Re:Go is boring, and that’s fantastic
by controversy on Thursday July 02, 2020 @10:21AM
(#23713371)
I appreciate your comment. I think it proves the idea how important free compilers and run times are. The web took off not due to C, but Perl. It was free and came with many servers that people rented. After that came the 90s with languages like Java and other free higher level languages. At the same time free OSes like Linux allowed people to be more technical without cost.
By the time this came around, universities taught C++ or Java in their intro to programming. Students used those. Then found the free version from discussion with peers.
I bought Pascal, and then Modula-2, for my Atari ST. They were cheaper or the same price as a C compiler. Though C was a better choice for that system, since the OS was written in it and the calling conventions, etc. were all C.
On the Macintosh (and Lisa before it), by contrast, Pascal was the way to go.
So I think part of the reason C won out over Wirth languages back in the late 80s was because it just "fit" better with the systems that were emergent then. The swing towards Unix/Posix or Unix-like machines meant that the syscall interface for most things was defined with C calling conventions, and most example code was done that way.
And C++ also became quite popular, while the various object oriented Wirth / Wirth-like languages were not well standardized or available.