C won over because of the mystique of the syntax in which you can load multiple side effects into expressions. The intuition was that this leads to faster code, and in fact, with naive compilers, it did lead to faster code. C's terseness won over programmers who hated typing things like BEGIN and END for delimiting blocks. Unlike Pascal or Modula, C came with something very useful: a macro preprocessor. This is such an advantage, that it's better to have a crappy one than none at all. Those programmers who did not hate BEGIN and END could have them, thanks to that preprocessor. The preprocessor also ticked off a checkbox for those programmers who were used to doing systems programming using a macro assembler.
C started to be popular in the microcomputer world at a time when systems programming was being done in assembly languages. For instance, most arcade games for 8 bit microcomputers, were written in assembler. Some applications for the IBM PC were written in assembler, such as WordPerfect.
The freedom with pointers thanks to arithmetic would instantly make sense and appeal to assembly people, who would find a systems language without pointer flexibility to be too strait-jacketed.
C started to be popular in the microcomputer world at a time when systems programming was being done in assembly languages. For instance, most arcade games for 8 bit microcomputers, were written in assembler. Some applications for the IBM PC were written in assembler, such as WordPerfect.
The freedom with pointers thanks to arithmetic would instantly make sense and appeal to assembly people, who would find a systems language without pointer flexibility to be too strait-jacketed.