> providing only the minimal set of things that are available in most (maybe all) architectures
The rise of C in the 1980s induced CPU makers to design instructions that cater to C semantics.
The rise of C in the 1980s induced CPU makers to design instructions that cater to C semantics.
Edit: And by "worked everywhere" I mean C did the heavy lifting of being a programming language that was even a little bit portable across architectures.
In contrast, Intel introduced a lot of instruction for PASCAL, e.g. enter / leave etc. which are basically unused.
An instruction set ideally suited for C is the PDP-11.
He says Leave is often used by compilers, but not Enter.