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C has roots of its usage in academia, the same way Unix does. I suspect, compared to other OSes of the era (Multics, MVS..), Unix doesn't require too much cent
by js8 6y ago
C has roots of its usage in academia, the same way Unix does.
I suspect, compared to other OSes of the era (Multics, MVS..), Unix doesn't require too much centralized control of (timeshared) operating system resources; for example the security model is extremely simple. So it was readily adopted in academia, because of this perceived user freedom (you just need a shell and you're good to go), and from there it spread to the industry.
So C and FORTRAN didn't came out of the academia, but were more widely adopted by it, which influenced later generations of students.
- pjmlp 6y agoAcademia was crucial in the adoption of UNIX and C, because in the early days UNIX was free beer (AT&T tried to fix that afterwards), so a juicy alternative to paying for Multics, MVS... That also made UNIX an ideal teaching device for OS programming classes versus the toy OSes developed by students. Well, until AT&T forbade the circulation of UNIX V6 commented book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...