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Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities?

I'm on the journey of developing a web-browser from scratch in C and I keep coming across niche questions on how certain libraries function (Xlib). I did some searches, but I couldn't find any forum or community that was recently active. Do you know of active communities that have Knowledge of C/Xlib?
( 25 comments | 17 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by emmo on Sunday April 17, 2022 @08:50PM (#31066109)
Handmade Network[1] is probably where you want to be. They have a semi-active forum, and a very active Discord.

[1] http://handmade.network

Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Sunday April 17, 2022 @08:58PM (#31066152)
This looks great! Thanks a lot!
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by sigstoat on Sunday April 17, 2022 @07:41PM (#31065636)
what conceivable use could you have for xlib?

you’re going to have ten thousand hard problems related to just CSS. do yourself a favor and at least use a high level cross platform gui library.

Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Sunday April 17, 2022 @08:40PM (#31066032)
The high level GUI toolkits that I looked at (GTK+ and Qt) were very bloated with features that would not come in handy for my use case, and frankly, they were difficult to use. Doing simple tasks in Xlib was simpler. But I did quickly notice a lot of limitations with Xlib such as no transparent pixels which means no Anti aliasing and the lack of ability to load in True type and Open type fonts. I did come across the Xrender library (also by XOrg) but couldn't find any documentation for it. Also doesn't really help that pretty much any documentation for Xlib is dozens of years old. Which (C) GUI libraries do you have in mind?
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by sigstoat on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @02:39PM (#31101136)
> Also doesn't really help that pretty much any documentation for Xlib is dozens of years old.

it hasn't changed in dozens of years! what do you expect? somebody sitting around refreshing graphical design for docs on a library you shouldn't use, so that people feel better about using it? you shouldn't be using it!

> frankly, they were difficult to use

try making a combo box with Xlib.

> Doing simple tasks in Xlib was simpler

pro-tip: simple tasks are simple. worry about how difficult the difficult tasks will be.

Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by zzo38computer on Monday April 18, 2022 @02:44AM (#31068068)
I agree; I really dislike GTK+. However, you could use Xt and/or Xaw, which are OK in my opinion (although there are no transparent pixels, etc; but if you need them, then you might possibly draw your own stuff in the document area).
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Monday April 18, 2022 @08:15AM (#31069677)
I'll look into Xt and Xaw. Thanks
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by chadcmulligan on Monday April 18, 2022 @07:12AM (#31069304)
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Monday April 18, 2022 @08:14AM (#31069674)
This looks promising. I'll look into it. Thanks +1
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by tus666 on Sunday April 17, 2022 @06:13PM (#31064994)
What is the background of this project? Is it a learning exercise or aiming for some functional benefit?
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Sunday April 17, 2022 @06:31PM (#31065119)
The aim of the project is to create a useful, minimal, and fast web browser. But we all are learning as we are developing it :D
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by zzo38computer on Monday April 18, 2022 @02:48AM (#31068085)
If it is FOSS, I think it will be necessary, since many modern web browsers have many problems. Will you be able to write extensions to the browser in C? Would have many feature assuming advanced users only? If so, that would be an improvement, I think.
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Monday April 18, 2022 @08:24AM (#31069740)
The project is still very early on in development so we haven't decided how to handle extensions/add-ons. But it would definitely be neat and unique if the browser extensions are also written in C. But the idea behind the browser is to create an unbloated, fast, and responsive browser that is also easy to use.
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by 0x20cowboy on Monday April 18, 2022 @12:13AM (#31067362)
Would love to contribute. Especially if it’s Javascript free. Any plans to open source?
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Monday April 18, 2022 @08:20AM (#31069712)
Yeah the browser is open source, but the project is very early in development. After the project has a stable basis, we will fully embrace the FOSS mindset and make contributions open.
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by 2143 on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @03:03PM (#31101426)
It's cool that you're doing this.

Why not Rust?

Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @03:35PM (#31101809)
I evaluated a lot of languages before settling down on C. I have 2 main reasons why I chose C. One is that I wanted to pay homage to many great programmers who wrote industry-pushing software in C. The other reason was that I wanted to start from 'scratch' and use as few pre-made libraries as possible. I think there is a lot of fun in starting a project like this from 0 and figuring out everything on the go :D
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by 2143 on Wednesday April 20, 2022 @09:54PM (#31105263)
Rust is rather low level, yet it offers memory safety.

> One is that I wanted to pay homage to many great programmers who wrote industry-pushing software in C.

Some of those great programmers might probably have chosen other languages if they existed back then.

Anyway, I think what you're doing is pretty cool and I wish you all the success in whatever language you choose to do this in.

Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Thursday April 21, 2022 @04:13PM (#31114630)
Thank you for the advice and the good wishes :)
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by rurban on Monday April 18, 2022 @04:03AM (#31068410)
GitHub has some, but there are also gitlab, codeberg, srt, a.s.o.

C folks prefer to talk in code.

Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Monday April 18, 2022 @08:25AM (#31069749)
That's a good insight! I'll definitely try to look for them on Github and similar platforms. Thanks!
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by mc4ndr3 on Sunday April 17, 2022 @05:41PM (#31064751)
The C++ Slack team has much C knowledge.
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Sunday April 17, 2022 @06:31PM (#31065123)
It's a shame that they are on Slack, but thanks I will check them out!
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by janekg on Monday April 18, 2022 @11:44AM (#31072245)
comp.lang.c ;-)
Re:Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities? by leakbang on Monday April 18, 2022 @02:48PM (#31074840)
Thanks +1 I did't know Google Groups were still around!