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I'm not from that generation so that's a bit hard for me to understand. Even if you used a closed-source C compiler, wouldn't you still have been able to look a
by joefourier 7mo ago
I'm not from that generation so that's a bit hard for me to understand. Even if you used a closed-source C compiler, wouldn't you still have been able to look at the header file, which would have been pretty self-explanatory?
E.g.
void qsort(void* base, size_t nmemb, size_t size,
int (compar)(const void , const void* ));
And surely if you bought a C compiler, you would have gotten a manual or two with it? Documentation from the pre-Internet age tended to be much better than today.
- mech422 7mo agoYeah - but you have to be a good enough programmer to really understand the headers.. the 'bootstrapping' problem was real :-) Especially if you didn't live in a metropolitan/college area. My local library was really short on programming books - especially anything 'in depth'. Also, 'C' was considered a "professional's language" back then - so bookstores/libraries were more likely to have books on BASIC then 'C'
- rustyzig 7mo agoWhat kind of modern C wizardry is that? qsort was: qsort(base, nel, width, compar) char *base; int (*compar)();
- kuboble 7mo agoI don't remember where we got the compilers from but we surely didn't buy them. Also I don't know if it came with manual but my English wasn't good enough to read them anyways.