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   RecurringBloatware (recurringbloatware@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 19:25:34 JST RecurringBloatware

   I am a bit curious - does C map directly to the hardware, or vaguely similar to how there's the GC memory auto-allocation abstraction in GC-based languages, it abstracts over a PDP-11?

   #c #lowlevel #machine #programming #assembly #pdp

   • Embed this notice
     RecurringBloatware (recurringbloatware@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 19:25:33 JST RecurringBloatware

     in reply to

     • 13reak :fedora:

     @13reak Oh yes, minus the GC (obviously, as C is manual) but purely talking about the similarities in abstraction over modern machines.

     Because I came across the concept of a "Lisp machine", and now I am not sure what a modern machine should be called relative to that?

     Are modern machines descendants of PDP-11? Because at least after reading the "C Is Not a Low-level Language - Your computer is not a fast PDP-11." article, I can't help but be more confused.

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     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 19:25:33 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • 13reak :fedora:

     @RecurringBloatware @13reak The Lisp Machine is a relatively simple "stack machine" implemented on top of a "relatively" standard RISC processor (CADR/Lambda,...).

     Fun fact, the CADR quite a bit of parts/features/hardware from PDP-11 (and 10).

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     13reak :fedora: (13reak@infosec.exchange)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Apr-2025 19:25:34 JST 13reak :fedora:

     in reply to

     @RecurringBloatware

     It depends what you program. There is no abstraction if you (or the operating system) does not program any.

     Though what most programmers use (malloc) is already some form of abstraction. Usually the OS allocates a pool of memory and gives it out in chunks via the malloc function call.

     But there's no garbage collection or anything like that.