I find C easier to understand than the algebra of other languages such as Haskell, Ocaml, Rust because of how C statements correspond to assembly.
Memory is just a big grid of numbered locations and computing is logistics between grid locations. Execution is transition between memory locations.
LEAQ or "&" (C addressof) is an address calculation or LEAQ for one of those grid locations.
True in the 80s maybe. Not remotely true now.
objdump -b binary -Matt,x86-64 -D main.bin -m i386 ;
You can work that the assembly implements the semantics of C's virtual machine model and it is this that I find easier to understand than some algebraic systems. I kind of think of struct->ptrarray[indx]->struct.something corresponds to the calculation of ultimately a single memory address even if there is various shift lefts or adds or ors.
Java has its template interpreter which is interesting to read about and there is copy and patch JIT compilers.
https://godbolt.org/z/hjW4T934q
And that capability is not remotely unique to C - look at the list of languages Godbolt supports! Not all of them support linking source code to assembly but a large number do: C++, Rust, Zig, Ada, even Dart.
Sun's Forte Pro was one of the first IDEs to have such capability for Java.