more questions about efficient C code

[Doug Gwyn <gwyn>]

Professionalism is an attitude.  It is not restricted by age or
means of income.  This whole discussion started when someone
complained that standard C idioms should not be used because
they made it harder for unqualified people to read C code.
One of the hallmarks of a professional is skilled use of his
tools..  Would someone explain why it is important for code to
be understood by untrained people?  (This is truly impossible,
in any case, except for rather trivial examples.  An untrained
person is unlikely to understand linked data structures,
dynamic memory allocation, recursion, etc.)

Certainly, many people who are getting paid to program in C
are doing a terrible job of it.  Certainly, it is possible to
produce obscure code in C.  Professional programmers do their
best to produce good code (by all relevant standards, including
maintainability) under existing constraints (time being a major
factor).