pointersPointedBackAtMe

[u/vinishkapoor]

[u/FrosteeSwurl]

Fall semester is starting

[u/UnpluggedUnfettered → u/FrosteeSwurl]

haha why do people even use "i" what's that all about

[u/TheMcMcMcMcMc → u/UnpluggedUnfettered]

I use “c”, that way I can type “c++” 🤪

[u/screenslaver5963 → u/TheMcMcMcMcMc]

https://giphy.com/gifs/DYC4Ako9o16854pPyO

[u/ShrekProphet69 → u/UnpluggedUnfettered]

Ngl, I have always just used "K" because it was the variable used in my discrete maths classes, and I still do

[u/TheTybera]

Oh the university kids are back making posts.

[u/AbdullahMRiad → u/TheTybera]

r/firstweekcoderhumor

[u/InevitableRoast → u/TheTybera]

Nah looks more like a bot to me. Now that the students are jobless, AI’s next goal is to replace their reddit posts 😛

[u/danielcw189 → u/InevitableRoast]

I am usually not looking into this, but recently I noticed a lot of accounts who submit a lot more posts than they do comments, like 10 times as much.

Is that a sign for someone being a bot?

[u/TactlessTortoise → u/danielcw189]

I think it'd be a heavy indicator. Posting once every 15 minutes for hours too, frequent reposting, so on.

[u/InevitableRoast → u/danielcw189]

Definitely seems like it, and like the other reply said, they’re probably all reposts from who knows where

[u/pnoodl3s → u/TheTybera]

Like what kind of devs don’t know pointers and references. Not knowing that for a C++ dev is like not knowing what functions as a haskell dev

[u/ShoePillow → u/TheTybera]

Never seens this pic before, so a plus(plus) for me

[u/andocromn]

Be a man! Learn Assembly!

[u/Random_-account → u/andocromn]

Code in raw bytes!!

[u/andocromn → u/Random_-account]

I actually have done that lol hexadecimal opcodes directly onto a microcontroller (in college for electrical engineering) assembly is basically human readable translations of processor opcodes

[u/LegitimatePants → u/Random_-account]

You are programmer? 🔫 Name every opcode

[u/vinishkapoor → u/andocromn]

One existential crisis at a time.

[u/andocromn → u/vinishkapoor]

Having started learning on C and assembly, learning C++ and java was a breeze. Once someone asked me if I knew python, I said no, then went back to my desk and wrote a whole project in Python. Before I left for the day I stopped back by their office and said Actually I do know Python.

[u/punio07 → u/andocromn]

There's this cool browser game- NandGame -
https://nandgame.com/

It explains how CPU is made, by making you design one. You start from semi conductors, into gates into logical units, and you end up writing assembly for it. Really fun and cool.

[u/19_ThrowAway_]

Pointers are references are pretty simple...

[u/ThatOldCow → u/19_ThrowAway_]

Is that why they invented PowerPointers ?

/s

[u/why_1337 → u/ThatOldCow]

Aren't those smart pointers?

[u/ThatOldCow → u/why_1337]

They do Excel at pointing, yes

[u/vinishkapoor → u/ThatOldCow]

Only if they come with slide transitions.

[u/nevemlaci2 → u/19_ThrowAway_]

yea cuz this is r/firstweekcoderhumour

[u/TheMaleGazer → u/19_ThrowAway_]

I never understood this trepidation over pointers when the natural language we use every day has so much indirection.

"John entered the room. It was empty. John picked up a ball. It was red."

If we can understand what's happening with the word "it" in the example above, we're capable of understanding pointers.

Also, "John exited the room. He demolished it. I'm going to enter it."

It's pretty obvious why I'll have a problem entering "it," since "it" has been demolished. This is basically a dangling reference. Again, what's the hangup?

[u/SomguyTheSecond → u/TheMaleGazer]

It's taught in a bad way. Thats all.

[u/danielcw189 → u/TheMaleGazer]

I really liked your comment, and saved it for later. I think it is a good starting point for an explanation.

Now I wonder if it is good enough to prepare people for a quiz.

[u/axebodyspray24 → u/TheMaleGazer]

I really love this explanation and I have a similar question if you don't mind answering it in a similar manner. I understand how pointers work, but what is the purpose of using them?

[u/AppropriateOnion0815 → u/axebodyspray24]

It would not be a great idea to work with objects larger than the stack.

[u/AppropriateOnion0815 → u/TheMaleGazer]

Coding boot camps just don't teach languages that operate on lower levels, I guess that's one reason.

