The wrongness, such as it was, is completely beside the point. The author's audience is a group of people where this has a high probability of this being their first exposure to any C at all. That `malloc` is one more thing for them to get tripped up and distracted by.

I'm indignant because this happens on almost every marginally interesting article that makes the front page and I'm sick of it. I get that the code was wrong and a bug and C must be correct at all times or the world will literally light on fire. It's just exhausting reading comment after comment about the tiniest little nit in an otherwise perfectly wonderful essay.