This is exactly my reason for starting a couple of recent side-projects in C. You can pretty much count on the target system having an ANSI C compiler (even ra

This is exactly my reason for starting a couple of recent side-projects in C. You can pretty much count on the target system having an ANSI C compiler (even rather old systems), which can't be said for any other language. Have an ANSI C compiler? Great! You don't need anything else to build and install this program. You don't need to install a hefty runtime like the JVM and you don't need to know what a gem is. I don't think I'm immune to the hazards inherent in the language. I try my best be aware of them and to write safe code, and still find myself introducing a segfault now and then. Luckily, tools like valgrind and Coverity can really help to catch these kinds of issues early (of course, they can't catch everything, but I've been amazed by just how much they do catch).