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Every time I hear this argument, it's always from a programmer who never did much C. As a beginner, it sucks. Once you learn it, things are 100x better.
What's absolutely hilarious to me is the fact that nine times out of ten I can write programs just as fast as a Python/Ruby programmer and often times faster. And of course I end up with a program that runs 50x faster and uses 3x less memory. Manual memory management can be a pain, but it usually isn't if your program is well designed and uses proper data structures.
Time for a funny anecdote. I have a friend who is big into Java. He bashes C all the time for lacking GC. For shits and giggles I ported a program he wrote in Java to C but I wrote it in such a way so that none of the memory allocated was freed. All the memory was leaked and guess what? It STILL used less memory than the Java program because of how bloated the JVM is. It's like amputating your legs and bragging to your able-bodied friends about how you never get leg cramps or sore ankles.