Well, you could also say that gcc is a 10-megabyte shim for the GNU assembler and would prefer to code each and all your programs in assembly language. However at some point you would probably get bored computing the stack offsets manually each time and would let the C compiler do it for you, while you think about more high-level problems. Same with debugging. GDB itself is cool for small simple projects, but once your project becomes large enough, you would probably just enjoy clicking on a line to make a breakpoint and hovering your mouse over an expression to see itsvalue rather than typing the line numbers and variable names manually each time and keeping it the back of your mind where was the breakpoint #42...

And, BTW, if you're a student, it's only a half of the $99 for you...