Well, Basic and Pascal was already something I guess, and Modula arrived in the same "era" as C. So at a general level the weight of C is to my mind not so much

Well, Basic and Pascal was already something I guess, and Modula arrived in the same "era" as C. So at a general level the weight of C is to my mind not so much due to how it was shining out of the crowd of its alternative options for general programming. Instead my perception is that it's mostly due to a conjunction of where it was born (Bell Labs), its initial focus on construction of low level layer parts (kernel/OS), and how software stacks tends to leak. That doesn't void completely what C achieved at a technical level, of course. But it certainly ponder differently how much its spread can be weighted on its technical benefits.