Come to Virginia Tech. Our entire linux/unix user's group is C crazy, we have a resume CD, and most of us are pretty intelligent people.
Yeah I'm at VT as well and a member of VTLUUG. My last technical interview was primarily done in C.
Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
91–100 of 101 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#92Many universities now offer a course using the Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective book ( http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/index.html ). This is a fantastic book, focusing on nit-picky assembly and C-level work -- all the foundational stuff for an operating systems or compilers class, even if you never go on to one. Having TA'd this class the last few years, I find most students really enjoy it. In fact, I think most…
I'm guessing that the speed, convenience and ease of abstraction that a higher-level language like C++ or Java offers is a pull-factor for CS instructors. Apart from systems-level programming classes, of course.
Someone mentioned "Why C when higher-level languages will suffice?" and I thought that's pretty much spot on. In a data structures class, it seems easier not to have to debug cryptic core dumps and segmentation faults too often, especially since the focus is on algorithms. At least, that's the impression I got when speaking with TAs and professors.
Or perhaps there are less systems-level programming enthusiasts nowadays?
I took the class you TA'd, way back when the textbook was still a draft and absolutely loved it! As an EE guy, it was great to be able to get at the bits and bytes and really understand what it meant to be fetching, executing, branching to, jumping to instructions, allocating memory etc. The transition from assembly language to C was natural and I loved/hated every single core dump / segmentation fault that came with it. That class helped tremendously in getting me my first job, but I guess there are plenty of jobs that don't require working knowledge of C.
Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#93I am an EE student but with a lot of interest in CS . I personally am no big fan of C,despite the fact that most of the courses are in C . It is kind of cool when working on compilers or embedded systems but for anything else I would any day prefer something like Python or Haskell - the speed of development and the fun involved being the two main reasons.
Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#94Many universities now offer a course using the Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective book ( http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/index.html ). This is a fantastic book, focusing on nit-picky assembly and C-level work -- all the foundational stuff for an operating systems or compilers class, even if you never go on to one. Having TA'd this class the last few years, I find most students really enjoy it. In fact, I think most…
I'm also a TA for this class at my university, and I think it is excellent. In fact, I think many of our grad students would benefit from taking it - the course emphasizes understanding the whole system stack in ways that other courses (such as a classic OS course) do not. The bomb and buffer overflow labs are probably the most interesting to the HN community, but the shell project is what I consider the most importa…
is there a link to the labs code,tgz,web ?
Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#95I enjoyed it. Now i'm working for a web company and have lost touch with it. Really want to get back into it.
Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also a TA for this class at my university, and I think it is excellent. In fact, I think many of our grad students would benefit from taking it - the course emphasizes understanding the whole system stack in ways that other courses (such as a classic OS course) do not. The bomb and buffer overflow labs are probably the most interesting to the HN community, but the shell project is what I consider the most importa…
is there a link to the labs code,tgz,web ?
Current semester's offering: http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3214/fall2010/gback/
Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#97Did anyone ever enjoy writing C, especially data structures? Here is what I remember from college: ./program Segmentation fault.
C is one of the few languages in which data structures are really fun and challenging. Even C++ has STL where everything is ready for you...
Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#98Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#99Apparently most CS is taught in Java and Python these days, with one or two courses in algorithms or operating systems. There seems to be only a few classes where C is involved. These are bad schools. I'm really not willing to compromise on this statement. Is this because teachers don't like teaching in C? Or because students prefer the speed of development of a language like Python or Java? Where are the students wh…
"These are bad schools."
These are 95% of schools.
Re: Ask HN: Do CS students enjoy C anymore?
#100At the University of Michigan, our classes are taught in C++ although the early courses teach C data structures before allowing us to use things like classes or the STL.
There are a handful of classes taught using other languages (Java, Python) but for the most part we're all C/C++