Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
> C is an abstraction of the machine, so thin it's nearly transparent.

Looks like someone fell for the C abstract machine trap yet again. No, C is isn’t an abstraction of the machine.

C Is Not a Low-level Language: Your computer is not a fast PDP-11.

https://spawn-queue.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3212477.3212479

As a corollary, all processors are C VMs, anyway.
loading story #48418950
{"deleted":true,"id":48415731,"parent":48413606,"time":1780680908,"type":"comment"}
It may not be an abstraction of a real machine. But the C abstract machine is very close to the foundational idea of how a computer work. And it’s quite easy to bootstrap.
Importantly my work involves me often being able to look at C and think about the assembly and back and I regularly work on ESP32, ch42(riscv) and atmega avr8.

I couldn't do that with mciropython on any platform.

C is a thin abstraction, python isn't.