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Friday Fun Thread for December 23, 2022

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I believe there are a number of software devs here. Are there any Linux / C / embedded devs here that would be willing to mentor or offer some signposting for a (near) total beginner on writing what ought to be a simple single function program? By which I don't mean "make a mobile app", I mean "read this one function call from a piece of hardware and print the value to the terminal".

I've gathered a few of the concepts but I don't have enough knowledge to grasp whether they're the right way to approach the matter and whether I'm focusing on the relevant level of abstraction.

Edit: Help is being provided. Thank you Motters.

Are you writing the hardware's driver, or just a userspace program interacting with an existing driver?

I'm definitely not writing a driver, just trying to read (physically read, with my eyes) one value from an existing driver. I've got someone helping me now and fingers crossed I can use an existing library / script that I missed to get me what I need. Looks like I overshot the mark and ended up in the kernel zone.

Maybe unrelated to your needs but I believe people waste too much human resources on niche low level languages like C/C++/rust (I've extensively learnt both BTW) and could get much more proficient and expert in their job language instead, such as Kotlin which is the sweet spot IMHO.

The language wars are a CS student thing, not a programmer thing.

Good luck making a website that is any good with C or programming a microcontroller using JS.

It all makes sense when you realize the flamewars are being fought by;

  • CS students arguing over which program to use in their data structures and algorithms project, most of them are yet to write a program that is one any use to anyone. To them, the idea of a language genuinely being good for a specific task is still alien.

  • Old-timers posturing about the good ole days.

To argue that every languages are equal is intellectual obscurantism.

Of course both CS students and old timers are major tribes in that culture war but that is irrelevant to the fact that languages have objective features and merits that can be civilly discussed.

Im strongly skeptical that a vast majority of the people partaking in those wars are priviledged to the level of job security where deeply rooted perks/flaws of the language actually matters to them, relative to how strongly they feel about it.

Outside of a flamewar context where the technical details are of concern, I have no issue with dissecting languages.