"There are no minimum requirements." Anyone sitting down to write an article on what a programmer needs to know should take that sentence as their mantra. C i

"There are no minimum requirements." Anyone sitting down to write an article on what a programmer needs to know should take that sentence as their mantra. C is definitely one of, if not the most important languages a well-rounded programmer should know. But realistically, there are millions of programmers who get along perfectly well without knowing it. In unusual cases like those described in this article, they'll get around their ignorance of C by leaning on a forum, guru, or a third-party library. In fact, the number of programmers who do know C is (vastly) smaller the number who don't. Lest anyone think I'm celebrating ignorance, that's not the point. I come at programming from an engineering perspective, and C rates highly in my pantheon. The point is that for any requirement someone can come up with for a 'good' programmer, a pretty good chunk of the community has gotten along just fine without knowing it. Ultimately this debate is less a question of what someone _needs_ to know, and more about how circumscribed a professional life they're comfortable with.