Re: technology discussion → does the world need a "new" C ?

On 06/07/2024 02:38, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 5 Jul 2024 14:31:44 +0100, bart wrote:
 

C also is the only language that is supposed to work on any kind of
processor ...

 I don’t think there is anything innate in the design of C to ensure that.
It was simply its popularity that meant it was usually the first language
implemented on a new processor.
 For example, C assumes byte addressability.

C didn't define a 'byte' at all. It assumed 'char' addressability, but allowed that 'char' to be any width at all. I think at some point a minimum of 8 bits was applied.

So that causes awkwardness on
architectures like the PDP-10, for example.

Which was also the first machine I used, and the first I wrote a compiler for.
C didn't exist on it, at least at that establishment, and was never mentioned. I didn't take a closer looker until 16 years after I started coding.
The 36-bit words caused problems on other languages too. There was an instruction set extention to allow access to bitfields of any width, but that was fiddly to use.
Some languages had to choose between 'packed' strings, and strings using one word per character.

It just so happened such
architectures became extinct at about the time the rise of 8-bit
microprocessors (and their more advanced successors) made byte-
addressability essentially universal.

The next machine I wrote a compiler for was an 8-bit microprocessor, using twos complement, byte addressibility, some 16-bit capability, and 16-bit addressing.
Most of today's hardware evolved from such a model: 32- and 64-bit words and addresses were an obvious natural progression. C however still hasn't got the memo.