[tmewett]

>C does a wonderful job of looking like a high level language but it was designed to do low level stuff. There is an implicit assumption, to my mind, that the user has a deeper understanding of what is behind the "curtain" that is created by the compiler.

Lots of people say this, indeed several comments here talk about learning assembly before C being beneficial.

I actually think this is not true, today. In its original incarnation C may have mapped closely to instructions, but the details of e.g. x86 are IMO neither necessary nor particularly useful knowledge. Knowing what memory is like and how stuff is laid out is enough.

C is not just a super-thin layer to the bare metal. By "integers are cursed," I mean exactly that: C integers are cursed. The arithmetic behaviours that standard C defines for integers are error-prone and in many cases undefined. C is a layer and it has its own behaviour, it doesn't just expose your CPU.