The nice thing about C has always been how close you can get to the hardware, while still having some sensible flow control. The bad thing about C is how close

The nice thing about C has always been how close you can get to the hardware, while still having some sensible flow control. The bad thing about C is how close you need to get to the hardware. I really think that everyone serious about programming should learn C, to the level where they can read parts of the Linux kernel or something, but never actually deploy C code to a production environment. It's not a "must" -- not a requirement to be a good programmer or developer at all -- but you'll understand something much closer to the hardware than you will in a more modern language. Just don't expose that program to an adversary if you can avoid it, because that proximity to the hardware makes a single mistake catastrophic. Plus, if you ever need to do embedded work, you often don't have a choice other than C.