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Re:Learning to read Arthur Whitney's C to become Smart (2024) by cozzyd on Monday November 03, 2025 @12:35PM (#45801783)
The C preprocessor allows you to define a limited DSL on top of C. This is... sometimes a good thing, and often convenient, even if it makes it hard to understand.
Re:Learning to read Arthur Whitney's C to become Smart (2024) by jacquesm on Monday November 03, 2025 @04:53PM (#45804897)
For extremely small values of 'sometimes' where sometimes is constrained by the following expressions evaluating to 'true':

- you have no interest in maintaining your code

- your code will never be maintained by someone else

- you know your C preprocessor better than you know your C compiler

- your favorite language isn't available for this particular target

- you don't mind object level debugging

- your idea of a fun time is to spend a few hours per day memorizing code

- you really are smarter than everybody else

Re:Learning to read Arthur Whitney's C to become Smart (2024) by cozzyd on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @09:51AM (#45811651)
It depends how far down the rabbit hole you go.

Something like JCON (originally from mongodb, see https://blogs.gnome.org/chergert/2016/10/21/jcon/) is actually pretty nice IMO.

Re:Learning to read Arthur Whitney's C to become Smart (2024) by gitonthescene on Monday November 03, 2025 @05:08PM (#45805020)
I think _all_ programming is about finding an appropriate DSL for the problem at hand. First you need to understand the “language” of the problem then you develop a “lingo”.
Re:Learning to read Arthur Whitney's C to become Smart (2024) by rbanffy on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @09:48AM (#45811620)
Exactly. You build the language up to the problem. When you do that, the program almost writes itself.