&gt;<i>How does being the basis follow from being popular</i><p>The basis is by definition popular.<p>If it&#x27;s not popular (at least where it matters) it&#x27;s not the basis. Basis is the fundamental thing on top of which something (the IT world as we know it) stands.<p>One could argue that algorithms are more basic, but we&#x27;re talking about programming languages here, and at that level, C&#x2F;C++ has been, and remains king for anything crucial. Even Java, the CLR and V8 are written in C&#x2F;C++ (to name but a few environments standing on this &quot;base&quot;).<p>&gt;<i>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.</i><p>Not sure how this argument is supposed to work.<p>To be the basis of something doesn&#x27;t mean you don&#x27;t have competition. Just that you prevailed over it.<p>&gt;<i>Well, aside from every Emacs and AutoCAD user in the world. Also HN wouldn&#x27;t exist, so there&#x27;s that.</i><p>Still people would barely notice. If you think Emacs and AutoCAD would make a huge difference to the world if they disappeared (compared to say, Windows, Linux, Android, or, if we&#x27;re to talk about sites and apps, Google, Facebook, Photoshop, Word, etc) then you&#x27;ve been on an echo chamber for too long.<p>(Not to mention that most Emacs users use it for if not C&#x2F;C++ then for languages whose compilers are written with C&#x2F;C++, on OSes written in C&#x2F;C++, and that Emacs itself is written in C -- the base were elisp stands on is C).