I don't want C to grow any more. I've been a C programmer for a long time, the vast majority of my day-to-day work is still in a C codebase, and I expect to continue working in C for a while yet. Nonetheless, its time has passed. It will be around for a while, just like FORTRAN and COBOL are, but there's no good reason for new code to be written at that poor level of abstraction. Even for systems software - what I write - there are always better choices that provide higher-level data and control structures. They variously use garbage collection, reference counting, ownership rules, or whatever you call that hot mess C++ has. Writing safe, secure C code is certainly possible, but it's too much unnecessary work - especially in the concurrent and/or parallel world that any non-trivial code has to live in nowadays.

That said, I really wish proponents of other languages would get their stuff together about creating libraries that can be used from other languages. A library written in C can be used by anyone else. Many other languages are avid consumers of this functionality, many advertise it as a key feature, but very few return the favor by producing reusable code. The industry doesn't need such Balkanization. If you're one of the very many people who look down their noses at C and want to get rid of it, do your part.

(originally written as a comment on Hacker News)