[notacoward]

> The idea is that you build many independent programs, and then you glue them together using scripts.

That doesn't exactly describe kernels or embedded systems, which are C's strongest bastions. Whether it's well designed for the purpose or not, whether modules are appropriate in that context or not, a significant majority of the C code out there (including most common web servers, databases, etc.) does not fit your description at all.

Building small programs and gluing together with scripts is great, but hardly relevant. You don't need includes or modules for that. What if you do need to build one large program, like those aforementioned web servers or databases, or (what I work on) a storage server? That's where the difference between textual inclusion and modules really comes into play, and modules are strictly better than includes in every way.

I think the problem here is that you're confusing modules with things built on top of modules - specifically package managers. A lot of the package managers out there are horrible and create more problems than they solve, but that has almost nothing to do with modules as a language construct.