Aware of what, though? And for what purpose? Being aware of the engine is not the same as being aware of your surroundings and hazard perception. In fact you can watch this in learners; at a junction which demands lots of traffic observation they make errors in moving off, or (more dangerously) fluff a gearchange while driving along and then look down or spend a few seconds panicking and recovering during which they might miss something happening in front of the car.
The programming language equivalent is clearly memory management. Yes, you can make it more efficient if you do your own allocation - but you have to get it right every time, and C offers you very little help to do this. C++ offers more, and Rust holds out the prospect of getting it right provided you can understand and fix all the compile-time errors. If memory allocation isn't critical to what you're doing this is a distraction that consumes time and effort to no result.
The programming language equivalent is clearly memory management. Yes, you can make it more efficient if you do your own allocation - but you have to get it right every time, and C offers you very little help to do this. C++ offers more, and Rust holds out the prospect of getting it right provided you can understand and fix all the compile-time errors. If memory allocation isn't critical to what you're doing this is a distraction that consumes time and effort to no result.