> It's a simple language with only a few concepts to learn

I mean by that logic, Assembly could be deem even simpler, yet writing OR reading programs in Assembly is absolutely not simple at all.

At the end of day, one has to write programs that solve (complicated) problems, and learning how to do that in C is difficult, thus the learning curve deemed higher when it comes to writing professional C.

I can guarantee you that writing professional Go or Java and writing correct programs in both takes way less effort than with C, for use cases that would make Go or Java viable.

Modern assembly language has a huge set of instructions, that make them hard to learn, but the concept is still easy to learn.

Many antique computers are simulated by SIMH. If you have the corresponding software, you can operate on your desktop a simulated computer's software development system. For example, DEC VAX (VMS or Unix) has a relatively simple and sane assembly language.

I think, learning a tiny bit of assembler, even if in an emulator, is very valuable to teach the basics.

C is indeed a very small language. But the expressive power of C for real-world problems brings a huge learning curve in terms of organization, tracking, and understanding.

Coming from python/js I found it to be high. Mostly because of the memory management/ making sure I call free correctly etc. In many cases where I would plow ahead in programming, with C I had to stop and would feel dread. A lifesaver for me was using C/C++ Repl environments where I could quickly prototype or sanity check things I was doing.

The trick is to just not use `malloc()` and `free()` unless absolutely necessary ;)

> The trick is to just not use `malloc()` and `free()` unless absolutely necessary ;)

The problem is that often C programmers have to deal with API and libraries they didn't write themselves to solve their problems, thus are forced to use constructors and destructors even when they don't want to.