This is probably the most important lesson I learned when I started doing kernel and firmware work - the Linux kernel is, fundamentally, just a C program - albeit quite a complex one where you don't have the standard library and you see "volatile __asm__" more than you'd like to, but it's still just a big C program.

I'd absolutely encourage anyone with some C background to go and write themselves a "hello world" Linux kernel module to go convince themselves of this.