I can't see how this can be a good thing. If C is that bad at managing complexity (and complexity doesn't only arise from bad design choices, some problems are

I can't see how this can be a good thing. If C is that bad at managing complexity (and complexity doesn't only arise from bad design choices, some problems are inherently complex) then it should be used as rarely as possible, period. It's not about idealism, it's about ill-placed, almost comical elitism ("C is a low-level-hacker language and only real programmers use it" while a 3rd grader could understand pointer arithmetic) to the point of rather spending 5 days writing bug-ridden code in C instead of 5 minutes in whatever else, just because it's the right way. It's ridiculous.