Brian Barbour
medium.com/@bartobri · Personal blog · on HN since 2016
Brian Barbour (bartobri) writes C programming articles on Medium, covering declarations, sizeof, coding taste, and small terminal tools.
What HN saysHN links it in discussions of Linus Torvalds' good taste coding, C declaration ambiguity, and a terminal effect, with commenters debating the if/else point.
17HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
13stories submitted
621story points
3 years agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement7 people · 585 points · first shared 2016 · 289 comments on HN
- 2The Movie-Based Terminal Effect Not yet Recreated by Hackers5 people · 29 points · first shared 2016 · 4 comments on HN
- 3Untangling Complex Declarations in C2 people · 5 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 4How I Wrote a Client-Server App in Two Minutes Flat1 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 5Sometimes programs you write for yourself get the biggest response from others1 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 6Exploring the ambiguous nature of the sizeof operator 45b6dd2b8b671 people · first shared 2023
What HN people wrote when they linked it
starkparker · 2023-07-20
Blog post (2016): https://medium.com/@bartobri/the-movie-based-terminal-effect-not-yet-r… (the comments are more interesting than the post)
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11584535
bryanrasmussen · 2016-12-11
True, but some would argue that its use is a mark of lacking taste - https://medium.com/@bartobri/applying-the-linus-tarvolds-good-taste-co…
knorker · 2016-10-25
Looks like I can't edit, so I'll create another comment.
I ran into this article that puts quite nicely why the problem isn't the "else", but the "if" itself:
https://medium.com/@bartobri/applying-the-linus-tarvolds-good-taste-co…
This is what I meant in the other comment by preferring the non-branching.
nayuki · 2023-02-27
It sounds like you are not familiar with the most vexing parse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_vexing_parse , https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14077608/what-is-the-purpose-of-th…
Also pointer/multiplication ambiguity: https://medium.com/@bartobri/exploring-the-ambiguous-nature-of-the-siz… , https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/124570/why-poi… , https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41331871/how-c-c-parser-lexer-make…