tef's roast beef account

i know some lovely C people who write code with an "audit-first" mentality. heavy commenting. excellent technical writing

you probably don't have a test suite four times the size of your code base and full branch coverage, like sqlite has

i know folk with very specific performance requirements, or very specific hardware requirements. i don't mean gamedev

managed code is great and with the existence of rust, you don't have the "but gc" excuse anymore

even so i can imagine a time where i'll need to write C but i'd rather write C in rust, some of the time at least

in the same way i might write bash to glue things together, i might write C, both are as nasty but one has status

one has harder error messages and can do the wrong thing faster, great

anyway anyone who tells you writing in C is fun and somehow they're not a property testing fetishist, be wary

if you've never had the pleasure of reading a disciplined C program, you're in for a treat

comments, narrative structure. no careful tricks. occasional macros, but forgive them for the one letter variables

in many ways the style of code I write is influenced by that C programmer mentality, breaking up the cognitive load of the program

i'm not saying "write less C" but "you probably can't afford to write C well, and you're unlikely to need it"

i would say similar things about C++ but i have met C++ users and well, for me at least, i feel i'll never convince them to change