this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
6 points (100.0% liked)

General Programming Discussion

7814 readers
10 users here now

A general programming discussion community.

Rules:

  1. Be civil.
  2. Please start discussions that spark conversation

Other communities

Systems

Functional Programming

Also related

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Restioson@lemmy.ml
Cloak@lemmy.ml
6
C Is Not a Low-level Language. Your computer is not a fast PDP-11. (queue.acm.org)
submitted 9 months ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/programming@lemmy.ml
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
all 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] JoYo@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

Imagining a Non-C Processor

Oh OK, I like this song.

[–] JoYo@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

All this argument does is bump up ASM to a low-level language.

I get the resistance in calling C low level but we aren't about to mistake C runtimes for a JIT.

LLVM certainly makes the comparison easier.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

That's not what the article is saying though. It's arguing that the memory model that imperative languages assume is not actually how modern chips work. What we end up with effectively is a VM on the chip that pretends to be a really fast PDP-11 style architecture. Writing assembly against this VM still has the same problem. Interestingly, the way modern chips are designed actually fits better with functional style that doesn't rely on global state.

[–] JoYo@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

i got there at the end

[–] stanka@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Interesting, if old, article.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

It was published a while back, but everything it talks about still very much applies today.