Umm, guess you didn't read my request. When I said I grew up on Stevens and The Unix programming environment, I thought it implied that I knew C and as a veteran Linux developer IMHO, suggesting the Gnu autotools doc..man gcc (seriously??) is the worst answer to my question. One can learn application programming on Linux without first having to read through the entire man pages of the tools.

"this ain't Windows land where we have VB, and other high level beginner lanagues."

You say that like it's a good thing. What's wrong with high level languages that are easy to use? Progress is defined by making complicated tasks easier. I'm guessing the ASM guys used to say the same thing about C/C++ users.

Actually you don't really need C. There is plenty of stuff in Python and Perl. Golang also has a ton of wrappers, and I'd consider that a pretty easy language.

Instead you'll have to contend with userland tools written by amateurs that choose to ignore POSIX standards.