From: Tyler Adams <coppero1237@gmail.com>
To: Tom Ivar Helbekkmo <tih@hamartun.priv.no>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>,
Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] History of popularity of C
Date: Fri, 22 May 2020 12:51:43 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEuQd1D2S2VOUn2dFApypYZsZQe+qm_0j8XM=wGzUEjeqi-+YQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m2o8qg2vx3.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>
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Awesome, looks like my theory was completely wrong. Here's what it looks
like to me, please correct me as needed.
C's popularity has 2 distinct phases.
1972-1987 Unix drove C. Writing a functional PCC for a particular
architecture was easy, but not unusually so compared to other languages at
the time.
1987- gcc made C uniquely free to compile, so people chose to write C
because it was free and already popular.
Perl also came out in 1987, and afaik that was always free, but C still
took off because there was so much room for multiple languages.
So, now Im curious about embedded systems. In my limited experience, every
"embedded system" I programmed for from 2002-2011 had C as its primary
language. After 2011, I stopped programming embedded systems, so I don't
know after that. Why was C so dominant in this space? Is it because adding
a backend to gcc was free, C was already well known, and C was sufficiently
performant?
Tyler
On Fri, May 22, 2020, 11:53 Tom Ivar Helbekkmo <tih@hamartun.priv.no> wrote:
> Noel Chiappa <jnc@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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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-05-22 9:52 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 106+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-05-21 18:28 Noel Chiappa
2020-05-21 18:44 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-21 19:06 ` Paul Winalski
2020-05-21 20:27 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-22 8:52 ` Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS
2020-05-22 9:51 ` Tyler Adams [this message]
2020-05-22 11:09 ` arnold
2020-05-22 11:15 ` Tyler Adams
2020-05-22 18:40 ` John Gilmore
2020-05-22 19:01 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-22 19:35 ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-22 19:31 ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-22 20:19 ` Michael Kjörling
2020-05-22 14:59 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-22 20:39 ` [TUHS] History of popularity of C (GCC/Cygnus) John Gilmore
2020-05-23 4:33 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-22 11:58 ` [TUHS] History of popularity of C A. P. Garcia
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-06-06 21:49 Doug McIlroy
2020-06-06 21:55 ` Warner Losh
2020-06-08 13:56 ` Derek Fawcus
2020-06-08 15:20 ` Richard Salz
2020-06-08 15:30 ` Dan Cross
2020-06-08 16:32 ` Tony Finch
2020-05-21 15:27 Tyler Adams
2020-05-21 16:10 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 16:30 ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-21 17:22 ` John Foust
2020-05-21 20:17 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 16:43 ` Tony Finch
2020-05-21 17:35 ` arnold
2020-05-21 19:16 ` CHARLES KESTER
2020-05-21 20:33 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-21 20:09 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 20:12 ` Tony Finch
2020-05-22 8:28 ` David Arnold
2020-05-21 20:07 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 20:56 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-21 23:45 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-21 23:57 ` Richard Salz
2020-05-22 0:17 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-22 4:10 ` John Gilmore
2020-05-22 14:11 ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-22 14:34 ` Richard Salz
2020-05-22 14:17 ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-22 7:42 ` arnold
2020-05-22 23:50 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-05-23 7:28 ` Andy Kosela
2020-05-23 17:08 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-23 17:22 ` Richard Salz
2020-05-23 18:42 ` Derek Fawcus
2020-05-23 19:28 ` Michael Kjörling
2020-05-26 4:21 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-05-26 4:32 ` Ed Carp
2020-05-26 8:21 ` Rob Pike
2020-05-26 14:44 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-26 14:32 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-26 19:50 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-05-26 21:48 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-26 22:36 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-05-27 14:37 ` Ronald Natalie
2020-05-27 15:09 ` Clem Cole
2020-05-27 16:11 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-27 19:49 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-05-27 20:13 ` Larry McVoy
2020-05-27 20:23 ` Richard Salz
2020-05-27 21:00 ` Nevin Liber
2020-05-27 23:17 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-06-05 20:57 ` Dave Horsfall
2020-06-05 21:40 ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-06-05 21:47 ` Richard Salz
2020-06-05 22:01 ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-06 20:49 ` Ed Carp
2020-06-06 21:08 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-06-06 21:13 ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-06 22:27 ` Ed Carp
2020-06-06 23:14 ` Tyler Adams
2020-06-07 5:57 ` arnold
2020-06-07 9:22 ` Andy Kosela
2020-06-07 9:39 ` Ed Carp
2020-06-07 10:02 ` Brantley Coile
2020-06-07 11:30 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-06-07 15:26 ` Clem Cole
2020-06-07 15:52 ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-08 1:02 ` Adam Thornton
2020-06-08 8:04 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-06-07 17:26 ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-07 17:35 ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-07 18:50 ` Nemo Nusquam
2020-06-07 21:15 ` Chris Torek
2020-06-07 22:16 ` Dan Cross
2020-06-07 22:56 ` Chris Torek
2020-06-08 0:24 ` Bram Wyllie
2020-06-08 5:48 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2020-06-06 23:31 ` Bakul Shah
2020-06-07 0:12 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-06-07 11:04 ` emanuel stiebler
2020-06-07 11:33 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-26 15:19 ` Toby Thain
2020-05-26 16:00 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-26 16:21 ` Christopher Browne
2020-05-26 19:29 ` Thomas Paulsen
2020-05-26 19:55 ` Dan Cross
2020-05-26 20:00 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-05-21 16:18 ` Jim Capp
2020-05-21 18:58 ` A. P. Garcia
2020-05-21 19:02 ` Clem Cole
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