OT: This Swift thing

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.10857.1402167635.18130.python-list at python.org>,
 Michael Torrie <torriem at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 06/07/2014 12:11 PM, Roy Smith wrote:
> > Several language constructs in C are there specifically to diddle bits 
> > in hardware.  Bit fields were in the earliest implementations of the 
> > language to allow you to address individual bit control and status bits 
> > in memory-mapped device controllers.  The volatile keyword is there to 
> > deal with bits which change value on their own (as hardware status 
> > registers do).
> > 
> > And, why do you need a library routine to touch a memory location, when 
> > you can just dereference an integer? :-)
> 
> Which of course, technically, Pascal has too.
> 
> But memory addressing is only half the story.  You still need interrupts
> and ioctl access, both of which happen via assembly instructions that
> libc exposes via a standard C subroutine interface.

Well, on a machine where all I/O is memory mapped, it's really 3/4 of 
the story, but I get your point.