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> every language other than assembly languages has some amount of runtime How are you defining "runtime" such that this statement is correct?

• steveklabnik 10y ago
  What language are you thinking of that I'm missing? C has crt.0, for example.
  • vonmoltke 10y ago
    crt0 does things you would need to do manually in hand-coded assembly anyway. It is no different than manually creating a library of assembly subroutines that you inject into your code, at which point assembly technically has a runtime as well. I see a distinction between a runtime library and a language runtime. The former is just a set of convenient routines for interacting with a specific platform. The latter is something that runs alongside your program to facilitate its execution, like a JIT or an interpreter.
    • steveklabnik 10y ago
      > at which point assembly technically has a runtime as well. The key is, you are doing the injecting in asm. Anyway, your distinction is pretty solid. Most people just use "runtime" to mean either one, and then rely on the context to disambiguate.