> C has destroyed our ability to advance the state of the art in automatic optimization, automatic parallelization, automatic mapping of a high-level language to the machine.

So C caused everybody to get a lobotomy? C caused all the existing literature to disappear? How did C do any such thing as this quote is saying?

The only way the quote makes any sense is if C made people to decide that automatic optimization, automatic parallelization, and automatic mapping of a high-level language to the machine were not actually the direction that we should be going in. I deeply suspect the "We're on the right path; all those others are fools who have been led into temptation" view of the history of computing. Just because of how comforting it is to those on the minority path, it is suspect.