"... I still fail to understand why it is so popular." It was repurposed. As you wrote, "I don't think it's very popular in the manufacture of embedded contro

"... I still fail to understand why it is so popular." It was repurposed. As you wrote, "I don't think it's very popular in the manufacture of embedded controllers." A theory: There is a large population of programmers who want to write bloated programs. They will use whatever is made available to them to do it. They will prefer whatever makes it easier. This has become a "market" that others want to serve. The supporting anecdote I always remember is the small scripting language AWK. It was not designed with the intent to write large scripts/"programs". However, if I recall correctly, Kernighan commented that he was surprised to learn that is what users were trying to do with it before Perl existed.