Add this to the fact that the vast majority of libc functions are either obsolete or simply designed for another era, and it can become a quite daunting feat trying to write C code without shooting yourself in the face. C++ isn't in a great position either (the whole std::locale fiasco is very similar), but at least the standards since C++11 have had the guts to actually attempt fixing the warts instead of simply ignoring problems altogether.

All C standards since C99 have been ugly mishmashes of C++ features and bad ideas, one after another. What everyone was clearly asking them was to just copy-paste stuff from POSIX, and instead they came up with stupid nonsense like VLA or things nobody uses, like the [static N] syntax for arrays. I also still find absurd someone thought it was a good idea to add stuff as critical as threads.h without asking implementers first if they liked it (fun fact no one did).

What I think is a massive indicator of how much disconnected they are from reality is the "memory safe string handling" they added in C11 with those crappy *_s functions, which a. were just annoyingly slightly different from what POSIX and Win32 had and b. used a totally lunatic error reporting system based on callbacks and `set_constraint_handler_s()` - because obviously when a call to memset_s() fails I totally want a random function to run, for what for I still don't understand after 9 years. People just wanted the BSD's _l functions, and they gave them a memcpy() that called a random callback. No wonder C2X just wants to quietly pretend these abominations nobody ever implemented never happened.

What no one has ever had enough guts to admit is that 1. C strings, i.e. null-terminated strings, were a terrible mistake and 2. that C badly needs a new string library, or at least something that people can use without risking leaking their whole address space by accident.