Comment by pjmlp
2 days ago
C pointers are nothing special, plenty of languages expose pointers, even classical BASIC with PEEK and POKE.
The line is blurred, and doesn't help that some folks help spread the urban myth C is special somehow, only because they never bother with either the history of programming language, and specially the history of systems programming outside Bell Labs.
They're nothing special, but were designed for a particular CPU and expose the details of that CPU. And since we were talking about C specifically, not a bunch of other random languages that may have did similar things...
While most modern CPUs are designed for C and thus share in the same details, if your CPU is of a different design, you have to emulate the behaviour. Which works perfectly fine — but the question remains outstanding: Where does the practical line get drawn? Is 6502 assembler actually a high-level language too? After all, you too can treat it as an abstract machine and emulate its function on any other CPU just the same as you do with C pointers.