3 ms·

There is such a thing as path dependence. C got ubiquitous because of reasons (UNIX?), and now we're stuck with it. Now the historical accident theory is pret

There is such a thing as path dependence. C got ubiquitous because of reasons (UNIX?), and now we're stuck with it. Now the historical accident theory is pretty obvious: it could have been an Algol, Fortran derivative instead of C, if only UNIX used that as a basis. C itself could have been designed differently, and if so would probably have different flaws and qualities. Asking for a Rust/Go/Whatever OS is dishonest, because you know full well it will fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the underlying language's intrinsic qualities: even if that OS is great, nobody expect it to be so great we all have to switch away from Windows and Linux. Well, except maybe if we prove the correctness of the kernel, hence ensuring the absence of many vulnerabilities. Research is ongoing, I'd like to see where that goes.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
C got ubiquitous well before Linux, at least. I'd date it back to the '80s on microcomputers ( mostly meaning DOS) . Lots of Pascal, but Pascal really was an engineering constraint at the time if you were doing actual system programming. And back then, that was a serious consideration.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Not in Portugal, we were using mostly using Turbo Pascal. In the 80's using C on MS-DOS, was only seen by those that had UNIX at work or universities and wanted to work home. It wasn't even C, rather SmallC or any other K&R dialect. In any case, everyone that cared about performance was using TASM and MASM, writing everything in Assembly.