[OT] Was: totally satisfied :D

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 15:37:46 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
> The sad part is that so many of the commenters have no idea that
> adjacent C literals are concatenated at compile-time. It's a very nice
> way to put long strings in code and have it nicely indented, something
> that is sorely lacking in most languages. But regardless, why are they
> posting if they clearly don't know C that well?!
> 

Heh, actually I didn't even know about it until I learned it from D
and then learned that D got it from C (does D still do it, or is that
one of those "to be deprecated" things?)

But then dealing with strings is something I generally tried to avoid
in C anyway ;)

> 
> > Note also that the "' ...code here" and "' ...more code here"
> > sections were typically HUGE.
> 
> Speaking of 1000-line functions... yeah I routinely work with those
> monsters.

*cough* DMD's main() *cough*  ;)

Although it's actually, surprisingly, not too bad in DMD's case, all
things considered. Took me by surprise at first though, I really wasn't
expecting it.


> > And that was only scratching the surface of the lunacy that was
> > going on there - both in and out of the codebase.
> 
> I have seen code whose function names are along the lines of "do_it()"
> and "do_everything()". As well as "do_main()" and
> "${program_name}_main()" in addition to "main()".
> 

What really gets me is that these are the sorts of things that are
harped on in chapter 1 of just about any decent "intro to programming"
book. So where did these people even learn to code in the first place?

Heck, back in college, I used to be a CS tutor for first semester
programming students. Even *they* wrote better code, no exaggeration.
(Well, except for the handful of students, and I could always tell which
ones they were, who were from the class of Mrs. "Let's Teach OOP
*Before* Basic Flow Of Execution". Those poor students couldn't write
*any* code, let alone good or bad code. I felt bad for them.) 

> 
> > I've been sticking to contract stuff now, largely because I really
> > just can't take that sort of insanity anymore (not that I ever
> > could). If I ever needed to go back to 9-5 code, or cubicles, or
> > open-floorplan warrooms, I'd *really* be in trouble.
> 
> I really should start doing contract work. Being stuck with the same
> project and dealing with the same stupid code that never gets fixed is
> just very taxing on the nerves.
> 

Yea, contract has it's upsides, although naturally it has it's own
perils too. Making a living at it is *damn* hard (either that or I'm
just REALLY bad at self-employment...but it's probably both), and
frankly I'm still trying to figure out how to do it.

And you can forget about health care if you're in the US: Non-group
premiums on insurance (read: legalized casinos without the neon lights
and cocktails) are just as expensive as paying out-of-pocket (remember,
the house *always* has the advantage), and that's if you're lucky enough
to have never had a gap in coverage. If you have, then your premiums
are literally buying you nothing unless you *ahem* "win" and get mangled
by a car or get a terminal disease or something.

Not to discourage you though. Everything sucks, it's just finding a
"suck" that you can live with, y'know ;) Personally, I'm still
looking...