Comments on: In Defence of C

By: Project Euler | John Ramey

Project Euler | John Ramey — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:06:06 +0000

[...] I was not too savvy with Python until now that I am restricting myself to using one and only one programming language for these problems; I have learned much about the language, and I’m quite impressed. It is always great to have mundane aspects of coding shot into oblivion because they really just are not needed anymore: well, maybe some will continue to believe C is necessary for all. [...]

By: Brendan

Brendan — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

On the Stackoverflow podcasts, Joel's taken Jeff to task for his "I don't need to learn C" attitude a few times, too. So, if you've got Joel and me agreeing with you, you can probably close the comments for this thread.

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

How do you feel about C++? I remember reading that post by Tim Bray and wondering if he was using C interchangeably with C++ or not.

By: Chris Brandsma

Chris Brandsma — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

I would agree with your idea here. I am not a C/C++ apologist by any means, but if you want to be professional developer you should be able, at minimum, to read and understand C and C++ (being able to write a C/C++ app from scratch is another matter all together).

It is important to remember that ALL of our sub-systems are written in C (OS Kernels -- Windows and Linux), and most of our frameworks are written in C or C++ (PHP, Ruby, Perl, Java, .Net, we all have that in common).

By: markus

markus — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

You are so right about it.

And the fact that C is still so important in the year 2008 makes me sad.

Sugarified Assembler code seems like a relic from one hundred years ago.

By: Chase

Chase — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

C is a lot of fun if you actually have to deal with the performance constraints that existed when it was invented. I’m picking up microcontroller programming for the Atmel AVRs. I’m using a reasonably high end ATMega ($5/ea) which is clocked at 16MHz, with 1024b RAM and 512b EEPROM (essentially, hard disk), as well as 12kb program space. So a lot of the performance issues K&R had to deal with on the machines of their time, microcontroller programmers have to deal with today. It certainly makes much more sense than coding C for a dual core Core2 processor with 2GB of RAM.

By: john

john — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

Markus, I think you are missing the point when you say that C is a relic and that it's still important makes you sad. Yes, in theory you can be a Java programmer your whole life and not know what an operating system is, or that there are different kinds of CPUs. Hell, nowadays you can get away with not knowing the difference between RAM and swap and physical and virtual memory.

It's like that old joke about hardware being too unstable, so why not just get rid of all hardware and just run software?

Have you heard of "click and play"? It was a game development framework in which you could make games without knowing how to program. It's the extreme version of the same thing as this topic. You invariably lose the ability to do everything when you move up the abstraction chain. I wish someone would prove this mathematically so we could just drop this.

Why do I have to know what a wheel is? I just want to learn to ride a skateboard.

By: Don

Don — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

All you wussies complaining about learning C. I use it everyday as a hardware designer and driver programmer. It’s an excellent language for low level activities and it wouldn’t hurt you one iota to be able to understand the grammar. I prefer python for higher level things but I love swig+python+c/c++ when performance becomes an issue. There is a place for all these languages due to the ever increasing penetration of computers at all strata of the human endeavour. All the guy is trying to say is that it is important to know at least somethings about the platform underneath, because almost assuredly you will hit a limitation you won’t overcome with your higher level abstractions.

By: Tom Ritchford

Tom Ritchford — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

"Sugarified Assembler code"? Methinks you really haven't written very much assembler code if you can say this, even about C. If you meant C/C++ then you must simply be joking.

It takes at least five times as long to say something in assembly as C. The volume of code alone makes it hard to keep track of what's going on. I've written medium-sized assembly projects - it takes a lot of discipline and a lot of typing to get them to do the simplest things.

By: stalepie

stalepie — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:19:00 +0000

I refuse to install on Java.