most of these combinations actually have legitimate use-cases. and, kind of like what the article is pointing to; it's really only confusing if you learnt it the bad way from the start.
that said, I think the more extreme examples probably come from C codebases, where these kinds of declarations are actually highly useful as well as highly logical, compared to C++ which usually tones these kinds of things down via STL and higher level abstractions.
i'd also argue both C and C++ still have their place as legitimate tools for their purposes, and especially C still has no real competitor that can match it for its purposes.
that said, I think the more extreme examples probably come from C codebases, where these kinds of declarations are actually highly useful as well as highly logical, compared to C++ which usually tones these kinds of things down via STL and higher level abstractions.
i'd also argue both C and C++ still have their place as legitimate tools for their purposes, and especially C still has no real competitor that can match it for its purposes.