Why Learn to Program in C?

C is great. I wouldn't recommend starting programming in C, though. At least not with the standard exercises you see. Get user input, read a file, do this do that with it.

Why? the C standard library is full of gotchas and tricks and goofy shit that makes it unsuitable for new programmers. The comp.lang.c FAQ should be standard reading material for anyone taking a C class. Look at all the posts on StackOverflow about the stdio functions 'not working right' and asking how to do menial things like collect keypresses.

C works well as a first language if you teach it like assembly (use of which as a teaching language is another debate): flip some bits and do some loops. But not for collecting user input/output. Half of your students are going to get stuck trying to collect a list of names from the user, before they even get a chance to get stuck trying to sort the list.

I'm the author of the article.

I don't think C should be the first language for most new programmers. The article doesn't recommend that. Rather, my argument is that C provides the lowest level abstraction that (most) modern programmers could ever need. By understanding C, you give yourself the ability to break into the black box of any higher-level language or framework. You're not at their mercy if they provide odd abstraction layers or bugs in their code.

It seems to me, at least anecdotally, that beginner programmers using C feel like they can't do as much as other beginners using languages like Python or Java. Often this is because graphics are so much faster to get to when working with the libraries that those other languages offer. Without a standard graphics library, C feels like the weaker choice. How wrong that is, but I've heard this sentiment from several different beginners.

I think part of what draws me to the Handmade Dev community is that we are finding so many people who know how to code, but want to feel more in control of their programs. Many people following my Handmade Quake project have told me that they're considering learning C for the first time ever. Maybe that's a good position for C to take in 2016 - a language to learn once you've learned your first language and some simple logic but want to understand the hardware better, or figure out exactly what code is running when you turn on your Python interpreter. I hope the community is able to plant that seed in the minds of as many programmers as possible.

Learning C is to computer programming what the study of human anatomy is to medicine. You may not enjoy it, but you will be dangerously uninformed if you don't do the work.

I'm surprised that people have managed to get through a CS program without learning C (or, at least, C++)! It seems to me that programming should be taught simultaneously in Haskell (or Lisp?) and C.

- C teaches you how computers work.

- Haskell teaches you how programming logic works.

Until not too long ago, De Anza College still taught C as an introductory programming language (I think because some recently retired instructors wrote a textbook on it). Even now, from what I've seen of the syllabi online, their C++ course that replaced it is still mostly C with some sprinkling of classes added on.

I thought it was a horrible idea, and I had a pretty miserable experience at De Anza. If you're just starting out programming, you should simply get used to writing code, and not fighting low level details of the language. C is the kind of thing that is useful, perhaps only as an advanced undergraduate course. Most beginning programmers need to start writing code, not get bogged down in pointer hell. And obviously most beginning programmers aren't going to be hacking away at *nix kernels or anything advanced like that.

One of the best academic decisions I've made as a student was to take a course on Operation Systems in C. I did take a beginners course in C previously so it was an intermediate class.

Nothing compares to spending hours and hours grinding through thousands of lines of C and building your own passable OS from a skeleton kernel. It was the hardest course I've ever taken in college and it was my favorite.

I can honestly say I'm a better programmer and engineer after that experience and would recommend anyone to take a course in OS (hopefully in C), and you'll know what I mean.

I think it doesn't really matter what people learn as a first programming language. Eventually, any serious programmer will become familiar with the most common languages and paradigms, C being one of them. It may not be the best choice for beginners, but it's valid nonetheless. People can have fun learning algorithms without worrying too much about pointers and complicated type declarations. It's not like it's going to mess up their brain and prevent them from learning higher-level languages later on.

Ugh, while I 100% agree that learning C (or similar lower level language) should be a prereq for any programming job, the use of the K&R C book is idiomatic of what is wrong with C. To many people pick up that book and try to emulate what they read.

I firmly believe that book will teach you every bad habit you should never use in actual practice. 30 years ago, many of those "tricks" made sense given the compilers and computers of the time, but today your much better just writing straight clean C (for example using array indexes instead of pointers). Not only because its more maintainable, but because it often generates more efficient code due to hardware support for base+displacement addressing and compilers abilities to understand the intent and optimize the resulting code. Furthermore, code like what you find in that book is what has given C a bad name due to buffer overflows and the dozens of other things people think are the fault of "C" rather than the programming environment around it. Not the least of which is a formatting scheme that hides bugs.

So, PLEASE, if you are learning C, stay as far away from the K&R book as you can until you have gained enough proficiency to understand the pitfalls of may of the techniques taught in that book.

If anyone is interested in learning C as a first language, the lectures from Harvad's CS50 course make it more than feasible[0]. IMO the practical advantage of learning C first is that all other curly-brace languages become very easy to pick up.

[0] https://cs50.harvard.edu/lectures

I am a strong believer in learning C as your first language. Why? Well a number of reasons but the two main ones are 1) it teaches you about what is happening at a lower level so you have some idea about what is happening behind the scenes of that Java code you wrote or whatever and 2) it makes you appreciate just how lucky you have it in higher level languages.

However I don't think you should start writing all your programs in C! Use the right tool for the job. If that job is something C makes sense for then go for it but if you are writing a webapp I wouldn't recommend you use C (although I would if you needed a fast, native library to call from your webapp).

C is an abstraction. Assembly is an abstraction. Even physical transistors are abstractions. You can go down the ladder as deep as you wish, there is no bottom. (Sure, you can delude yourself you that X is the fundamental level of Y... as long as you define Y properly.)

