# 2015-07-17

Now that I have worked a bit more with C I see its elegancy. Even though the 
language core itself is kept simple and minimal, it still yields a lot of 
possibilities. For example, consider this program:

	void callback() {
		printf("the callback fired!\n");
	}

	int main() {
		void (*cb)(void) = callback;
		cb();
	}

A pointer to the callback() function is saved within the variable cb. Using
the () suffix in conjunction with the variable, the function may then be 
invoked.

So throughout the indirection of pointers it is possible to use functional 
features, such as saving functions within variables, passing functions as 
parameters or e.g. returning functions from other functions. In short: 
functions as higher class citizens.

After a bit of discussion with Markus it became clear to me that my impression 
of C having a lot of datatypes was wrong. I got confused by the whole uint32_t 
stuff. Now I know that the ``_t'' suffix denotes a type. This way more
portable programs can be written. On one machine uint32_t may actually be a
typedef to an int, since an int is 32 bit on this certain machine. On another 
machine it could as well be some other datatype which consists of 32 bits
on this certain machine.