You have to look at where C was originally designed to run. It was designed for the DEC PDP8. Those were SMALL in resources machines. Later versions of C were built on the PDP11s, but Richie and crew started out on the PDP8. And, yes, C was designed to be a middle-level language.
During that time, new CPU designs were popping up all over the place. The problem was moving things to them: things like compilers and assemblers as well as applications that were written in those compiler languages. So the thought was to design a language that would be quickly portable and easy to write for a new platform. Lloyd ----- Original Message ---- From: John Gilmore <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, May 17, 2013 9:02:30 AM Subject: Re: Business politics and software development John McKown's notion that C is a middle-level language has merit. In some respects it is. Better, perhaps, it can be used like assembly language; and when it is I have heard the results described as having "all of the expressive power and all of the portability of assembly language". In the hands of quondam COBOL programmers it can also, unsurprisingly, be very COBOL-like. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