In this grand scheme of things, C is not better than Python. I don't mean the we should avoid going deeper. I mean that each level of abstraction has its own benefits.

BTW: How many of you started learning natural numbers not from counting fruits/blocks/candies, but from the ZF set theory axioms and the von Neumann construction?

While I agree with this in theory, I can't help but imagine that 20-30 years ago you could take this post, replace every instance of "C" with "assembly" and it would relate to a lot of developers at the time.

The march of technology (and knowledge in general) is one of constant abstraction. We figure out ways to do more with less so we have more capacity left over for further advancement. You don't know 10x10=100 because your brain derives it every single time, you just memorize the fact, hopefully with understanding. In software terms that means higher level languages with sophisticated libraries, and languages like C are relegated to more of an infrastructure role.

This isn't necessarily bad. If the technology is more capable then everybody wins at the end of the day. As the author points out there will always be a niche of enthusiasts/zealots who will lead the charge and further the field. The remaining 99% will learn what those people come up with and apply it. To the best of my knowledge that's how it's always been, and it's worked pretty well so far. So I'd say let people start off with high level languages if they want, but expose them to lower level languages and let them choose which demographic they end up joining.

Why do so many people seem to think the author is advocating that you learn C as a first language? Did you read the article? He explicitly says the opposite:

Does someone brand new to programming, who’s excited about making changes in the HTML on a page or setting up a blog to later customize, or just wants a slow introduction to more complex topics, really need to worry about cache coherency? Or threading? Clearly that’s a problem for down the road. Maybe that’s a road that some developers will never need to walk down at all, depending on their focus.

His position is that, while C may not be the best language for everyone coming into programming it is beneficial to learn it eventually because it allow you to peel back the layers of abstraction underneath all of the goodies in your high-level language. This allows you to better understand and reason about even your higher-level code and opens the door to fixing and understanding a lot of things that would have constrained you previously.

I completely, whole-heartedly agree. We don't always need to be able to plumb the depths of our abstraction stack. I don't believe it is necessary for a beginner. But having the ability to go up or down in the stack is extremely valuable. C is worth learning.

I find it odd that anyone would question the value of learning C. I find the negative attitudes toward C to be very odd in general. Now, it is clear to me that I am in the minority, but I can't understand why people would be doing serious work in an interpreted language. I detest garbage collection as I have no control over it. I am sure I could write statements like this all day.

Don't get me wrong: I use perl when it makes sense; I use Java when it makes sense. I quite like playing with new languages and seeing what I can do with them. There are many languages that are safer than C or easier to do particular tasks than with C, but I am very rarely happy with the trade offs. When I am trying to do serious work that is meant to stand the test of time, I'll use C.

The problem with learning C is it's easy to code things that work most of the time, but not always. A great many C coders don't really understand the architecture, and they don't get the immediate feedback that learning requires.

In my last big C project it wasn't uncommon at all to find memory leaks and out of scope references to stack variables. You'd add a line of code and the whole thing would blow up because it changed the state of the stack and unmasked a problem in another module. I would find the culprit and figure out if they were being sloppy or they just didn't understand, and it was usually the latter. This from people who had been programming professionally for a year or two.

While I agree with the premise that it is important to know C, I also agree with many of the comments here suggesting that there are other better first languages out there. As a recent college grad ('15), my intro course was in Python and then the next course was in C. Python was easy to jump into--it usually just made sense and worked. While learning about loops, lists, strings, etc, that was useful. Equally useful was then moving to C and getting a better understanding of the "lower level" (especially in the sophomore computer systems course). But you don't have to understand caches, page tables, and threading to jump into a first programming class and master the principles.

Whenever I don't quite understand how something works in a programming language, I try to imagine how I might implement it in C. Or I look up the implementation, or write it myself. This helps me understand from 'first principles' or near enough.

Classic Joel Spolsky essay: "Back to Basics" - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000319.html

I enrolled in my university the same year they switched from teaching C to teaching Java in the CS curriculum. As someone that learned C++ in high school I was less than enthusiastic about this change.

But what surprised me more was that the courses became more institutionalized. Professors were bettering you for a cushy career as an employee at a bank or large corporation instead of showing you how to use the computer to solve a dizzying amount of technical, social and and financial problems. I could understand a technical college emphasizing a safe, risk-free entry into a nice career but I expected better from a university.

In my college here in Lisbon, almost all the courses that you did were in C, Programming 1 and 2, Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, etc etc, except for OO classes. They changed it to Python after i left but i am glad that i had the opportunity to learn C, although i don't use it very often in the "working world". I reckon that Python is a nicer language to a freshman that has never seen code before, but they should of kept stuff like OS and Distributed Systems in C.

C is a beautiful and pure language. It is like the Latin of programming languages. I recommend everyone to at least learn it.

Ruby, Python, Perl, PHP, Java are all (mostly) built in C ( not to mention most databases ). Why not learn to program in C?

You can write very C-like code inside of Java or C++. Just write one class and stuff all the variables and subroutine methods inside it. Many years ago I had to fix some bugs in such "converted" code. The programmer just wrapped old C code into one humungous dummy class.

I liked having Ruby as a first. The REPL made it easy to see what was going on (even if I didn't understand it), the community's like for testing is fabulous, and I became comfortable doing things at the command line.

Interesting. I havent' delved quite much in to C but no doubt I will try to get more in to it during my spare time. IT's a good basis that some other high entity languages drew their cues from

The whole handmade thing seems kind of silly. Yes, understanding what's beneath abstractions is important, but if you want to build software well, you should use your abstractions well, because not every piece of software needs lightning speed.