[Info-vax] Viable versus ideal programming languages

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2022-03-22 kl. 02:44, skrev Bill Gunshannon:
> On 3/21/22 20:28, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> 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.
>>
> 
> Well, Z80 and 6809 both meet your criteria of very old and very
> small and both of them support C compilers.  Maybe not ANSI C but
> then, some of us are still quite happy with K&R.
> 
> bill
> 
> 

When talkning about these kind of systems, you need to
qualify "support". It is not that you are able to run
a C-compiler on any of those "platforms". But there are
dev tools available for Windows/Linux or such, that does
have a C-compiler included for these platforms.

It is more correct to talk about C-compilers that support
these platforms, not the other way around.