&#62; Put enough time and polish into something, and it's going to be good regardless of what language you choose.<p>I don't think the evidence supports that claim. Witness the select() API or any number of other issues in the modern libc which have gone unaddressed for so many years. Then look at how libraries are occasionally rewritten better in a matter of months. It should be possible to develop software in new languages that compels the user compared to what they already have access to, else why develop a new language?<p>When you say millions of users, I think I'm not communicating well. When I say "products," I mean products where the programming language is actually relevant: libraries and frameworks. You don't need millions of users to be considered a huge success in that market.<p>So I guess my continued question is, have you written any libraries that got serious traction because they were much better than an alternative written in C? Because if you read him charitably, that's what the comment we're discussing was really asking for. You replied with a laundry list of projects and nothing actually relevant.<p>&#62; more and more of the code is safe Javascript instead of raw C++<p>I'd be interested to see the extent to which this is actually true. Do you have a plot of the linguistic composition of the program over the years? Or at least some links to news articles to back up your claim?<p>&#62; Of the software packages that I use on a daily basis, very few are pure C. (xmms2 is. That's all.)<p>I take it you don't use an operating system? Or do you mean to say that by including a little bit of non-C code, something significant has changed in the overall composition of the software you use?<p>&#62; and see if C is still the most popular. That is a more reliable indicator of the state of the art.<p>I disagree that language popularity in new projects is a reliable indicator of anything except what language is popular at a given time.