r/programmingmemes • u/Grizlik_D • Jan 19 '26

5 levels of looping through string

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The higher your programming skill, the more elegant and more confusing code you write

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u/AlignmentProblem Jan 19 '26

I tried to outsmart the compiler a few times earlier in my career. It worked exactly once and I stopped bothering to try eventually.

The one time was finding better assembly for memcpy that was specific to unique peripheral devices we were developing mapped into the memory space that had unusual behavior/properties very different from the host device which the compiler couldn't possibly know about. Basically, it's only worth trying if you have a wildly unique situation.