I think the biggest point where C is more "how the computer works" vs. a lot of languages is when you write an allocator. I've noticed in, say, an interview co

I think the biggest point where C is more "how the computer works" vs. a lot of languages is when you write an allocator. I've noticed in, say, an interview context, that people without a lot of C experience have a lot of trouble reasoning about how an allocator might work, or where memory comes from, or even that some constructs in their preferred language result in memory allocation. With C you can't hide these details. Yes there are abstractions beneath you, both in software (your OS has set up the MMU) and hardware (cache, out of order execution) and also in the C standard itself (assumptions about pointer types, the precise meaning of the stack). This doesn't take away from the point that reasoning about allocations is more of a thing.