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> It was learning how to take a very limited set of primitives and construct a larger whole. By this measure C should be a popular university intro language to

> It was learning how to take a very limited set of primitives and construct a larger whole. By this measure C should be a popular university intro language too, but it is famously unsuitable as a first language, at least according to academics.

southerndrift 8y ago
On the one hand, Scheme has an even smaller set of primitives than C. On the other hand, it's far more difficult to construct the larger whole from those primitives. Additionally, you have all the problems from the compiler when you have to manage libraries, include and object files. With some guidance when students are stuck with the compiler, C is not such a bad language to learn programming, but it doesn't hit the same sweet spot as Scheme.