alt Hacker NewsThe famous C dilemma: we want to be as close to the machine as possible, but don't want to change anything when the machine changes
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It really hasn't much to do with C (e.g. there is no such thing as a "C ABI", and especially no such thing as a "standardized C ABI" - not sure if that's even a hot-take anymore).
ABIs are defined by CPU and operating system vendors. Those ABIs usually happen to be quite 'C friendly', but that's not a requirement (for instance the AmigaOS ABI was primarily meant to be used from handwritten assembly code, and Amiga C compilers had to adapt to those ABI rules or they wouldn't be able to call into the operating system DLLs).
Except for the basic integer types. Change those as much as possible. Hell, CHAR_BIT=12 just to keep them on their toes.
Personal pet theory: C is portable as in "you can retarget the compiler to any machine" moreso than "your code will run on any machine".
so what they gonna do ??
Because contrary to urban myths, C is a normal high level language like everything else.
The Assembly like abilities have been growing as language extensions in specific compilers, not as part of ISO C.
Going back to K&R C, inline Assembly or intrisics were not even available, all of that required using the Assembler directly.