My most downvoted StackOverflow answer

Sometimes, I get mad at someone on the internet.

It’s just so easy, isn’t it?

Then, I remember my most downvoted StackOverflow answer, and I become less angry.

I wrote the actual answer many years ago, but the angry-ness is much more recent.

Apparently, I angered someone on a topic that is so controversial that my answer became part of a StackOverflow Meta(!) discussion about how to deal with such terrible answers.

What is the procedure for getting blatantly off-topic C or C++ answers deleted?

… Example:
How do I determine the size of my array in C? has this answer. The question was never tagged C++ yet the answer only applies to C++. The score is +18 -5 = 13 currently. There is little hope of down-voting it far enough to enable delete-voting any time soon.
What should be done with such answers?

Damn, was someone mad at me on the internet.

(Edit: the answer is now deleted! thanks HN 😂 archive link)

When I wrote that answer (13 years ago, but only *checks-notes* 11 years before the meta-discussion 🫠), I needed to know the size of an array in a C thing I was working on, and the top answer(s) (sizeof(a)/sizeof(a[0])) didn’t apply.

However! My C thing was actually a C/C++ thing, so I wrote my answer (== can’t be done, if C++ then use vector¹), went on with my life and forgot all about it.

Until I saw this notification:

How do I determine the size of my array in C?
For those with <1k rep: This answer has +32/-33 votes.

Wat

Apparently, I stepped (through time and space) right into one of the most fiery subjects on SO (a site not known for calm and respectable discourse at the best of times):

Are C and C++ two completely different languages?

And, look. I don’t know. Obviously I wasn’t a C or a C++ expert then, am not one now and not even on the path of becoming one. I don’t have an opinion on this matter.

But I was just starting out, and if someone wrote that my answer was so bad that “there’s little hope to delete-vote it”, I would probably be super sad.

So try to be excellent to each other on the internet. It’s so easy to be angry, but it can be just as easy to let go of your anger when you know others are probably more angry at you all the time.

I’ll end this with a reddit classic that drives this point home more than anything I could ever hope to write: