> pretty much unreadable

I disagree. Both seem perfectly readable, assuming you know their preferred coding styles. As a non-C programmer, I absolutely despise running into #ifndef SOME_OBSCURE_NAME and `while (n) { if (g) {` but C (and in the latter case Go) programmers seem to love that style.

Comparing a bunch of small, barely integrated command line programs to a UI + calendar widget doesn't seem "of similar complexity" to me. Looking at a C clock widget (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/xclock/-/blob/master...) the difference seems pretty minimal to me. Of course, the XClock code doesn't deal with calendars, so you have to imagine the extra UI code for that too.