I wound up going back to C in a big way about five years ago when I embarked on Scheme for Max, an extension to Max/MSP that lets you use s7 Scheme in the Max environment. Max has a C SDK, and s7 is written in 100% ANSI C. (Max also has C++ SKD, but is far less comprehensive with far fewer examples and docs).

I was, coming from being mostly a highlevel language coder, suprised at how much I like working in this combo.

Low level stuff -> raw C. High level stuff -> Scheme, but written such that I can drop into C or move functions into C very easily. (The s7 FFI is dead simple).

It's just really nice in ways that are hard to articulate. They are both so minimal that I know what's going on all the time. I now use the combo in other places too (ie WASM). It really forces one to think about architecture in what I think is a good way. YMMV of course!