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C is still the lingua franca; it's the only toolchain you can rely on a target system having, and the only real usable interface for calling between code in dif

C is still the lingua franca; it's the only toolchain you can rely on a target system having, and the only real usable interface for calling between code in different languages. So my theory is that it's not so much that people are especially inclined towards starting projects in C, but that projects in C have fewer barriers to distribution and thus adoption. By natural selection, C code spreads and becomes standard; programs in Java, JS, Ruby, Haskell, Ocaml, etc. don't tend to leave their native ecosystem.

groovy2shoes 11y ago
This is exactly my reason for starting a couple of recent side-projects in C. You can pretty much count on the target system having an ANSI C compiler (even rather old systems), which can't be said for any other language. Have an ANSI C compiler? Great! You don't need anything else to build and install this program. You don't need to install a hefty runtime like the JVM and you don't need to know what a gem is. I don't think I'm immune to the hazards inherent in the language. I try my best be aware of them and to write safe code, and still find myself introducing a segfault now and then. Luckily, tools like valgrind and Coverity can really help to catch these kinds of issues early (of course, they can't catch everything, but I've been amazed by just how much they do catch).