C a toy language? C is arguably the most difficult languages to master from the (relatively) mainstream languages. Far more difficult than C++ imo. I've gone through a lot of C and C++ code over the years and, I'm fully standing behind Torvald's opinions of it. As far as get things done, you could say that about any language really - Python, Haskell, Julia, hell, even PHP and js get things done easily. The example I gave above - the Rust microservice is not more than 10-15% larger in terms of codebase compared to the go one. The gains in performance and code which is actually pleasant to read is well worth it.