How I program C

Caption notes

Eskil Steenberg uses his own long-lived C projects to explain how he organizes code. He starts with the interface callers need, then fills in the implementation so the module can change with less disruption to its callers. His function names encode the module, object and operation so readers can tell where a call belongs. In a renderer example, he uses triangles to show the trade-off in choosing a basic representation. Converting several kinds of geometry into one representation lets later operations target a single form, while that choice also limits what can be represented. A music player illustrates the same approach to organization: the interface and audio live in separate libraries, and the application combines them.