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"Put another way: Most of us enjoy the mental stimulation of programming, and we enjoy the mental challenges (in general). C makes us feel clever. Witness the "
by jorangreef 6y ago
"Put another way: Most of us enjoy the mental stimulation of programming, and we enjoy the mental challenges (in general). C makes us feel clever. Witness the "obfuscated C programming contest" etc."
Yep, only C makes me feel stupid (but I enjoy that experience too!).
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoOh don't get me wrong, I'm a philosophy major drop-out, not a CS student. :-) I have never gotten off on clever-C, and it makes me feel stupid, which yeah, isn't awful either (humbling). Luckily my day-job has nothing to do with mental gymnastics even though I'm a software engineer at Google and work in plenty of low-level stuff. Most sensible software development bears little resemblance to the stuff on whiteboards in coding interviews etc. After 20 years of this I know the right thing is to reach for a library, and if that doesn't exist, then reach for Knuth or some other reference rather than try to write it myself from scratch.