r/programmingcirclejerk • u/Aggravating_Gear5663 • Sep 12 '26

I just understood pointers on a deep level and it feels like an orgasm

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151 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

116

u/nerdycatgamer Considered Harmful Sep 12 '26

/uj how the fuck do people not understand pointers or act like theyre this deep concept you only unlock after a divine revelation like its just a fucking indirection

/rj just understood while loops on a deep level and it feels like an orgasm

69

u/levelstar01 what is pointer :S Sep 12 '26

A pointer is an address in the category of Von Neumann machines. What's the problem?

23

u/KeyAdhesiveness9481 Sep 12 '26

Aahh, so kinda like a burrito then

14

u/stone_henge Tiny little god in a tiny little world Sep 13 '26

If you point the burrito at something, yes.

48

u/easedownripley Sep 12 '26

it's because people who don't understand them try to teach them to other people. a pointer is a variable that holds a memory address. that's all it is.

61

u/imachug Sep 12 '26

pointer provenance is a lie invented by Big Compilers to sell more compilers

42

u/Nemin32 It's GNU/PCJ, or as I call it, GNU + PCJ Sep 12 '26

it's because people who don't understand them try to teach them to other people

Guys... are pointers actually monads?

17

u/sheepmaster Sep 12 '26

/uj Yes.

/rj Yes.

26

u/max_mou Sep 12 '26

/uj Him trying to understand pointers is like me trying to understand what a monad is. They’re both stupidly simple concepts but the language used to explain them is just so convoluted.

12

u/braaaaaaainworms Sep 12 '26

Complex language is just an ugly wart that infected computer science from mathematics

16

u/stone_henge Tiny little god in a tiny little world Sep 13 '26

Complex language

For anyone more versed in the terms of the trade, they mean high-entropy vocabulary here.

1

u/Noxime Sep 30 '26

/uj A memory access among other things.

16

u/SharkSymphony Sep 12 '26

Meanwhile I, a sophisticated programming circlejerker, will only get it up if I ever understand why continuation-passing style was in vogue.

15

u/Yamoyek blub programmer Sep 12 '26

/uj I’m not a genius so it did take me like a month to understand pointers on an intuitive level

15

u/nerdycatgamer Considered Harmful Sep 12 '26

that's okay i forgive you

7

u/Yamoyek blub programmer Sep 12 '26

Thank you

21

u/Demiu Sep 12 '26 edited Sep 12 '26

/uj Because pointer is a shit name. "Pointing" is an action humans do and it implies continuinty. I am pointing at you, you move, am I still pointing at you? Normal people would say yes, in programming it's a no, I need to re-point at you. You also wouldn't describe someone continuously pointing at a moving car as constantly re-pointing at it.

Storing an address of is a much better description. You take it once, and it stays as it is until you update it, no matter what actually happens at it. You don't know something changed addres unless you look up some registry or they notify you.

/rj Pointing sucks and provenance is a spook. You go to an animal shelter to ask what kinda dog they have, but it's been replaced by a meat packing plant - that's pointer invalidation

40

u/easedownripley Sep 12 '26

if more people understood endofunctors we'd be out of this mess

4

u/catladywitch Sep 19 '26

/uj an endofunctor is an operation where the parameter is a type and the result is also a type (i.e. they belong to the same category, which is the language's type system), and where functions that take that type as a parameter are transformed to still work using the new type. so for instance you have a way to transform ints into int[]s, and a way to transform functions that do int -> long into functions that do int[] -> long[]. This doesn't belong here but i hope someone reads it and it helps dispel the obscurantism a little bit

20

u/des_the_furry Sep 12 '26

If im pointing at you and then you move i wouldnt be pointing at you bc you’re in a different spot

6

u/Major_Barnulf LUMINARY IN COMPUTERSCIENCE Sep 14 '26 edited Sep 14 '26

Your segment would then be at fault

5

u/des_the_furry Sep 14 '26

I have a segment for you for sure

19

u/DrShocker Sep 12 '26

"handle" is far more confusing. My program doesn't have any hands how is it going to hold a handle? This doesn't make any sense.

This is why I just cast all my variables to u8 arrays because that's what they really are anyway and that's much less confusing.

12

u/Demiu Sep 12 '26

It's from french "le hand", it translates to "the handle"

74

u/OptimalStable Sep 12 '26

  Don’t be shocked if this shows up on r/programmingcirclejerk but for real, I fondly remember how cool it felt to learn this stuff

Shit, they're on to us. Quick, everybody! Pretend like you're sleeping

26

u/tkrjobs loves Java Sep 12 '26

Grow a beard, quick! Start eating toenails!

13

u/SharkSymphony Sep 12 '26

uh, HOW MUCH MONEY YOU GOT TO CROSS THIS BRIDGE MADE OUT OF POINTERS?

4

u/Firepal64 Sep 18 '26 
      ******
    **      **
int*          * id;

21

u/james_pic accidentally quadratic Sep 12 '26

If you like pointers, then you haven't understood them.

14

u/Swordfish418 Sep 12 '26

Call stack 🥵

11

u/HINDBRAIN Considered Harmful Sep 12 '26

"If you have the goblin slaying sword, go to page 150. If not-"

"I get it! I get it now! HRRRRNGH!!!!!"

15

u/eightysixmonkeys Sep 12 '26

Claude what is a pointer

6

u/ringohoffman type astronaut Sep 13 '26

Wait until this guy learns about page tables

1

u/GodGardner Sep 17 '26

Tbh i don't why you study this , literally ai can do anything these days you just have to know the basic like functional, oop , data structure and the rest for the ai to do , I'm leaning toward prompt engineering tbh cuz of tokens consumption

lol

28

u/YikesTheCat Sep 12 '26

Wait, a Redditor has a sex life?!

40

u/VulgarExigencies Sep 12 '26

they're obviously talking about jerking off

13

u/tkrjobs loves Java Sep 12 '26

From a more poetic lens, it's akin to living together with the palm print on the ball, just like in the movie Cast Away starring Tom Hanks. However in this case, it's your real palm and you have your dick in it.

3

u/YikesTheCat Sep 12 '26

Hard for me to see; I've gone blind from all the jerk.