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by pvg 3081 days ago
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.
2 comments
pjmlp 3081 days ago
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.

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littlestymaar 3081 days ago
> 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 …

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