Not knowing C is fine, but not having an understanding of the machine you use to make a living, well, you can get away with it, but before i started learning C and reading about low-level issues, i felt like I was cheating.
Can you take programmers seriously if they don't know C?
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Re: Can you take programmers seriously if they don't know C?
#12One might just as easily say:
:%s/C/Lisp,Haskell,OCaml or Erlang/g
It all depends on what you want. And yes, I know a few excellent computer scientists who don't "know" C.
Re: Can you take programmers seriously if they don't know C?
#13Soooo.... if a statistician doesn't know C but knows R then that's a deal breaker? How about if a 3d game programmer knows lua, but can't do function pointers ? I'm way too late to this party, but I'm sorry it's horses for courses here.
Know the tools for your trade. Nothing more, nothing less.
Re: Can you take programmers seriously if they don't know C?
#14do you know anyone who doesn't know C but is still excellent at coding/computer-science?
You don't? How parochial. I recommend tht you study a good functional language for a while. It helped me understand coding on a "far deeper level".
Re: Can you take programmers seriously if they don't know C?
#15After learning the syntax of a language (let's say C), you are left with the formidable task of learning best practices, idiomatic expressions, frameworks, debuggers, libraries... and then, how to deal with managers, how to hire employees, how to do taxes. And in spare time let's all spend a few years learning C. ;-)
Or rather, a designer is not a good designer if he doesn't have the human anatomy memorized, and no UI specialist is a good UI specialist if s/he's not a good designer. So let's all us who make web forms, go and study human anatomy for 2 years.