3 ms·

Writing correct C is REALLY hard and slow (strings, manual memory management, concurrency pitfalls). So the investment is not paying off unless you are writing

Writing correct C is REALLY hard and slow (strings, manual memory management, concurrency pitfalls). So the investment is not paying off unless you are writing highly performance critical backend services. What can pay-off is learning to read C. Node.js, Firefox, Postgres, Linux are all written in C/C++ so if you ever want to really understand what's going on or have to debug a nasty bug, then you will need to be able to find your way around these code-bases.

scoutt 6y ago
> So the investment is not paying off unless you are writing highly performance critical backend services. You took it too far. C opens the door for today's embedded, like, you know, blinking an LED with some microcontroller.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  Most people do that on Arduino which is as c++ as it gets, with templates, etc...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Yoofie 6y ago
    If you mean hobbyists, then probably yes. But there are whole industries who use embedded C as the defacto standard, such as automotive.
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      I've worked on automotive and that was definitely C++, to a very deep level
roryrjb 6y ago
Also beyond the codebases themselves, interactions with the running code via GDB or tracing frameworks like dtrace, bpftrace, where you often reference C data structures. As well as being able to more fully understand the output of strace and other tools.