Mass adoption doesn't necessarily mean something is superior. For all the software that's written in Go, there's plenty more written in C++

Imagine how famous he would be if Bell Labs had been allowed to sell UNIX instead of giving its source code away with a symbolic price.

Hundreds of developers used Basic, Pascal, C, Modula-2, Assembly, Forth productively.

Maybe we should have kept using them, instead of coming up with programming languages that require a PhD. /s

Appeal to authority fallacy. People still use C, what's your point? There are superior options, but people are either (1) forced to use something inferior, or (2) don't know any better (especially if they drank the kool aid).