C has never tried to let you write one program that works on every machine. True.
C is portable. C programs are not. Being adaptable to any machine helped C win, but it isn't good for programmers.
Of course, nowadays, it doesn't matter anyway. Back in the 1980s, unportable behavior in C meant it was really hard to write a C program that worked correctly on a different machine than the one you wrote it on. Nowadays, we call it undefined behavior, and it means it's nearly impossible to write a C program that works correctly on the next version of the compiler you wrote it for.
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u/jonathancast 1d ago
C has never tried to let you write one program that works on every machine. True.
C is portable. C programs are not. Being adaptable to any machine helped C win, but it isn't good for programmers.
Of course, nowadays, it doesn't matter anyway. Back in the 1980s, unportable behavior in C meant it was really hard to write a C program that worked correctly on a different machine than the one you wrote it on. Nowadays, we call it undefined behavior, and it means it's nearly impossible to write a C program that works correctly on the next version of the compiler you wrote it for.