I think timing had a lot to do with C's success. It's a decent language and at the time powerful and flexible compared to other languages. Universities picked up UNIX and C and taught a lot of students. The went forth taking their skills with them.
On 16 April 2017 at 01:56, Charles Dickman via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org > wrote: > There are a lot of smart people here with wide ranging experiences, so > I like to ask questions from time to time that get more to philosophy. > So "If C is so evil why is it so successful" was one of those > questions. > > The answer I see is that it is the path of least resistance to the > most successful outcome in the time horizon of the effort. > > Or, it gets the job done. > > Personally, I am stuck in the machine control world where things like > symbolic names and type checking are sometimes non-existant. And I > wonder why. > > SIL-3 and PLe with stone knives and bearskins. > > On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 1:48 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk > <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > On 04/11/2017 07:03 PM, Charles Dickman via cctalk wrote: > >> The Balkanized nature of programming is interesting. > > > You might find more fertile ground plowing the plctalk.net forum when > > your questions relate to the STL/SCL/FBD/LAD/CSF area. > > I am familiar with STL (and some of the others). My question was not > for help. I was trying to present a contrast between the nit-picking > the list was doing about C and that fact that a huge amount of mission > critical programming is done in languages that are essentially machine > code. > > It was a ham fisted attempt. Don't post after too many high ABV IPA's. > > > FWIW, "STL" in Siemens-talk is an acronym for "Statement List". Why it > > isn't "SL" is anyone's guess. > > Probably for the same reason that PZD is process data. > > > --Chuck > > -chuck > -- 4.4 > 5.4
