Anecdotally I personally have talked to several people in the last few years who do things like write guidance systems for rockets. My limited sample frequently either worked in C or (a limited subset of) C++. Albeit with a variety of tooling on top to automatically test and catch a variety of kinds of common flaws.
So as weird as this may seem to you, that mindset is applicable much more recently than you might expect.
Most of them do use C due to talent and tooling available. They often subset it. They're also very careful. A small niche of the industry use Ada or embedded Java. A recent trend is toward model-driven develooment with tools such as Simulink, Stateflow, and Esterel SCADE.
So as weird as this may seem to you, that mindset is applicable much more recently than you might expect.