I think that's besides his point, which I take is: Replace C with an alternative and people will complain of similar problems, since all abstractions are leaky

I think that's besides his point, which I take is: Replace C with an alternative and people will complain of similar problems, since all abstractions are leaky abstractions to some extent. Or in other words, since you can never be immune to this "leaky" problem, you will inevitably have similar kinds of problems despite using an alternative. Which is why you'll find every programming language has critics. Also, keep in mind having alternatives isn't necessarily better, as it introduces a problem itself: it complicates things (the article even mentions a problem of this sort). Does having 100 programming languages, with dozens of OS's, each all doing mostly the same sort of things in different ways - simple? Might the programming world be simpler if there was 1 programming language/OS/way of doing something, rather than having 100s of alternatives? (This is just food for thought to demonstrate the point, not something I'm particularly advocating)