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Malloc Challenge

vicsydev.blogspot.com

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Re: Malloc Challenge

#21

Post by greenshackle2 »

>[libc4life] is aiming for simplicity and leverage; and it makes a real effort to get there by playing on C's strengths, rather than just inventing yet another buggy Lisp.

Ouch, right in the feels, I've been working on https://buildyourownlisp.com in my spare time. (EDIT: I was looking for a name for the repo, YABLisp it is.)

> coding in C is a welcome therapy after seemingly wasting years exploring various ways of pretending the hidden complexity in my stack was someone else's problem

I've noticed several older talented programmers express similar feelings. I was watching Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero stream, where he writes a game in C from scratch, and he said, I don't know who would watch this except aging C programmers.

I'm less than 30 but I already feel like an aging C programmer. Most OOP seems like a morass; I've switched to writing my own projects in C and my prototypes in C-like Python. But I wonder what hope there is for people like us in the industry, which seems to be moving ever further away from this type of programming.

Re: Malloc Challenge

#23

Post by xenadu02 »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #21

>[libc4life] is aiming for simplicity and leverage; and it makes a real effort to get there by playing on C's strengths, rather than just inventing yet another buggy Lisp. Ouch, right in the feels, I've been working on https://buildyourownlisp.com in my spare time. (EDIT: I was looking for a name for the repo, YABLisp it is.) > coding in C is a welcome therapy after seemingly wasting years exploring various ways of p…

I'm sure it inflates one's ego but the chances that they've avoided writing any exploitable security vulnerabilities is almost zero.

Re: Malloc Challenge

#24

Post by codr4life »

userbinator wrote: post #19

Before I read the article or the comments I thought it would be about rewriting code to not use dynamic allocation, which is IMHO a far more interesting (and challenging to some) exercise. Contrary to common expectations, it often doesn't mean e.g. restricting the lengths of inputs, and can result in simpler, more efficient, and less buggy code. From my experience it is usually those with a background in higher-level…

You should have a look at the repository README. libc4life bends over backwards to provide stack allocation and value semantics wherever possible. Right now I'm working on an ordered map that allows user defined key/value sizes which lets it allocate all the memory it needs in one block and provide value semantics.

Re: Malloc Challenge

#25

Post by codr4life »

xenadu02 wrote: post #23
greenshackle2 wrote: post #21

>[libc4life] is aiming for simplicity and leverage; and it makes a real effort to get there by playing on C's strengths, rather than just inventing yet another buggy Lisp. Ouch, right in the feels, I've been working on https://buildyourownlisp.com in my spare time. (EDIT: I was looking for a name for the repo, YABLisp it is.) > coding in C is a welcome therapy after seemingly wasting years exploring various ways of p…

I'm sure it inflates one's ego but the chances that they've avoided writing any exploitable security vulnerabilities is almost zero.

Show me a software stack without those kinds of bugs; they're all written in C somewhere down the line; enormous amounts of complicated C, written by coders of varying competence. At least in my stack I can keep it simple and fix anything that needs fixing.

Re: Malloc Challenge

#26

Post by codr4life »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #21

>[libc4life] is aiming for simplicity and leverage; and it makes a real effort to get there by playing on C's strengths, rather than just inventing yet another buggy Lisp. Ouch, right in the feels, I've been working on https://buildyourownlisp.com in my spare time. (EDIT: I was looking for a name for the repo, YABLisp it is.) > coding in C is a welcome therapy after seemingly wasting years exploring various ways of p…

No worries :) I was mostly referring to the tendency to turn C into another language on the api-level. Building Lisps is one of my part time hobbies. Language abstractions are like training wheels. Once you know what you're doing they start getting in your way, and you start preferring languages with less baggage.

Re: Malloc Challenge

#27

Post by codr4life »

vvanders wrote: post #16
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the domain - i suspect that this question would cut off qualified application programmers who are not perfectly familiar with lower level/infrastructure code.

I would argue that except in the case of legacy software there's no reason to be using C/C++ for something that doesn't care about performance or memory overhead. Even then it's useful to know how sentinel values and other features work if you don't dig into the performance aspect.

What kind of software doesn't care about performance or memory overhead? And why would anyone want to use it?

Re: Malloc Challenge

#28

Post by codr4life »

sparky_ wrote: post #22
jwatte wrote: post #9

How about: mmap() a few terabytes of virtual space let malloc() be pointer addition and let free() be a no-op?

Somebody out there is doing this in production. I guarantee it.

Why wouldn't they? If it turns out to be a good solution for the problem they're trying to solve? There's nothing wrong with coming up with your own solutions, that's why we got brains instead of answering machines.

Re: Malloc Challenge

#29

Post by _RPM »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #21

>[libc4life] is aiming for simplicity and leverage; and it makes a real effort to get there by playing on C's strengths, rather than just inventing yet another buggy Lisp. Ouch, right in the feels, I've been working on https://buildyourownlisp.com in my spare time. (EDIT: I was looking for a name for the repo, YABLisp it is.) > coding in C is a welcome therapy after seemingly wasting years exploring various ways of p…

What the hell is C-Like Python?

Re: Malloc Challenge

#30

Post by greenshackle2 »

_RPM wrote: post #29
greenshackle2 wrote: post #21

>[libc4life] is aiming for simplicity and leverage; and it makes a real effort to get there by playing on C's strengths, rather than just inventing yet another buggy Lisp. Ouch, right in the feels, I've been working on https://buildyourownlisp.com in my spare time. (EDIT: I was looking for a name for the repo, YABLisp it is.) > coding in C is a welcome therapy after seemingly wasting years exploring various ways of p…

What the hell is C-Like Python?

Python that looks like C? It's not a thing, I just made it up. A subset of Python that is not too painful to rewrite in C. No classes, I use namedtuples as structs, etc.

I'm not sure it's a sane thing to do, arguably I should just write the thing in C in the first place, but I have more experience with Python so it's still easier to me.

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