Depending on who you ask, C is either a low-level or medium-level programming language. Personally, since I also use Assembly, which is indisputably low-level, I vote for the latter.

However you classify it, C’s reputation is based on being lower level than almost every other language in use today. In fact, C has influenced many of the most-popular high-level languages.

Therefore, I would argue that C’s real power is the latter, not the former. It’s true power is not what you can do with it on hardware (which is obviously powerful), but where you can go with it in the programming industry.

I recently studied a bunch of languages just to test my hypothesis that the more languages you learn, the easier it is to learn new ones (at introductory levels). Of my 3 primary languages — Assembly (NASM), C, and Python — C had the greatest influence on rapid course completion.

While going from any language to HTML or SQL is a bit of a stretch (ameliorated by their ease of use), going from C to C++, C#, Java, and Javascript, for a few examples, is a smooth transition. Because I was only testing my hypothesis and I don’t intend to actually use any of these languages, I skipped over most of the content to get to the quizzes. Sure enough, if you guess C answers you’ll be mostly correct. This is not true for all questions, but C provides a large step through the doorway into these languages.

To conclude, I have a bias to admit. If you asked me my favorite language, I’d like to say Assembly, but I really have to say C. Python is my workhorse for complex projects, but I like to translate Python to C to better understand how the code is actually working. I then find Assembly helpful in understanding how C works.

Actually, QASM (Quantum Assembly Language) is really my favorite language, but for practical applications I default to C.