The relation is in the low level nature of the language; I guess in the same ballpark there are languages like D or Zig. > C is an extremely simple language.

The relation is in the low level nature of the language; I guess in the same ballpark there are languages like D or Zig. > C is an extremely simple language. It could be, however considering a language complexity in isolation is misleading. C shifts the memory management correctness to the user, which adds significant operational complexity. Every once in a while somebody writes that 6502 assembly is extremely simple. Well, yeah, but try to do a division. > most of that complexity could have been avoided with a better language design Can you elaborate the specifics? I do program in Rust, and most of the complexity is due to two factors - memory management (which causes a significant proliferation of types, for starters) and low-level control (which requires extra complexity; stupid example: stack vs. heap allocation). None of them can be avoided, without shifting the level of the language (which is certainly fair; if one doesn't need lower level control, there are other languages which can be more developer-efficient).