That is pretty scary (and possibly true). If a hacker does not have basic C competency, they probably do not understand how their code, C or otherwise is execut

That is pretty scary (and possibly true). If a hacker does not have basic C competency, they probably do not understand how their code, C or otherwise is executed... I'm all for C-S programs having a focus on teaching how to learn, frameworks of understanding and theory, but there need to be a few practical lessons along the way, and C competency is one of those. Maybe things have changed greatly since my undergrad but, the capstone of my undergrad C-S program was writing a C(lite) compiler for MIPS in C. This is in a program where for 60% of the classes the language in use was Java. I think this was a fantastic capstone choice. Students were expected to have deep understanding of C and Java and a working knowledge of Scheme, Haskell, Prolog with HTML/CSS/Javascript never taught due to the expectation you teach them to yourself on the way like everyone else. Depending your electives you might have also picked up C#, Python and Objective-C.