5 ms·C was so successful because it had, and to a large extent still has, no competitors.by Veedrac 9y agoC was so successful because it had, and to a large extent still has, no competitors.dboreham 9y agoIt was also free.pjmlp 9y agoOnly on UNIX, until Sun started to charge money for their SDK, which lead to many devs starting to help GCC development.pjmlp 9y agoOn UNIX, it was barely used outside AT&T until companies started to base their workstation OSes on UNIX.