C was definitely a player in the 70s and 80s (when it (and Unix) still had a lot of healthy competition), but it didn't attain its current veneer of ubiquity until approximately the early 90s (after being standardized in 1989). Javascript was derided as a joke until 2009 brought ECMAScript 5 and Node.js. Java's rise was relatively fast, but Java also had the benefit of the most concerted corporate ad campaign in the history of programming languages (how many programming languages have you seen advertised on TV? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpirOZe1Cgk )