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Linus Torvalds says that C is king for OS development due to its efficient hardware interaction and the ability to predict the assembly language output of C code.
3,010,229 views • 1 year ago •via X (Twitter)
14 Comments

Maybe... like 25 years ago. Optimizations make this nearly impossible. However definitely still possible on ARM thumb. Have extensive decomp experience. The most complicated thing there is some unrolling.

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I agree C is much closer to the hardware than even Rust. I find attempts at “replacing” C can’t resist adding at least a small layer of abstraction more than what C has. Which kind of defeats the point of a C “replacement”,

Exactly, that's also the reason why I can't move away from C. I love Assembler!
Maybe with optimizations turned off. But generally no

No he is pretty much saying “I am a computer and I am also a compiler” 😂

From what I recall, Linus built Linux because back in the day, UNIX was the Windows of today, only people couldn't afford it, and I'm pretty sure Linus hated that and therefore built his own OS from scratch. Absolute BOSS!

And that's why Rust is great for malware. Because of how unpredictable the Rust compiler is!

Every time someone tells me "Oh just use Bun (?)" or "Just use Python" I unsheath this video like fucking Excalibur

Then he shouldn't be switching Linux over to Rust.

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Big feedback loop. CPUs have been optimized for decades to run C. C and Unixish OSs have co-evolved. I'm not sure what a clean sheet would look like. What we have now is not a given.

I love how he starts by saying "When I started getting into linux -" but then he has to stop and correct himself

Since LLVM, more languages are coming to bite C pie, beside Rust, Zig, Go.

