> It is almost certain that C++ "saved" C by existing.
replyPerhaps. 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.
I don't know if this is true. In the 80s there were many languages that were C with additional features or C preprocessors that added and experimented with features similar to cfront. You had OOPC (object-oriented pre-compiler), Objective-C, C*, Concurrent-C. People were experimenting in all kinds of ways by taking C and trying things out with it.
replyI think it is absolutely true, because adding features to an experimental language that has no tools or ecosystem surrounding it does nothing and people know that.
replyNiche experiments having features doesn't accomplish anything, but adding just one more feature to C seems plausible.
With C++ people could point people to another production ready language compatible with C that people could use, so there was somewhere they could do and an example of the feature working instead of someone promising silver bullets in theory.
> adding just one more feature to C seems plausible
replyI thought it would be a couple months to add C++ to my C compiler. 10 years later...