C doesn't have double star either (in fact double star means double dereferencing).
YMMV or course, but distinction between a low-level language like C, and a higher-level one that can support exponentiation, matrix multiplication, thread spawning etc. as a first-class language construct is as clear to me as the difference between shell and non-shell.
C has an “exponentiation operator”, used in literals where you’d expect exponentiation in other languages: <<. (Sure, it’s limited to raising things to powers of 2, but when would you ever need to raise something to a non-power-of-2? :P)
YMMV or course, but distinction between a low-level language like C, and a higher-level one that can support exponentiation, matrix multiplication, thread spawning etc. as a first-class language construct is as clear to me as the difference between shell and non-shell.