I think the problem is that a lot of languages encourage you to do something clever, whereas C actively and relentlessly punishes you for being clever. My favo

I think the problem is that a lot of languages encourage you to do something clever, whereas C actively and relentlessly punishes you for being clever. My favorite example is from #19, which is something that javascript programmers do all of the time. int value = a && b && fn(a->x,b->x); (The author goes on to complain about how value you obviously be whatever fn(a->x, b->x) returns). In javascript, that's actually good practice (I guess, I had a mentor once who encouraged it, but I never really bought into it). To a C programmer though, that just looks gross. (Or at least to me, and I like to pretend to be a C programmer).