I have been programming in C for the last 25 years, and every year or so someone comes with a new shinny thing that will "replace" C. First it was C++ (we know how well it did...), then Objective-C, then Java, then C#, then Go, and now rust.

Everyone of these language brought new ideas, but they don't stand a chance because their designers don't understand the point of C. The C language didn't win because it was the "best" language or had the best set of features. Far from it. Even in the mid 70s it was a backward language compared to other cool languages of the day like Algol and Lisp.

C won the competition because it just gives programmers the bare minimum functionality to put an operating system and a compiler in place! It is flexible, you can provide your own library if you want, and therefore gives your easy portability. OS writers will chose C any hour of the day or night because it makes their job easier.

By comparison, other languages will require a huge library to be available, and sometimes a complex runtime system, just for you to write a simple "hello world"! Imagine if you need to write a new OS, a compiler, a linker, or a shell interpreter... you get the idea.

My conclusion is that language designers still didn't get what made C so successful and therefore keep coming up with shiny complex things that don't stand a chance to become the next C.

it did well enough that C stdlibs (at least MSVC's, LLVM's) and compilers (... pretty much all the big ones) are implemented in C++ and just export C symbols nowadays, likewise for newer OSes like Fuschia.

SerenityOS (https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity) was written from scratch in two years in C++ and goes as far as having a custom web browser & JS engine. Where is the equivalent in C ? Where are the C web browsers, C office suites, C Godot/Unity/Unreal-like game engines ? Why is Arduino being programmed in C++ and not C ?