Gregory's Serversay what you want about C but "void star" is a great name for a type that is as powerful as it is dangerous
aeva
51 comments
alys
@joshuaelliott @aeva or a yellowed paperback you find at a used bookstore with a cover about to fall off 
Klara, continued
@aeva I distinctly remember thinking about what a cool name this was back when I first learned C but also being surrounded by Serious Programmer Dudes who rolled their eyes at me for thinking a sequence of words was neat for its own sake. Which is to say, thank you for this decades-late validation.
Klara, continued
@aeva Hooray! Maybe I'll try liking programming more. I did find a 100% justifiable situation in which to name a flag "reverse polarity" today. That's gotta count for something. 
Third spruce tree on the left
  
Essjay (she / her) 🏳️🌈
'Satellite Hitori' by Keiron Phelan contains the immortal error-message sounding line - "overriding, public void run interruption" The song is based on a true story about a Japanese satellite that once launched into space, steadfastly refused to communicate with Ground Control -  
Greg Wilson
@aeva also one of my favorite SF novels of the last decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_Star 
Grrrr, Darth Moose Shark
Andrea
@grrrr_shark @aeva hey I think I've only ever once been guilty of writing the kind of code that would use such a type without using a real JIT :P
Joel D
@aeva “Void Star” is also the title of one of my favorite recent-ish sci fi books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_Star 
vfig (aka leviathan_bound)
@aeva and when your program explodes because you dereferenced it, can we call that a void supernova? 
Vile Lasagna
@aeva I grew up with a language that isn't afraid of words, tho, so I know * is an asterisk and the star doesn't make sense. So I always just read void* as "void pointer". Gone is the romance, all we're left with it spaghetti code
Vile Lasagna
@aeva I've always known the actual name of the * character so English native speakers saying "star" when they read it just always felt super bizarre to me. Still does
aeva
@VileLasagna what part of this is being afraid of words though? English loves words, we keep packing more of them into it.
Vile Lasagna
@aeva eeehhhh... not so sure, especially when it comes to the US. I still haven't recovered from, say, the word literally existing specifically to denote something is not a metaphor or hyperbole and then, y'know, people just more and more using it as such. It pains my insufferable nerd brain 
Aaron
@VileLasagna @aeva Native speaker here. I've always known the name of it too, but I will still say "star" for convenience, just like I say "oh" instead of zero in a phone number. Has nothing to do with not liking words; I'm quite verbose. Expediency of communication is what it's about.
aeva
@hosford42 @VileLasagna I did not get the impression that he's particularly interested in the native speaker perspective on English. Really quite the opposite actually.
Vile Lasagna
@hosford42 @aeva Yeah, I was speaking as a non-native, for sure. The "not liking words" thing is an intentional hyperbole but the feeling with a lot of English is still a bit Mr Torgue a lot of the time. (not to mention other barely related gripes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50ZXUOnMjfc It doesn't help here that "asterisk" is the same in my native language so the "real name" just comes naturally to me and the whole "star" thing just never clicked, it's like my brain throws a parser warning immediately
Douglas Kilpatrick
@aeva@gamedev.place `#define RTLD_DEFAULT ((void *) -2) // Use default search algorithm.`
Seth "Twylo" Morabito
@aeva Back in 1998 when I worked at a tiny startup our running joke was “I will cast you into the void star!!” We were young and dumb and I kind of miss that. |
@aeva (Also 100% sounds like the kind of low-budget early-90s scifi show that had about 9 episodes and nobody else remembers but is seminal to my entire existence.)