Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "C Is Not A Language Anymore" video.

  1. The C/C++ short, int and long are always integers that have defined minimum size and the actual size is whatever the hardware can support with maximum performance. If some hardware can process 64 bit integers faster than 16 bit or 32 bit integers, short, int and long could all be 64 bit integers. That was the theory anyway. In practice, due historical reasons compilers must use different sizes as explained in the article. The reason we have so many function call conventions is also performance. For example, x64-64 sysv calling interface is different from x86-64 MSVC calling convention because Microsoft interface has a bit worse performance because it cannot pass equally much data in registers. And because we need to have backwards compatibility as an option, practically every compiler must support every calling convention ever made, no matter how stupid the convention was from technical viewpoint. It would be trivial to declare that you use only packed structures with little endian signed 64 bit numbers but that wouldn't result in highest possible performance. And C/C++ is always about highest possible performance. Always. That said, it seems obvious in hindsight that the only sensible way is to use types such as i32, i64, u128 and call it a day. Even if you have intmax_t or time_t somebody somewhere will depend it being 64 bit and you can never ever change the type to be something else but 64 bit. It makes much more sense to just define that the argument or return value is i64 and create another API if that ever turns out to be bad decision. The cases where you can randomly re-compile a big program in C/C++ and it just works even if short, int, long, time_t and intmax_t change sizes is so rare that it's not worth making everything a lot more complex. The gurus that were able to make it all work with objects that change sizes depending on underlying hardware will be able to make it work with a single type definition file that codes optimal size for every type they really want to use.
    1