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Comment by yokohummer7 | Hacker News Reader

> To be clear, it isn't that I find the code difficult to grok: if you don't understand how switch works, please stop using C.

Oh please. C is perfectly usable without knowing switch is actually a bunch of gotos. The idea that one has to know all the hidden edges of a language to use it is pointless, because every language has something like that. Even Python can be a minefield if one tries hard abusing metaclasses, and I'm pretty sure 95% of the Python users don't know how to use them.

If you pursue the idea of knowing every deep place to the extreme, the only language left for general developers to use is Go. A language so concerned at removing hidden features that almost no features are left.

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Ok, I don't mean "stop writing C", but "stop reading C": people too often look at not-even-difficult things and say "I happen to not have bothered to learn that, so you shouldn't use it in writing, as I couldn't read it", which to me sounds exactly like someone saying "I happen to have a first grade reading level, so you shouldn't use big words or long sentences or prepositions, because I didn't understand them". There are times and places where that is appropriate, but those are not all times and places, not I would argue the majority of times and places.

I've been doing c for almost 25 years now, and for many of those years it was my primary language, and not only would I refuse to write that kind of crazy switch construct I would refuse to allow it to pass code review.

> The idea that one has to know all the hidden edges of a language

switch is hardly a hidden edge, it's an important control structure in the language. You want a "hidden edge", look at designated initializers [1] which I just heard of yesterday (thanks to HN), despite having 17 years experience using C. Or bitfields, or function pointers.

[1] http://www.drdobbs.com/the-new-c-declarations-initialization...

Switch is hardly a hidden edge, but using it like that is.

Designated initializers aren’t “hidden” at all, just new (and not that new).

Huh, I wouldn't think of function pointers as a hidden edge in the language, and I've only been seriously using C for about 4 years.

Is there some crazy consequence of using function pointers that I've been missing? Callbacks are pretty ubiquitous in C code bases, and the "hand coded vtable" pattern isn't too uncommon.

Maybe the lesson is that what language feature are the "hidden edges" depend on one's domain.

I was being figurative. nothing's hidden in an ANSI standardized language. My point was you can go along way in C without ever needing function ptrs. Their syntax isn't exactly welcoming, either. Compared to switch, which OP had compared to a hidden corner, need switch a lot more frequently than you need function pointers.

I've always understood switch statements just fine.

However, after this article, I now understand them a little better.

Exactly.

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