Weekend projects: getting silly with C - lcamtuf’s thing

C is beautiful yet full of horrors. Here's to uncovering its hidden depths.

For all its warts, the C language is a marvelous thing. It is remarkably simple, yet somehow expressive enough to allow entire operating systems to be written with ease. Just as curiously, its terse, minimalistic syntax became the way to structure code — copied by nearly all of its mainstream successors, from Java to Go. Among geeks, the syntax can also be credited for the emergence of code obfuscation as an art form. The IOCCC contest is perhaps the best-known outlet for this craft; a typical IOCCC submission looks like this: #define q [v+a] #define c b[1] #define O 1 q #define o 0 q…

saved by

• Jason Ernst

related reading

• Getting silly with C, part -5^-7 - lcamtuf’s thinglcamtuf.substack.com
• Writing a C compiler in 500 lines of Pythonvgel.me
• how I think when I think about programming - alice mazalicemaz.com
• What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior #2/3 - The LLVM Project Blogblog.llvm.org
• Zig: Already More Knowable Than C - Andrew Kelleyandrewkelley.me
• Undefined behavior, and the Sledgehammer Principle | The Pasturethephd.dev
• Effortless Performance Improvements in C++ | Julien Jorge's Personal Websitejulien.jorge.st
• What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior #3/3 - The LLVM Project Blogblog.llvm.org
• Modern Cinria.hal.science
• Branchless Equivalents of Simple Functions | Harder, Better, Faster, Strongerhbfs.wordpress.com
• The Lost Art of Structure Packingcatb.org
• Compiler Optimizations Are Hard Because They Forget - Faultlorefaultlore.com