I haven't used C professionally in a long, long time, but I naturally gravitate to it when doing technical interviews.
One of the reasons, I think, is that the language itself is "small" enough you can actually hold most of it in your head.
That, and for certain problems it gives you the opportunity to demonstrate understanding of things like pointer arithmetic that you wouldn't have if you used Java. I remember an interviewer at a Java shop being impressed a few years ago when I used C and pointers to reverse a string in place (I wasn't very comfortable with Java back then).
All that said, I'm getting old and cranky and whiteboard interviews are starting to get really annoying.
One of the reasons, I think, is that the language itself is "small" enough you can actually hold most of it in your head.
That, and for certain problems it gives you the opportunity to demonstrate understanding of things like pointer arithmetic that you wouldn't have if you used Java. I remember an interviewer at a Java shop being impressed a few years ago when I used C and pointers to reverse a string in place (I wasn't very comfortable with Java back then).
All that said, I'm getting old and cranky and whiteboard interviews are starting to get really annoying.