Slashdot and C

[pemo]

Article here:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/18/0146216

"When C was created, it was very fast because it was almost trivial to turn
C code into equivalent machine code. But this was only a short-term benefit;
in the 30 years since C was created, processors have changed a lot. The task
of mapping C code to a modern microprocessor has gradually become
increasingly difficult. Since a lot of legacy C code is still around,
however, a huge amount of research effort (and money) has been applied to
the problem, so we still can get good performance from the language."

 

[Tom St Denis]

Article here:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/18/0146216

"When C was created, it was very fast because it was almost trivial to turn
C code into equivalent machine code. But this was only a short-term benefit;
in the 30 years since C was created, processors have changed a lot. The task
of mapping C code to a modern microprocessor has gradually become
increasingly difficult. Since a lot of legacy C code is still around,
however, a huge amount of research effort (and money) has been applied to
the problem, so we still can get good performance from the language."

I don't get the conclusion [if any]. Companies like Sun and IBM pour
millions of dollars into optimizing their JVM. Similarly with
Microsoft and their C#.

Companies like PGI spend a fortune on their optimizing Fortran
compilers, etc, etc, etc.

If the conclusion is that C is outdated and optimizing for it is too
costly, the author is just plain ignorant and needs a return to
reality.

Tom