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I have not heard this 'criticism' ever before and it's absolutely ridiculous on so many levels to me as a person tangentially interested in gamedev, C, C++, run

by _dcwr 9y ago

I have not heard this 'criticism' ever before and it's absolutely ridiculous on so many levels to me as a person tangentially interested in gamedev, C, C++, runtimes, system programming, retro stuff, history of gaemdev, etc. 1. Why would a web dev suddenly decide to write in such a spartan way an algorithm heavy library in C or C++? This makes no sense except to somehow tie modern web dev failures like left pad with this style of libraries to portray them in negative light... 2. In gamedev neat organization is/was not some golden long standing standard, i.e. in comments under[0] you can find information that with 3D graphics it was customary to use a single file to let the early compilers do a better job since they didn't optimize across translation units and many old codebases have no problem with thousands of lines of spaghetti per file. 3. These libraries are meant to be compiled once ever per project (except when you clean out all your object files) with a define in a single source file (which any modern compiler should handle), otherwise most of their text is thrown away in a single ifdef which should be trivial and speedy on a modern compiler. The resulting header shouldn't be a problem for any modern compiler and is as light or lighter than an entire include tree would be. Most of these libraries are also single purpose and have very small API and C is light compared to template heavy C++ anyway. If you develop such a library you can keep it split up and ship merged files, i.e. SQLite does that. If anything this might speed up the execution (optimization in single TU), compilation (a single TU for entire library) and linking (no dynamic nor static linking but a single object) but to me that tangential compared to convenience itself. 4. I've never seen such libraries to have been badly received - quite the contrary, SQLite might be the most widely deployed piece of software actually and it's recommended consumable form is a single pair of files (plus an ext file, for a total or 3 in the official 'amalgamation'). 5. I've personally yet to see a 'young web dev' create such a library. If anything it's the grizzled veterans of gamedev, runtimes, compression, middelware, cross platformness, systems programming, people with university education that includes CS heavy stuff, etc. Libraries I use or like that use this (single file or single header + source) style are: - very popular PD libraries by Sean T Barret, thanked in this linked repo's README. He arguably popularized this style, maintains a list of such libraries and has a FAQ and a guide about this style of libraries. He is over 50 (or maybe over 60, he was a teen in the 80s), is a gamedev veteran with software and hardware graphics and runtimes - Thief 1, Iggy (Flash runtime) at RAD, etc. His website is also hardly something that a modern web dev would make[1]. - pugixml by Arseny Kapoulkine - gamedev veteran: PS3, physics, rendering, etc. not a web dev, not young (definitely over 30, unless you happen to redefine young to 'under 40' which makes 0 sense in industry as young as ours but considering your other claims is totally likely). - SQLite which is shipped and recommended to be used like that (and I think Python embedds it like that) - D. Richard Hipp, Tcl, over 50 now, total veteran of world class between Fossil, Tcl, SQLite, etc., educated and programming since 90s, his personal website is also hardly modern web dev. - ClipperLib by Angus Johnson, a hardcore clipping 2D library, it has single/two file versions in C#, Delphi and C++ (are these the languages young web devs know well now too?) - another person who was a programme rin the 90s and is from very Enterprise-y background (Delphi Object Pascal, yikes), not a web dev, nor with a web dev worthy web page[3] (I don't mind it, I even find it nice to look at, but it's another hint of the lack of supposed web dev blood in him). Honorable mentions are the two people related to imgui concepts and also thanked in this linked repo's README: - Casey Muratori - programmer in the 90s already, over 30 or 40 years old, another (along STB) RAD tools related person, worked on Granny (animation for games) and Bink (video compression for games), total veteran in low level stuff, not a young web dev. - Omar Cornut - maker of Dear IMGUI, was an intern in the 90s, has a very non web dev website[4]. All in all I'm truly baffled about where you got the 'mostly young people who come from web dev' bit, especially since it's no secret many people are inspired to write them by STB himself (and mention that in their READMEs, as seen here) who is none of that. Your comment seems very hearsay, dishonest disingenuous. If anything I feel like this is a set up of a Yerevan (communist, post communist, Eastern Europe, Eastern Bloc, [5], etc.) joke I happen to know in Polish (translation mine): "Dear Radio Yerevan, is it true they give out free cars on the Red Square in Moscow?" - "That's mostly true but it's bikes, not cars, they are stolen, not given out, and not in the Red Square in Moscow but in the Prague district of Warsaw". [0] - http://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/ http://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/ [1] - http://nothings.org http://nothings.org [2] - http://www.hwaci.com/drh/ http://www.hwaci.com/drh/ [3] - http://www.angusj.com/delphi/clipper.php http://www.angusj.com/delphi/clipper.php [4] - http://www.miracleworld.net/ http://www.miracleworld.net/ [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Yerevan_jokes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Yerevan_jokes

