Having HLL features, staying as close to the metal as he could (Steve M. Taylor), C is stuck somewhere in middle of HLL and asm.

While this is hailed as "fast written but efficently compiled"; I say rather "unreadability of asm (with the same temptation to do tricks) + inefficiency of HLLs".

Well, and read the second sentence of Preface of K&R's C Programming Language book.

Unfortunately, C became the modern computer latin - a fact to be respected.

And, as an another fact, being "close to silicon", is more suitable for microcontrollers than HLLs.

Jan Waclawek

PS. An analogy: C is like English, with different accents where first, it has another peculiarities in countries where it is second language; but generally, everywhere spoken. Asm are the languages of nations - each different, with distinct groups. Latin as a was-language of the well educated = FORTRAN. BASIC - perhaps Pidgin. HLLs - ehm - esperanto?
PS2: A typo in midnight may perhaps be forgiven... "a" is close to "s"...