the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard

Reply to the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard on Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:07:59 GMT

thankfulmachine@oldbytes.space — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 19:07:59 GMT

@dolls.in.sudoparadise.fi volunteering for a sign bit that you don’t need is Complying in Advance

Reply to the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard on Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:55:55 GMT

hipsterelectron@circumstances.run — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:55:55 GMT

@typhon @zzt i respect fortran for not trying to branch out and instead focusing on doing one thing really well. wish more languages did that. mine will

Reply to the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard on Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:54:54 GMT

hipsterelectron@circumstances.run — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:54:54 GMT

@typhon @zzt C is good because it's portable, if you don't write portable C then your code is worse than useless. FORTRAN is good because it has an immense amount of time and effort spent over decades to optimize array programming which is highly specialized and not something most people ever need to do. both of these languages are useful in specific cases and are not fully general, as no language can be fully general

Reply to the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard on Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:52:54 GMT

th@social.v.st — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:52:54 GMT

@zzt I remember when he was just getting started and still looking for reference books on the IBM PC/AT hardware.

Reply to the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard on Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:51:44 GMT

typhon@piaille.fr — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:51:44 GMT

@zzt I have to wonder if the same thing is happening to fortran guys

Reply to the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard on Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:34:36 GMT

discatte@digipres.club — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:34:36 GMT

@zzt Going to start calling this the frying pan to the head logical fallacy.

Reply to the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard on Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:31:30 GMT

dolls.in.sudoparadise.fi@bsky.brid.gy — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:31:30 GMT

I remember when Torvalds got a bigger monitor so he had to change the variable for onscreen lines from signed to unsigned char now that he could have more than 127.

Reply to the guys who only learned C, insisted on C for everything, refused or failed to learn any other language, and put down anyone who tried to use anything else, are now fully in on LLMs because they think programming is too unpleasant and hard on Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:27:04 GMT

zzt@mas.to — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:27:04 GMT

bonus: the loudest one of them insisted on using a 1987 version of an obscure editor that didn’t support syntax highlighting or any other basic convenience features and now thinks an LLM doing basic symbol manipulation is irreplaceable magic