I'd argue that in practical cases, resizable arrays require less memory than fixed-size arrays, because the actual length is usually going to be shorter than th

I'd argue that in practical cases, resizable arrays require less memory than fixed-size arrays, because the actual length is usually going to be shorter than the arbitrary maximum length. My guess is that C encouraged using arbitrary limits by not having first-class support for resizable arrays (or even a non-hacky type-safe way to implement them as a library).