I kinda disagree. A small language is one thing, but to "learn a language," (to be productive) you need to know the ecosystem, idioms, libraries, etc. A lot o

I kinda disagree. A small language is one thing, but to "learn a language," (to be productive) you need to know the ecosystem, idioms, libraries, etc. A lot of people say design patterns are language smell--deficiencies in the language. For example, the Group of Four's book was for C++ at the time it was written. True or not, my point is that it's a part of being productive in that language and part of "learning" it. K&R and nice and short, but I've heard it argued that it doesn't teach the best (modern) C practices. C was probably the first language I learned, but I wouldn't say I "know" it. I still have no idea which calls are safe or preferred or how to structure a larger program. It depends what you want to get out of it. If you want to learn for its historical value, to learn more about the language that a majority of other languages adopted ideas from, K&R is probably good enough. If you want to grok a bit of random C code, that might be good enough, too, but you'll probably need a bit more. If you want to contribute to the Linux Kernel or similar project, or even put C on your resume, that's definitely not enough.