&gt; And the basis upon which computing sits upon.<p>How does being the basis follow from being popular<p>&gt; Take away all C&#x2F;C++ code and we have nothing or almost nothing.<p>We had Lisp machines in the 70s, Oberon system in the 90s, Forth systems basically throughout history... take away C and C++ and something else would&#x27;ve become popular. Probably Pascal, some random low-level Lisp dialect, or Forth, given that those were all reasonably popular in a similar timeframe as C. For something that is a ‘basis’, C had an awful lot of competition.<p>&gt; Take away all Lisp&#x2F;Scheme code and people will barely notice.<p>Well, aside from every Emacs and AutoCAD user in the world.<p>Also HN wouldn&#x27;t exist, so there&#x27;s that.