if it's not portable then it might as well be
assembly and get the
benefits that come with that.
Sorry, I don't agree. It _is_ possible to write portable code, but even
ignoring that, the benfits of writing in a higher-level language (good
control structures, complex expressions, etc, etc) are well worth it.
Well... No even the following program:
int main (void) { return 0; }
is guaranteed to work, so much for portablility, huh?