Just to add some context: the fascination I describe with C is from the perspective of a 15 year old learning to write his first real tool.

And, in fact, I knew nothing else at the time. What I essentially describe in the post is a learning process – not the events of a professional developer making a reasond choice of the best language to use for a particular problem.

Simplicity is something I've come to appreciate exactly because of such experiences early in my career.