__volatile__ __asm__

volatile is a C keyword, and programmers know better than using asm as an identifier. Why do people insist on using double underscores around them, especially Linux kernel developers?

Also, why do people use things like __attribute__((aligned(n))) instead of defining a macro ALIGNED(n)?

>>41
M-Expressions sound an order of magnitude more sane than LISP notation.
An M-expression could also use operator names, meta-variables, and argument lists. Operator names and meta-variable names were in lower case, to show that they were not symbols (i.e., not data). Argument lists were delimited by brackets, [], and their elements were separated by semicolons. For example:
car[cons[(A . B); x]]
compared to Lisp syntax function soup this is actually usable.