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?

>>20
While free software is a sound concept in my book, I'm no fanboy of GNU and definitely no enemy of compiler competition; I however do believe that replacing the main compiler of open-source/free software with a not copylefted one poses a threat to free software as a whole, and right now this is where Clang is heading. Especially in embedded programming, where many vendors wouldn't pass on the chance to use Clang for a proprietary compiler and sell it to those who want to use undocumented high-speed features, this could set us back a lot. I agree with rms when he says that this scheme effectively became extinct because of a strong, free compiler under copyleft.

>>21
Not that I know of, but making a Sepples compiler is a very hard task, so it wouldn't be surprising if most resources went there. GCC is a collection of compilers anyway, so I assume they have multiple teams for different languages, all with their respective amount of activity.