Poll: Do you know C?

#1

Post by DanielStraight » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 12:36 PM UTC

C comes up regularly, and usually the general consensus is that all programmers should know C. I think it would be interesting to see if programmers take this to heart and learn C.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#2

Post by stray » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 12:50 PM UTC

There should be an option for "C was my first programming language and I used it exclusively for years - many years ago".

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#3

Post by DanielStraight » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 12:53 PM UTC

stray wrote: post #2

There should be an option for "C was my first programming language and I used it exclusively for years - many years ago".

It seems like this could be either the second or third option, depending on how well you still know it. Perhaps the second if you still know it well and the third if you've gotten really rusty in it.

I can add the option if this doesn't make sense in your case.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#4

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 1:23 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#5

Post by larrik » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 1:29 PM UTC

I used to know it very well. Now, not as much. Even when I wrote C++, I basically wrote "C, with classes."

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#6

Post by Vivtek » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 1:31 PM UTC

I used C exclusively for ten years - then I fell in love with Perl and never really looked back. Garbage collection was my downfall.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#7

Post by antirez » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 1:31 PM UTC

As a first reaction I thought, well, more than 50% of HNers fluent with C, the average age should be pretty high probably. But then I realized that actually the average HN age is probably around 25 (from other pools I saw here), so I guess, there are still a lot of fresh programmers learning C. I really hope so. I love higher level programming languages and spent a lot of time with Tcl, Scheme, FORTH, Joy, Ruby, and other languages, but I really hope that the next generations of programmers will still be able to stay near the metal when needed.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#8

Post by Symbol » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 1:32 PM UTC

I use C/C++ and assembly everyday as a game programmer. It is the incumbent development language for consoles (at least xbox and ps3 - I'm never done any dev on the Wii). I suppose its stay is due to the ease of access to the metal. It's propably worth noting that lots of games use higher level scripting languages to do speed-insensetive tasks.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#9

Post by ch0wn » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 1:33 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #5

I used to know it very well. Now, not as much. Even when I wrote C++, I basically wrote "C, with classes."

That is my favorite C++ style as well.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#10

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 1:35 PM UTC

[deleted]