How ISO C became unusable for operating systems development
Victor Yodaiken
TL;DR
The paper discusses how the evolution of ISO C has made it less suitable for operating systems development, highlighting the divergence from non-ISO dialects still used in practice.
Contribution
It provides an analysis of the changes in ISO C standards that have impacted their suitability for OS development and contrasts them with non-ISO dialects.
Findings
ISO C has become less suitable for OS development over time
Operating systems are still primarily developed in non-ISO dialects of C
Differences in C dialects reflect specific OS programming requirements
Abstract
The C programming language was developed in the 1970s as a fairly unconventional systems and operating systems development tool, but has, through the course of the ISO Standards process, added many attributes of more conventional programming languages and become less suitable for operating systems development. Operating system programming continues to be done in non-ISO dialects of C. The differences provide a glimpse of operating system requirements for programming languages.
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