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>and even claimed to be faster than C for certain cases -a promise made for pretty much every language ever. Just need a couple of compiler tune ups. Not trying to be critical, that just gave me a chuckle.

I remember the days when C was just yet another systems programming language deemed too slow for any serious work.

EDIT: Always nice to be downvoted by hipsters that lack coding experience from the days C was UNIX only.

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while true, that doesn't make it a bad comparison. Languages like Swift are one step up on the foodchain, they provide more abstraction. Comparing to a popular language one step down is a good way of showing the cost (or lack thereof). I'm sure 10 years from now we'll all be going "Language X is faster than Swift in certain cases!"

> I remember the days when C was just yet another systems programming language deemed too slow for any serious work.

I've heard that remark several times. Which languages were faster than C back then, except assembly? Fortran? Algol? BCPL?

Assembly of course. All higher level languages were still 2nd place to Assembly and had similar execution times across the board.

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