I personally do not believe that C is dead. There still is a need for a rather low level language, but it is loosing to C++ (the less OO part). The thing is that it is a tool and there are other tools available, use the proper tool for the job and C is not the proper tool for all jobs. If it comes to raw processing, think physics or numerics kernel, yes C is the way to go (not FORTRAN, mind you). But for rapidly develop the easy thing that tend to change, like business logic, don't mangle with such a hunk of language.