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Why I Chose to Learn C

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Re: Why I Chose to Learn C

#2
I learned C as first language. I haven't used it for any real-world work, but it was fun way to get into programming. K&R told me not just C but how to program, then I read TUPE which told me how to effectively use the best development environment, Unix.

Re: Why I Chose to Learn C

#4
C really is fantastic language to learn. When I learned it, I also came from the scripting language world (Python, PHP). Having that as a base, then learning C, lead to revelations about how those scripting languages are created, and how the data structures I took for granted in a scripting language are actually implemented.

From what I understand in formal CS courses, you learn from the bottom up, but learning from the top down was much more enlightening for me.

Re: Why I Chose to Learn C

#5
Well now I feel old. When I was in high school, CS was a required course for graduation and it was taught in C++ (that being the pedagogical language of the APCS exam). It wasn't even that long ago (late 1990's).

Re: Why I Chose to Learn C

#6
post #2

I learned C as first language. I haven't used it for any real-world work, but it was fun way to get into programming. K&R told me not just C but how to program, then I read TUPE which told me how to effectively use the best development environment, Unix.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Chose to Learn C

#7

I know learning C might seem a bit of a waste of time, but given Obj-C, C++, Python and Ruby can leverage it for performance it's not a bad thing to learn.

Objective C and C++ can leverage it for performance? Objective-C is a strict superset of C and C++ a near superset. If you learnt Objective C or C++ properly, you already know C (!).

Re: Why I Chose to Learn C

#8

I know learning C might seem a bit of a waste of time, but given Obj-C, C++, Python and Ruby can leverage it for performance it's not a bad thing to learn.

From my experience if you are familiar with both C and C++, you do not end up writing C++ code that is completely obnoxious.

Re: Why I Chose to Learn C

#9
C programming is still alive and well is many parts of our profession. The biggest reason why is that even though c++ _can_ do memory management like C most of the time programs implemented in it don't and you can really start to loose a grasp as to what your asking the computer to do when you abstract away where your putting all the stuff your unknowingly asking it to make.

Re: Why I Chose to Learn C

#10
post #8

I know learning C might seem a bit of a waste of time, but given Obj-C, C++, Python and Ruby can leverage it for performance it's not a bad thing to learn.

From my experience if you are familiar with both C and C++, you do not end up writing C++ code that is completely obnoxious.

Indeed, given the option, you may not write C++ code at all!
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