The Bottom Line
In the end, C is a much more efficient language than many of its peers. However, it doesn't work well when prototyping is involved.
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A balancing act
My approach is to use interpreted languages like Python, R, Octave/Matlab, etc., for prototyping—that is, for exploring small amounts of data, for developing an approach, and algorithms, for analyzing data, and for generating graphics.
For computationally heavy tasks, simulations, or a series of operations that are time-consuming, I think about implementing them in C.
Using interpreted languages for prototyping and C for performance is a sweet spot that helps balance the development speed with the performance.
On the practical side, the nature of C makes it optimal for many processing-based applications:
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