Lain of the Stack

Programming for fun. Tea lover.

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@RandomSprint Now is the right time to teach him either about combinatorics or aleph. your choice...

[Arika @Arikalabs]

When the Linux kernel removes an entry from a linked list using list_del(), it doesn't set its next and prev pointers to NULL.

On typical 64-bit systems, it sets them to 0xdead000000000100 and 0xdead000000000122 (LIST_POISON1 and LIST_POISON2).

these deliberately invalid addresses help catch code that accidentally accesses a removed list entry. Instead of silently following a stale pointer, the kernel can fault at a recognizable poison address.

It's called pointer poisoning.

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

php always seemed like a bad language, very suspicious. I stand vindicated

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@oO0Fal0Oo A lot of people start with python nowadays?

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@__soragoto__ I admire their courage to ship the product in that state.

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@straceX Nice, I didn't know that. For comparison, common lisp has gensym to generate new symbols on the fly

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@JustDeezGuy C macros are unhygienic and a bit dirty, like Common Lisp's. But they are also dumb, and can't use the whole language, unlike in lisp.

So they are like a toddler, cute but not that powerful.

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@noncanonicAleae True, the array would even be two lines longer (with 0 values for index 0 and 1)...

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@headzoo also because value is psychological and drives the price

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@SebAaltonen @YashHustle_22 For me, assembly is fun to read, write and debug. I don't know why people don't use it for their low-stakes hobby projects more.

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@b4dgerr In my sock drawer

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@wangzhr4 Of all the "genius" things C let's you do, this one seems mostly harmless

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@danielkleach personal projects

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@i2cjak so you dreamt of randomly accessing memory?

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

The only point of a bss section is it takes no space in the executable because its not initialized.

So if your program only has smallish buffers, you might as well put them in a data section.

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@msimoni haven't you vibecoded a real time os to run your verified compiler, like one does?

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@the_aiju People often fantasize about what they can't access...

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@fjs_kyousosama @shigerufujita and only works if the business' margins are high enough to pay for it, with high and predictable future ROI. Or if it's subsidized (eg. med students working at hospitals).

[Lain of the Stack @Lainofthestack]

@_rygo6 I am of the (unverified) opinion that reducing pointers in structs + not using malloc inside computations + using big fat arrays would also lead to less buggy code. is that your experience?