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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

My time in computing started during the mid-80's, C had hardly any meaning outside UNIX clones, on our home computers running CP/M, AmigaDOS, MS-DOS, TOS, or other mainframe platforms like VAX/VMS, ClearPath, OS/400, z/OS,....

So those of my generation know that C being the very first systems programming language, the only way to write portable code across platforms in high level languages, is a kind of cargo cult from C devs.

Yes, I should have been more explicitly regarding ESP32's SDK. Point being that ESP-IDF Tools Installer supports C++.

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Since almost all of the operating systems you listed were written in different languages, some specifically designed for a single hardware, the believe of your peers at the time, that C was the only way to write portable code at that time was pretty much correct. This was one of the design features of C. C is also a small, relatively easy to write a compiler for language. That is also a reason why so many mcu manufacturers included a C compiler with their products instead of a C++ compiler, even though C++ is also an old language.

C is portable alright, as long as the underlying OS looks like UNIX.

Apparently you lack some knowledge of portability efforts done in other programming languages.

There is plenty of material available from old manuals, scanned papers and what not.

C doesn't need an OS, and the OS doesn't need to look like UNIX at all if you're using one. We were originally talking about embedded systems and you since you mentioned ESP32 SDK, most of those libraries are portable to other MCUs and none of them has an OS or anything to do with UNIX.

"Apparently you lack some knowledge of portability efforts done in other programming languages.

There is plenty of material available from old manuals, scanned papers and what not."

Besides you mounting a personal attack here, I don't get you're point here. I have never said that there was no other portable language.

Any language doesn't need an OS, it just needs enough bare metal glue to run.

I thought C was portable everywhere, if we are conditioning it to specific libraries, then again other capability available to any programming language.

After all that ESP 32 SDK won't run without Windows wrappers. Any language can have OS specific wrappers, nothing special about C as well.

So now it is a personal attack to point out lack of knowledge?!?

I'm happy that you now agree that C doesn't need an UNIX like environment to be portable. You haven't pointed out any lack of knowledge, you were just being rude. Again you are arguing with a straw man, I haven't claimed anywhere that C is special (there are other system languages), although it is true that not all languages are equal when it comes to bare metal.

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