| Some reasons: 1. Everyone has a C compiler, or can write a decent-enough one to support their preferred environment. 2. C is well tested and specified. Reading the standard isn't an exercise is face melting (compare with, say, C++). 3. As a systems language, C doesn't require a runtime library if not needed, and this can be left out very easily (not the case with Go, D, or C++, as I'm aware). 4. C exposes easy trapdoors to the underlying machine (inline assembly, pointers, etc.) that are very handy. 5. C is usable by other languages, as its calling conventions are well documented. This is why C is a preferred base language for things like OpenGL bindings--it's easy to write Ruby, Pyhton, Java, etc. wrappers. This is in sharp contrast to C++, which is brainfucked for things like symbol exports. 6. A line of C is pretty obvious in what it does, when written correctly. You can usually estimate what code it'll generate, barring #define hackery. C++ especially is bad at this. ~ C is still used because it doesn't do a lot, and it nails what it does do. |