If it weren't for discovering C a little more than a decade ago, I probably would have never made it out of the disaster called "my 20's" alive (or at least with an intact liver..). No, seriously. C was something I did for entertainment to PIC's and ATMEL's in between benders, while my degenerate friends would all wonder where the hell I'd disappear to for weeks. Would usually return with some weird shit to show off, like my own mini floppotron..

Never really thought I'd be doing C on a regular basis as part of my job, it just happened that way. Started at the bottom as an assembler on the factory floor at a small company. They outsourced their coding to some dude, who doesn't get things done in a timely fashion and his code is always riddled with bugs. Started writing code for the company on my own time at home, filling in some of the smaller gaps I could manage to fill, brought my work straight to the big cheese. Eventually, the big cheese handed the code I've been writing to the engineers for inspection. Soon thereafter, I was offered a position in engineering and salary instantly doubled on the spot.

Wouldn't have nearly the amount of prosperity I have today, if it weren't for all of that "disappearing for weeks" to pick up C for fun.

C probably saved my life.

hugely influential

I mean. Like the basis of literally everything that exists in any meaningful computer science programming today. So yes.

e;

For one, Unix is written in C. Originally written in assembly, the Unix kernel was rewritten in C back in 1973.

And there's why. It functions as a meaningful and understandable medium between assembly and human. Humans can and as evidenced: could, program in assembly. But it's not good code. Like ever.

Most of them (DB management systems) have since been rewritten in C++, but that’s also a direct descendant of C.