C exists in the middle territory between high (colloquially right now) and "original" low-level programming.
By all accounts, virtually any language that operates relatively close to the semantics of the machine in terms of operations and memory (pointers are a standard abstraction in assembler) is a low-level language.
The only things that detract from C's low-level credentials are that it is more of a hybrid attempt at grafting a harvard machine onto von neumann machines and its functions. The functions/stack are a bit of an abstraction depending on which architecture you're using.
Calling C high level isn't accurate or descriptive, but I'd be willing to concede that it's not truly low-level either if you know enough C to explain why.
"C is not high level because you don't know C" is not exactly the most cogent of arguments. The rest of it I pretty much agree with, nonetheless the actual definition of "high level" language doesn't change just because you (or I) feel it should, which is why I said it was "technically" high level.
C exists in the middle territory between high (colloquially right now) and "original" low-level programming.
By all accounts, virtually any language that operates relatively close to the semantics of the machine in terms of operations and memory (pointers are a standard abstraction in assembler) is a low-level language.
The only things that detract from C's low-level credentials are that it is more of a hybrid attempt at grafting a harvard machine onto von neumann machines and its functions. The functions/stack are a bit of an abstraction depending on which architecture you're using.
Calling C high level isn't accurate or descriptive, but I'd be willing to concede that it's not truly low-level either if you know enough C to explain why.
You don't, though.