Was that "The C Programming Language"? I learned C from that after a bit of C++ and it made everything make so much sense. C is refreshingly simple.

I’ve heard templates are a thing of note when it comes to complications but not sure

It's funny because that is the one feature I really wish C had, I can live without member functions but templates or even a good generics system would be great. I did some C# with MonoGame and FNA. Language has gotten better as of late but idk about performance, way better than VB.