[pjmlp]

Thanks Linux.

C was already on the way out when Linus created Linux.

Apple was migrating from Object Pascal to C++.

IBM had CSet++ for OS/2.

Borland, Microsoft, Zortech, Symatec were selling C++ frameworks.

UNIX vendors were playing with Taligent and CORBA.

BeOS and Symbian were developed in C++.

Then came Linus, made Linux with GNU on top.

GNU project for a long time always mentioned that the go to language for GNU projects should be C.

All major C compilers are written in C++ nowadays, there is hardly any reason to stay with C outside UNIX world.

[pvg]

C was already on the way out when Linus created Linux.

That seems a little... fanciful. There was a lot of C++ and it was a great way to show how modern and forward-looking you were (and to sell compilers, tools, frameworks) but standardization hadn't got far, interoperability was poor, problems great and small abounded. A number of the things you mention above were spectacularly unsuccessful.

[pjmlp]

Yes, C++ was a pain to write portability before 2000, but so was C, in spite of having been standardized in 1990, most compilers were a mix of K&R C and ANSI C.

Nevertheless, all major desktop OSes were going C++ for their application frameworks, before the widespread adoption of GNU software.

> A number of the things you mention above were spectacularly unsuccessful.

Mostly due to politics between corporations and very little to do with C++ itself.

[littlestymaar]

> but standardization hadn't got far

That's true, but not really fair: even ANSI C standard was only 2 years old at that time, despite C being way older than C++. Standardization takes a lot of time …