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C has a lot of problems as a compilation target as well, from surprising UB (e.g. signed integer overflow) to debugging problems (e.g. #line is woefully inadequ

C has a lot of problems as a compilation target as well, from surprising UB (e.g. signed integer overflow) to debugging problems (e.g. #line is woefully inadequate compared to the ability to emit DWARF DIEs) to the inconvenience of setting up a toolchain for end users. To its credit, Wuffs is one of the better projects that compiles to C, because it targets a very restricted domain. But, in general, don't write programming languages that compile to C.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
Of course C sucks, but since everything under the sun uses it, there's unique value in being able to make it safer without putting a whole new compiler in the process for users. Remember that time the cryptography library in Python decided to add rust? We could have avoided all that pain with wuffs.
bobajeff 2y ago
For many of us making a compile to c language is many times more feasible than using something like llvm. I'm not saying it's great mind you but it's probably the best thing available without a runtime. For debugging i believe you can generate your own source maps and use gdb as a backend to talk with your custom debugger.