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

[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

[lunadragofelis@void.lgbt]

@halla @eniko I think the ones in Java are the least awful. But it might be familiarity bias.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@halla I've worked with threads in other languages before. They're always bad but C makes it a lot worse

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@pixx it's just as bad as working with threads in any other language but there's no functional standard and the api is worse

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@joe but threads in C are worse than any other language

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

"Oh well threads are bad in <other language> too"

No you don't understand. Working with threads in C doesn't really actually work and if you do get it to work it's still so much fucking worse than working with threads in any other language

[silvermoon82@wandering.shop]

@eniko
Oof, *windows* threads in C! Fun fun!

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@silvermoon82 well wtf good is writing something in C if it's not maximally portable :/

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

Like, I'm *good* at avoiding the pitfalls of threads. Normally. In any other language that *isn't* C

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

Oh what's that? C11 standardized threads.h? OK well the api looks pretty trash but I guess anything's better than pthreads. Let me just open VS2022, msvc, ok... #include <threads.h>

....... why are there like two dozen compiler errors *in the damn header*?

[lispi314@udongein.xyz]

@eniko Consistency is nice I guess?

[lispi314@udongein.xyz]

@kirtai @khleedril @eniko Supposedly Rust has fancy compiler assistance on deadlocks & such.

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

"Oh well if you're writing C you should be running Linu-"

I am not going to switch operating systems just to make it 5% less miserable to work with threads in C!!!

[gabrielesvelto@mas.to]

@eniko IIUC you can declare a C-compiler C11 compatible but not have support for the concurrency API, in which case the compiler defines __STDC_NO_THREADS__ and you can't include threads.h

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@gabrielesvelto that sounds like threads in C alright