Include Guards

Unreal Engine out here acting like your helicopter parent, telling you your beast of a machine with an RTX 5090 and 14900KF isn't good enough to run at 1440p 60fps because it insists on strangling everything through a single thread. Meanwhile, id Tech Engine is the cool uncle who shows up and says "use ALL the cores, kid" and delivers billion FPS on a toaster. The difference? id Software actually knows how to write multithreaded code that doesn't make your CPU cry. They've been optimizing game engines since Carmack was writing assembly in his sleep. Unreal just keeps adding more AI-upscaling band-aids instead of fixing the fundamental performance issues. It's 2024 and we're still dealing with engines that can't properly utilize modern hardware. id Tech proves it's possible, but everyone else would rather blame your GPU than admit their engine is running like it's 2005.

Ah yes, the C++ standards committee doing what they do best: creating Frankenstein's monster one standard at a time. You've got C++98, C++11, C++14, C++17, C++20, C++23, and now C++26 all stacked on top of each other like a cursed Jenga tower. Each version adds new features while dragging along decades of backward compatibility baggage. Modern C++ compilers look at this abomination and have to support ALL of it simultaneously. Want to use auto and lambdas from C++11? Sure. Need concepts from C++20? Go ahead. Still have legacy code from the 90s? No problem, we'll compile that too. It's like trying to build a spaceship while keeping the horse and buggy parts functional "just in case." The poor compiler is basically Noah trying to figure out how this chimera of language features is supposed to fit on the ark. Meanwhile, other languages just deprecate old stuff and move on, but C++ is out here like "backward compatibility or death."

Billion-dollar GPU vs. one efficient Japanese coder? Not even a contest. While we're all chasing fancy hardware to run our bloated, framework-heavy code, Japanese game devs are out here making masterpieces run on calculators. Monster Hunter and Elden Ring weren't built with 16 layers of abstraction and 800MB of node_modules. The rest of us are like "I need a quantum computer to center this div" while they're squeezing every last cycle from hardware like it's still the PS2 era. Efficiency is apparently a lost art everywhere except Japan.

The eternal battle between Big-Endian (BE) and Little-Endian (LE) processors, illustrated perfectly by... people walking upside down? For the uninitiated: endianness determines how bytes are ordered in memory. Big-endian puts the most significant byte first (like reading a number left-to-right), while little-endian puts the least significant byte first (reading right-to-left). The comic shows a BE person trying to communicate with an LE person who's literally upside down, speaking in reverse syntax: "Processor? Central the to way the me tell you could lost. I'm" and "Much! Very you thank." After 15 years in systems programming, I still have nightmares about debugging network protocols between different architectures. Nothing like spending three days tracking down a bug only to discover it's a byte-order issue. Endianness: the original "works on my machine" problem.

The secret to longevity isn't diet or exercise—it's printf debugging! Mike here has made it to 92 by stubbornly refusing to use fancy debuggers or logging frameworks. While the rest of us are stressing over breakpoints and watch variables, he's peacefully inserting print statements like it's 1972. The man has probably typed "printf" more times than he's had hot dinners, and his code is littered with more debug statements than his lawn has blades of grass. Clearly, the fountain of youth flows with C syntax and terminal output. Next time someone suggests you "modernize your debugging approach," just point to Mike—the living proof that printf debugging isn't just a habit, it's a lifestyle choice with unexpected health benefits!

The sky is literally smiling upon C programmers! When your language is so fundamental that even Mother Nature pays homage to it. Sure, Python might be trendy and JavaScript might be everywhere, but C? C is where the real magic happens—where memory leaks are a lifestyle choice and pointer arithmetic is considered a recreational activity. The language where you don't just write code; you craft it byte by precious byte. No garbage collection to save you, just pure, unfiltered programming prowess. Why use 10MB of RAM when 10KB will do? C isn't just a language, it's a badge of honor worn by those who've survived segfaults and lived to tell the tale.