My background is mainly in Python and Java. I am currently considering C, Go or Rust. Which should I go with and why?
Thanks.
Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#2Depends a bit what you want out of it. C for fundamentals, Go for fast web serving, Rust for stuff that's memory safe?
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#3Depends a bit what you want out of it. C for fundamentals, Go for fast web serving, Rust for stuff that's memory safe?
C++ for fundamentals plus RAII?
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#4Depends a bit what you want out of it. C for fundamentals, Go for fast web serving, Rust for stuff that's memory safe?
Honestly, I have no projects or specific uses for these languages. Rather, I am treating it as a tool for learning and to experience low level programming.
I might make some kind of machine learning application in it later down the line though.
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#5Why not step off the beaten path and try a language that is safer than Rust, has a better concurrency story than Go, performance similar to C (but without as many ways to shoot yourself in the foot)?
Ada.
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#6Pick C or C++. There is a huge amount of code out there in these languages and learning one of them will open the door to you being able to benefit / learn from it.
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#7C and Go are quite small languages. I love C for its history and low-level view of the machine. It's worthwhile learning C I think, as a way to understand part of the history of programming. However it makes it time consuming to program even simple things. Go is more productive, with maps, strings and a garbage collector.
C++ and Rust are both relatively complex. If you have aspirations to working on large native projects, then C++ might be the way, with Rust becoming more prevalent in the future.
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#8Depends a bit what you want out of it. C for fundamentals, Go for fast web serving, Rust for stuff that's memory safe?
Honestly, I have no projects or specific uses for these languages. Rather, I am treating it as a tool for learning and to experience low level programming. I might make some kind of machine learning application in it later down the line though.
The usual recommendation "for learning and to experience low level programming" would be C. See this for example http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html
although that was written before Go and Rust.
Also if you're mucking about with machine learning a lot of the libraries seem to be in C or C++. I played about a bit with computer vision using Python but sometimes the Python bindings don't work or don't exist and I was thinking it would be easier to just call the things from the C/C++ they are written in.
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#9Depends a bit what you want out of it. C for fundamentals, Go for fast web serving, Rust for stuff that's memory safe?
Honestly, I have no projects or specific uses for these languages. Rather, I am treating it as a tool for learning and to experience low level programming. I might make some kind of machine learning application in it later down the line though.
In that case, I would recommend Rust because it's just harder to learn than the other options.
Re: Ask HN: I want to learn a low-level, compiled language. What should I chose?
#10Learn C. Specifically learn pointers and memory management. Just these two concepts will give you a huge understanding of any other language.