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Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

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Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#151

Post by pg314 »

andreygrehov wrote: post #63

I'm not a C engineer, but I think I have an interesting recommendation to consider. Since you are already familiar with other languages, you obviously don't need to know the basics of C. The basics are the same everywhere. Instead, you'd likely want to build that mindset on how to build good software with C. I suggest you read other people's code and try to deep dive into the whys. I heard Redis is a well-written sof…

I did that with Git itself. As a bonus you’ll learn more about a tool you’re probably using everyday. If I remember correctly, even the early commits were pretty high quality.

Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#153

Post by svnt »

julianeon wrote: post #122
svnt wrote: post #17

I like firearms as an analogy here. Rust is like a modern rifle, unloaded, with six safeties and three locked triggers in a gun safe. The ammunition will harmlessly self-destruct if you don’t focus properly before firing. C is sort of like Rust except the rifle is on the couch, loaded, one in the chamber, all the safeties are off, the numerous open triggers are held by RNGs, and the business end is pointed right at y…

Ha. Confession time: I came to this thread to Ctrl-F for "Rust" to find the Rust-C fisticuffs. And this answer is like what I would expect if I said "ChatGPT, write me a reddit-style Rust defense that would rustle some jimmies." I'm about equally capable at both Rust and C - I could pass a 1st year undergrad CS course using either, but I'm no better than that. I know C has its place - its marketshare of embedded devi…

There is a lot of nuance in this discussion that someone inexperienced could misinterpret, you’re definitely right about that.

Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#154

Post by sfpotter »

stusmall wrote: post #145
sfpotter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're just beginning with C, it doesn't matter. If anything, it's better to be exposed to these unsafe practices and make mistakes with them in the very safe environment of your own home, where absolutely no one cares what you're doing. K&R C is an excellent learning resource primarily because it's extremely strong pedagogically. Read K&R and then move onto something else later when you're done with it. If you ev…

C is one of those things that unless you have proper testing, tooling and linting you don't know if you code is incorrect. It may have subtle memory bugs, rely on undefined behavior or crumple in exploitable ways under bad input. Having a feedback loop is really important in learning and improving. Undefined behavior helps subvert it. For the exact example of above, how would a developer learn not to use gets? The be…

All of this is true, but if you are just starting with C, none of it matters.

If you continue using C, then you should eventually learn this stuff, but to overburden someone with a list of 100 things they must do right is the surest way to frustrate them to the point where they give up.

If OP eventually writes C code that goes into production for a company, it is the company's responsibility to have procedures and safeguards which ensure that OP writes reasonable code. Ideally, one such safeguard will be a senior colleague to introduce them to the thornier parts of C.

To expect a beginner to learn all of the finer points of a topic from the start is bad pedagogy.

On the other hand, K&R provides a set of exercises which are fun, graded, interesting, and challenging. By the time you finish them, you have a working knowledge of a large and useful subset of C. You can then proceed to reading another book (or consulting some other reference). Invariably, you will find that they disagree with K&R to some extent. Learning to spot these differences and begin to understand how C has evolved is itself an important lesson.

Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#155

Post by sfpotter »

daniele_dll wrote: post #149
andreygrehov wrote: post #63

I'm not a C engineer, but I think I have an interesting recommendation to consider. Since you are already familiar with other languages, you obviously don't need to know the basics of C. The basics are the same everywhere. Instead, you'd likely want to build that mindset on how to build good software with C. I suggest you read other people's code and try to deep dive into the whys. I heard Redis is a well-written sof…

Fully agree with the principle but maybe let's not call Redis "well-written" :) Redis is a great piece of software because of how much it impacted the "evolution" of Internet not because of the code quality, Redis's code resemble spaghetti code, a lot. I will push myself and say that nowadays people would get fired for writing code like that! And before someone start to throw stones (just for the sake of it), here a…

Here's one example of when to commit auto-generated code: if you use a tool like Cython and want to distribute sources to an end user, it is frequently recommended to distribute the C sources generated by Cython instead of the Cython code itself. The given reason is that the end user may not have access to Cython, but will likely have access to a C compiler. (This is frequently the case on scientific clusters where users don't have superuser privileges.)

Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#156

Post by dxbydt »

rramadass wrote: post #119
dxbydt wrote: post #67

One thing I always loved about C was how easily you could slip in and out of x86 assembler with the __asm__ tag. There is no ceremony & it seems like magic. Like if you have 3 C int's a,b & c, and you want to add a & b and store the result in c, you would do: __asm__ ( "addl %%ebx, %%eax;" : "=a" (c) : "a" (a) , "b" (b) ); Then you could just continue in C as if nothing had happened, and a printf("%d",c) would give y…

Man, that is one complex, interconnected and interesting System! I would love to work on something like that even if it is just maintaining a legacy product. Seriously, let me know (contact in my profile). On similar lines, I have been thinking of using Erlang/Elixir for distributed programming over the Web (even in the browser if possible) and dropping down to C/C++ and J programming languages as required on individ…

If you like such systems, backend systems in investment banks is where its at. Most of my experience was at Goldman, but similar systems exist in Morgan, Deutsche, Citi, UBS, Bloomberg or old PE firms. Look for C programmer careers in trade publications like efinancialcareers.com, or work with Huxley, Selby Jennings etc. Combination of C/C++ and certification in Q/kdb - will keep you employed pretty much into your 60s. Those languages are intrinsically hard & imo a real pleasure to code in. Well, I liked it.

Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#157

Post by palmtree3000 »

daniele_dll wrote: post #149
andreygrehov wrote: post #63

I'm not a C engineer, but I think I have an interesting recommendation to consider. Since you are already familiar with other languages, you obviously don't need to know the basics of C. The basics are the same everywhere. Instead, you'd likely want to build that mindset on how to build good software with C. I suggest you read other people's code and try to deep dive into the whys. I heard Redis is a well-written sof…

Fully agree with the principle but maybe let's not call Redis "well-written" :) Redis is a great piece of software because of how much it impacted the "evolution" of Internet not because of the code quality, Redis's code resemble spaghetti code, a lot. I will push myself and say that nowadays people would get fired for writing code like that! And before someone start to throw stones (just for the sake of it), here a…

Re: auto generated code: it saves ci time which is a pretty huge benefit. You still need to regenerate the code to make sure it's up to date, but you can do that in parallel with tests that rely on that code.

Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#158

Post by trenchgun »

baby wrote: post #137
andreygrehov wrote: post #63

I'm not a C engineer, but I think I have an interesting recommendation to consider. Since you are already familiar with other languages, you obviously don't need to know the basics of C. The basics are the same everywhere. Instead, you'd likely want to build that mindset on how to build good software with C. I suggest you read other people's code and try to deep dive into the whys. I heard Redis is a well-written sof…

It's funny because I would never think that this is a good way to learn a codebase. Code changes completely through time, and early phases where nothing is set can be extremely messy and filled with constant refactorings. Commit messages are rarely good. I would rather try to learn a codebase looking at the latest state and the docs.

> It's funny because I would never think that this is a good way to learn a codebase.

It is NOT for learning the codebase.

It is for learning how to program in C.

Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#159

Post by sfpotter »

asveikau wrote: post #131
sfpotter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're just beginning with C, it doesn't matter. If anything, it's better to be exposed to these unsafe practices and make mistakes with them in the very safe environment of your own home, where absolutely no one cares what you're doing. K&R C is an excellent learning resource primarily because it's extremely strong pedagogically. Read K&R and then move onto something else later when you're done with it. If you ev…

I've taught C at university level, and used to give crash courses to new college grads and interns in industry. The one thing I impart the most from the beginning is to develop good instincts for secure interfaces. You should be able to look at function signatures and see alarm bells for unsafe practices. For someone skilled at C this is second nature, you can see bad practices from a distance, often at the function…

It's unwise to neglect it in the long run. It's perfectly reasonable to ignore it initially. There are different valid pedagogical approaches here. Your approach may be suitable for the type of student you were interacting with, but the profile you're familiar with doesn't represent every person who might be interested in learning C.

Re: Ask HN: Learn C in 2023?

#160

Post by daniele_dll »

sfpotter wrote: post #155
daniele_dll wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree with the principle but maybe let's not call Redis "well-written" :) Redis is a great piece of software because of how much it impacted the "evolution" of Internet not because of the code quality, Redis's code resemble spaghetti code, a lot. I will push myself and say that nowadays people would get fired for writing code like that! And before someone start to throw stones (just for the sake of it), here a…

Here's one example of when to commit auto-generated code: if you use a tool like Cython and want to distribute sources to an end user, it is frequently recommended to distribute the C sources generated by Cython instead of the Cython code itself. The given reason is that the end user may not have access to Cython, but will likely have access to a C compiler. (This is frequently the case on scientific clusters where u…

Importing a C file into a Python session is a practice that can ---easily--- cause ---a lot--- of headaches, the packages required to build the code as python library and make it importable will vary between systems and make it hard to debug in case of crashes. I personally would distribuite the pre-compiled binaries, CI + docker makes that much easier.

The fact that "can be done" doesn't necessarely mean that "it's the right way" to do it.

Going back to embedding auto-generated code, focusing on this specific case, are you telling me that a line in the requirements.txt, on a machine where the user is expected to have access to a compiler, is the reason to keep auto generated code in the repository? Sorry, personally it seems a flaky reason.

Also, the very fact that you mention that users don't have superuser privileges should be even more of a reason to use virtual environments, where you don't need super privileges, or if you can't or want to use virtual environments you can still have multiple paths in the PYTHONPATH env variable and you can install packages in a specific paths leveraging the --target of pip or the PYTHONUSERBASE env variable, solving the issue as well.

I would prefer to suggest my users to improve their runtime environment than enable them to improve the chaos.

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