| >How does being the basis follow from being popular The basis is by definition popular. If it's not popular (at least where it matters) it's not the basis. Basis is the fundamental thing on top of which something (the IT world as we know it) stands. One could argue that algorithms are more basic, but we're talking about programming languages here, and at that level, C/C++ has been, and remains king for anything crucial. Even Java, the CLR and V8 are written in C/C++ (to name but a few environments standing on this "base"). >We had Lisp machines in the 70s, Oberon system in the 90s, Forth systems basically throughout history... take away C and C++ and something else would've become popular. Probably Pascal, some random low-level Lisp dialect, or Forth, given that those were all reasonably popular in a similar timeframe as C. For something that is a ‘basis’, C had an awful lot of competition. Not sure how this argument is supposed to work. To be the basis of something doesn't mean you don't have competition. Just that you prevailed over it. >Well, aside from every Emacs and AutoCAD user in the world. Also HN wouldn't exist, so there's that. Still people would barely notice. If you think Emacs and AutoCAD would make a huge difference to the world if they disappeared (compared to say, Windows, Linux, Android, or, if we're to talk about sites and apps, Google, Facebook, Photoshop, Word, etc) then you've been on an echo chamber for too long. (Not to mention that most Emacs users use it for if not C/C++ then for languages whose compilers are written with C/C++, on OSes written in C/C++, and that Emacs itself is written in C -- the base were elisp stands on is C). |