this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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Programmer Humor

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[–] xiii@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I was working on a C code base with classes, inheritance, and polymorphism, all done by hands and macros.

Something like

typedef struct s_some_class {
    void (*method)(this *s_some_class);
} t_some_class;

Overall, learning C was the best enabler in my whole career. For instance I was learning Python by tinkering with CPython VM, so when I see these ‘WAT’ quircks I know exactly what’s up.

[–] bestelbus22@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Interesting, how did they do inheritance? Something like void *super? Also why not switch to CPP if you wanna do OOP?

[–] xiii@lemmy.world 1 points 32 minutes ago

In general, 'classes' declarations were done with macro. I don't remember the exact code — something akin to

BEGIN_CLASS(A, Parent);
CLASS_MEMBER(a...)
END_CLASS();

The project had started before C++ existed, and the switch would be too costly. It's not just OOP part, also reflection mechanism with bindings to the homemade scripting language, and multi-platform UI library. It was a gem of its time.

[–] dan 28 points 1 day ago

Sweet dreams are made of this

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 42 points 1 day ago (2 children)

In Python, self is not a keyword, it’s a conventional variable name. You can replace all instances of “self” with “this” and your code will work the same.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lua might have been a better choice, since self is special in lua.

[–] diemartin@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 minutes ago) (1 children)

Kinda.

Lua defines it implicitly only when you use the

function foo:bar(a, b, c) -- note the colon

syntactic sugar, which gets translated to

function foo.bar(self, a, b, c) -- note the period

In all cases, self is a regular variable name. You can even redeclare a new local with that name even when the old one is in scope.

Edit: some typos

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't see how what you said is inconsistent with me saying "self" is special in lua. Note that I did not say it's a keyword.

[–] diemartin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 minutes ago

Derp, I misread.

[–] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago

Python is just distancing itself from JS.

[–] bobo1900@sopuli.xyz 76 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (21 children)

Partially unrelated to the meme, but I find it almost malicious how some python keywords are named differently from the nearly universal counterpart of other languagues.

This/self, continue/pass, catch/except and they couldn't find a different word for switch so they just didn't implement it.

It's as if the original designers purposefully wanted to be different for the sake of it.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 62 points 2 days ago (1 children)

pass and continue are absolutely not equal (pass is a noop, and python has a continue keyword that does what you think), and switch is called match like in many other languages. except is weird though.

[–] Phen@lemmy.eco.br 11 points 2 days ago

"except" is also used in Pascal (or at least the main derivatives of it), but not sure if that's older than its use in Python or not.

[–] SolNine@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

List and Array terminology also bothers me ... Why not just call it an array?

[–] sjmarf@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Python does have a switch statement now, actually. And yes, they went out of their way to call it something different - match.

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/controlflow.html#match-statements

[–] NichtElias@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago

match isn't just equivalent to switch though, so in this case it actually makes sense to call it something different.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

PHP naming "::" a Paamayim Nekudotayim is also pretty infamous.

When I'm designing shit, I'm pretty zealous about borrowing terminology from anything even vaguely related to avoid this.

[–] bobo1900@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

PHP weirdness and inconsintencies never fail to amaze me.

On the bright side, I found my first StackOverflow answer that would fit exactly the same on Linguistic Stack Exchange.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/59259755

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Absolutely cursed, lol.

So not only did they decide to randomly include Hebrew in their language, because I guess they were feeling kabbalistic, but they got the Hebrew wrong. In what way does any of that increase usability or even make them look competent?

It reminds me of the INTERCAL manual, which was a joke:

This precedence (or lack thereof) may be overruled by grouping expressions between pairs of sparks (’) or rabbit-ears (").

[–] barubary@infosec.exchange 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

include Hebrew in their language, because I guess they were feeling kabbalistic

... or because the developers were Israeli: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zend/_(company)#History

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 hours ago

Yeah, that's not actually a good reason though, unless you're developing a Hebrew programming language for Hebrew speakers. I made a bit of a joke about it, yes.

[–] bestelbus22@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I read that self as a keyword also has quite a history. It was already used in Smalltalk, an OOP language from the early 80's.

[–] Jambalaya@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Isn't self not actually a keyword? Like you can name the first variable in a class method anything and it will behave like self.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You could use "this" instead of "self". And if you want a lynch mob of Python programmers outside your house, make a push request with that to some commonly used package.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I think there will be a lynch mob of git users outside your house for calling PR as "push request".

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I've been wondering about the noise.

Edit: turns out, they weren't there to lynch me. They just gave me a two hour lecture on proper usage of git.

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[–] lime@feddit.nu 8 points 2 days ago

only github users. git itself doesn't have PRs, and other forges call them different things. gitlab calls them merge requests, pico calls them patch requests...

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[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 52 points 2 days ago (1 children)

TBF the last two bullet points are verbose descriptions of the thing it means in C++, Java, and Python too. It's just that in JS, "this" can also be used in other places.

But yeah, in practice, every time I write JS I want to throw my hands in the air and shout "this is bullshit", but never know what "this" refers to... :D

[–] bestelbus22@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

Yeah that's fair, though it also discusses that whole prototype thing that JS has going on

[–] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 14 points 1 day ago

Alternative image for C: Mr. Incredible: "A PARAMETER IS A PARAMETER!"

[–] Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Rust: Borrow handler got mad at you for asking

(I'd assume)

[–] drbluefall@toast.ooo 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's either a reference to an object instance, or the instance itself (depending on whether you specified &mut self, &self or just self).

[–] ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 days ago

Don't forget Self, the type of self.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 12 points 2 days ago

My JS:

Ah, you mean that?

[–] AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (4 children)

In Python you can use this as a variable name

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

In Python you can use 🍆 as a variable name.

Edit: oops, guess I was mistaken, you can use most Unicode but emojis are not valid.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 2 days ago

Edit: oops, guess I was mistaken, you can use most Unicode but emojis are not valid.

That actually seems even more arbitrary. Like, do they just hate fun?

[–] embed_me@programming.dev 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just going by the reputation, you probably can do this in JavaScript

[–] scott@lemmy.org 4 points 2 days ago
~ $ python
Python 3.12.10 (main, Apr  9 2025, 18:13:11) [Clang 18.0.3 (https://android.googlesource.com/toolchain/llvm-project d8003a456 on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> ❗ = 'nah'
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    ❗ = 'nah'
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid character '❗' (U+2757)
>>>
~ $ node
Welcome to Node.js v23.11.1.
Type ".help" for more information.
> const 👍 = 'test'
const 👍 = 'test'
      ^

Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token
>

you might be thinking of Rust.

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