Why C isn't anything special

Slashdot had an article commenting about the Top 10 Dead (or Dying) Computer skills article in Computerworld. It's little surprise that no one is paying for Cobol skills. People have had 7 years to get rid of Cobol and their mainframes, and those who aren't are planning to train in-house anyway.

I am just surprised that people are surprised that no one is paying a premium for C skills. My first CS class was a FORTRAN and C class (programming for Engineers), and my first "real" CS class was Pascal. After the first classes, we didn't use anything but C or C++ for any serious projects. It wasn't until I started to leave that Java was even introduced.

Programming C is like a carpender hammering nails: some things should just come standard. No programmer in 2007 should NOT know C.