great quote about the 'C' la - (nf)

[andree at uokvax.UUCP]

#R:ulysses:-72800:uokvax:3000010:000:1560
uokvax!andree    Dec  9 12:44:00 1983

Why are C and BASIC so much more heavily used than the correct languages
like Pascal, CLU, alphard, etc?

First, it's not clear to me that C is that much more heavily used than
Pascal. It will be in the future, but now? I dunno.

As for why they are more heavily used, the answer is easy. If somebody
starts selling lots of systems that effectively support one language
and one language only, then people are going to use that language.
So BASIC is heavily used because there are ALL THOSE MICROS (apple, trs-80,
commodore, etc) that you can buy that run only BASIC without further
(usually fairly heavy) expense.

C is popular because of Unix. Unix supports only C well. The fact that there
were something like 100 new Unix systems introduced this year means that
there are 100 companies doing lots of C. C is popular on micros (the good
old z80, mostly) because it does a very good job of what it was designed for -
replacing assembler. That's just what the micro world wanted (besides which,
how much real difference is there between a small pdp-11 and a large z80?).

Final note: Horrowitz (sp?) gave three rules for having a succesfull (i.e.,
popular) language:

	1) Write a good, clear book describing the language. The
		emphasis is on writing code, not exact definitions.
	2) Write a compiler for it that at least generates code.
	3) Sell the compiler incredibly cheaply. Better yet, give it
		away.

BASIC and C both meet qualify. Pascal doesn't do quite as well. CLU
does a good job, but is still new (I expect it to pick up in popularity).

	<mike