On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 9:50 AM, erik quanstrom
<quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> Even C has a runtime. Perhaps you should look more into how programming
> languages are implemented :-). C++ has one too, especially in the wake of
> exceptions and such.
really? what do you consider to be the c runtime?
i don't think that the asm goo that gets you to main
really counts as "runtime" and neither does the c
library, because neither implement language features.
How about setting up stack space in the code for an operating system kernel? That's something you don't explicitly write in C that must be there somehow, for example in an operating system kernel. You end up changing that runtime bit and then all your C code has different stack space available. I suppose you could group that into the kernel's runtime, but since the operating system I'm thinking of is coded in C, that kind of line drawing seems silly ;-)
I agree that C has a really really minimal need for any "help" to run on raw metal, but some level of support is still necessary.
Dave
- erik