> Because contrary to urban myths, C is a normal high level language like everything else.

It's a myth that this is a myth.

Have you ever worked with newbies learning C?

These students split pretty hard into two camps (of course there are oddball exceptions): those who knew assembly and find C easy, and those who didn't and struggle with pointers until they finally get it (some, never do).

Of the mainstream languages, C is the only one where understanding and dealing with direct memory access is a fundamental requirement if you're going to get anything done.

The myth argument is that C code doesn't directly translate into the execution flow on the CPU. No, of course it doesn't. That's not the point.

What people mean when they say C is lower level than most mainstream languages is because it forces you to deal with details most other languages paper over.

Yes, multiple languages have some way of achieving this kind of memory access, but except from C, it is considered an esoteric edge case that mostly nobody needs.