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0 pointsjoefourier1mo ago0 comments

I'm not from that generation so that's a bit hard for me to understand. Even if you used a closed-source C compiler, wouldn't you still have been able to look at the header file, which would have been pretty self-explanatory?

E.g.

void qsort(void* base, size_t nmemb, size_t size, int (compar)(const void , const void* ));

And surely if you bought a C compiler, you would have gotten a manual or two with it? Documentation from the pre-Internet age tended to be much better than today.

0 comments

mech4221mo ago

Yeah - but you have to be a good enough programmer to really understand the headers.. the 'bootstrapping' problem was real :-) Especially if you didn't live in a metropolitan/college area. My local library was really short on programming books - especially anything 'in depth'. Also, 'C' was considered a "professional's language" back then - so bookstores/libraries were more likely to have books on BASIC then 'C'

kuboble1mo ago

I don't remember where we got the compilers from but we surely didn't buy them.

Also I don't know if it came with manual but my English wasn't good enough to read them anyways.

rustyzig1mo ago

What kind of modern C wizardry is that? qsort was:

    qsort(base, nel, width, compar)
    char *base;
    int (*compar)();

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