Poll: Do you know C? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#191

Post by jc123 » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 5:34 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #130

I wish more languages had books equivalent to K&R. Here's how I learned C. 1. Buy K&R. 2. Read it. Maybe 2 or 3 times during the process of reading it, I would go write a program to try what I had just learned. This was was around 1980, so trying a program meant walking across campus to a terminal. I could either head to the computing center and use a public terminal, or to the high energy physics building (where I h…

K&R is best as a reference; especially for non-programmers, there are more effective ways to learn C and programming than K&R.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#192

Post by sliverstorm » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 5:46 AM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #143

+1 to the non-existent poll entry that says: "I know C thoroughly, though I barely ever use it these days. I used it for so long and during such a formative period of my overall programming career that I can read/write C code with virtually no spin-up time even though I find myself touching C code very rarely. Oh, and btw, when I find myself coding C on a nix box, I am still amused at how I have muscle memory for all…

I love muscle memory. I only vaguely remember how a keyboard is laid out- all I know offhand is things like Enter, "Q", Space, "F", and "A". If I ever need to remember which keys are where, I put my hands on the table and pretend to type.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#193

Post by BasDirks » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 6:25 AM UTC

antirez wrote: post #7

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…

I'm 23, self-taught (though not asking for pats on the back), and fairly proficient in QBASIC (hahaha), Haskell, Python, JS, Prolog, and I am learning Scheme and Erlang, but there's something mythical about programming in C, and I try to read C (linux kernel, etc) regularly.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#194

Post by johnm » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 7:06 AM UTC

SageRaven wrote: post #183

Dumb question: Is the 2nd Edition K&R for about $50 on Amazon worth the coin over the 1st Edition I recently picked up at a thrift store for a buck? (I also picked up Steele's C: A Reference Manual , 4th Ed. for a buck at the same place.)

Nope, the first edition gives the nice approach and if you want anything with more depth than the reference manual, you might as well go a get a copy of e.g. the C99 standard itself.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#195

Post by danssig » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 8:14 AM UTC

What about: I learned C quite well and used it for years but rarely touch it now?

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#196

Post by skipperfly » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 8:37 AM UTC

Yes, I first encountered it from an old issue of DDJ (Small C) while I was studying electrical engineering at UNSW back in the 80s. Then I had to understand it further while studying the UNIX source code in John Lions' OS lectures.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#197

Post by SteveMoody73 » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 9:02 AM UTC

I know quite a few other languages but most of my day to day work is in C.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#198

Post by talonx » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 9:27 AM UTC

karolist wrote: post #107

edw wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, logically, "Not sure it's a good thing," means "It is either a good thing or it is not a good thing." You know, X or not X, and so your ass-covering comment is logically defensible, but come on , you wrote it for a reason. Just say, "Good point," and move on.

"Not sure" in this context was meant demonstrate I'm open to both variants of the situation, good and bad. Since OP had upvotes already indicating that people find it good/funny/whatever, the point was to bring other side of this to light. There's a saying that fits your comment so well - don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you where to go.

Are we turning into an anti-dissent crowd? Look at the downvotes - the same number, and why? Because somebody had a different opinion? Because it's so easy to downvote here and not let out your identity or have to explain why you did it?

Tolerance of, nay, encouragement of dissent (not insubstantiated rants) is the hallmark of a healthy community.

Btw, if you choose to downvote this, please explain why and what I am missing. Thank you.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#199

Post by gaius » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 9:39 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #69

antirez wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wasn't impossible in 1985, either, when GNU Emacs came out; but the now-common AlternateSoftAndHardLayers approach won Emacs a reputation for being a slow memory hog. My point, though, is that much of C's 1995 or 1996 niche is now occupied by "scripting languages", and in 1995 or 1996, that niche was occupied by C.

C is the scripting language of the Unix kernel.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#200

Post by karolist » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 10:49 AM UTC

talonx wrote: post #198

karolist wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not sure" in this context was meant demonstrate I'm open to both variants of the situation, good and bad. Since OP had upvotes already indicating that people find it good/funny/whatever, the point was to bring other side of this to light. There's a saying that fits your comment so well - don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you where to go.

Are we turning into an anti-dissent crowd? Look at the downvotes - the same number, and why? Because somebody had a different opinion? Because it's so easy to downvote here and not let out your identity or have to explain why you did it? Tolerance of, nay, encouragement of dissent (not insubstantiated rants) is the hallmark of a healthy community. Btw, if you choose to downvote this, please explain why and what I am…

It's interesting for me to watch the downvotes, but I'm not really concerned about it. I won't delete these comments as I stand by them, all this upvote/downvote business to me looks like yet another MMORPG I have no interest in.