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I think there's a third one: To generate hype. C is already established - it's been around long enough that it doesn't need advertising.

Yet many still haven't learned to use lint like tooling, initially developed in 1979.

Sounds like a good topic for a conference talk ;)

It is not for lack of trying, check out the Linux Kernel Summit 2018 talks.

The problem is on the receiving end.

> It’s almost like news about algebra

There are plenty of algebra conferences, though. I’ve been to several. :-)

I agree with your general point, but algebra isn’t quite as slow-moving as you seem to believe.

Perhaps they were thinking of the ordinary equation solving that most people know as algebra, rather than the abstract algebra (group theory etc.) covered in university mathematics courses.

C is the tool, so probably a better analogy would have been to pencils, rather than algebra, which is more in line with OP's sentiment regarding hammers.

> I'm going to guess--possibly just projecting--that most C developers are older and not terribly interested in meeting new "C friends" or jumping into some hot, new "C startup".

Unfortunately that doesn't explain why there are not only aren't C conferences today, but there weren't C conferences 15, 20, 30 years ago.

I was a C programmer 30 years ago, but we didn't attend C conferences for two reasons: 1) programming languages weren't newsworthy enough to generate much buzz. Hardware was the focus of attention, and things like programming languages tended to be features of products, not products themselves. And 2) C was already about 20 years old by that point in any case, so monthly magazines were sufficient to keep up with the changes. We didn't tend to go to Fortran or COBOL conferences, either.

We DID go to conferences or expos for things that were buzzy and newsworthy, which meant the exciting new world of microcomputers: Comdex, MacWorld, etc. But the emphasis was on exposition, not conferencing with others, because we got to see exciting, new things with our own eyes, when that was the only way to see them (couldn't "see" things online). We wanted to see them (and they wanted to show them) to inform our decisions. The makers of C tools filled plenty of booths at the "computer expos", though.

Twenty years ago, we had started having big language conferences. JavaOne was like a religious revival or political rally, but C was the old devil being vanquished, not the Hope of the Future. And Visual-J++ and C# conferences were counter-political rallies, where C was going away as both sides agreed, but to be replaced by what? The makers of C tools still filled plenty of booths at the hardware expos, but there wasn't much demand for a C conference where we could hear, in person, about how C wasn't actually dead yet.

And by 15 years ago, all the hotness that inspires a crowd to gather for a conference was based on changes relevant to the WWW. If C had reinvented itself with shiny, new async networking, web service & e-commerce building blocks, concurrency, and whatever in its standard libraries or some such approach, there definitely WOULD have been C conferences. That would have been big news (and probably a bad choice, but that's a different question.) Without something like that, there is still plenty of demand for C, but little demand for a C conference.

> what important purpose would they serve?

To spread the knowledge how to actually write C code that meets a certain quality level regarding security and safety.

And not that writing C89 without any sort of static analyzers is still acceptable practice.

There should be one more reason: businesses that want to sell to that specific category.

There will be Hammer conferences if there are companies that make "handle grips" or "hand hammer protectors" who are willing to sponsor such events.

The reason that there is a conference for X is because somebody makes money running a conference for X. Be it directly or indirectly.

Yes but the reason there’s someone making money hosting a conference for X is that there’s a demand for a conference on that topic. Why is there a demand for Ruby conferences but not C ones?