Tell HN: C Experts Panel – Ask us anything about C

Hi HN,

We are members of the C Standard Committee and associated C experts, who have collaborated on a new book called Effective C, which was discussed recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22716068. After that thread, dang invited me to do an AMA and I invited my colleagues so we upgraded it to an AUA. Ask us about C programming, the C Standard or C standardization, undefined Behavior, and anything C-related!

The book is still forthcoming, but it's available for pre-order and early access from No Starch Press: https://nostarch.com/Effective_C.

Here's who we are:

rseacord - Robert C. Seacord is a Technical Director at NCC Group, and author of the new book by No Starch Press “Effective C: An Introduction to Professional C Programming” and C Standards Committee (WG14) Expert.

AaronBallman - Aaron Ballman is a compiler frontend engineer for GrammaTech, Inc. and works primarily on the static analysis tool, CodeSonar. He is also a frontend maintainer for Clang, a popular open source compiler for C, C++, and other languages. Aaron is an expert for the JTC1/SC22/WG14 C programming language and JTC1/SC22/WG21 C++ programming language standards committees and is a chapter author for Effective C.

msebor - Martin Sebor is Principal Engineer at Red Hat and expert for the JTC1/SC22/WG14 C programming language and JTC1/SC22/WG21 C++ programming language standards committees and the official Technical Reviewer for Effective C.

DougGwyn - Douglas Gwyn is Emeritus at US Army Research Laboratory and Member Emeritus for the JTC1/SC22/WG14 C programming language and a major contributor to Effective C.

pascal_cuoq - Pascal Cuoq is the Chief Scientist at TrustInSoft and co-inventor of the Frama-C technology. Pascal was a reviewer for Effective C and author of a foreword part.

NickDunn - Nick Dunn is a Principal Security Consultant at NCC Group, ethical hacker, software security tester, code reviewer, and major contributor to Effective C.

Fire away with your questions and comments about C!

Please don't do this here.

Some simple instructions about how to use a thread for conversation would be appreciated. Thanks!

Nothing to it! Just hit the reply button on comments you want to respond to. You can also upvote anything you like by clicking on the up arrow to the left of the comment.

It's a longish story, but people do seem to like the cover. We started equating the idea of C == Sea, so we had some early drawings of the robot riding various undersea creatures including a giant squid. I thought that looked overly phallic, so I suggested the robot ride Cthulhu instead, an unofficial mascot of NCC Group.