alt Hacker NewsIt's not normal in any other language that constant-folding in the compiler has different behavior than running an expression on the machine.
C exists in a nether world of being neither assembly nor high-level language.
People only call it high level because in the 1970s, having blocks, loops, and functions was high level, compared to the SoTa machines available in the day, which were either programmed with assembler or some bespoke thing the manufacturer came up with.
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thin_carapace • today at 11:53 AM
may I ask specifically what aspects of C lead to examples of quasi low level status such as the one you gave? I'd hazard a guess the C abstract machine is defined in a particular manner differentiable from say the JVM?
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There are high level systems languages starting with JOVIAL in 1958 for the SAGE radar system.
C only exists instead of the alternatives, because according to Dennis Ritchie himself it was more fun to create C than using something else, and I quote:
"Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for. All these languages influenced our work, but it was more fun to do things on our own."
From https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/chist...