The biggest issue C has is that there's no good answer to the second big question. No matter how you slice and dice C, its highest abstractions are functions,

The biggest issue C has is that there's no good answer to the second big question. No matter how you slice and dice C, its highest abstractions are functions, structs and pointers and all of them can fail catastrophically at each and every point of use. One can't even add two numbers or read from a variable in C without the possibility of triggering undefined behaviour. And there's nothing that will rescue you from that possibility except paying attention, which is something us humans can be pretty bad at. When using C, one is setting themselves up for failure, which already hints at the answer to the first big question - no. Go, Rust and C++ can do everything C does in a safer way.