[timbit42]

It certainly tagged along with Unix but with 16-bit systems like the IBM PC, Macintosh, Atari ST and Amiga, it began to take over. We had safe languages like Pascal and Modula-2 at that point but computers weren't networked back then and programmers cared more about saving a few CPU cycles than having more stable programs. Today we know how dangerous C is for online security. Sure, safe code can be written in C but it's a lot more work for the programmer than using a language that is designed to be safe. It's good to see Rust come along and I'm hopeful to see safety being added to existing and new languages.