In academic circles, many struggle to understand why people are still using C for large projects, other than the special cases of operating systems, embedded sy

In academic circles, many struggle to understand why people are still using C for large projects, other than the special cases of operating systems, embedded systems, and code that must execute very quickly - e.g. within the gaming industry. The main argument against using C seems to be that C is at too low a level of abstraction, which leads to low productivity and buggy code. For example, pointer arithmetic might sometimes be useful, but it doesn't seem like something most developers should be exposed to anymore. I have some sympathy for this argument, but wonder what others think? - The right tool for the job? RS