[throwaway87543]

Other than assembly, which barely qualifies as a language, what programming language is lower than C?

[lproven]

It does not need to be a relative statement in order to be correct.

The statement "C is not close to the instruction set of a modern CPU" does not need to be validated by specifying examples of languages that are closer.

[danielvaughn]

But if you're going to say that "C is not a low-level language", then yeah you kinda do need other languages beneath it.

[lproven]

Well, firstly, I'm not saying it.

But no. That is what I meant when I said this is not a relative statement.

If the title said "C is not the lowest-level language" then your objection would be valid... but it doesn't and it's not saying that.

But before I go into some lengthy explanation: have you read the article, or are you responding to the title alone?

[dist1ll]

In general terms, any language aiming to be lower-level than C should

- have an "abstract" machine that is more concrete than C (and by extension less portable)

- be easier to lower into optimal assembly (especially loop ops)

- give you strong and precise compile-time guarantees about memory layout (padding, bitfields), variable sizes, register spilling, stack usage, etc.

[pjmlp]

Plenty to chose from since 1958's introduction of JOVIAL, when one cares to research what has happened in the world of systems programming outside Bell Labs, and UNIX/C taking over the server room.

[casparvitch]

Forth/joy maybe?

[humanrebar]

LLVM IR

[giaour]

Fortran, maybe?

[drsopp]

B

[Joker_vD]

Or T3X9, if you're prefer Algol-style syntax.

[Nzen]

I think there is an argument that Brainfuck [0], et al, is lower than C, given that it eschews variables and functions.

[0] https://esolangs.org/wiki/Brainfuck

[AlecSchueler]

Low level means close to the processor, not small in scope.

You could argue brainfuck is machine language for a theroetical infinite tape machine, but such a machine can only exist when implemented in high-level software.