Dušan Mitrović on Nostr: When I was still a university student (I never finished my studies, unfortunately), ...
When I was still a university student (I never finished my studies, unfortunately), people were upset that a class called "Basics of programming" used C to teach #programming. There's this notion that C is somehow antiquated and that, and please don't laugh, something like Java should be used instead.
I can't be more grateful we used C, and not Java. I believe people should understand the abstractions they use, so a relatively simple language (not a lot of keywords, imperative, close to the hardware) like C is a great teaching tool.
Even if I don't actively code in C, it has taught me valuable lessons, mainly about memory and efficiency that are translatable to almost any other language. I still have "The C Programming Language, 2nd edition" book I used and I still sometimes read it.
To me, the issue of how to learn to program has never been clearer. Start with a relatively low level of abstraction and work from there, start with something like C, and not something like Java or Python.
I can't be more grateful we used C, and not Java. I believe people should understand the abstractions they use, so a relatively simple language (not a lot of keywords, imperative, close to the hardware) like C is a great teaching tool.
Even if I don't actively code in C, it has taught me valuable lessons, mainly about memory and efficiency that are translatable to almost any other language. I still have "The C Programming Language, 2nd edition" book I used and I still sometimes read it.
To me, the issue of how to learn to program has never been clearer. Start with a relatively low level of abstraction and work from there, start with something like C, and not something like Java or Python.