I do think C is a very useful programming language to learn. Certainly, concepts like memory and pointers can be crucial knowledge. But I disagree that C needs to be a programmer's first language. I've seen plenty of programmers who started out with Python or Java, then later went on to learn C and were none the worse. I myself started out with Visual Basic. Just because you didn't start out with C doesn't mean you can't subsequently learn it and low-level concepts.