You don't need huge libraries and labyrinthine frameworks to be a 'useful' language. C is a perfectly good language with just the most basic standard library.
> C is a perfectly good language with just the most basic standard library.
Unless you want to write cross-platform networking code. But in that case C is an excellent language for writing networking libraries for your favorite scripting languages.
I'd argue that nowadays C is used more to implement other languages than it is by itself.
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You don't need huge libraries and labyrinthine frameworks to be a 'useful' language. C is a perfectly good language with just the most basic standard library.
C does get the OS API, though. Is it easy and non-kludgy to make unix system calls from arc?
> C is a perfectly good language with just the most basic standard library.
Unless you want to write cross-platform networking code. But in that case C is an excellent language for writing networking libraries for your favorite scripting languages.
I'd argue that nowadays C is used more to implement other languages than it is by itself.
That's probably been true for a long time. That and low-level libraries.
Even the really old Unix books recommend piping together small C utilities and stuff written in awk, sh, etc.