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Those C programmers from the 70s had it made, didn't they? One language took them from mainframes to microcomputers to workstations to early web servers to embe

• vmcalls 2y ago
  C programmers had to learn plenty of new skills over the decades, but the core language knowledge remained transferable in a way that's rare. Someone who mastered pointers and memory management for Unix in 1980 could understand Linux kernel code decades later. The same C skills applied whether writing MS-DOS apps, embedded firmware, or early CGI web code. It's the consistency across wildly different computing eras that made C unique. No other mainstream language has spanned from mainframes to microcontrollers to web servers while keeping its fundamental approach intact. That's the kind of cross-domain stability that makes Rust worth watching.
  • pvg 2y ago
    Right but C was hardly all that universal or even popular for long stretches. People knew plenty of other languages, just like they do now. The entire 8-bitter period had relatively little to do with C, for one obvious example.