Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz

From	Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz
Date	2013-01-16 15:36 -0600
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<kd76hq$oft$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
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On 1/16/2013 2:09 PM, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:
> Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 1/14/2013 9:02 PM, JohnF wrote:
>
> (snip)
>>> C is often called a "portable assembly language" (google that
>>> phrase for lots of relevant hits). So this is all pretty
>>> well-known stuff already.
>
>> While it is generally true, the actual meaning of that
>> characterization is not exactly unambiguous.
>
>> C language was true "portable assembler" - i.e. a tool for directly
>> expressing the programmer's intent in near-machine language - mostly in
>> its nascent stages, as described in "C Reference Manual" and the first
>> edition of "C Programming Language". That was indeed a true "assembler".
>
>> The standardized C was considerably reworked and became more abstracted
>> from the actual machines. In many cases when one refers to it as a
>> "portable assembler" in the above sense of the term, it usually means
>> that one simply lacks proper understanding of the true abstraction level
>> built into the language features.
>
> Yes it is more abstract, but if you are careful with what opeations
> you use, then you are still pretty close.
>
> But most good high-level langauges now include array operations.
>
> You can say a=b+c; where a, b, and c are arrays (of any rank)
> with appropriate dimensions, and it will add them element by element.
>
> C still does not have array operations, and with the way C uses
> pointers, it isn't so easy to see how to add them.
>
>> Yet, standardized C retained the crown of "portable assembler" in a
>> different meaning of the term: it works rather well as a back end
>> representation for various higher-level language translators, i.e.
>> instead of translating the higher-level source into assembler it often
>> makes much more sense to translate them into C.
>
> Much of the time, you can figure out exactly, or close enough, what
> assembler code would be generated. (And the register allocation
> is probably better than most assembler programmers would do.)
>
> -- glen

How about the third party array operations in
OpenCL and CUDA ?

Lynn

Thread

"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-14 11:55 -0600
  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2013-01-15 05:02 +0000
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-14 22:44 -0800
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 11:20 -0600
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2013-01-15 20:06 +0000
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-15 20:27 +0000
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 17:06 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 01:52 -0600
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 17:08 -0600
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz falk@rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) - 2013-01-15 22:39 +0000
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-16 11:00 -0800
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-16 20:08 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-16 20:09 +0000
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-16 15:36 -0600
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-16 14:01 -0800
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 02:15 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2013-01-17 07:15 -0500
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Nobody <nobody@nowhere.com> - 2013-01-17 15:09 +0000
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 14:42 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-17 12:58 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 14:59 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz falk@rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) - 2013-01-19 23:37 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-19 18:47 -0600
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-20 00:49 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> - 2013-01-18 16:30 +0100
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-19 19:12 +0000
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 16:40 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-20 00:52 +0000
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-20 01:26 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 00:32 -0600
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 01:42 -0600
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-20 13:06 +0000
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 11:30 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 19:28 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-19 19:05 -0800
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 01:32 -0600
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-20 00:29 -0800
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 04:24 -0600
  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-15 23:02 +0000
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-15 16:06 -0800
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "Mel Smith" <med_cutout_syntel@aol.com> - 2013-01-15 17:54 -0700
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 02:42 -0600
  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2013-01-18 01:09 -0600
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-18 11:45 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2013-01-18 14:43 -0600
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-18 23:31 +0000
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-19 00:23 +0000
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 15:17 +1300

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