>>30
What's the problem with simple pointer arithmetics? That's one of the advantages of C. Why do you want bound checking? That's for Basic kids. Proper programs don't require to waste time bound checking; however, if you want that, you can overload operator[] , something you can't dream of doing in Java.
Oh, I see what you mean about others' code. But then again, if they are bad programmers who write buggy code, you shouldn't be so interested on using it. You should use more trusted libraries, or, at least, have a look at 5% of the code so you get a glimpse of how good it looks.
Perhaps bound checking is not so bad for Internet software, although you don't really want that done when you're coding low-level software. Remember C is the fastest thing ever (now that compilers will do a better job of pairing and optimizing than an assembly guru). You gotta keep it the fastest thing ever; no point in having a bunch of slower languages and no lower level better performing language.
>>31
What's killing C is the lack of a decent standard library. They went for stdin/stdout only, with a couple very crappy date and string functions. If it had a strong, comprehensive standard library, with proper strings and Unicode support, etc., it would be even more popular than it is. Think a standard library as powerful as Java's, only not a piece of OO shit like Java's.