The simplicity of C relative to Rust is an illusion in the sense that the main thing that makes Rust feel difficult at first ("fighting the borrow checker") rel

The simplicity of C relative to Rust is an illusion in the sense that the main thing that makes Rust feel difficult at first ("fighting the borrow checker") relates to a concern that's relevant to C (allocation lifetimes), but in the case of C the burden of dealing with the issue is on the programmer and not on the compiler.