Even when I'm writing a toy operating system, or other toy projects, I personally always try to use the standard options like -std=c11 (though don't have anythi

Even when I'm writing a toy operating system, or other toy projects, I personally always try to use the standard options like -std=c11 (though don't have anything against people who use the dialect option). I'm happy to use compiler extensions, but I'll use __asm__ instead of asm, and use __extension__ as needed. I've done some neat but truly upsetting things with compiler extensions in my hobby code, especially once I combine them with macros. I'm particularly "proud" of the mutex macros in a toy OS of mine, which wrap a statement inside for loops and switch statements for automatic release of the mutex, unless it's requested that it stay locked. There, I originally used compiler extensions to release the mutex on scope exit, but switched to non-compiler-extension code for the actual functions, and just using the extensions for checking that the code using the macros didn't break the "contracts" on what is allowed in those statements, and how they can be exited. It's the same reason that I'm always explicit about the size of integers, using stdint, even if I know that an int is 32-bit on a particular platform.