Paul J. Lucas

Retired Principal Software Engineer, Instructor, Author — most recently of the book Why Learn C.

San Francisco Bay Area Joined on Jan 21, 2017 [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauljaylucas/

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Work

Retired Principal Software Engineer

Pinned

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 12 '25

"Why Learn C" Book Released

1 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jun 28 '23

Undefined Behavior in C and C++

#c #cpp

8 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jun 20 '22

The Curious Case of the Disappearing “if”

#c #cpp #debugging

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 14 '22

Obscure C99 Array Features

8 min read

Paul J. Lucas

May 28 '18

Go-tcha: When nil != nil

#go #pitfall

7 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 3

C23 Miscellany

3 min read

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Paul J. Lucas

Dec 19 '25

bool in C23

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Dec 16 '25

Advanced C Preprocessor Macros for a Type-Safe Varargs Substitute

7 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Dec 1 '25

Avoid the Temptation of Header-Only Libraries

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Nov 27 '25

Good Git Hygiene Practices

#git #programming

4 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Nov 18 '25

Advanced C Preprocessor Macros for a Pre-C23/C++20 __VA_OPT__ Substitute

#c #cpp

8 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Nov 13 '25

Autotools Miscellany

#c #cpp #autotools

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Nov 12 '25

Code Coverage Testing in Autotools

#c #cpp #autotools

7 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Nov 8 '25

Writing and running End-to-End Tests in Autotools

#c #cpp #autotools

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Nov 1 '25

Integrating Doxygen into Autotools

#c #cpp #autotools

1 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 31 '25

Enabling Compiler Warnings in Autotools

#c #cpp #autotools

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 30 '25

Dynamically Allocating 2D Arrays Efficiently (and Correctly!) in C 2.0

2 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 24 '25

Writing and Running Unit Tests in Autotools

#c #cpp #autotools

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 20 '25

Probing the Compiler in Autotools

#c #cpp #autotools

5 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 18 '25

GNU Autoconf Archive & Portability Library

#c #cpp #autotools

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 14 '25

Optional Packages & Features

#c #cpp #autotools

7 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 12 '25

Determining the Maximum Decimal Digits at Compile-Time

#c #cpp

2 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 10 '25

Autotools Introduction

#c #cpp #autotools

8 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 4 '25

Avoid the Temptation of bool

#c #cpp

2 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Sep 22 '25

Generic Data Structures in C

5 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Aug 21 '25

Implementing “Did you mean ...?” Suggestions

#c #api

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Aug 10 '25

Anonymous Structures in C

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jul 31 '25

“Why Learn C” Book Announcement

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jul 21 '25

A Tale of Two Threads (APIs)

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jul 14 '25

Attributes in C23 and C++

#c #cpp

9 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jul 8 '25

nullptr in C23

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jul 6 '25

Unreachable: The Standard Function for Inserting Undefined Behavior

#c #cpp

4 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jun 27 '25

Go-Like Channels in C

23 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Apr 24 '25

Clearing Up Misconceptions about Copyright

#software #copyright #ai

5 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Sep 13 '24

Choosing an Appropriate Integer Type in C and C++

#c #cpp

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Sep 10 '24

The Obscure “restrict” Keyword in C

4 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Sep 9 '24

Inline Functions in C and C++

#c #cpp

5 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Sep 5 '24

Switch Statement Oddities

#c #cpp

5 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Aug 31 '24

Proper Header File Etiquette

#c #cpp

7 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Aug 18 '24

C++ Interview Questions

#cpp #interview

7 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Aug 15 '24

C Interview Questions

#c #cpp #interview

4 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Aug 8 '24

A Generic SWAP() Macro in C

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Aug 1 '24

Waiting for... a Debugger

#c #cpp #debugging

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jul 26 '24

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Sundials

#astronomy #c #sundial #trigonometry

17 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jul 10 '24

Casting to the Same-Sized Unsigned Type

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

May 7 '24

Variadic Functions in C++

#cpp

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Apr 27 '24

Variadic Functions in C

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Apr 9 '24

Custom C++ Stream Manipulators

#cpp

4 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Mar 13 '24

Declaring Multiple Variables in a “for” Loop Initialization Clause

#c #cpp

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Feb 11 '24

DIY Home Security Camera System

#homesecurity #security #diy

147

8 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Feb 9 '24

Compound Literals in C

5 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Feb 6 '24

Software Career Advice

#career #programming #software #advice

138

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Feb 4 '24

Unions & std::variant in C++

#cpp

9 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Feb 1 '24

Career Retrospective

#programming #career #retrospective #retirement

104

15 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 30 '24

C Const Conundrum

5 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 28 '24

Using assert() for Less Buggy Code

#c #cpp

7 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 23 '24

typeof in C23

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 18 '24

auto in C23

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 16 '24

_Generic in C

14 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 13 '24

Unions in C

7 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 5 '24

An Updated Cdecl — with Macro Expansion

#c #cpp

3 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Jan 2 '24

Handy C/C++ Preprocessor Macros

#c #cpp

6 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Dec 31 '23

C/C++ Preprocessor Macros

#c #cpp

12 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 22 '23

Enumerations in C++

#cpp

4 min read

Paul J. Lucas

Oct 19 '23

setjmp(), longjmp(), and Exception Handling in C

10 min read