from Hacker News

Creator of Zig asked "how to open a file in C++" in SO 15 years ago

by agomez314 on 7/24/24, 1:04 PM with 12 comments

  • by fallingsquirrel on 7/24/24, 1:34 PM

    Misleading.

    https://andrewkelley.me/post/goodbye-twitter-reddit.html

    > I enthusiastically participated in the launch of Stack Overflow, including asking basic questions such as "How do you open a file in C++?" in order to farm karma points.

  • by davidkunz on 7/24/24, 1:34 PM

    The title is a bit misleading and readers might think he didn't know how to open files in C++. This is not the case, see https://x.com/Deor/status/1815563936671867315

  • by zamadatix on 7/24/24, 1:32 PM

    I feel a bit bait and switched considering this title was posted after the original poster self proclaimed they found it to be misleading. At least some initial comments here aren't catching that follow up either.

  • by fp64 on 7/24/24, 1:36 PM

    I don't get it. 15 years is quite a while, if I think back what my own experience was then compared to now it's also quite a significant improvement. Also `std::ifstream` and `operator<<` is, in my humble opinion, stupid. If you make a story out of the fact that this lead to something in Andrew's philosophy, it might be an interesting post, but this I find just silly and borderline creepy.

    EDIT: ah misleading title and post altogether, makes it even worse. Should farm some karma here so I can downvote

  • by ochronus on 7/24/24, 1:41 PM

    Even if he didn't know how to do it, it'd only be proof that people grow :)

  • by crabsand on 7/24/24, 3:37 PM

    ... and he didn't like the answer and went ahead to create Zig. :)

    I know it's misleading but you can learn anything in 10-15 years anyway. Why is this a thing, I don't know :)

  • by sim7c00 on 7/24/24, 1:32 PM

    classic :D since Zig first appeared ~8 years ago (wikipedia), if that question reflects his abilities at the time he really soared in ability quickly :D

  • by giancarlostoro on 7/24/24, 1:39 PM

    Honestly whether he was farming karma or genuinely asking, its still fun to look back through other developers history.

  • by impure on 7/24/24, 5:24 PM

    I’m surprised he wasn’t downvoted for asking that.