I am quite sure many people would fail Pub Quizzes related to C, when taking into account the whole language alongside compiler extensions, regardless of the compiler.
To learn all of the common GCC and MSVC extensions would make up a fraction of the language features of C# or Java. You’re really overstating the complexity to make some invalid point.
“Actually, one of the most notoriously conservative and simple (in feature set) languages is really super complex and has evolved a ton because it has _Generic and varargs now, and __packed__ exists as a compiler feature.”
And to further double down, that minor evolution is over 36 years (arguably a decade longer, but I’m being generous with your argument). Not the 12-16 years (depending which 5 point release you wanna start with) that PHP has morphed into an entirely different language.
A pub quizz would consider more than GCC and MSVC, and still I would bet many would fail if talking only about those two.
And I would double down on my bet regarding ISO C related questions, as I have met a few folks that contrary to myself as language nerd, hardly know what is written there or have even opened the PDF drafts at least once in their life.
