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The ABI is certainly helpful, but I don't think it's the only reason why C libraries are easier to call than libraries written in other languages. C doesn't hav
by fauigerzigerk 10y ago
The ABI is certainly helpful, but I don't think it's the only reason why C libraries are easier to call than libraries written in other languages. C doesn't have generics, inheritance or a GC, all of which make integration a lot more difficult.
- pjmlp 10y agoA set of features shared by many other, safer, system programming languages. Their OSes didn't had a C ABI, rather an ESPOL, NEWP, Modula, and so forth ABI.
- fauigerzigerk 10y agoSure, theoretically there could be viable alternatives to C.
- pjmlp 10y agoWhat makes many of us sour, is that it isn't theory, rather already proven in the past, back when C was only a UNIX language and barely relevant outside it. It was the commoditization of UNIX in the industry that pushed C outside UNIX, just like we nowadays have JavaScript outside the browser.
- fauigerzigerk 10y agoIt sounds remote today, but you're right that it didn't have to be this way. What should make you even more sour is that another opportunity for starting over seems to have been passed up when Google only recently chose to build Fuchsia on top of a C++ based kernel.