I think the remotely hosted dependency problem and ecosystem thing is not that big of a deal all the time, but if the project involves atypical OS and architectures, then C makes sense. I think it’s still possible to do these in other languages, but that’s just another familiarity gap to add to the existing set.
For the remotely hosted dependency thing, I think it’s pretty easy to vendor dependencies in most realistic C contenders, and a really simple litmus test is just yanking your network cable and doing a fresh build.
The ecosystem thing can be a bigger deal, but again it really depends on the problem domain. There are lots of high quality, non-C libraries for C to always be a clear winner. I think it’s more important to take a step back and make sure whatever language you pick is well suited to the task, rather than assuming any individual one will always be. Knowing multiple languages is handy for this, since that’s more ecosystems that you can pick from, rather than just tying yourself to a single one.
> The ecosystem thing can be a bigger deal, but again it really depends on the problem domain.
Yes, absolutely - and of course C isn't immune to ecosystem problems, either. I remember the pain of working with GNU autotools back in the mid 2000s - in fact it's probably that experience (plus trying to use bleeding-edge tools written in Python!) that left me so cautious about external dependencies today.
For the remotely hosted dependency thing, I think it’s pretty easy to vendor dependencies in most realistic C contenders, and a really simple litmus test is just yanking your network cable and doing a fresh build.
The ecosystem thing can be a bigger deal, but again it really depends on the problem domain. There are lots of high quality, non-C libraries for C to always be a clear winner. I think it’s more important to take a step back and make sure whatever language you pick is well suited to the task, rather than assuming any individual one will always be. Knowing multiple languages is handy for this, since that’s more ecosystems that you can pick from, rather than just tying yourself to a single one.