It is true that C is capable of those thing by virtue of being capable of everything, including writing a functional Javascript engine. But you have a choice. Y

It is true that C is capable of those thing by virtue of being capable of everything, including writing a functional Javascript engine. But you have a choice. You can have strict typing in C, you can pass structs by value and most C programs work in a synchronous manner. (I actually mentored a good C programmer to teach him JS for working on our team and asynchronous code was the thing he had most difficulty wrapping his brain around.) With Javascript you cannot have strict types and you cannot pass objects by value and asynchronous programming is the norm. C is also a lot less forgiving so it takes more skill to even be able to create a mud-ball of a reasonable size. ;) In my limited experience, functional programming languages just move a significant amount of difficulty up-front to the code. Perhaps it makes for less difficulty in architecture - I never suck around for long enough to find out. The difficulty threshold is enough to keep out lesser programmers, which certainly helps code quality. The price is that far fewer people use the language.