Why can&#x27;t we do both? On the one hand, we obviously need better techniques to maintain and improve upon code bases in languages like C. They aren&#x27;t going anywhere anytime soon. But why shouldn&#x27;t we also pursue improvement to the programming language state of the art? And if we find improvements, why shouldn&#x27;t we use them? I&#x27;d be very sad if 50 years from now C (or Rust, for that matter) is considered the final word in programming languages.