag that none of the cropped screenshots bothered to include.

@pikesley@mastodon.me.uk Since we have no idea what the training data actually is, there's a chance it *does* give better results, for some definition of "better" anyway. Someone should do a study on the quality of results between asking tersely worded questions, asking politely worded questions, and burning the entire industry to the ground. For science.

@PeterSommerlad@mastodon.social @lesto@hachyderm.io @DanielaKEngert@hachyderm.io @alilleybrinker@hachyderm.io Of course they "magically" write better code in a better language. Except it's not magic, it's human nature. A tool that is more easily used incorrectly than correctly will most often be used incorrectly. Defaults matter. This incidentally is why making new C++ code safer is worth some effort: the vast majority of everyday C++ developers and projects will never switch languages, because change is hard and maintaining status quo is easy.