I agree with the point about C. Most of my class assignments have to be programmed in C/C++ or Java. Out of those three, I usually end up choosing C, because it is not nearly as weighed down with syntax soup as Java and C++ are. So I don't really think of C as being idiosyncratic, either. It is somewhat close to the hardware, and I can't really think of much of anything that is in there without good reason.