[kibwen]

C was definitely a player in the 70s and 80s (when it (and Unix) still had a lot of healthy competition), but it didn't attain its current veneer of ubiquity until approximately the early 90s (after being standardized in 1989). Javascript was derided as a joke until 2009 brought ECMAScript 5 and Node.js. Java's rise was relatively fast, but Java also had the benefit of the most concerted corporate ad campaign in the history of programming languages (how many programming languages have you seen advertised on TV? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpirOZe1Cgk )

[pjmlp]

Regarding Java, it also helped that big Smalltalk players like IBM, decided to fully pivot into Java, and many Oracle haters might not realise that alongside IBM, they were the first ones to have alternative JVMs and were together with Sun in the Network Computer effort.

Smalltalk had a .NET like role in OS/2, one of the reasons SOM even supported metaclasses, just imagine the alternative universe.