Sometimes we get a little punchy around the office on a Friday afternoon. I came up with an idea in the middle of a debugging conversation, and had to run with it. If you’re not at least passingly familiar with C, it just isn’t funny; don’t waste your time.<\/p>\n
\nuser: what’s a handle?<\/p>\n
hacker: No,
*what<\/code>‘s a pointer.<\/p>\nuser: I don’t know. What is a pointer?<\/p>\n
hacker: Yes.<\/p>\n
user: But where is the data?<\/p>\n
hacker: No,
&where<\/code> is the address. The data is there.<\/p>\nuser: where?<\/p>\n
hacker: The address.<\/p>\n
user: So where’s the pointer?<\/p>\n
hacker: No,
*what<\/code>‘s the pointer.&where's<\/code> the address.<\/p>\nuser: And the pointer?<\/p>\n
hacker:
*what<\/code>.<\/p>\nuser: The pointer?<\/p>\n
hacker:
*what<\/code>.<\/p>\nuser: THE POINTER?<\/p>\n
hacker:
*what<\/code>!<\/p>\nuser: Forget it.<\/p>\n
hacker: No, you can’t
forget(it)<\/code>, you need a handle for that<\/p>\nuser: But what’s a handle?<\/p>\n
hacker: No,
*what<\/code>‘s a pointer.<\/p>\nuser: I can’t handle this anymore.<\/p>\n
hacker. That’s because
this<\/code> is an object. You have to usethis->handle()<\/code>.<\/p>\nuser: what handle?<\/p>\n
hacker: No,
*what<\/code>‘s a pointer.<\/p>\nuser: I don’t know! I don’t understand it!<\/p>\n
hacker:
it<\/code>‘s just an integer, which is why you can’tforget(it)<\/code>…<\/p>\nuser: I need a handle for that?<\/p>\n
hacker: No,
that()<\/code> returns a handle.<\/p>\nuser: And what is that?<\/p>\n
hacker: A function that returns a handle.<\/p>\n
user: But what’s a handle?<\/p>\n
hacker: No,
*what<\/code>‘s…<\/p>\nuser: A pointer! I got it. But what does it point to?<\/p>\n
hacker:
it<\/code>‘s not a pointer,it<\/code>‘s an integer.<\/p>\nuser: Fine. what’s an integer?<\/p>\n
hacker: No,
it<\/code>‘s an integer.*what<\/code>‘s a pointer.<\/p>\nuser: I quit.<\/p>\n
hacker: Be sure you return an exit code.<\/p>\n
user: But I didn’t take one!<\/p>\n
hacker: What are you talking about?<\/p>\n
user: !!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
With apologies to\n
Laurel and Hardy<\/del> Abbot & Costello. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes we get a little punchy around the office on a Friday afternoon. I came up with an idea in the middle of a debugging conversation, and had to run with it. If you’re not at least passingly familiar with C, it just isn’t funny; don’t waste your time. user: what’s a handle? hacker: No, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}