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From: Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Top 10 most common hard skills listed on resumes...
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2024 18:23:07 +0200
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On 25.08.2024 16:50, James Kuyper wrote:
> On 8/25/24 08:18, John Forkosh wrote:
> ...
>> I recall C as originally characterized as a "portable assembly language",
>> as opposed to a "higher level language". And I'd agree with that
>> assessment, whereby I think you're barking up the wrong tree by trying
>> to evaluate its merits/demerits vis-a-vis higher-level languages.
>> Consider it with respect to its own objectives, instead.
> 
> C has been mischaracterized as a "portable assembly language", but that
> has never been an accurate characterization. It has, from the very
> beginning, been defined by the behavior that is supposed to result from
> translating and executing the C code, not the assembly language that's
> supposed to be produced by the translation process.
> C is a high level language. It is a very low-level high-level language,
> but it's not in any sense an assembler.

I wouldn't take above characterization literally - literally it's a
wrong assessment (as I think you rightly say). But given its origin,
its intended uses for systems programming, its machine-orientation,
its low-level constructs, and lacking any high-level constructs, the
absence of abstraction that was already existing these days in various
forms in quite some other HLLs, all the software bugs and hassles with
it as a consequence of its design, and whatnot...

We can dispute about informal classifications; whether it's a "very
low-level high-level language" or rather a "very high-level low-level
language".

It's just that many folks consider(ed) that language within the zoo of
HLLs as a lousy representative. The title "portable assembly language"
always appeared to me as being just a disrespectful accentuated formula
used in discussions with naive fans of new hypes that were not aware of
state-of-the-art language developments existing these days, and still.

When thinking about the "level" of languages there's always an image
of the economic damage forming in my mind by the actual consequences
of using a language. (Just recently I tried soothing someone that he
shouldn't take his desperate error-tracking too personal in the light
that the damage of the given C-issue certainly caused billions of
dollars already and that he's certainly not alone with that problem.)

Janis

> [...]