> you (also) need a real language to cement your understanding of the subject.

That's why I'd like to use a language that I already know instead of learning a new one while also learning new material.

Well you can. If you understand the algorithm you can write it in any language you know. Additionally, C is at basic level just loops, conditionals and function calls so it will be easy to translate from it if you need to. And then there are other books using other languages out there and people can choose.

It is also manual memory management, lack of generics, of polymorphism, and what not else. Even C++ would be a better choice.

Basic C is not that hard. Probably one of the easiest languages to get into.

Sure, but it’s a hard language to write good code in.