Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks.

For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.

Some consider UNIX to be the second most important invention to come out of AT&T Bell Labs after the transistor.

It seems certain that much of the success of Unix follows from the readability, modifiability, and portability of its software.

The True-GNU philosophy is more extreme than I care for, but it certainly laid a foundation for the current scene, as well as providing real software.

Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson.

C++ and Java, say, are presumably growing faster than plain C, but I bet C will still be around.