Hacker News: david2ndaccount

New comment by david2ndaccount in "C extensions, portability, and alternative compilers"

david2ndaccount — Tue, 26 May 2026 06:05:01 +0000

Use the new standards-conformant preprocessor with `/Zc:preprocessor`

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/zc-pre...

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Use string views instead of passing std:wstring by const&"

david2ndaccount — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 03:34:32 +0000

Pascal strings might be the only string design worse than C strings. C Strings at least let you take a zero copy substring of the tail. Pascal strings require a copy for any substring! Strings should be two machine words - length + pointer (aka what is commonly called a string view). This is no different than any other array view. Strings are not a special case.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "TSMC to make advanced AI semiconductors in Japan"

david2ndaccount — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:19:45 +0000

The world won’t allow a dependence on a single geopolitically threatened entity in the long run, so either they defuse that risk themselves or risk a competitor filling that role. This move is better for TSMC itself.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "C/C++ Embedded Files (2013)"

david2ndaccount — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 18:18:53 +0000

If you want to remain portable, write your code in the intersection of the big 3 - GCC, Clang and MSVC - and you’ll be good enough. Other implementations will either be weird enough that many things you’d expect to work won’t or are forced to copy what those 3 do anyway.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "C/C++ Embedded Files (2013)"

david2ndaccount — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 18:16:11 +0000

You can apply `#` to __VA_ARGS__, which won’t preserve the exact whitespace, but for many languages it’s good enough. biggest issue is you can’t have `#` in the text.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "How to write generics in C"

david2ndaccount — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 15:07:36 +0000

I wrote a similar article in the past: https://www.davidpriver.com/ctemplates.html

I use this technique in my hobby projects as it has worked out the best for me of the options I’ve explored.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Recursive macros in C, demystified (once the ugly crying stops)"

david2ndaccount — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 03:56:20 +0000

Works with MSVC if you add /Zc:preprocessor (to get a standard compliant preprocessor instead of the legacy one).

Samsung Fridge's New Update Gives You Ads While Tracking Your Food

david2ndaccount — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:46:10 +0000

Article URL: https://www.howtogeek.com/your-samsung-fridges-new-update-gives-you-ads-while-tracking-your-food/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732133

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Writing memory efficient C structs"

david2ndaccount — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 16:13:54 +0000

The author relies on the compiler fitting the bitfield in unused padding bytes after “speed”, but that is implementation-defined behavior (almost everything about bitfields is implementation defined). MSVC will align the unsigned bitfield to alignof(unsigned), whereas GCC and clang will use the padding bytes. To portably pack the struct, use unsigned integers and use flags (monster.flags & CAN_FLY instead of monster.can_fly).

See https://c.godbolt.org/z/K7oY77KGj

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Writing memory efficient C structs"

david2ndaccount — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 16:05:38 +0000

C23 has _Float16

New comment by david2ndaccount in "“Reading Rainbow” was created to combat summer reading slumps"

david2ndaccount — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 14:56:12 +0000

Summer reading programs are a band-aid on the problem that children shouldn’t have such a long summer break now that air conditioning is common. Spread the breaks out throughout the year if you want to maintain the same number of days off. All evidence shows the summer break is bad for children’s academic achievement (especially poor children), but it is viewed as a perk for the teachers so the teacher’s unions fight against questioning it.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Would You Like an IDOR With That? Leaking 64m McDonald's Job Applications"

david2ndaccount — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 23:12:13 +0000

> We immediately began disclosure of this issue once we realized the potential impact. Unfortunately, no disclosure contacts were publicly available and we had to resort to emailing random people. The Paradox.ai security page just says that we do not have to worry about security!

Amazing.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "I write type-safe generic data structures in C"

david2ndaccount — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 22:32:02 +0000

The “typeof on old compilers” section contains the code:

         (list)->payload = (item); /* just for type checking */\

That is not a no-op. That is overwriting the list head with your (item). Did you mean to wrap it in an `if(0)`?

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Variadic Switch"

david2ndaccount — Wed, 14 May 2025 22:31:01 +0000

In D, you can just do a static foreach over a sequence to generate case labels:

https://d.godbolt.org/z/PxWEW14K1

New comment by david2ndaccount in "DoorDash to acquire Deliveroo"

david2ndaccount — Wed, 07 May 2025 15:42:27 +0000

Don’t ignore food addiction, the app turns into a button you can press on your phone and in a bit you’ll have a dopamine hit from the food. You don’t have to get dressed or confront the reality of your situation.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Driving Compilers (2023)"

david2ndaccount — Mon, 05 May 2025 14:30:29 +0000

That’s not the point of hello world. It’s not to be as small a valid program as possible. It’s to be a small program that also exercises the needed functionality for using the tool usefully. All of the exercises following that hello world need formatted text, so introducing puts would just add confusion and wouldn’t verify that you have a working printf.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Converting a Git repo from tabs to spaces (2016)"

david2ndaccount — Fri, 02 May 2025 20:58:56 +0000

Tabs are a control character and have no business being in a text file. Do you use ascii record separator characters too?

New comment by david2ndaccount in "An Introduction to Modern CMake"

david2ndaccount — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 20:55:30 +0000

You’re switching to the build system of a different, pre 1.0 programming language that has frequent breaking changes?

New comment by david2ndaccount in "Better typography with text-wrap pretty"

david2ndaccount — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 20:30:15 +0000

This does actually look a lot better. Using the inspector to toggle it on and off, “pretty” does look a lot prettier.

New comment by david2ndaccount in "WorstFit: Unveiling Hidden Transformers in Windows ANSI"

david2ndaccount — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 06:15:22 +0000

Backslash is a valid path character (you can use / or \ as the path separator on windows) so if the backslash isn’t actually escaping anything it is left as-is.