On: What Have We Learned from the PDP-11?

[agumonkey]

Teacher regularly called C a macroassembler

[davidw → agumonkey]

"C: all the power of assembly language with all the ease-of-use of assembly language"

[beefhash → davidw]

Not quite, unfortunately. In assembly language, you don't have to fear that your compiler optimizes out clearing cryptographic keys out of memory at the end of a function.

[syrrim → beefhash]

In assembly, you don't have to worry about pesky optimizations speeding up your code at all. A similar effect can be achieved in C by not manually enabling optimizations.

[dangerface → syrrim]

"A similar effect can be achieved in C by not manually enabling optimizations."

Good luck with that.

[mpweiher → beefhash]

Nor in K&R C. Or even early ANSI-C. This whole "we can use undefined behavior to "optimize" away half your program" idea is fairly new.