C is a small language which fails even at the most basic abstractions (you can’t really create a safe and ergonomic “zero-overhead” generic vector type). Due to the inherent complexity of low-level programming, expressive languages in this niche (C++, Rust) has to be reasonably complex just for this reason alone.

Zig is an interesting “exception” due to its strong compile-time metaprogramming capabilites, resulting in a small, but quite expressive language. But all 3 has a future. C is here to stay, but I really wouldn’t start any new project in it.