> Memory access at the time was slow Actually, memory access was fast (assuming you're referring to the time when C was developed, not when ANSI C was standard

> Memory access at the time was slow Actually, memory access was fast (assuming you're referring to the time when C was developed, not when ANSI C was standardized), as you could access any individual memory location in a single clock cycle. It's once you start seeing the development of RISC systems that being able to clock processors faster than memory starts becoming a thing, and that makes memory slow. > and if you specified an Int that you couldn't load/unload with a single instruction or fit into a register, you would kill your performance. This is the bigger issue. If you have to do lots of extra masking or adjustment of the values to emulate an N-bit integer that isn't otherwise available on your system, that's the slowdown.