[TUHS] History of popularity of C

Tom Ivar Helbekkmo tih at hamartun.priv.no
Fri May 22 18:52:56 AEST 2020


Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> writes:

> I suspect the real reason for C's sucess was the nature of the language.
> When I first saw it (ca. 1976), it struck me as a quantum improvement over
> its contemporaries.

Paul Graham expressed it like this:

"It seems to me that there have been two really clean, consistent
models of programming so far: the C model and the Lisp model. These
two seem points of high ground, with swampy lowlands between them."

-tih
-- 
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp.  Lisp is the most important idea in computer science.  --Alan Kay


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