Linus Torvalds famously said the same exact thing whilst bashing C++ (instead of Ruby as Zed does here).
C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot
of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much
easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if
the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out,
that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.
People should program in C because some people programing in ruby are morons ? Great argument ...
I really don't see any valid argument why knowing C is such an enlightening experience (I would argue it is not).