Learned a bit of C, not convinced it had any real benefit besides learning about pointers kinda drives things home for you about passing stuff around by values or reference if you are a self-taught Java / C# developer.
What set me on this path to enlightenement was an e-mail article from Dan Abramov (https://github.com/HackYourFutureBelgium/just-javascript/tre...) - here's an excerpt:
"We will learn about the JavaScript world for what it is — without thinking about how it’s implemented. This is similar to how physicists can talk about properties of stars without answering the question whether the physical world is real. It doesn’t matter! We can still describe it on its own terms.
Our mental model does not attempt to answer questions like “How is a value represented in the computer memory?” The answer changes all the time! In fact, the answer to this question changes even while your program is running. If you heard of a simple explanation about how JavaScript “really” represents numbers, strings, or objects in memory, it is most likely wrong.
To me, each string is a value. Not a “pointer” or a “memory address” — but a value. In my universe, a value is good enough. Don’t allow “memory cells” and other low-level metaphors to distract you from building an accurate high-level mental model of JavaScript. It’s turtles all the way down anyway!
If you’re coming from a lower-level language, set aside your intuitions about “passing by reference”, “allocating on stack”, “copying on write”, and so on. These models of how a computer works often make it harder to be confident what can or cannot happen in a JavaScript program. We’ll look at some of the lower level details, but only where it really matters. They can serve as an addition to our mental model, rather than its foundation.
...
As for these strange visions, I don’t pay as much thought to them anymore. I have wires to point, questions to ask, and functions to call. I better get to it!
The stars are bright when I look at them.
Are they still there when I blink?
I shrug.