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Path: ...!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re:_technology_discussion_=e2=86=92_does_the_world_need_a?= =?UTF-8?Q?_=22new=22_C_=3f?= Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2024 04:29:57 +0200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 46 Message-ID: <v6aa76$3l5bc$1@dont-email.me> References: <v66eci$2qeee$1@dont-email.me> <v67gt1$2vq6a$2@dont-email.me> <v687h2$36i6p$1@dont-email.me> <v68sjv$3a7lb$1@dont-email.me> <v6a76q$3gqkm$6@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2024 04:29:58 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="781ca9d7554251b88247fed6ee929ec6"; logging-data="3839340"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19cgo8lsV2u8CKolvNf/RmW" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.8.0 Cancel-Lock: sha1:cp6wpYhCZw/m9JCkg8M+mSJljf8= X-Enigmail-Draft-Status: N1110 In-Reply-To: <v6a76q$3gqkm$6@dont-email.me> Bytes: 3156 On 06.07.2024 03:38, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > On Fri, 5 Jul 2024 14:31:44 +0100, bart wrote: > >> C also is the only language that is supposed to work on any kind of >> processor ... Where did you get that idea from? I mean, compiler construction differentiates between various stages, and the code generation part can be defined for any processor. Why should any language exclude processors because of a language type? The reasons why compilers were restricted or targeted to specific computers were quite mundane; e.g. because it were the available machines at the company or institute, or because they were funded by system manufacturers, and other practical, commercial, or political reasons. But there's another important spin; using "C" as a universal sort of assembler. So that nowadays you don't need to generate machine code any more but can create "C" code instead, using an additional compile step to get machine code. > I don’t think there is anything innate in the design of C to ensure that. > It was simply its popularity that meant it was usually the first language > implemented on a new processor. > For example, C assumes byte addressability. So that causes awkwardness on > architectures like the PDP-10, for example. It just so happened such > architectures became extinct at about the time the rise of 8-bit > microprocessors (and their more advanced successors) made byte- > addressability essentially universal. I'm not sure I correctly understand you here. "Byte addressability" is a bit vague a term given that there was no clear definition of a "byte". (That's a reason why they introduced the term "octet" later.) And the "C" data types on a, say, Honeywell 6000 was based on 9 bit entities (char: 9 bit, int: 36 bit, etc.). Okay, that is a legacy topic. (You can read about that even in the K&R "C" book.) Janis