It's 2006. I'm working with threads in C and it's awful

[passocacornio@tech.lgbt]

@eniko oh goddesses, you were suffering with C back in 2006? oh wow! (2006 I was still dreaming I would be a writer)

[ericsedge@bitbang.social]

@eniko I’ll join in with a bit of paraphrasing.

It’s 1987. I’m forking this process in C and my library code isn’t reentrant….

[pixx@merveilles.town]

@eniko

/winces

Can i ask what about it?

[landelare@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko It's 2026. [...] C [...] i[...]s awful

[lisyarus@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@analog_feelings @eniko Yup: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/pthread_create.3.html

[gureito@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko in my head-canon, that's the reason we got erlang, go, rust.......

(it's 1996 and threads in C is awful, it's 1986 and threads in C is awful......)

[khleedril@cyberplace.social]

@kirtai @eniko The model might be the same, but the guardrails are there...

[kirtai@tech.lgbt]

@khleedril @eniko
Are they though?
Threads have a lot more problems than memory issues

[dbat@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko sounds like threads should be called dreads.

[khleedril@cyberplace.social]

@kirtai @eniko It is true that rust can't stop you locking up, but, hell, having the memory issues mostly sorted is a massive win, is it not?

[raptor85@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@lisyarus @eniko yeah, C++11's std::thread interface is great, makes it extremely simple to set up stuff like thread pooling and generic worker threads.

[countablenewt@mastodon.social]

@eniko . working threads I’m 2026 C it’s and awful with It’s ,

[joe@f.duriansoftware.com]

@eniko you could leave "in C" out and it would be about the same

[scottmichaud@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@joe @eniko Ignoring run-to-run variance.

[joe@f.duriansoftware.com]

@scottmichaud @eniko vibe coders 🤝concurrency programmers

[vfig@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@joe @eniko but that would make Terry Riley sad

[casar@mastodon.social]

@halla I've been working with threads in Java and in Python and they were ... so, so, those in Python most certainly double-plus than ones in Java.

But I always imagined (but never tried) working with threads in C must be wonderful. Now I am confused.

@eniko

[superblox@mastodon.social]

@eniko Have you heard the good news about our lord and savior Rust yet?

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@silvermoon82 and the w is for works well in windows

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@gilesgoat idk it's like all the bad stuff of working with threads but also none of the conveniences. In fact more like a giant pile of additional inconveniences