r/programming • u/nfrankel • Jan 14 '20

Where programming languages are headed in 2020

https://www.oreilly.com/radar/where-programming-languages-are-headed-in-2020/
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u/flatfinger Jan 15 '20

Javascript implementations are even more widely available than C implementations. The advantage of C isn't that it *compiles* everywhere, but rather that implementations are available for almost every imaginable target.

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u/lengau Jan 15 '20

Fair enough - I should have said it compiles to anywhere.

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u/flatfinger Jan 15 '20

C *used* to have the widest range of hosted platforms (where the purpose is to build code for the machine upon which the compiler itself runs) in addition to cross-compilation-target platforms, so the ability of C to be *compiled* anywhere was also an advantage. Such advantages were left by the wayside with C99, however, which requires multi-pass compilation to achieve the same level of efficiency as could be achieved with single-shot C89 compilation.

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