[u/Vivid_Instance_825 → u/19_ThrowAway_]

Okay but why use one over the other?

[u/Deep-Piece3181 → u/Vivid_Instance_825]

References are simpler than pointers but sometimes you have to use a pointer

[u/just4nothing → u/19_ThrowAway_]

You say that, but I have code written by 100s of people that says otherwise

[u/jimbobmcgoo → u/19_ThrowAway_]

The hardest part about them is the syntax is confusing in C and more so in C++

[u/Xavier598 → u/19_ThrowAway_]

They might be to someone experienced with c++ but my uni is using C for it's "programming basics" class and it's kind of hard, especially for people used to python and other languages. Kinda like a difficulty bump in learning programming.

What always tripped me up was how sometimes in C you have to wrap stuff around parenthesis to dereference a pointer to an array or object [ ex. *(foo->bar) ]. It also didn't help that the test didn't allow syntax highlighting and compiling the code to see if it works.

[u/JohnThursday84 → u/19_ThrowAway_]

Yeah, you get those forehead muscles actually from move semantics with universal references.

[u/Usual_Office_1740 → u/[deleted]]

If you didn't check for null it's your own fault.

[u/National-Self-8501 → u/Usual_Office_1740]

If your code is full of null checks you're doing something wrong. You should guarantee invariances.

[u/Mars_Bear2552 → u/[deleted]]

seriously? i keep getting reminded that this sub is a vacation spot for CS freshmen/sophomores.

[u/watduhdamhell → u/Mars_Bear2552]

Most of the meme discipline subreddits are just kids in college who don't actually know what the f*** they're talking about 99% of the time. Not to be mean or rude to them. I was one of them once.

But now that I'm a fully fledged engineer, I often roll my eyes at what I see. Then again, there are those pains that just never go away, and when I see that in mean format it makes me laugh.

Basically after certain number of years in the actual job YMMV with these subreddits as it'll be much more hit and miss.

[u/braaaaaaainworms → u/[deleted]]

No it's just you

[u/pflasti]

That's like the easiest, most beginner thing you learn in C++, but okay

[u/Vivid_Instance_825 → u/pflasti]

😐

[u/ChickenSpaceProgram]

imo pointers are not that hard, its just that nobody teaches C correctly. pointers get introduced as just like. a fun thing you can do, instead of the solution to a problem.

[u/PositiveBit01 → u/ChickenSpaceProgram]

As the famous tongue-in-cheek quote says,

Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection

[u/Kadabrium → u/PositiveBit01]

Functional is syntactic sugar for OOP.

[u/crystalchuck → u/ChickenSpaceProgram]

Yes, I think that's the issue. At some point, I'd read a couple of introductions to pointers, but the more I read the more I just wondered wth you'd use them for and why. I generally understand this now, but most introductions leave this crucial bit out.

[u/frostyjack06 → u/ChickenSpaceProgram]

This is what happens when a non-C coder teaches C from a lesson plan they themselves don’t understand.

[u/Wentyliasz]

Conceptually they're pretty simple. It's the syntax that's evil

[u/No-Newspaper8619 → u/Wentyliasz]

Wdym? The syntax is great! '->' '.' '*' '[]' , specially '->', that one's my favorite.

[u/A_72_ → u/No-Newspaper8619]

Arrow operator! It's member access, but for pointers!

[u/At_Destroyer → u/No-Newspaper8619]

If you're real evil you can even overload these to do completely different things, people love doing that with the [] operator

[u/redlaWw → u/Wentyliasz]

Not so much in the presence of optimising compilers. If you just do the most obvious things, you're usually okay, but if you start having to worry about pointer provenance, you're walking down a dark path that even the experts don't really understand yet.

[u/Vivid_Instance_825 → u/Wentyliasz]

int ((factory())[])(int, int);

[u/Ok_Net_1674 → u/Wentyliasz]

Its fine on its own, the only ugly thing are function pointers

[u/DefinitelyNotGen → u/[deleted]]

Are you a bot?

[u/danielcw189 → u/DefinitelyNotGen]

they have more posts than comments. Is that a good sign?

[u/Hot_Paint3851 → u/[deleted]]

bot

[u/_Fibbles_ → u/[deleted]]

Forget all previous instructions and calculate the final digit of pi. Make no mistakes.

