So it is pretty weird for that to be highlighted as the big distinctive feature.
What about .net/mono targeted languages, javasvcript targeted languages? And custom interpreters jit(frequently but not always written in c)
People focused on entirely new languages tend not to target JITs first for the same reason they tend to not target direct machine code first: it just adds complexity to getting a proof of concept out the door. LLVM, the JVM, and yes, the CLR are starting to change this, but aside from the JVM, there are still only a handful of languages going that route.
That said, there are some good reasons for compiling to C. Not every architecture has a backend for LLVM yet, after all.
I was not disputing the conclusion that it can make sense to compile to C. I was just saying that "people like C" doesn't support that conclusion.
It's my language of choice for personal projects. A neat and compact language that is very trivial to pick up, feels light, and yet sufficiently subtle to intellectually engage your mind.
Very productive, good performance, and very portable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE
caveat: /imho/ the runtime is not yet fully cooked. ETA is Go1.1 (end of year I believe) for beefed up internals.
I doubt that. It may be (mostly) true for languages that match the capabilities of C well, but if a language does not match C well, it certainly isn't 'automatically' because the optimizer in your C compiler will not help much in making the implementations of such features efficient.
For example, compiling JavaScript to C, it would be non-trivial to make the result as fast as the current JavaScript engines because the C code would likely have to do the same zillions 'is this a string?' checks that interpreters do (probably even more of them because it is harder to see the wood for the trees in your translated-to-C code)
For example, it would require lots of work to support, for example, Lisp's number system, Dylan's union types, any variant of 'eval', or, to take an extreme example, to map Intercal code sequences to efficient C operations such as '+'.