[js8]

C has roots of its usage in academia, the same way Unix does.

I suspect, compared to other OSes of the era (Multics, MVS..), Unix doesn't require too much centralized control of (timeshared) operating system resources; for example the security model is extremely simple. So it was readily adopted in academia, because of this perceived user freedom (you just need a shell and you're good to go), and from there it spread to the industry.

So C and FORTRAN didn't came out of the academia, but were more widely adopted by it, which influenced later generations of students.

[pjmlp]

Academia was crucial in the adoption of UNIX and C, because in the early days UNIX was free beer (AT&T tried to fix that afterwards), so a juicy alternative to paying for Multics, MVS...

That also made UNIX an ideal teaching device for OS programming classes versus the toy OSes developed by students.

Well, until AT&T forbade the circulation of UNIX V6 commented book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...

[anthk]

What's your opinion on ITS?

[pjmlp]

Not much, I have read a few articles about it, but never cared much to dive into it.

Other than it was probably great having an OS where LISP had the spotlight alongside Assembly.