[s_tec]

C is not the best way to manipulate information, as you have noticed. It's abstractions are all wrong. On the other hand, C is great for computer engineering, as opposed to computer science.

If you are writing firmware, for example, the exact sequence of memory writes is critical. Program the hardware registers in the wrong order, and the device doesn't work. Access the FIFO the wrong way, and your ISR has a data race. Hiding memory access from the programmer is useless when accessing memory correctly is the problem. C is pretty much the only usable language for this kind of work.

The guys writing kernels and system-level libraries face similar issues.

So, C is stateful because the hardware is stateful. C has raw pointers because the hardware has raw pointers. C doesn't manage memory for you because you don't want C to manage memory for you. This all makes sense when you realize that C was invented for writing operating systems.

So, while I do understand your criticism, I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. The electrical engineering guys build the hardware, and the C guys make the hardware boot up. Fancy functional programming languages are useless without real machines to run on, and C makes those machines go. It's part of the plumbing, just like transistors. Plumbing may be messy and unpleasant, but even the architects designing skyscrapers need to know how it works.

[wvoq]

I fully acknowledge that there are domains where C is the best/only tool for the job. I was specifically taking issue with the claim that C is lucid, and neither scary nor evil.

[s_tec]

C is only opaque, scary, and evil if you consider computer hardware itself to be opaque, scary, and evil. For someone like an electrical engineer, C is perfectly lucid, safe, and friendly.