pj I always detect a degree of "disdain" for C in your comments. Back in the 80s everything was system programming if you wanted performant software. C replaced Pascal during the 80s because it was a better language - simple as. Today I code almost entirely in C and rarely need to use Assembly. C started to be used beyond Unix during the 80s (AmigaOS was written in C except for third party IO library written in BCPL) because it is a small and very concise language; Pascal had just too much abstraction - for example how it dealt with bitwise operations. This meant C compilers could do better jobs in terms of optimisation. This is reflected in C replacing Pascal in PC game programming in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Also a lot of Amiga games were also written in C (Cinemaware games) and Megadrive games too (Sonic Spinball, Ecco etc.). In short C is just the best HLL out there when it comes to programming systems with meager resources. As for Rust - like Go - its supporters will eventually throw in the towel. C is king of system programming.