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Comment by lelanthran

16 days ago

> I remember why C stayed what it is at least: elitism and gatekeeping.

If that was the goal, it failed horribly - the gatekeeping didn't work because the popularity exploded.

> You're telling me OCaml / Rust / Haskell compile to fairy pixie dust? Obviously their compilers figured it out and it works.

I said nothing of the sort.

You asked how sum types work in assembly. I'm telling you that at least 3 compilers figured that part out.

  • > You asked how sum types work in assembly.

    No, I didn't - I asked how sum types were supposed to work in an era of 64KB memory systems.

    • They don't need extra memory in Rust for the case of nullable pointers.

      The boring cases require an enum tag in C too.

      By bringing up the one thing that doesn't matter, your argument becomes purely ideological.

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