I agree with what you're saying about the problems that C has (or rather the problems people have with writing safe and secure C code), but I do think the langu

I agree with what you're saying about the problems that C has (or rather the problems people have with writing safe and secure C code), but I do think the language matters; just from the perspective of having any hopes of being adopted. C is largely immune from all the language wars, because it's everyone's reference point. I think it will be very difficult to get enough people to sign off on another language for systems development. Everyone thinks they know what everyone else should use; and it makes for a very fractious environment with regards to what languages should get used... C# and Objective-C are good examples of that.