[OneWingedShark]

>That box changed my life. I had started programming in C a few years before, but the Unix environment and I immediately got along like old buddies, and it’s still my favorite OS.

Hm, as an old-hand at C I’m sure you’ve got a lot to say on the various shortcomings/pitfalls therein.

[dayglored]

> Hm, as an old-hand at C I’m sure you’ve got a lot to say on the various shortcomings/pitfalls therein.

Shortcomings and pitfalls of C? Those have been listed and recited and documented and argued for 30+ years. I needn't repeat them yet again.

I prefer simple tools that do exactly what I want, to complex tools that make selected tasks trivial and other tasks impossible. I prefer driving a manual transmission car, for example.

C is still the language of choice for much of the non-application programs written today. System stuff, drivers, utilities, embedded devices, controllers, etc. You know, the stuff that actually DOES something beyond painting pretty pictures on a user's screen. :)

The two main reasons (IMO) that anybody uses anything else are:

1. In the hands of a less-than-skilled programmer, C will happily do what they tell it to do, which is most often erroneous. It's not for the lazy or inept. There are much safer languages, Nanny-May-I style, for those programmers.

2. String and database processing in C can be very tiring and frustrating, and a lot of business software processes strings and databases. There are special-purpose languages that excel at those tasks.