Linked by Eugenia Loli on Mon 10th Oct 2005 16:48 UTC, submitted by Shlomi Fish
General Development Shlomi Fish has written a new essay titled "When C is the Best? (Tool for the Job)". Its theme is giving several reasons (besides high speed and low memory consumption) why some code should still be written in C.
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RE: style; argument
by on Tue 11th Oct 2005 17:20 UTC

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I take issue with most of the article (as does everyone on this thread, it seems), but particularly the argument that C is inherently portable.
Well, then take issue. But C is portable, that is a fact. The proliferation of C-implementations is proof.

I'm sure there are platforms without a libc where there's e.g. a java VM (I'm thinking some specialised phone situations, for example)
First, you are comparing apples to oranges. The counterpart of the C library is a (subset) of the Java SDKs library. The counterpart of the JVM would be a C-compiler without the libc.
Second, your statement, even if true, does not contradict the notion that C is portable. If you have 60 platforms where you have at least C, and only one platform where C does not run, than C is still portable.
Third, you neglect a certain technicality, which is that C does allow a so called "freestanding" implementation, which does not even have large parts of the libc (Of course, programs using the libc will not necessarily run on that implementation).
Fourth, guess in what language is the JVM written in, which you suppose exists for that phone? Hint: It is not Java (-Well, okay, it is unlikeley that it is Java).

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