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"But sadly it seems that the notion that our most basic and widely-used programming language should be one that's fit for programming in is not yet fully accepted."

Ouch. I usually hear that about C++, not C. =[

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My guess is that many of the optimizations causing increasing trouble were introduced to improve C++ code performance in pursuit of the "zero-cost abstraction" goal. But many are just as applicable to C (and may even be below the level that a compiler like gcc or clang knows the difference).

The whole "zero-cost abstraction" thing puzzles me. Abstraction is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

We want abstractions to make things easier to do, but we don't want to pay for them with CPU cycles... that's what a zero-cost abstraction means. It's not about adding in useless abstractions. The ideal is software that is faster to write and easier to understand and maintain, while offering uncompromised execution performance.

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