I agree with you; in the cases you mentioned there don't seem to be any good arguments for not using a higher-level language with managed memory, properly imple

I agree with you; in the cases you mentioned there don't seem to be any good arguments for not using a higher-level language with managed memory, properly implemented data structures, etc. It seems like there are at least two threads of thought going on in the comments in general. One of them is, "does C have any role in any domain, and if so what is that domain?". I think that it does; software development is much wider than kernels, userland applications, and compilers, and there are fields where C and/or C++ are the right tools as things currently stand. I don't think anyone would argue that either language exists as a global optimum in any problem space, but from an engineering (rather than a theoretical purism) standpoint sometimes there are few practical alternatives. Maybe these domains are small, maybe they're unexciting, but they do exist. The other is, "what is the point of learning C?". Maybe they want a deeper understanding of manual memory management, the concept of stack and heap storage, pointer manipulation, etc. Learning more about C to play with these concepts isn't a terrible idea, although it's not the only way to learn about these things. If nothing else, learning C and trying to implement your own parsers or data structures might be a good way to better understand why writing correct code in C that accounts for buffer overflows and string issues is so difficult, and what challenges higher-level languages face in order to overcome these flaws.