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The article does not properly distinguish between C as a language and what the C compiler does with the C program. The logic of the article references what the
by wglb 9y ago
The article does not properly distinguish between C as a language and what the C compiler does with the C program. The logic of the article references what the compiler does.
The reasonable way to measure languages is to look at the abstractions present in the language. C has fewer abstractions than the other languages that we are familiar with. That is the reasonable definition of the level of a language.
- favorited 9y agoThat's exactly the author's point. The C that programmers write is remarkably far from what the compiler generates for modern hardware. How do you propose measuring the number of abstractions? JavaScript has remarkably few built-in abstractions, but it's in no way "low-level" from a hardware perspective.