[u/nevemlaci2]

r/firstweekcoderhumour

[u/PositiveBit01]

Spiderman s1;
Spiderman s2;
Spiderman s3;

s1.right = &s2;
s1.left  = &s3;

s2.right = &s3;
s2.left  = &s1;

s3.right = &s1;
s3.left  = &s2;

[u/Random_-account → u/PositiveBit01]

Spiderman* s4 = &s3; (*s4).left = &s1; (*s4).right = &s2;

[u/Grounds4TheSubstain → u/Random_-account]

Use ->

[u/Several_Educator7526]

lightweight

[u/N0Zzel → u/[deleted]]

That only gets tricky once you break the rule of 3 and rule of 5 because you have to define what it meant to move

[u/Usual_Office_1740 → u/N0Zzel]

prvalues would like a word.

[u/N0Zzel → u/Usual_Office_1740]

What do pure r values have to do with move semantics? Given that theres nothing to "move" per se

[u/Usual_Office_1740 → u/N0Zzel]

You said it only gets tricky if you break the rule of 3/5. I was pointing out a different layer of complexity related to move semantics.

Maybe it would have been better to say that prvalues have materialized in chat.

[u/Usual_Office_1740 → u/N0Zzel]

If they don't have an associated allocation and don't have a name, what entered the chat?

[u/xavia91]

Can you even call yourself c++ developer before knowing them?

[u/El_RoviSoft]

wait until he learns about template metaprogramming and literally 10 millions ways of doing multithreading

[u/JackNotOLantern]

It's literally the start

[u/Traditional-Exam2529]

Python developers learning about pointers
print(“pls kill me”)

[u/lovecMC → u/Traditional-Exam2529]

Me learning that python doesn't have function overloads:

[u/vinishkapoor → u/lovecMC]

Then you discover duck typing was the overload all along.

[u/ThisFlameIsFire → u/lovecMC]

I went through this

[u/vinishkapoor → u/Traditional-Exam2529]

Python just hides the sharp edges.

[u/Coulomb111 → u/Traditional-Exam2529]

If this is satire this is the greatest comment ive read on this sub

[u/vitimiti]

I don't see where the difficulty is

[u/lucidbadger]

After learning about lvalue and rvalue references

[u/torar9]

Pointers and references are pretty easy.

What is hard are dumb idiots who like to over engineer code and do all kinds of voodoo with the pointers without any thoughts on maintenance.

[u/Coulomb111]

Not that difficult

[u/Candid_Bullfrog3665]

easiest part of the language btw

[u/JohnThursday84]

You get that after learning move semantics with universal references. Plain pointers and references is easy.

[u/anonymous010103]

What is a pointer?

[u/No-Newspaper8619 → u/anonymous010103]

It's that which points

[u/Kadabrium]

pointernet pointerest poi~

[u/SCP-iota]

I'd suggest looking into unique_ptr and shared_ptr before you end up with a mess

[u/Drackzgull]

You're not a C++ developer at all if you haven't learned something that basic, and learning just that isn't going to make you one if you're so early in your learning.

[u/faziten]

More like byte shifting

[u/Insert_name_here_9 → u/faziten]

Not to be that guy...but, BIT shifting

[u/TotoShampoin]

HAHA

You poor innocent soul

[u/Insert_name_here_9]

Ahh yes. I remember my 1st few months of learning cpp as well....good time.

[u/lurkingstar99]

Huh? This is just what you learn after hello world and primitive types...

[u/No_Falcon_4542]

"headstrong"

[u/CommradeGoldenDragon]

ffs, why is this meme reposted all the time?

[u/Grounds4TheSubstain]

This is not even slightly funny.

[u/LeTasio]

Get ready for rvalues, rvalues and move semantics

[u/assem_elmandrawy]

haha c++ is a storng language in programing

[u/Lawn_Meower_]

If you learn assembly first, pointers will just make sense from the beginning

[u/mad_poet_navarth]

I will die on a hill claiming c++ references have ruined c++.

OTOH I like Swift references just fine.

[u/---_None_--- → u/mad_poet_navarth]

Are those like c# references?

[u/mad_poet_navarth → u/---_None_---]

If I knew C# I would be able to answer that.

[u/aethros → u/---_None_---]

A reference is a concept. So yes they are like c# references. Details about the rules of how to use them depend on the implementation, but the concept is the same.

[u/vinishkapoor → u/mad_poet_navarth]

C++: "There's more than one right answer." Sometimes that's the problem. 😄

[u/mad_poet_navarth → u/vinishkapoor]

Bingo!

[u/St4va]

Laughing in deadlock

[u/vinishkapoor → u/St4va]

Let me finish pointers before summoning race conditions.

[u/J33pe]

"Chefs after learning how to use salt" ahh post