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Poll: Do you know C?

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 208 posts

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#51
post #5

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

Why write C-with-classes if you can just write C-with-structures-and-function-pointers instead?

It's the same compiler, what's the advantage? I do want inheritance and such.

Also, you may be giving up a lot of niceties in your IDE that way.

Plus, if there's some feature of C++ I do like, I can bring it in.

Ug, now it sounds like PHP.

(Edited the first line a bit)

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#52
post #48
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 30, and from Googling you seem to be 3 years older than me, but I don't think the use case for learning C has changed all that much over the course of my time as a programmer. Already around '95 or so Perl was widely used, GUIs could be done in things like Tcl/Tk, basic apps were starting to move onto the web, desktop stuff was mostly in C++. You learned C when you wanted to work on things like kernels or databas…

I don't know if you remember, but in 1995, Serious Software was still Not Written in "Scripting Languages". Things like SATAN and HotJava were avant-garde exceptions, and Emacs Lisp was a holdover from another era (and we often used vi instead because it was noticeably faster). Today, I regularly use an email client written mostly in JS, message boards written entirely in Python, a chat client written in Python, a hi…

Tcl was driving oil extractions plants in 1995... just an example, also there were bit perl programs in production, so for sure now the acceptance is higher but was not impossible to have sensible code written in scripting languages back then.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#54
post #47

I'm from the "Modern C++" school. I learned C++ without first learning C. I don't consider myself a C programmer. Of course, I can read and write C code, but I would consider it a burden to code without smart pointers, templates and exceptions. How should I answer this poll?

I come from a similar background and chose the third from the top. I can read it, but writing would require more education, also known as, documentation.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#55
post #47

I'm from the "Modern C++" school. I learned C++ without first learning C. I don't consider myself a C programmer. Of course, I can read and write C code, but I would consider it a burden to code without smart pointers, templates and exceptions. How should I answer this poll?

You don't know C. Coding in C and C++ has diverged significantly enough that they are two completely different languages.

That said, answer #3 or #4 makes sense.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#56
post #47

I'm from the "Modern C++" school. I learned C++ without first learning C. I don't consider myself a C programmer. Of course, I can read and write C code, but I would consider it a burden to code without smart pointers, templates and exceptions. How should I answer this poll?

I'm in a similar place, probably the second or third option is the best answer.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#58
I know C although it's been several years since I've used it. Currently Go is my low-level language of choice (although maybe it's not low-level). It gives you the simplicity of C, but with a few of the higher level features like garbage collection, without the baggage of high level languages.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#59
post #38

I've been programming in C for longer than my current manager has been alive. :-)

Not sure if that's a good thing. I wouldn't say the same for a comment on another site (different things drive different people), but I assume you have some aspirations to make it and be your own boss.
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