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The real reason people like C

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-21 8:29

C allows the most freedom of all languages in convenient abstraction which does not add any hidden performance drains.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-21 8:54

NO DUH

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-21 9:09

I just use C for low-level tasks, along with the platform's assembly. If what I'm doing is mostly low-level, that's what I'll use. Otheriwise, I tend to pick some better suited high-level language.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-21 9:15

That's not freedom.  C's just a decent, portable syntax on top of the most common assembly features with a fairly stupid macro processor stapled to the front end.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-21 9:24

This thread has been closed and replaced with the following thread:

Subject: Compiling Befunge with a Perl Compiler
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It doesn't work.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-21 9:38

>>5
Don't lie to me!

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-21 14:50

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-21 19:15

>most freedom
Lisp would like to have a word with you.

>hidden performance drains
Enjoy your libraries and libraries

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 1:44

>>does not add any hidden performance drains.

The only "language" that can claim this is assembly.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 1:49

>>9
The only "language" that can claim this is assembly.
I've always thought it would be cool to have just assembly with a fuck-all powerful preprocessor sort of thing.  You would basically build the language as you build the program that you're writing with that language.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 2:01

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 2:11

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 2:16

>>11
Forth would also work.

Lisp is fine, but it tends to be a high-level language and does have certain costs(gc, possibly boxed integers, ...), it's also not really meant for low-level tasks that C is used for, however almost all real Lisp implementations will let you fiddle with memory or pointers or whatever you want (like write your own assembler or code generator and generate code objects which you can just run as you wish). However, if you're just writing the macroassembler in lisp and the generated code does not have to live within the lisp image, then these "costs" don't apply. Any high-level language could do this, it's just easier in homoiconic languages.

I'm however confused what does the Lisp Machine have to do with >>10. LispMachine's had an OS written from ground-up in Lisp, had a microcoded CPU which ran their lispm assembly bytecode, had native support for tagged data, typechecking, gc support and some other stuff. It was quite the high-level CPU, possible due to the layered design (the assembly instructions got translated to simpler microcode which was executed by the CPU). This was a bit slow, and today we usually opt on using general-purpose CPUs and a good compiler.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 2:26

>>13
>>This was a bit slow
Actually, it was faster than all other Lisp implementations at the time.  Only when even faster generalized CPUs came out that Lisp could run at a comparable speed (and still not quite as fast for a short while.
And if GC was directly implemented in hardware.  I salivate at the though.

>>12
It's not the whole packaged without the (near)Lisp-native cpu.  Plus, I've heard the emulator for that is pretty dodgy.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 2:27

>>14

4am typos, sorry

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 2:43

Orginal LISP instructions came from.. assembler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAR_and_CDR#Etymology

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 3:16

>>13
I'm however confused what does the Lisp Machine have to do with >>10.

Yeah, >>10 here, I was thinking more along the lines of what >>12 said, a "high-level assembler."  However, the link he gave cited Borland TASM and Microsoft MASM as examples of high-level assemblers.  lol

I was thinking more along the lines of being able to define a grammar, etc.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 3:17

>>17
And before the shitstorm commences, yes, I know that there are plenty of tools out there that give you the ability to define a grammar.

Name: Anonymous 2010-07-22 3:57

HLA by randall Hyde is High level assembler.
Its macros mimic C

Name: Anonymous 2010-11-26 4:46

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-03 5:49

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-04 15:13

Don't change these.
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