[Info-vax] Viable versus ideal programming languages

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 3/21/2022 3:26 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2022-03-21, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 3/21/2022 2:46 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>
>>> I would say that C is a _viable_ programming language in that case,
>>> but I would not say that it is an _ideal_ programming language.
>>>
>>> You may end up using something that is viable but is not your preferred
>>> language. This could be due to language availability across multiple
>>> environments, the ability of the language to be easily called from
>>> other languages, etc.
>>>
>>> This is especially important when you are writing library code for
>>> example. Consider that I can write a portable library in C, and I can
>>> then compile it unchanged on VMS, Linux/FreeBSD/Unix, Windows, embedded
>>> operating systems, bare metal ARM/MIPS/etc, and even 8/16-bit MCUs if
>>> the library is small enough.
>>>
>>> I can then easily call that C library from a wide range of languages
>>> running on those multiple operating systems and environments. The language
>>> also allows me to create code that runs both in kernel mode and user mode.
>>>
>>> Name one other programming language that allows me to do all that.
>>
>> C compilers are available on most platforms.
> 
> I would be interested in knowing about a platform they are not
> available on. You can even get them for GPUs...

I don't know any.

But if any then I would expect it to be either very old platforms
from before C or very tiny platforms only supporting assembler.

>> But how many percent of C programs are written so that they
>> are actually guaranteed to work with all ISO compliant C compilers?
> 
> The point is that you have the option to write to those standards
> and run your code everywhere you might want to.

They could but they don't.

Arne