Two types of files, compiler directives, pointers, malloc and friends, are you really sure about that? Any non-trivial C program will use these, on TOP of the basic syntax that first timers have to learn.
There is a reason it is usually not taught as a first language, and Java, Python, C# or even Assembly are.
Java is taught a lot, not because it's better. But because once you learn Java, all you know how to do, is teach Java. Python is taught early because it's fun/easy, not because it's the best.
No one teaches ASM first anymore, what did you mean by saying asm is one of the first taught languages. (Maybe in some embedded systems, but generally that's not first, not by any reasonable definition.)
I think thd more accurate sentence would be "know exactly what the computer is doing". Lots of languages have clear and simple semantics that let you understand what your program will do. This is not the case for C though. The only way to understand what a C program does is to have a very complete mental model of the low level computer architecture, memory layouts, call stack organization and so on (aka knowing what the computer does). That is actually lot to go through for a first introductory course (hence why they are making a restricted language to teach before jumping to full C)
Python has similar arguments. It's a clean but powerful language that gets out of the way of learning basic programming, data structures, and such.
> But because once you learn Java, all you know how to do, is teach Java.
Why is that true for Java or Python, but not for other languages?
It's true about a lot of languages. But C isn't one of them. You can do a lot with C, you can do almost as much with with python and a lot faster as well. I can enumerate more, but those are the only two relevant ones.
With Java, you can get a job where job performance is measured in LOC.