It's really friction between incompatible visions of C: Some want it to be a portable wrapper over assembler with predictable semantics, others want it to run a

It's really friction between incompatible visions of C: Some want it to be a portable wrapper over assembler with predictable semantics, others want it to run as fast as possible. Like it or not, the standard leaves the doorway open for the latter group to come up with increasingly aggressive optimization, only limited by their ingenuity.