While learning multiple programming languages in the past, C was the first language that I used professionally. While reading chapter 1.1 I noticed a personal habbit that originates from these times. Or should I say from the deficencies of this language? C differentiates between declaration and definition and requires declaration before usage. Without going into the details what this exactly means, it bascially boils down to this typical structure:
int helper_function(int param) {
// ... do something and return
}
int main (int argc, char **argv) {
// ... whatever
x = helper_function(y);
// ... continue
}
The helper_function needs to be above the main function otherwise the
compiler will complain. (1: Yes, I know, technically only the declaration needs to be above
but this is the way I ended up writing 99% of my C code.) Whenever a new function needs to
be introduced, go up and insert above.
And I realized that I'm doing this also in my Python (2: In Python there is of course this
weird if __name__ == "__main__" thing but I always call main() there and this function can be on the top) and Rust code while it's not necessary
there. This observation sent me down a rabbit hole of stack overflow questions and tons of
advice for different programming languages. Anyway, I have made a decision: I will write code
top-to-bottom in the future.