&gt; I like the simplicity of C too. You can have a good mental model right down the CPU of what is going on.<p>Not really, with compilers as sophisticated as they are and the spec as liberal with undefined behavior as it is. The C virtual machine that the spec defines is every bit as complex as any other virtual machine.<p>&gt; But these days given how fast CPUs are and how much more productive you can be in a high level language (python is 10x more productive than C++, apparently) I think a garbage collected high level language is the way to go.<p>I totally agree. In fact, I wouldn&#x27;t use C even for projects where a GC isn&#x27;t suitable, just because we have alternatives now and it&#x27;s so difficult to write programs free of basic memory management mistakes we&#x27;ve been making since the 80s.