How do a program become popular and gets adopted worldwide?

[Max]

Hi,

I am a new user to this group....have some query..

All these programming languages like C, Java, COBOL etc. are widely accepted and used today.

But when these languages were developed, what did their creators do make it popular? or what was unique about all these languages that made them adaptable socially?

Can someone throw some light on this area and update me?

Thanks

[David Welton]

That's a very good question! I think you have to look at each
language and see what the story is. I think most of the really big
ones involve some corporate backing at a certain point, or some kind
of 'lucky break'.

C was backed by Bell/AT&T, and was the language used to create Unix with.

Java had the full weight of Sun behind it, doing their best to get it
used by all kinds of other large corporations.

COBOL - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL - looks like it had serious
backing from the US Government, as well as some pretty major
corporations.

Javascript had the 'lucky break' that it got included in browsers.

And so on.

--
David N. Welton

http://www.welton.it/davidw/

http://www.dedasys.com/