Requiem for C

For nearly five decades, it's been C. Regardless of what else has been tried, the new language paradigms that have been explored, the new semantics that have been probed, C was at the heart of the successes. C++, Java, C#, Ruby, all took their cue from C. Indeed C's dominance has been so great that years ago Dick Gabriel was moved to declare that C was the last programming language. But all things end, and so it is for C. It's ascendancy has passed, it's demise is accelerating, and the end is near. Alas, for C, we knew it well.