I absolutely loathe and despise the arrogant 'your code must be bullshit' attitude that runs throughout this article.

When you encounter other peoples' code and it looks a bit complicated, and not the 'obvious and simple' thing, your first thought should never be 'they wrote bullshit code', but instead 'what have I missed? What did I forget to consider for this function?'

I don't know anything about the glibc authors, or their code style, but if you go through your life assuming incompetence if someone wrote a function differently to your initial thoughts, then you are an arrogant prick.