alt Hacker News> It is almost certain that C++ "saved" C by existing.
Perhaps. But in the 80's, C was the most practical language to use on the PC, by far. And porting C code to other platforms was easy.
> It is almost certain that C++ "saved" C by existing.
Perhaps. But in the 80's, C was the most practical language to use on the PC, by far. And porting C code to other platforms was easy.
Yeah, OPs claim feels disconnected from C’s identity. C stayed conservative because the areas where it excels (to this day) benefit from its “portable assembler” design history. A history with no C++ wouldn’t have changed that, instead another (either non-C extended or alternative C-adapted [Obj-C, for instance]) language would have taken the market C++ did; likely with a larger runway time due to the lack of interoperability/superset compilation.