I'm familiar with the argument.
A functional c compiler on a platform is one of the oldest, basest assumptions that package maintainers make. This is a good thing for open source in general and not something that should get tossed aside lightly.
A functional C compiler on the platform means that your software is in the realm of possible and that somebody interested enough might help maintain it.
The alternative presented is "lol screw you". Not by these thoughtful posts, but if you look at the sentiment of the threads like when this happened in pyca/cryptography.