I prefer C. If I want some more language sugar or safer constructs, I am finding Rust better. If you want "high performance, high reliability, small footprint, low energy consumption" it's pretty hard to beat assembly, but you lose portability to other architectures. Honestly, that's why I don't C go any where. However, I see C++ being superseded, by other languages eventually. Yet that's not going to happen quick because C++ does have a lot code written out there. Giving it a large historical inertia.