The article argues that the perception of C as a “low‑level” language has become outdated.
- **Historical context** – In the early 1970s, C on the PDP‑11 was literally close to the metal: each statement mapped to one or two machine instructions, memory was flat, and the execution model was straightforward.
- **Modern hardware** – Today’s CPUs are far more complex (multi‑core, deep pipelines, out‑of‑order execution, vector units, large caches, speculative execution). They are designed to run legacy C code efficiently, but the underlying reality is far removed from the simple model that early C programmers relied on.
- **The illusion** – Modern processors adapt to preserve the old C abstract machine, giving developers the impression that C is still “low‑level.” This illusion hides a mismatch between what C promises (predictable, simple mapping to hardware) and what the hardware actually does.
- **Historical context** – In the early 1970s, C on the PDP‑11 was literally close to the metal: each statement mapped to one or two machine instructions, memory was flat, and the execution model was straightforward.
- **Modern hardware** – Today’s CPUs are far more complex (multi‑core, deep pipelines, out‑of‑order execution, vector units, large caches, speculative execution). They are designed to run legacy C code efficiently, but the underlying reality is far removed from the simple model that early C programmers relied on.
- **The illusion** – Modern processors adapt to preserve the old C abstract machine, giving developers the impression that C is still “low‑level.” This illusion hides a mismatch between what C promises (predictable, simple mapping to hardware) and what the hardware actually does.
Minarke Is Not A Real Kriegsmarine Enigma But it will allow you to communicate with one. Command line enigma machine emulator. Full M4 compatability, can be used to decode WWII U-boat messages, or send your own.
ChatDBG is an AI-based debugging assistant for C/C++/Python/Rust code that integrates large language models into a standard debugger (pdb, lldb, gdb, and windbg) to help debug your code. It can provide error diagnoses and suggest fixes.
The question discusses optimizing time measurement for a latency-sensitive application requiring high message throughput. It explores alternatives to `gettimeofday`, including `rdtsc` and `clock_gettime` with various clock sources, and benchmarks their performance on an Intel Core i7 processor. It also considers the trade-offs between accuracy, resolution, and performance.
A contest to write the most obscure/obfuscated C program within the rules, stressing C compilers with unusual code, and illustrating some of the subtleties of the C language.
rtl_433 is an open-source program designed to decode radio transmissions from various devices operating on ISM bands. It supports RTL-SDR and SoapySDR and can decode a wide range of sensors, including temperature, humidity, and rain gauges. The software is written in C and is known for its low resource consumption.
ESP32C3 code for 1.44inch display.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing TRACTOR, a project aimed at using AI to automatically convert legacy C code into Rust for improved memory safety.
Pnut is a transpiler that allows users to write shell scripts in C, which is then compiled into a POSIX-compliant shell script. It aims to simplify shell scripting by leveraging the familiarity of C.
emlearn is an open-source machine learning inference engine designed for microcontrollers and embedded devices. It supports various machine learning models for classification, regression, unsupervised learning, and feature extraction. The engine is portable, with a single header file include, and uses C99 code and static memory allocation. Users can train models in Python and convert them to C code for inference.
