In message , at 11:20:49 on Sun, 15 Jan
2017, tim... remarked:
The "whole new way of working" (which was probably coming in when you
started your career) was to program in high level languages rather
than assembler.

Thus it doesn't matter whether you know how to optimise assembler
routines on a pipelined TTL mainframe but people suspect you might
not be able to readily do the same on an 8086; having mastered C (or
whatever) that skill is indeed portable to any computer with a decent
C compiler.

All my working experience post dates assembler

I wrote high level code in a variety of languages

BCPL, RTL/2, Coral 66, PL/M and even some Fortran XX (was it 77? CBA to
check) (FTAOD each language does not represent a new employer).

You are describing a halfway house, where employers looking to fill a
vacancy for a Coral 66 programmer will be wanting to see that on their
CV, and not have to enquire how long they think that programmer would
take to 'convert' from BCPL. During that period you probably would have
to find an employer who was looking for a language had you could
demonstrate existing proficiency in.

Ahead of, as you rightly say, C becoming the market leader by a country
mile.
--
Roland Perry