> The argument is that those projects prove large C programs/systems are maintainable. 'Survivorship bias' doesn't enter into it; they are large and have been w

> The argument is that those projects prove large C programs/systems are maintainable. 'Survivorship bias' doesn't enter into it; they are large and have been well maintained. It shows that large C programs / systems can be maintainable. My claim is that the projects became maintainable out of necessity, that is, despite C, not because of C. Had C been opinioned around certain things and enforced maintainability out of the box to some degree, then and only then you could claim that C is maintainable, because this speaks for the general case. On the other hand, C is not opinionated about things, so you must enforce maintainability and high standards to get around all the footguns. This is what makes it unwieldy and why Rust is so loved. This plays greatly into the survivorship bias. You claim that C is maintainable because of all the large C projects that were forced to become maintainable. Had they not been maintainable they would not be as large or survive the test of time, and thus you wouldn't be able to cite them as evidence to your claim. In contrast, the oxidification of a lot of software, and the rise of "better C"s that have picked up steam shows that there are languages that are more maintainable and arguably better approaches for most software as they avoid all the footguns. NASA has strict requirements to make it maintainable, e.g. no heap alloc, so when you force yourself to not use language features, it appears that those features make things worse for you. Edit: Anyone care to inform me how my response falls into "low standards" for HN, and so much so that I got flagged and can not comment ?