I think, most designers of languages want abstractions, convenience, and clevernes. So for people who don't want that we have to cling on to C since there aren't other options ;-)
> I think, most designers of languages want abstractions, convenience, and clevernes.
You get that in C as well in the form of libraries and frameworks. Today you saw a post in HN on how to do object oriented programming with C. Some time ago people shared C frameworks to enforce memory safety. There are generic data structures libraries for C as well.
I think your jab on how C programmers don't want abstractions, convenience, or cleverness is a weak strawman. It's obviously not it. What I think C programmers value is expressiveness and speed, and avoid bloat and overall inefficiencies, and C detractors don't want to address that because it forces them to face the real world tradeoffs which expose the shortcomings of their personal choices. There's a pervasive fear of missing out on the latest and greatest, and an irrational need to jump onto bandwagons, and C is extreme opposite of it. And yet it still outperforms anything that came after.