Despite it being the first language I ever learned, I don't touch C a lot anymore since I've removed myself almost entirely from the systems space, and undefined behavior isn't even the main reason.
Primarily, I have determined that I really don't like dealing with manual memory management. For all the tasks I'm interested in, C's performance gains over a GC'd language are marginal at best. Number crunching? Julia is competitive with C. Web servers? The JVM will handle it just fine. Microcontrollers? For what I do Lua+NodeMCU or MicroPython does everything I need it to. Reasonably fast command line application? Go's got you covered.
When I do use C in 2024, I pretty much always cheat and use the Boehm GC, which is fast enough for whatever I need it for. I'm not smart enough to know if I handled pointers correctly, and I don't know that I want to spend the time to get smart enough.
Obviously systems C and manual memory management has a place in the driver and kernel world, and if you're genuinely good with it then my hat goes off to you, but I don't feel like it buys me enough today to use it much.
Primarily, I have determined that I really don't like dealing with manual memory management. For all the tasks I'm interested in, C's performance gains over a GC'd language are marginal at best. Number crunching? Julia is competitive with C. Web servers? The JVM will handle it just fine. Microcontrollers? For what I do Lua+NodeMCU or MicroPython does everything I need it to. Reasonably fast command line application? Go's got you covered.
When I do use C in 2024, I pretty much always cheat and use the Boehm GC, which is fast enough for whatever I need it for. I'm not smart enough to know if I handled pointers correctly, and I don't know that I want to spend the time to get smart enough.
Obviously systems C and manual memory management has a place in the driver and kernel world, and if you're genuinely good with it then my hat goes off to you, but I don't feel like it buys me enough today to use it much.