in your opinion

[Robin]

Wondering, as a broad comment, do you guys thing c is the best
programming language I'm trying to have a vote so I can find out, so
if I want to learn it and move towards using it a lot more I will have
more consensus / census type info...
Thanks,
-Robin

 

[Jens Stuckelberger]

Wondering, as a broad comment, do you guys thing c is the best
programming language

The best for what?

 

[John Kelly]

Wondering, as a broad comment, do you guys thing c is the best
programming language I'm trying to have a vote so I can find out, so
if I want to learn it and move towards using it a lot more I will have
more consensus / census type info...

C is like assembly language on steroids. Good for speed, and shooting
yourself in the foot.

 

[lawrence.jones]

Wondering, as a broad comment, do you guys thing c is the best
programming language

Do you think red is the best color? The questions are equally
meaningless.

 

[James Dow Allen]

Yes.

Do you think red is the best color?

No. Purple is.

James

 

[Nick Keighley]

Wondering, as a broad comment, do you guys thing c is the best
programming language I'm trying to have a vote so I can find out, so
if I want to learn it and move towards using it a lot more I will have
more consensus / census type info...

a suffusion of yellow

 

[Nick Keighley]

No.  Purple is.

when I was a kid I used to tell people my favourite colour was tartan

 

[Ian Collins]

when I was a kid I used to tell people my favourite colour was tartan

I used to, but the paint shop had trouble blending it.

 

[Nick Keighley]

Wondering, as a broad comment, do you guys thing c is the best
programming language I'm trying to have a vote so I can find out, so
if I want to learn it and move towards using it a lot more I will have
more consensus / census type info...

on a slightly more serious note. Programming languages are tools for
doing things. What you want to do helps you decide what language to
use. C is a relativly low level language. It is worth learning exactly
because of its closeness to the machine. Also learn a language taht
isn't close to the machine. I happen to like python. Some people like
perl or ruby. Java and C# are widely used for writing commercial
applications. Consider learning a language from a different paradigm
Lisp, Caml, smalltalk etc.

 

[Eric Sosman]

I used to, but the paint shop had trouble blending it.

... or perhaps they blended it correctly, but you applied
it with the wrong side out.

 

[Malcolm McLean]

on a slightly more serious note. Programming languages are tools for
doing things.

They are also a medium of communication. Is English a "better"
language than Icelandic? I think it's hard to argue that it is. Should
the average student in South Korea learn English or Icelandic? The
answer is pretty obvious.

 

[Nick Keighley]

They are also a medium of communication.

I agree with you up to here but not with where you appear to go with
it

Is English a "better" language than Icelandic?

the
computer language <-> natural language
mapping is, I think, at best an analogy. At worst it can lead you into
trouble.

The use of the Chomsky formalism is also responsible for the term
"programming language", because programming languages seemed to
exhibit a strucure similar to spoken languages. We believe that
this term is rather unfortunate on the whole, because a programming
language is not spoken, and therefore is not a language in the true
sense of the word. Formalism or formal notation would have been
more appropriate terms.
Niklaus Wirth

I think it's hard to argue that it is.

agreed. Any language that can cram a word like river into a single
letter has got to be cool.

Should
the average student in South Korea learn English or Icelandic? The
answer is pretty obvious.

yes but misleading. I think you're claiming that C is english and Lisp
is Icelandic. Therefore J.Random non-european should learn the
commoner language English and J.Random programmer the commoner
formalism C.

But full blown natural languages (as opposed to pidgins) are roughly
equivalent in expressivity. Apparently the "eskimo has <large-n> words
for snow" is a myth. So your decision for a natural language is based
on how likely you are find other speakers.

Formalisms are not equally expressive. It's quite easy to get lost in
the trees (the details) in a C program and fail to see the forest (the
expression of a solution to a problem). C's not bad for expressing
computational algorithms. Not necessarily the best for other things.

I'd still argue learning another language from a less standard
paradigm is going to give you more ways to look at problems.

"Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you
will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a
better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never
actually use Lisp itself a lot." — Eric S. Raymond

"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc,
informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of
Common Lisp." Greenspun's 10th Law

 

[osmium]

They are also a medium of communication. Is English a "better"
language than Icelandic? I think it's hard to argue that it is. Should
the average student in South Korea learn English or Icelandic? The
answer is pretty obvious.

