I was in college early '90s in CS&E (Comp Sci & Engg) and we were taught Pascal first, COBOL and then C. Pascal and COBOL in the second year and C in the third

I was in college early '90s in CS&E (Comp Sci & Engg) and we were taught Pascal first, COBOL and then C. Pascal and COBOL in the second year and C in the third year. C++ was already there, and gaining traction and I taught myself C++ (through the Annotated C++ Reference by Stroustrup). By the time I graduated most jobs were expecting C/C++ coding skills and my first job involved coding in C++. Nothing compares to the raw power and control we get with C. Around '97-98 Java was all the rage. Then Bill Gates did his internet pivot and we had .NET arriving in the '00s. The allure of being able to program in any framework language and interoperate looked like a good thing. Over the last 20+ years I had been in the .NET world and just this year I went back to writing in C and it all came back. It is quite refreshing to be completely responsible for every aspect of your code's working. While it is sometimes tedious, nothing beats the power and control of working close to the machine abstraction. Just my 2cents.