Seriously, is anyone still doing any real development in C besides
kernel programming and embedded world?? Maybe I was living under a
rock, but I always had an impression that the industry moved to C++ in
the late 90s and stayed with it ever since.
Hardly, in my 45+ years, I have seen way more C projects than C++. The C projects tended to last longer, have a more profound impact and many are still being developed. I've been at Intel for the last qtr of my career and without a doubt, C is the #1 language in use internally, with C++ probably #2. Most of our work is actually in user space, although obviously we do a great deal of low-level work. The Intel compilers are a mix of both languages. That said, as we move to more LLVM work (we actually have the largest number of paid LLVM developers ).
Archer is a large HPC site in the UK. Many supercomputer centers off similar stats, but I often point to Archer because it easy to get an understanding of what programming languages are used for codes that are actually used in day-to-day production.
That said, I personally am the most excited about Go theses day, but I'm also thinking Rust looks pretty interesting, but my experience with both compared to C is extremely nominal. Neither language is used for anything in production in our world at this point.
Clem