I think that's the best answer you are likely to get. Where "best" means
most useful to the person that asked the question.

If you already have some background in programming, C has the additional
advantage in that it is supported by one of the best examples of technical
writing in the modern era. By page 34 of K&R you have been exposed to the
fundamentals of the language and you can decide if you want to continue
learning. You have wasted, at most, a few hours of your life.

 

[Oliver Jackson]

Do you verb "thing"?  Why?

Mmm hmm. Speak it.

C is a terrible language for seducing women and killing cockroaches,
or vice versa.  

Ain't that the truth?

Writing poetry in it is difficult and the result
awful.  It's a terrible language to try to teach to an infant as a
first language.  

Hell yeah, just lay it out there.

(not first programming language).  

Oh smack, good point.

It's much better
as a programming language for some tasks.  

Preach that shit, brother!

What do you want to use
it for?

OH HELL YEAH OH HELL YEAH

 

[John Kelly]

On Aug 6, 11:40 pm, (e-mail address removed) (Gordon Burditt) wrote:

Hell yeah, just lay it out there.


Oh smack, good point.


Preach that shit, brother!


OH HELL YEAH OH HELL YEAH

Heh heh.

I pity the newbies wandering in here looking for friendly advice.

Maybe C is not a friendly language, and makes programmers irritable.
Maybe that's why these people act the way they do. You think?

 

[Seebs]

I pity the newbies wandering in here looking for friendly advice.

I don't! I've seen a lot of newbies who come here looking for friendly
advice and get it.

Maybe C is not a friendly language, and makes programmers irritable.
Maybe that's why these people act the way they do. You think?

Nah. Programming in C relaxes me. You wanna see me in a bad mood, talk
to me after I've spent a day doing PHP.

-s

 

[Dann Corbit]

Wondering, as a broad comment, do you guys thing c is the best
programming language I'm trying to have a vote so I can find out, so
if I want to learn it and move towards using it a lot more I will have
more consensus / census type info...

C is the best procedural language for writing Unix style filter
programs.

Fortran is the best language for heavy number crunching.

C++ is the best language for general OO because of the fantastic
collection of tools that simplify its use.

Perl is the best language for scripting.

These opinions, along with $4.80, will get you a Venti Carmel Macchiato
at Starbucks.

P.S.
The truth cannot be determined by vote. Just ask the Indiana State
Legislature.

 

[Malcolm McLean]

I think, but don't know, that C might be OK for a first language.

I think it's best to know assembly - for any processor - before
learning C. A lot of C only makes sense if you understand what's going
on behind the scenes. Pointers, in particular, cause trouble to
newbies without an assembly background. For me they were no problem.
"What's that funny star?" "It's the indirection operator". "Oh". That
was all I needed.

 

[Seebs]

I think it's best to know assembly - for any processor - before
learning C. A lot of C only makes sense if you understand what's going
on behind the scenes. Pointers, in particular, cause trouble to
newbies without an assembly background. For me they were no problem.
"What's that funny star?" "It's the indirection operator". "Oh". That
was all I needed.

I find this hilariously ironic given your argument that people shouldn't
study the standard.

In the real world, there are NO known examples of people who studied the
standard writing overly-clever code (which then fails to work on real
machines) as a result. However, there are THOUSANDS of examples of people
who learned assembly first, and who then assume that the C compiler is
a direct and naive translator to assembly, resulting in code which actually
fails in fascinating ways.

Now, on the whole, it may still be a good bet -- I've seen both good and
bad programmers either way, so it's not easy to rule out. But if you're
going to make the "knowledge is dangerous so let's not encourage it"
argument, assembly would be a pretty canonical example.

-s

 

[Malcolm McLean]

In the real world, there are NO known examples of people who studied the
standard writing overly-clever code (which then fails to work on real
machines) as a result.

People who know the standard inside out often produce code with bugs.
I know of nobody who has never checked in code with a bug.

These bugs can be difficult to trace if the behaviour of the code
relies on little-known quirks of the C compiler, particularly if the
person with the job of correcting the program isn't basically a C
programmer.