Programming language question

OK, so not exactly steampunk, but I've had good results getting answers from other steampunks in the areas of cryptography, botany, and entomology, so I'm giving this a try.

For a good 30+ years, I have been completely unable to understand how loops and conditionals work in the C programming language. This is becoming a major issue for me, since more and more modern languages (as used for things like Arduino) use the C conventions. And I am not alone in my problem with this. It seems that anyone who has learned programming with languages like BASIC, or FORTRAN has the same issue. They all just find some work around for it. I generally just steal code from another program, and futz with it until it does what I want, but that really bothers me! I've consulted books, online references, and living human beings, and none of them can explain these things to me in a way that I understand. It seems like if you didn't "grow up" with C, it is incomprehensible! So, does anyone know what I'm talking about? And if you do, do you have any idea where/how I might find a way to grasp these concepts? Or maybe where I can find the actual Arduino microprocessor instruction set, and an editor/assembler for it? I have no problems with machine language. I hate not really understanding something that I have to deal with.

(Point of clarification: It isn't enough for me to know that entering a statement a certain way will produce a given result. I have to understand WHY it does this, or I'm just being some kind of programming parrot! RAWK!)

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