Put another way, while the C language has evolved, you can still compile C code written several decades ago using modern tool chains with an excellent chance of having it work immediately or at worst needing some very minor changes.
It’s depressing that some of the comments in today’s discussion are praising Clojure because code often still works after 5 years. Obviously that is itself a good thing, but is only 5 years now a remarkably long time for code to still work?