William ChopsWestfield wrote:

> On Jul 1, 2007, at 11:45 AM, Peter Bindels wrote:
> 
>> People use C because they have code in C...
> 
> I don't think your argument hold up very well.  Wasn't the original
> Apple OS written in pascal?  Wasn't ADA going to be required for all
> government-funded projects?  Was not PL/1 going to be THE language for
> anything IBM?  I don't recall C being heavily used in embedded projects
> 20 years ago; I recall it being barely available for computers as large
> as the IBM/PC of the day.

I think the first popular compiler/IDE combo for the PC was Turbo Pascal.
Still alive and well (not that much so, it seems, in the USA) in the form
of its successor Delphi. 

I think if you look at the details, you'll find a number of reasons why C
is actually a rather flexible compromise for the small micro area, a
flexibility that most other languages don't seem to have. 

Gerhard

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