Skip to content
Hallway
0:00 / 0:00

#c#stb#single-filelibraries

Advice for Writing Small Programs in C

Sean Barrett

12K subscribers • 3 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 5 people: 5 in engineering communities.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2015 to 2026.
  • Presented by Sean Barrett
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

210K views11 years ago5 recommendations

Programming languagesTools and practiceCSimplicity and complexityRefactoring and legacy code

Sean Barrett shares his philosophy and practical tips on using C effectively for small programs, tools, and scripting.

-- Watch live at twitch.tv/nothings2

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Engineers frequently recommend this video for its practical, minimalist approach to writing small tools and programs in C.

u/BigTanuki64in r/C_Programming • Recommends

On “C programming YouTubers”

Sean Barrett (stb/nothings) is one of the greats: link to this video
21View on Reddit

u/c-jmin r/C_Programming • Recommends

On “Do any of you use C to write a lot of small programs?”

I am just going to put this here: Advice For Writing Small Programs in C (link to this video
6View on Reddit

u/rmpr_uname_is_takenin r/C_Programming • Recommends

On “Automate stuff with C?”

Obligatory advice for writing small programs in C by Sean Barret (the creator of STB)
6View on Reddit

u/vurtunin r/C_Programming • Recommends

On “[Question]Writing Tools in C?”

I definitely agree with all your points and often it is just easier to use a more high level language with a more extensive standard library. You just have to compare the python standard library with the C standard library to see the difference, which is OK for C since it is supposed to be so simple for better portability. But if you really want to write "tools", what I interpret as small scripts/programs in C the standard library will not get you very far and you have to drop into ugly platform depended code. If you still want to use C for tools the best option would be to either write a more extensive library for yourself or use and extent an already existing library. Sean Barrett has an i…
2View on Reddit

u/Silver-North1136in r/C_Programming • Recommends

On “C is not limited to low-level”

Sean Barett (the guy behind stb-image, etc.) as an old video about using C for small projects, essentially using it as a scripting language: link to this video
2View on Reddit