Notices by ThePhD (thephd@pony.social)

Damn this is thicc!!

I can't read it yet but here's to making good progress on a better C compiler.

The damn survey has 950+ responses. If I get another burst it'll hit 1,000.

There's no way I can manually very every single entry, lol. Guess I'll have to use some basic general-checking techniques in a python script.

https://pony.social/@thephd/113659160563714508

@linear Put a fake one in, I guess. I won't be using them for any real purpose except post at you if it seems your response is broken/incomplete.

This is closing in 5 days. Add your response to the mix as soon as possible, or risk never being heard in the Official Vote™!!

https://thephd.dev/the-big-array-size-survey-for-c

@navi @humm The process is here: https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/contributing.html

If you write the paper and the paper is clear in its rationale, I can present it at a Standards Meeting (as a Champion). This is a low-stakes way to make sure you can contribute; all you have to do is follow the steps at the URL up to writing and submitting a paper. They accept HTML, PDF, and TXT files usually. You can see papers here: https://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/wg14_document_log

If you write the paper and want to present it yourself, you need to notify your (or rather, any) national body that you intend to be part of that National Body. You get one (1) free guest attendance so long as you just e-mail your (any) National Body to attend.

I say "your (any)" National Body because National Bodies are something that you can join, but the rules are set by the National Body. For example, I'm American but part of the Netherlands National Body thanks to a friend, so I attend as an "expert" through that body. There's someone who's from the Netherlands but attends as an American because their employer is part of the American National Body, INCITS.

You don't necessarily have to join the National Body that corresponds to your nationality/citizenry. I avoided the American one because they charge a steep fee even for individuals, per year. But sometimes the burecracy is too much and someone would rather just pay the American National Body to Be American. It is also easier to contact the American and Canadian National Bodies to just notify them you'd like to become part of the body, attend once, and then never actually join just so you can use your one (1) free guest attendance.

You have to register to attend, whether you show up in person or virtually. The next meeting is in Graz, Austria: https://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n3399.pdf

@navi @humm If you are going to write a paper:

• Talk about the status quo ("how it works right now") for some code, typically using a few examples to show it
• Talk about the pros and cons of the status quo
• Show your change with a code example and what that means
• Finally, write wording against the latest Working Draft for how that change would work, in Standardese.

You can avoid doing the last one and just pitch the first part for the ideas and see if people like it. Add any existing practice from existing C compilers or other languages. Typically, C folks want to see strong existing practice, usually within C extensions. Other languages / C++ implementations together typically only count as "one" point for such altogether, whereas existing C extensions count for more per each implementation/vendor that ships said C extension. Usually the goal is to have 2 points, but if you explain hard enough you can overcome that depending on how much interest is shown and if there isn't any strong opposition,

Since I expect this to have opposition you may want to look into getting named parameters or something else into an existing compiler -- any existing compiler -- first, before you write the wording but after you write the paper.

Good Lucka nd God's Speed.

@navi @humm You're the third person to come up with that idea and tell me about it.

We can do it in C, because there's no function overloading in C. There's only one type that goes into the function, so we don't need the compound literal's type to know that { foo, nya, mew } goes into the function here. This would make function passing work very well, and e.g. sokol_gfx would be a lot easier to use because it makes extensive use of compound literals but the code looks quite a bit uglier for it: https://github.com/floooh/sokol/blob/master/sokol_gfx.h#L133

The problem is, people are annoyed that this would remove type information being explicitly visible for what they feel is not much useful gain. You'd have to go argue with those people primarily, and the best way to get them to say what they mean on the record is to write a paper for it.

I'm overbooked on work, so as much as I like the idea personally I can't write that sort of idea for you.

Similar, one could consider "named parameters" or something similar. Again, much easier to do in C because there's no function overloading, which means there's only one set of names. You might need to come up with a syntax to separate the name of the parameter from the name you want to expose.

Eitherway, good luck!

@navi @humm Finally. { foo, nya, mew } can't confuse the compiler because if you're not using .member = ... syntax, you're then just initializing things in declaration-order.

@luna I fucking hate C I fucking hate C I fucking hate C I fucking hate C I fucking hate C I fucking hate C I fuckingghgrwhj

A few days ago:
"Oh, I know, I'll release a little survey, I'm sure people don't care too much about what I say and/or write."

Today, checking back in:
... (* laughing nervously *)

📢 It's time for you to MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD 🗣️...

... In the C Survey for the Name of a new Operator!! This one, being something a LOT of you are familiar with! Read the post and then tell me about how YOU feel bout this common C construct in the survey!

Read up, let us know, and SPREAD THE WORD: https://thephd.dev/the-big-array-size-survey-for-c

🎨: https://www.kiingkiismet.com/

The spookiest, scariest thing this Halloween:

C23 has been officially published!!! https://www.iso.org/standard/82075.html

https://hachyderm.io/@rcs/113405636116517737

It's the beginning of the end of mojibake. N3366 has been accepted to C during the WG14 Minneapolis Fall 2024 Meeting, and my sole reason for going down to C is over.

Five. Fuggin'. Years.

https://thephd.dev/5-years-later-the-first-big-unicode-win-omg-yay

I have a bunch of open C proposals, but...

... what if I just... stop?

It's very cute how everyone's like "THIS DOESN'T AFFECT LINUX SERVERS, WHAT A NOTHING BURGER"

And then half of those same people turn around and go "THIS IS THE YEAR OF LINUX ON DESKTOP!!"

Yeah? You sure about that?

Love to have a community with a rampant, raging disregard for users try to at the same time turn around and court said users. Really makes you feel good about The Year of Linux on Desktop.

I'm not sure there's anything Apple/Microsoft could do to lose with enemies like these.

I haven't responded to this one comment I received on cohost. Not because I can't, but because I don't know how to phrase what is effectively "the reason you don't care about these other proposals and think they're worthless is because you are highly specialized and lack perspective, which is why someone like Linus actually favors the same proposals you're shitting on and asking 'Who does this serve?'".

I don't want to appeal to authority or anything, but doing the full argument for "why are people writing proposals about things I don't care about but not focusing on all the things I personally/professionally have great stake in?" is just kind've exhausting at this point.

I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People,

but for engineers.

Like you mark the check for "always open with this application" but it only applies it to that file, SPECIFICALLY, and it's like dude wtf who thought this was a good user experience. That's not what that checkmark means bro. Come the fuck on, pull your head out of your ass.

MacOS Preview crashes every time I rebuild the C Standard LaTeX-constructed PDF and it reloads it. Firefox, unfortunately, doesn't have hot file reloading but it doesn't crash so I'm back to using Firefox as my default PDF app.

Also why is changing default apps in MacOS a PITA?

@koko The GNU ecosystem if it was good