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Comment by WalterBright | original | C for Rust programmers
[−]WalterBright · 2026-10-11 Sun 00:07 UTC · link
> providing only the minimal set of things that are available in most (maybe all) architectures

The rise of C in the 1980s induced CPU makers to design instructions that cater to C semantics.

[−]xtajv · 2026-10-11 Sun 08:17 UTC · link
That is because C already worked everywhere even before CPU makers agreed on things like making pointers and words the same size.

Edit: And by "worked everywhere" I mean C did the heavy lifting of being a programming language that was even a little bit portable across architectures.

[−]pjmlp · 2026-10-11 Sun 09:46 UTC · link
PL/I had more knobs for portability, but neither Multics, nor IBM Oses were available for free.
[−]uecker · 2026-10-11 Sun 08:42 UTC · link
I don't think this is really true. What instructions would this be?

In contrast, Intel introduced a lot of instruction for PASCAL, e.g. enter / leave etc. which are basically unused.