> "For instance, a while back I had to diagnose a JVM core dumping sporadically, and I was able to use my knowledge of C to try to recover valid return addresse

> "For instance, a while back I had to diagnose a JVM core dumping sporadically, and I was able to use my knowledge of C to try to recover valid return addresses from a corrupted stack, figure out there was a signal handler block on the stack, then further unwind from there to find out the whole story of what likely caused the crash." Okay, but is that knowledge coming from coding in C, or it coming from debugging low-level code? I don't know what tool(s) you used to do that debugging, but if I assume for a second that you were using GDB, wasn't the main benefit of your past C experience (in this case) the exposure to tools like GDB, rather than your C knowledge being key in enabling you to dissect that JVM issue?