There exists an enormous body body of reliable and fast code written in "C" (e.g. the Linux kernel). I've been coding in C for 27 years, C++ for 20. I think the idea that a language can permit only useful work to occur is naive. In order to code well, the programmer must understand how the computer works, and have a great deal of focus. If you have those, "helpful" languages only seem to get in the way.