🚀 go-pugleaf

On 29 Sep 1995, Laszlo BOESZOERMENYI wrote:

> Be serious, please.
> C has escaped the Bell-lab as the implementation language of Unix.
> Nobody would even know about it today, if it had been just
> announced as a programming language at the University of XXX.
> C's succes has almost nothing to do with its own qualities,
> but with the succes of Unix.

Come on! I'd agree with you if C was only used on Unix and Unix-derived 
systems, but that's clearly not true. As personal computers have gotten 
more powerful, C has spread like wildfire through the programming 
community. To put it simply, C/C++ is now used everywhere.

You also have to wonder why Unix was so successful. Does its success have 
anything to do with C? Despite its shortcomings, C has proven itself as 
being more portable and flexible than many other languages (note that 
even today many languages aren't portable -- e.g., Visual Basic). 
Although C alone cannot account for all of Unix's success, it was one 
important factor. (Other OSes provided similar capabilities... maybe it 
was the fact that they "gave Unix away" (sort of; for a while) to many 
universities.

By your argument, Visual (or maybe Quick) Basic, DOS's batch language, etc. 
would become mainstays of the computer industry. DOS and 'Doze are 
undoubtedly two of the most important software products (OSes?!? Nah...) in 
terms of numbers. Clearly C had something else going for it.

- Trung