Wait until you hear about alignment
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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The alignment of the language and the alignment of the coder must be similar on at least one metric, or the coder suffers a penalty to develop for each degree of difference from the language's alignment. This is penalty stacks for each phase of the project.
So, let's say that the developer is a lawful good Rust ~~zealot~~ Paladin, but she's developing in Python, a language she's moderately familiar with. Since Python is neutral/good, she suffers a -1 penalty for the first phase, -2 for the second, -3 for the third, etc. This is because Rust (the Paladin's native language) is lawful, and Python is neutral (one degree of difference from lawful), so she operates at a slight disadvantage. However, they are both "good", so there's no further penalty.
The same penalty would occur if using C, which is lawful neutral - but the axis of order and chaos matches, and there is one degree of difference on the axis of good and evil.
However, if that same developer were to code in Javascript (chaotic neutral), it would be at a -3 (-6, -9...) disadvantage, due to 2 and 1 degree of difference in alignment, respectively.
Malbolge (chaotic evil), however, would be a -4 (-8, -12) plus an inherent -2 for poor toolchain availability.
..hope this helps. have fun out there!
typedef struct {
bool a: 1;
bool b: 1;
bool c: 1;
bool d: 1;
bool e: 1;
bool f: 1;
bool g: 1;
bool h: 1;
} __attribute__((__packed__)) not_if_you_have_enough_booleans_t;You beat me to it!
Or just std::bitset<8> for C++.
Bit fields are neat though, it can store weird stuff like a 3 bit integer, packed next to booleans
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Depending on the language
And compiler. And hardware architecture. And optimization flags.
As usual, it's some developer that knows little enough to think the walls they see around enclose the entire world.
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I set all 8 bits to 1 because I want it to be really true.
01111111 = true
11111111 = negative true = false
negative true = negative non-zero = non-zero = true.
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Then you need to ask yourself: Performance or memory efficiency? Is it worth the extra cycles and instructions to put 8 bools in one byte and & 0x bitmask the relevant one?
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Wait till you find out about alignment and padding
Tell me the truth, i can handle it
Back in the day when it mattered, we did it like
#define BV00 (1 << 0)
#define BV01 (1 << 1)
#define BV02 (1 << 2)
#define BV03 (1 << 3)
...etc
#define IS_SET(flag, bit) ((flag) & (bit))
#define SET_BIT(var, bit) ((var) |= (bit))
#define REMOVE_BIT(var, bit) ((var) &= ~(bit))
#define TOGGLE_BIT(var, bit) ((var) ^= (bit))
....then...
#define MY_FIRST_BOOLEAN BV00
SET_BIT(myFlags, MY_FIRST_BOOLEAN)
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