C syntactically is straight forward, but conceptually may be harder than Rust. You’re exposed to the bare computer (memory management, etc) far more than with a GC language or even Rust arguably, at least for simple programs.

Towards deployment is even harder. You can very easily end up writing exploitable, unsafe code in C.

If I were a Python programmer with little knowledge about how a computer works, I’d much prefer Go or Rust (in that order) to C.

I do sympathize with the parent: The language itself might not be that difficult but you also have to factor in the entire ecosystem. What's the modern way to a build a GUI application in C? What's the recommended way to build a CLI, short of writing your own arg parser? How do you handle Unicode? How do you manage dependencies, short of vendoring them? Etc.

THe thing is, if one is an expert it is incredibly difficult to understand the beginner perspective. Here is one attempt:

C is simpler than Rust, but C is also _much_ simpler than Python. If I solve a problem in Python I have a good standard library of data types, and I use concepts like classes, iterators, generators, closures, etc... constantly. So if I move to Rust, I have access to the similar high-level tools, I just have to learn a few additional concepts for ressource management.

In comaprison, C looks a lot more alien from that perspective. Even starting with including library code from elsewhere.

Writing hello world in C is easy. Writing complex software without memory issues and vulnerability is pretty hard.

Agreed, I do bash C a lot, and it has plenty of issues, but hardly a monster that a mythological hero has to face.

And as tip for pointers, regardless of the programming language, pen and paper, drawing boxes and arrows, are great learning tools.