• witx@lemmy.sdf.org
      0·
      5 days ago

      And how testable is that solution? Sure macros are helpful but testing and debugging them is a mess

      • RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz
        0·
        4 days ago

        You mean whether the library itself is testable? I have no idea, I didn’t write it, it’s stable and out there for years.

        Whether the program is testable? Why wouldn’t it be. I could debug it just fine. Of course it’s not as easy as Go or Python but let’s not pretend it’s some arcane dark art

    • arendjr@programming.dev
      0·
      6 days ago

      I’m not saying you can’t, but it’s a lot more work to use such solutions, to say nothing about their quality compared to std solutions in other languages.

      And it’s also just one example. If we bring multi-threading into it, we’re opening another can of worms where C doesn’t particularly shine.

      • KRAW@linux.communityEnglish
        0·
        6 days ago

        Not sure I understand your comment on multithreading. pthreads are not very hard to use, and you have stuff like OpenMP if you want some abstraction. What about C is not ideal for multithreading?

        • arendjr@programming.dev
          0·
          6 days ago

          It’s that the compiler doesn’t help you with preventing race conditions. This makes some problems so hard to solve in C that C programmers simply stay away from attempting it, because they fear the complexity involved.

          It’s a variation of the same theme: Maybe a C programmer could do it too, given infinite time and skill. But in practice it’s often not feasible.