Top all-time · #10525
Stefan Schulze Frielinghaus
Personal blog · stefansf.de/postprogrammingsystems
Stefan Schulze Frielinghaus writes Stefan SF, a personal blog at stefansf.de about programming and systems. Since 2018, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “Pointers Are More Abstract Than You Might Expect in C”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Posts on C's undefined behaviour and pointer semantics, including a reading of the C standard on pointer arithmetic, a C quiz, and non-termination in C and C++. HN readers link them as background on C's quirks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Hi, I'm Stefan Schulze Frielinghaus. I mainly use this site to organize my thoughts about programming languages, compilers, and other technical things.
Most-linked posts?
- Pointers Are More Abstract Than You Might Expect in C3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-07-02
- C Programming Language Quiz2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-05-22
What Hacker News says?
A few years ago I came across this article Pointers Are More Abstract Than You Might Expect In C [1]. I followed the article which attempted to interpret the C standard and come to a conclusion. The conclusion is: > The takeaway message is that pointer arithmetic is only defined for pointers pointing into array objects or one past the last element. Comparing pointers for equality is defined if both pointers are deri…
Comment linking /post/pointers-are-more-abstract-than-you-might-expect/
on “Tell HN: C Experts Panel – Ask us anything about C”Submitted Pointers Are More Abstract Than You Might Expect in C as a story · 269 points
HN discussionhttps://stefansf.de/post/pointers-are-more-abstract-than-you...
Comment linking /post/pointers-are-more-abstract-than-you-might-expect/
on “Why MIT uses Python instead of Scheme for its undergraduate CS program (2009)”Submitted C Programming Language Quiz as a story · 2 points
HN discussionC is cursed, too. Just in a different way https://stefansf.de/c-quiz/
Comment linking /c-quiz/
on “Sp.h is the standard library that C deserves”Submitted Type-Based Alias Analysis in C as a story · 2 points
HN discussionJust today some friends sent me this: https://stefansf.de/c-quiz Yesterday I would have agreed that C is a nice and simple language, today I believe it is a cursed one that we just happen to make work somehow.
Comment linking /c-quiz
on “Sp.h is the standard library that C deserves”> C is valuable because it’s simple This is funny to me because just today some friends gave me a link to a C quiz: https://stefansf.de/c-quiz/ From which I gathered that it is a much more cursed language than I remembered. Maybe we all just got used to C and just happen to use a minimal subset. The problems with C are not mainly with the standard library, but any effort to improve things should be lauded.
Comment linking /c-quiz/
on “Sp.h is the standard library that C deserves”somewhat related article regarding non-termination in c++ and c: https://stefansf.de/post/non-termination-considered-harmful/
Comment linking /post/non-termination-considered-harmful/
on “Coping with nontermination: some thoughts on stopping loops”