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Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

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Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

#31

Post by doki_pen »

I learned C as my first language when I was young. I would never say that I was good at it. I've written a few Ruby extensions in C, but nothing I would be proud to show people. I've also hacked a few Linux drivers, but nothing to write home about. Very trivial stuff like adding vendorIds or applying patches that required some work.

I like C, but I haven't invested much time in it because it seems that the job market isn't that good for C programmers. Maybe I'm completely mistaken, but it seems like I couldn't hope to compete with a lot of the guys who have been doing it for 10+ years. I wouldn't even feel comfortable applying for a position that was primarily C.

That said, if someone offered me a job that was primarily C I wouldn't definitely consider it. And I'm sure if they have the patients, I would end up being a good team member. But web development is where my experience lies and it is where I will continue to pursue jobs. As a self taught programmer, the barrier to entry with web development seemed much lower when I was starting out. Again, that could be my own misconception.

Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

#33

Post by javanix »

I loved C when I was in college. Unfortunately, the university I attended had a CS department that required both a lot of time, and Java for most coursework, so I didn't get to do it enough. Hence, applying for jobs with C in mind wasn't really an option unless I could impress upon someone my desire to learn it.

Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

#34

Post by Jach »

My college teaches nothing but C, C++, and Assembly. (Okay, they do have an Actionscript class for designers and encourage messing with Lua...) Fortunately for me I've drunk the high-level kool-aid in web design and application dev for a long time, have read about half of SICP, and so I really prefer Python (or another high level language) over C or C++. But I don't mind C... c89 bugs me with its quirks (I really like "for(int i = 0;)", c99 is fairly enjoyable, more so than C++. C++ is psychotic; I really don't know why you would start a new project in that language...

In my side Python projects, if I need speed, I'll write that part in C and compile it to an SO and call it from Python. Nice and painless, easy to port by just compiling 32-bit, 64-bit, dlls and if I care Mac's thing, more enjoyable than pseudo-pythonic libs like pyrex.

I'd suggest looking for computer engineering students if you want people that know C. I'm in the CE program here, but it's almost as much CS as it is CE.

Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

#35

Post by icco »

I'm a computer science student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Our department is very focused on C, and we do a lot of embeded and Operating Systems level C. I love it as a language, and I think that is partially due to the amount we use it in our classes.

Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

#36

Post by elbenshira »

I'm a CS student. Do I enjoy C? Yes, I enjoy C much more than C++ or x86. But why would I use C when Python or Java will suffice for most things? Of course, I pulled out C for OS and C++ for graphics and robotics, but most of what I do does not require being this close to the hardware.

I find C to be an elegant language. But we have so many other things to worry about, like the algorithms, data structures, security, concurrency, etc. If a language can help me with things like memory leaking and segfaults, then of course I'll go with that language over C. I have so many other things to focus on.

Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

#37

Post by InclinedPlane »

Part of the problem is that colleges don't think of software engineering as important, because it's all about "computer science" (not that they teach that very well either). The result is that students end up missing out on a lot of important skills necessary for programming effectively. Skills that are more necessary in C because it's filled with so many different ways to cut off your own arms and legs if you aren't careful. If schools taught better practices and conventions to students they'd probably be plenty happy with C.

Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

#39

Post by vishaldpatel »

I liked C! =). I finished my undergrad in 2006 - also went to community college before finishing my degree. I learned C in community college - it was a prerequisite to all other programing classes (unlike university, where I wrote all my algorithms assignments in python).

We also learned C# later on in college, and there was always this, "this new thing is nice and shiny but C rocks" feeling among a lot of people in my class.

Also, most of the people (since it was community college) weren't your typical, "I've always wanted to be a computer programmer/scientist/engineer" types.

Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?

#40

Post by jbarham »

Even when I studied CS in the mid-90's at the University of Toronto, taking a course in C programming was optional, either as part of a survey of languages course, or in the upper level OS courses where C is still the obvious choice.

Otherwise, writing C programs has been called a "historical reenactment" (http://research.swtch.com/2008/03/rotating-hashes.html) and I think for most working programmers this is accurate.

It helps to know some C or C++ if you're using scripting languages like Python or Ruby in order to wrap 3rd party C libraries, but wrapper generators like SWIG will do 99% of the work for you, and what little C code you might have to write by hand doesn't need to be particularly fluent or idiomatic.

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