andree@uokvax.UUCP (12/11/83)
#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