Last time I did anything on the job with C++ was about 8 years ago. Here’s what I learned. It may still be relevant.
const
, constexpr
, inline
, volatile
, are all about steering the compiler to generate the code you want. As a consequence, you spend a lot more of your time troubleshooting code generation and compilation errors than with other languages.valgrind
or at least a really good IDE that’s dialed in for your process and target platform. Letting the rest of the team get away without these tools will negatively impact the team’s ability to fix serious problems.1 - I borrowed this idea from working on J2EE apps, of all places, where stack traces get so huge/deep that there are plugins designed to filter out method calls (sometimes, entire libraries) that are just noise. The idea of post-processing errors just kind of stuck after that - it’s just more data, after all.
The problem is that requirements refinement has been unceremoniously dumped in your lap. The failure here is organizational; maybe you have a design person involved, maybe devs are expected to do this. Either way, your job now also includes communications.
One strategy I’ve used is to draw a low-fi example of what they’re going to get - Figma is great at this these days. Then I add it to the issue and push the whole thing back for early approval in order to suss out these finer points.
Not to come off as misanthropic here, but many people are hot garbage at describing what’s in their head. Most of the time, it’s all abstract concepts up there until you start asking the real questions. They really do need a whole-ass conversation to sharpen that mental image. Or in this case, what they want that feature to look like. Incidentally, this is also the reason why therapy is a thing, and why it takes people years to make sense of themselves, and that outcome is usually far more crucial than anything we’re doing at the keyboard.
Honestly I don’t mind the indentation since C isn’t going to give us many ways to address this with as little code.
That said, with compilers that are good at inlining trivial functions, I really do appreciate the “it does what it says on the tin” approach to using functions on things like this. Even if they’re only used once. Comments would help too.
The logic in these if statements is inscrutable on a cold read like this. To me, that’s a maintenance risk; imagine seeing a snippet this size on a PR. Having functions that name what the hell is going on could only help.
Well, everything stored in plastic bottles and containers tastes a little plastic-y to me. But alcohol will dissolve all kinds of things that water can’t, so I’m pretty sure this is much worse.
The thing to consider is: what quality of distillation comes with a package that’s just a little nicer than a plastic bag?
Fastest answer I could find was from 2021: 285GB.
So make sure you have over half a terrabyte of free storage before you try this. These libraries can do things on install, like download and compile binaries. Then there’s overhead for inodes and such, since we’re talking about millions of files. So the impact to the filesystem is going to be much, much bigger than any figure cited like the above.
Slow down there, Satan. I kid you not, I had someone approach me to help develop technology like this a long time ago. The idea was to break into video streams at the ISP and insert advertising on the fly w/o prior approval.
My reaction, after realizing this person wanted to turn the internet into an ad-encrusted wasteland*, was: “What happens when that video stream is something live with a LOT of money behind it, like the Superbowl?” The legal and professional ramifications didn’t even clock with this guy. It was squarely in the “not my problem” category.
(* More-so than it is now. I’m not saying we’re getting off light, but this guy was a-okay with making everything look like the hallway bulletin board in a college dorm.)
For the programmer? Very no.
For saving space if run via interperter? No.
For running compiled for conventional CPUs? No.
Compared to CISC instruction sets? Absolutely no.
BF might be highly efficient if crunched down to a bit-packed representation (3 bits per instruction) and run on an FPGA that understands it.
As a consumer, I would see the presence of such a waiver as a prompt to think about what necessitated this in the first place. Perhaps this kitchen isn’t as clean as it could be, and something happened to prompt this level of (legal) caution. Yeah, it could have been an overzealous patron looking for a payday, but maybe someone had a legit case?
Honestly, this is why I tell developers that work with/for me to build in logging, day one. Not only will you always have clarity in every environment, but you won’t run into cases where adding logging later makes races/deadlocks “go away mysteriously.” A lot of the time, attaching a debugger to stuff in production isn’t going to fly, so “printf debugging” like this is truly your best bet.
To do this right, look into logging modules/libraries that support filtering, lazy evaluation, contexts, and JSON output for perfect SEIM compatibility (enterprise stuff like Splunk or ELK).