[wangchow]

Not stereotyping the best developers but saying that one who keeps an open mind to new ideas will be a better at what they do. Now, obviously there are limits to what people can do but more exposure is generally better.

C is all well and good (anything can be implemented in C) but one must recognize that higher level languages serve one purpose: to help express certain ideas in a more concise and easier-to-understand way than a lower-level language. It can be very helpful to look at why a particular functional language (just for example) achieves a result, and then implement the same concept in C or even assembly if necessary. But by abstracting the problem into a more simpler one, more complex ideas can be express.

Just look at integrals and derivatives in Math. One could compute derivatives using the difference-quotient but that would make more complex ideas almost impossible to understand. We create rules to help us derive common patterns, then use those to build more powerful ideas in a simpler way.

[ArkyBeagle]

You don't (usually) solve a problem directly in 'C' - you build furniture in 'C' that you arrange to then solve the problem.

Using a "higher level" toolset just means (possibly) buying rather than building. Which is "better" is an economic decision, until people's self-identity starts to get in the way.

I just remember a J2EE class, where every day we'd spend thirty minutes updating all the bizarre tools, which would frequently break things. I'm insufficiently venal to put up with that.