In some subtle way C was already "destroyed" with the introduction of C89. The K&R C had simplicity and beauty to it. Include files were small as they only contained the essential stuff (mostly definitions of structs). UNIX version 7 - the last "true" edition of UNIX - including its entire userspace - was still written in it. X Window system was written in it. Vi was written in it. Now all people do is complain.
Amen, brother! For a language that has been so supremely successful in the "real world", i simply don't understand the HN crowd's disdain for it.
As an aside, "printf format strings" are actually a DSL and hence the complexity. In their book, The Practice of Programming Kernighan & Pike actually show how to implement something similar for Network Packet encoding/decoding. It is quite neat and validates the power of this approach.
