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>but I do occasionally still hear people telling less-experienced developers that they should learn C to learn more about how their computer works. Your compute

by juped 6y ago

>but I do occasionally still hear people telling less-experienced developers that they should learn C to learn more about how their computer works. Your computer is not a fast PDP-11, all you will learn is how the C virtual machine works. Yes, this is wrong in that sense, but by learning C you learn how C works, and therefore how your computing systems, which are going to be C at some level because we live in Unix's world, work.

quickthrower2 6y ago
I think there is a meme (in the true sense of the word, not a silly picture) where the basis of languages like C and assembler is implanted in say JavaScript and how it does things. For example references vs. values and how this affects closures. Why have a lexical scopes? All this stuff which confuses the fuck out of new programmers, might be simpler if they learned C first. I think this can trip newbies up. Especially from bootcamps, who don't understand why their code is working, and I feel like replying with "well think about how the object is stored in memory" because none of the stuff that's built on that will make sense without it. I'd like to understand more myself. It would be useful to have some idea of what the compiler is doing with things like lexical scopes. I think that's the only way to really understand them as the abstractions are too leaky.
- xxxtentachyon 6y ago
  I think that’s all still addressed by him saying (paraphrased here) “learning C doesn’t teach you your system; it teaches you the C virtual machine.” You could just as easily teach the usefulness of lexical scoping and memory layout by teaching people a simplified version of a modern JavaScript engine and teaching them to inspect the accompanying intermediate representation. Bootcamps don’t dive into these things and give attendees intuitions for some model of computing because they know what people are paying for (learning the level of JS necessary to land a job as quickly as possible).
andi999 6y ago
Although I think learning C opens up your accessible domains of programming widely. I mean, if you know C it doesnt even take a weekend to learn (the basics of) CUDA. Or you can just buy an simple embedded system and do data aquisition easily. Also there is a reason C is often under the hood of other programming languages like Python, Tcl, and (I read on the internet) Julia, Ruby and Perl. I dont mean you can then write these languages, but you can look under the hood and read the source code (also if you want to write extensions it is useful).
- einpoklum 6y ago
  > if you know C it doesnt even take a weekend to learn (the basics of) CUDA. You mean, of CUDA kernel programming. The basics of CUDA as an ecosystem are not that much about a particular language and there are bindings for many languages.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Yes.

by juped 6y ago

quickthrower2 6y ago

I think there is a meme (in the true sense of the word, not a silly picture) where the basis of languages like C and assembler is implanted in say JavaScript and how it does things. For example references vs. values and how this affects closures. Why have a lexical scopes? All this stuff which confuses the fuck out of new programmers, might be simpler if they learned C first. I think this can trip newbies up. Especially from bootcamps, who don't understand why their code is working, and I feel like replying with "well think about how the object is stored in memory" because none of the stuff that's built on that will make sense without it. I'd like to understand more myself. It would be useful to have some idea of what the compiler is doing with things like lexical scopes. I think that's the only way to really understand them as the abstractions are too leaky.

xxxtentachyon 6y ago
I think that’s all still addressed by him saying (paraphrased here) “learning C doesn’t teach you your system; it teaches you the C virtual machine.” You could just as easily teach the usefulness of lexical scoping and memory layout by teaching people a simplified version of a modern JavaScript engine and teaching them to inspect the accompanying intermediate representation. Bootcamps don’t dive into these things and give attendees intuitions for some model of computing because they know what people are paying for (learning the level of JS necessary to land a job as quickly as possible).

andi999 6y ago

Although I think learning C opens up your accessible domains of programming widely. I mean, if you know C it doesnt even take a weekend to learn (the basics of) CUDA. Or you can just buy an simple embedded system and do data aquisition easily. Also there is a reason C is often under the hood of other programming languages like Python, Tcl, and (I read on the internet) Julia, Ruby and Perl. I dont mean you can then write these languages, but you can look under the hood and read the source code (also if you want to write extensions it is useful).

einpoklum 6y ago
> if you know C it doesnt even take a weekend to learn (the basics of) CUDA. You mean, of CUDA kernel programming. The basics of CUDA as an ecosystem are not that much about a particular language and there are bindings for many languages.
- andi999 6y ago
  Yes.