C was a great low-level language - for the PDP-11
C was a great low-level language - for the PDP-11
Posted Feb 12, 2021 22:08 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)In reply to: C was a great low-level language - for the PDP-11 by anselm
Parent article: Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo
For the PDP-11, C provided an outstanding trade-off: user-friendly programming concepts that mapped really well to the hardware.
While these concepts don't map with the hardware anymore, they stayed familiar and their programmer-friendliness has indeed not regressed. But it hasn't progressed either.
It is a very sad vicious circle to see that programming concepts and hardware keep meeting in a place that does not exist any more. Something like "retpoline" is the absolute irony: still meeting the hardware in that old, fictional place BUT with the knowledge of what hardware really does behind the scenes AND the intention to defeat that! Multiple layers of masquerading; what a carnival.
It's fantastic to see that a new crop of programming languages are at least trying to evolve a bit.
http://worrydream.com/#!/TheFutureOfProgramming (Bret Victor)