Why should we bother with such an "old-fashioned" language? Haven't Python and Ruby and Java and... replaced C? And it's so hard to use!
C: "All the speed of assembly, with all the ease of use of
assembly."
But an operating system needs to have direct access
to memory, device drivers, etc. C delivers that in a
structured language.
Compare:
if(i > j)
{
z = 1;
}
else
{
z = 0;
}
...
cmp i, j
jne set_zero
mov z, 1
jump continue
set_zero: mov z, 0
continue: ...