having flashbacks of looking at another bsd devs screen years ago at a hackathon during our libssl rewrite after…whatever that horrible libssl vuln was..
literally not even recognizable as C at first. they created their own weird byzantine convoluted sludge language with preprocessor macros and, my god, after closer inspection the sins they committed were unspeakable. we aren’t talking like #IFNDEF level shenanigans. every preprocessor sin committed at every level severity and in every combination possible. a permutation-complete reference work on how to go to hell.
it would be like building the wallet and grommace bed/breakfast contraption in real life, and then trying it for the first time, dislocating several vertebrae from the bed spring, breaking both legs falling through the floor, hitting your forehead on the table & concussing you, and then getting blasted with superheated porridge that has also started a fire. you yell “help me grommit!!” but it is a normal real life dog.