Finally, last year, Microsoft announced that some C99 features would make it into Visual Studio 2013. For compiling C99, GCC, Clang or one or two others were your best hope.

C99 has only been available through non-Microsoft Compilers, as Microsoft didn’t reckon there was any demand for it on Windows. Python, Perl and PHP are among the languages that have such compilers.Įven Microsoft appears to be taking a look at C after years of Visual C/Studio only supporting ANSI C. Doing so allows them effectively generate executable code without learning the subtleties of native code generation for a particular platform. In fact, it’s so hard to make one for C++ that it’s not uncommon to take a compiler front end such as Clang and just plug in a matching back end like LLVM.ĭevelopers of other language compilers will often have them generate C code as an output. A C compiler takes roughly one to two man years to create, whereas a C++ compiler takes 15 to 20. It’s like the difference between building a mud hut (C) compared to a skyscraper (C++).

That’s not so for C++ compilers, which are vastly different and considerably more complex. If you want advanced data structures you have to either write them yourself using pointers or get third party or open source libraries.Īs a result of such simplicity, any programmer, amateur or professional can - in theory - create his own C compiler. It doesn’t have any high-level libraries for hash maps or lists ANSI C only gives you arrays and pointers.

It’s a simple but useful language that gives you a very low level view of memory and how variables are stored. It’s surprising how important the C programming language remains, as it’s now over 40 years since it was first created.

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