Heh! I remember getting shit about this early in my career because of a 3-star commit, because wtf is wrong with someone who needs a pointer to a pointer to a pointer?
But it wasn't; it was the address of an array of strings. Because C. It was the most straightforward solution, which I maintain to this day (some 20 years later).
(In my co-worker's defense, it probably had no comments. That part was on me.)
I think the biggest problem with these indirections isn't necessarily the amount of layers, but that they are unnamed (and naming isn't really well supported in most languages outside of just typedef-ing symbols).
***char vs *array<string> (or something similar)
Or in the article's case, naming what the 2/4 layers of channels were.
But it wasn't; it was the address of an array of strings. Because C. It was the most straightforward solution, which I maintain to this day (some 20 years later).
(In my co-worker's defense, it probably had no comments. That part was on me.)