>>Not expressive enough to reduce LOC.
>
>What does this mean? How expressive is enough? Reduce LOC compared with what? What
>reduction in LOC is sufficient for you, and why?
>

Other than Fortran, try to name a language that's less expressive than C.



>> Not precise enough that real stuff still have to be done in assembly.
>
>This is doesn't mean anything. "Precise"? (what do you mean? not well defined?
>not expressive? calculations certainly are precise as they are defined...). Even
>as hyperbole it is silly. Most things you can do with C and POSIX C. Memory model
>may not have been totally well defined, but that is being improved, and with common
>sense implementations and locking libraries etc. in practice it works fine.
>

You do have some understanding of the issues invovled. Obviously you know to use volatiles and even wrote some spinlock primitives yourself. But that doesn't mean much. For those from the compiler or architecture world, C is merely a necessary evil to deal with.

C itself isn't special. Try not to confuse the power and precision of inline assembly with C. If other language compilers bothered to add inline assembly, they would have the same power of C.

BTW, given you're such a worshiper of C, why not write a locking primitive in C alone. Let see how far you can go.