5 ms·

When the language was made 40 years ago, the extra overhead was unbearable. Or rather, more likely, they were so focused on efficiency (because that's what you

When the language was made 40 years ago, the extra overhead was unbearable. Or rather, more likely, they were so focused on efficiency (because that's what you do when you have a 1Mhz computer), that the idea of making things easier for people in this way didn't cross their mind.

pjmlp 9y ago
Apparently this myth never dies. Burroughs did not have this issue with ESPOL and NEWP almost 10 years earlier before C was born. Nor did the UK Navy with Algol 68RS or the multiple institutes using PL/I variants.
- ktRolster 9y ago
  I'm going to suggest you didn't read my whole comment.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I sure did. Burroughs B5500 was created in 1961 and executed far slower and had less memory than a PDP-11, yet it was able to have a full OS written in ESPOL, an ALGOL dialect with intrisics for CPU instructions and explicit UNSAFE statements. So if a 10 year old machine by the time C was created for computers with " extra overhead was unbearable." and " what you do when you have a 1Mhz computer" was already able to execute an Algol dialect with enough performance, what does that say of C in regards to language design?
    - ktRolster 9y ago
      You have written nothing that indicates you've read my second paragraph.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Only if you implying that people that wrote operating systems before C was designed, were lazy and didn't care about performance, in spite of having less powerful hardware at their disposal.