wott 9y ago
That's all fine and dandy. You can quote all the shiny names you want from your domain and write a novel about them as it seems you are in the mood for doing that, it will not change anything to what I witness on each C forum I follow: it is always: 1. young people 2. coming from Javascript 3. coming from the land of IDEs which blur the difference in nature between files, between external and internal files, between copy inside the project and inclusion/linking from outside, etc. 4. who take a try at C, because they have heard C is hardcore or something like that and they want to taste low-level to become real programmers, not just web devs 5. who offer or request single header libraries because they have no idea it could be otherwise, or because they think linking or writing a basic makefile is an issue an enormous amount of work, because they come from the land of language-dependant automatic package managers. That's somehow the same horrible movement that ends up giving us projects which ship with all the dependencies inside the package. Well, not all dependencies, just almost all, because there will always be a random couple of libraries you'll have to install yourself, without knowing why... And then those 'internalised' libraries will never get patched, never get updated, never get fixed, that's wonderful. End of story. I do not even know why, along your text wall, you go on fighting things you pretend I have said, when I haven't. I haven't spoken of this library in particular, I haven't spoken of gamedev (I would not touch that with a 10 feet pole), I have spoken of what I witnessed. And that's a true phenomenon that started only 2 or 3 years ago.
- _dcwr 9y ago
  You have answered to: > I really do not understand why 'single header' is considered a good thing, but I see this more and more often on libraries. What is the reason all the code is put in the header file? With: > I have mostly seen it done by (young) people who come from web dev. They bring their bad habits together with them. And they usually don't get a very warm welcome for that. (...) And now you ask why I've listed all these libraries to prove otherwise? This is what I'm disproving with this list of old, experienced, non web devs writing good libraries that are well received and reliable. You can't make a sweeping statement about an entire paradigm of writing libraries and then claim you just happened to ignore all of the facts that contradicted it like existence of SQLite, STB and the entire gamedev industry. Your logic is on the level of saying that "most nuclear power plants go boom" and claiming you just don't care about any except Chernobyl personally. Where are your examples of these bad libraries made by young web devs that are not well received? Between few examples I gave you should have at least 10 by now but instead you tell me that some people learn C because it's 'hardcore' and that new C programmers struggle with C linking (both of which are obvious facts to any C or C++ programmer). And there's nothing special with single file libraries about avoiding building or lack of updates, people can (and do) dump entire source trees into their projects to avoid having to build a separate library and it works just as well most of the time. People also do things like ship prebuilt binaries (especially C ones, which have a very stable ABI even on Windows, unlike C++) with their C or C++ project which is just as bad from the update standpoint as embedded source is or it's even worse since it tasks anyone trying to replace these with finding out how to build that library (which between CMake, premake, Scons, even changing compiler defaults - which once bit me when building a project with GCC - and God knows what else might be quite an adventure compared to just dumping the source into the project itself and rebuilding that).

by _dcwr 9y ago

wott 9y ago

That's all fine and dandy. You can quote all the shiny names you want from your domain and write a novel about them as it seems you are in the mood for doing that, it will not change anything to what I witness on each C forum I follow: it is always: 1. young people 2. coming from Javascript 3. coming from the land of IDEs which blur the difference in nature between files, between external and internal files, between copy inside the project and inclusion/linking from outside, etc. 4. who take a try at C, because they have heard C is hardcore or something like that and they want to taste low-level to become real programmers, not just web devs 5. who offer or request single header libraries because they have no idea it could be otherwise, or because they think linking or writing a basic makefile is an issue an enormous amount of work, because they come from the land of language-dependant automatic package managers. That's somehow the same horrible movement that ends up giving us projects which ship with all the dependencies inside the package. Well, not all dependencies, just almost all, because there will always be a random couple of libraries you'll have to install yourself, without knowing why... And then those 'internalised' libraries will never get patched, never get updated, never get fixed, that's wonderful. End of story. I do not even know why, along your text wall, you go on fighting things you pretend I have said, when I haven't. I haven't spoken of this library in particular, I haven't spoken of gamedev (I would not touch that with a 10 feet pole), I have spoken of what I witnessed. And that's a true phenomenon that started only 2 or 3 years ago.

_dcwr 9y ago
You have answered to: > I really do not understand why 'single header' is considered a good thing, but I see this more and more often on libraries. What is the reason all the code is put in the header file? With: > I have mostly seen it done by (young) people who come from web dev. They bring their bad habits together with them. And they usually don't get a very warm welcome for that. (...) And now you ask why I've listed all these libraries to prove otherwise? This is what I'm disproving with this list of old, experienced, non web devs writing good libraries that are well received and reliable. You can't make a sweeping statement about an entire paradigm of writing libraries and then claim you just happened to ignore all of the facts that contradicted it like existence of SQLite, STB and the entire gamedev industry. Your logic is on the level of saying that "most nuclear power plants go boom" and claiming you just don't care about any except Chernobyl personally. Where are your examples of these bad libraries made by young web devs that are not well received? Between few examples I gave you should have at least 10 by now but instead you tell me that some people learn C because it's 'hardcore' and that new C programmers struggle with C linking (both of which are obvious facts to any C or C++ programmer). And there's nothing special with single file libraries about avoiding building or lack of updates, people can (and do) dump entire source trees into their projects to avoid having to build a separate library and it works just as well most of the time. People also do things like ship prebuilt binaries (especially C ones, which have a very stable ABI even on Windows, unlike C++) with their C or C++ project which is just as bad from the update standpoint as embedded source is or it's even worse since it tasks anyone trying to replace these with finding out how to build that library (which between CMake, premake, Scons, even changing compiler defaults - which once bit me when building a project with GCC - and God knows what else might be quite an adventure compared to just dumping the source into the project itself and rebuilding that).