I'm an old scientist that did lots of computer simulations that ate up many many cpu cycles. I started with BASIC in the 70s, then learned machine language, and used Fortran throughout the 80s. My simulation programs ran for 24 hours or more. Once I learned C, the concepts of structures and pointers were tremendously useful for storing and passing information. I don't believe any other language could be as efficient when program run times are measured in hours.