Preprocessors and Macros

I have never encountered anything more pointless and stupid in my years of programming, EVER.

It's pretty much the only thing that holds me back from giving contributions to most open source C programs. Every source file is littered with #ifndefs every-fucking-where. 90% of the code is preprocessor directives and the rest is real C code. It's so fucking pointless and it's not even metaprogramming. I mean #define for using constants? Really? Can't you just use const for that? Sure, it's useful for separating your header files and relating functions in their source files but that's it. Dennis Ritchie should have just built that in the language. Sure, it's also useful compiling different lines of code for different kernel versions or different CFLAGS but whatever, it just proves how broken a programming language is.

What do you think /prog/? I've only parroting C shit, how does your favorite use macros?

>>17
As much as I dislike Clang for being C++-centered and having the potential to kill GCC, I can't deny they churn out good stuff.

Regarding generated headers, I think this would be very inaccurate, and not just because the current compilation system barely distinguishes between files. Right now, the only way to have a hidden function of some sort is to declare and define it in a .c file while not declaring it in any header. Blindly generating headers would create a fair share of bogus prototypes.