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Poll: Do you know C?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#91

Post by chrislo »

achompas wrote: post #29
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…

Nit-picking time: there's probably a difference between the average age of a HNer and the average age of an HNer that knows C. Conditional probabilities and all that. That being said, I'm an "average age" HNer that has worked with (and loved working with) C. I'm looking for excuses to work with it more, although it doesn't really intersect with my type of work (statistics). Maybe I should contribute to Redis or other…

> Maybe I should contribute to Redis or other OSS...any suggestions?

The core of R is written in C, I think. Might be worth a look?

https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/main/

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#92

Post by Splines »

huherto wrote: post #80
kabdib wrote: post #38

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

Ok kadbid, I am intrigued. what's the story? Why didn't you make the transition to other languages? Why didn't you make the transition into management? I'm not questioning your decisions, just curious.

He's a freelancer that just became a new parent :p

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#93

Post by llimllib »

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 learned C in college classes, but never really learned it until after a "WTF PHP" moment, so I could dig into the interpreter source to figure out what was going on. Later experience with Python's interpreter and debugging pyrex reinforced my knowledge.

I mention this just to say why I think "modern" very-high-level language hackers still end up learning C; the base layer is all written in it, and eventually you've either got to fix something or write something fast.

(I'm 28)

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#94

Post by llimllib »

achompas wrote: post #29
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…

Nit-picking time: there's probably a difference between the average age of a HNer and the average age of an HNer that knows C. Conditional probabilities and all that. That being said, I'm an "average age" HNer that has worked with (and loved working with) C. I'm looking for excuses to work with it more, although it doesn't really intersect with my type of work (statistics). Maybe I should contribute to Redis or other…

work on the python or ruby interpreters! Beautiful code, both of them.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#95

Post by maw »

timclark wrote: post #21

I know C but none of those categories apply to me. Poll design is useful skill to learn! I am not a pollster but by combining different facts into single options you are restricting the information you can gain from your poll or polls. I taught C to engineering students at a university, I know it thoroughly, I haven't written a line of it in 12 years - the only option I can logically choose is the final option.

Agreed. Polls like this one don't work well for orthogonal ranges, and here there are at least two: how well you know C (from knowing nothing to being a master) and how often you use it (never [anymore, if you happen to know it well] to it being your primary language.

A third range might be how much you like C, regardless of how good you are at it or how often you use it.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#96

Post by gte910h »

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…

They teach C at many top colleges for any number of degrees (Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering).

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#97

Post by mellery451 »

I learned C as my second language after FORTRAN. As it turns out, some of the strangest C code I've ever had to maintain was a system that had been converted from FORTRAN to C using an automated tool.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#98

Post by ma2rten »

kabdib wrote: post #38

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

I think it's actually funny that the question, whether we know C. A few years the question would have been if people know assembler. That's how times change.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#99

Post by epynonymous »

c syntax lives on in many languages like java and javascript. it was the second language that i learned behind java, this was back in 1998. i still think it's a great language because you have so much control over the important things like memory management and pointers, how priceless (albeit dangerous) is that? string manipulation was a real detail that i could live without and exception handling was non-existent (don't go there with goto labels), but overall it was a clean language, you could optimize the hell out of things like byte boundaries for structures, you just felt like you had full control, it's the closest thing i had to assembly without the syntax being too cryptic. that was the good old days and i think it was an important foundation for me in terms of learning how to be anal as hell with source code.

Re: Poll: Do you know C?

#100

Post by crpatino »

albertzeyer wrote: post #81
hvs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What knowledge about C do you think does someone miss when he is using C++? I have made the experience that a good C++ developer also automatically knows everything about C.

Naive C++ programmers tend to use pointers as if they were references. They do not seem to understand pointer arithmetic, pointers to functions, etc. They also do not seem to have a deep understanding of memory models, and tend not to understand memory alignment. They do not use bit-wise operators much, though it's more of a cultural thing than skills issue.

I have never met a competent C++ programmer that does not have at least some exposure to C as well. But I'd dare to guess, that such character would not understand the C preprocessor in any but the most trivial level.

[edit] I originally used the phrase "C with classes" crowd, in a rather derogatory way, to describe the people who never get to learn any of the languages well, and end up writing some sort of sanitized, structured-programming, algol derivative in (a subset of) C++ syntax.

While reading the rest of the comments, I remembered that "C, with classes" can also apply to C hackers that just use C++ to structure their C-styled code, and may take advantage of a few features of the language. I have edited the comment to clarify what I meant.

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