>>41624687
C isn't “fun” or low-level mastery. It's a 1970s compromise between assembler and what compilers barely could do back then.
C is just an emulation of the old PDP-11 memory management and operation, it doesn't reflect moden CPU functioning.
https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479
What happens when you overflow an integer in x86? It wraps around. What happens when you overflow a signed integer in C?
You don't “learn computers” by writing C. You learn how to manually emulate what a modern compiler or runtime already does automatically if it was a PDP-11.
There's no safety net. Every string function (strcpy, strcat, strlen, etc.) is a ticking buffer overflow. The language has zero concept of array bounds, object lifetime, or valid pointer provenance. Even reading one byte past the null terminator is literally undefined behavior.
You want to concatenate “He” + “llo”? Off-by-one errors, missing terminators, uninitialized memory, and potential segfaults just because you trusted malloc and forgot to add one for \0.
Modern C compilers will happily optimize your code into oblivion because the standard explicitly allows UB to nuke your entire program's semantics. C is archaic. You're fighting the language, the standard, and your CPU's memory model simultaneously. The only people calling it “fun” are mistaking masochism for enlightenment.
C is "close to the metal" because is has grown as a cancer, and too much has been built around it to begin changing everything, lest the house of cards collapses. it's the only reason for it's compatiblity. Modern CPUs are just forced to provide a C emulation layer.
