If C is so evil why is it so successful?

Weighing in on the C vs. assembler subthread: modern processors are like exotic sportscars, in that pretty much anyone can drive the thing to the corner grocery but it takes a lot of skill to get the best performance out of it. Load/store superscalar architectures benefit enormously from various tricks that optimizing compilers do. Sure, you can code those tricksk in assembler, but for any program other than the most trivial it becomes a daunting task. Compiled C also supports writing sustainable code. Use as many intermediate variables as you like to clarify what your code is trying to do - the compiler will optimize them out of existence. This can make troubleshooting more difficult, but that's why you turn off the optimization for debug builds. C vs. anything else? I think John Wilson was spot on, it's like a motorcycle and if you don't know what you're doing you can hurt yourself. Personally, I usually use Python for application code and C if I'm doing something down 'on the metal' that has to be performant (e.g., device drivers). -- Ian On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 9:15 AM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk < cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu> Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical Narrative Through a Design Lens Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org> University of Washington There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."