What's C's biggest mistake?

[BCS]

Hello Walter,

> BCS wrote:
> 
>> I guess my point is that aside from VERY resource limited systems,
>> almost no one will have C as their first choice. Even with those
>> limited systems I'd bet that most people would rather be working in
>> something else if they could. That said, there are many places where
>> it ends up being the lingua franca.
>> 
> I still think you're underestimating C's audience. Consider the Linux
> effort - they can choose any implementation language they want, and
> they choose C. They aren't forced into C.
> 

Yes, C has a wide audience (any one who says differently is selling something). 
But I still thing that their are very few cases where C will be chosen for 
reasons other than it's purely technical merits. If C++/Java/C#/python/whatever 
would have done just as good a job in Linux as C, I'd almost bet that Linux 
wouldn't have been written in C. My point isn't that C is never the right 
choice (as that is clearly false) but that when C is chosen, it's (almost) 
always for technical reasons rather than aesthetic ones (where it is merely 
good enough).