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Many languages other than C have pointers though. It sounds like you are recommending understanding pointers moreso than learning C. > I've often been given th
by ZephyrBlu 4y ago
Many languages other than C have pointers though. It sounds like you are recommending understanding pointers moreso than learning C.
> I've often been given the task to fix severe performance problems in other peoples' code who simply did not know what kinds of operations were costly
What kind of application was this? I completely believe having this knowledge is valuable, but not for all developers.
> This may be hard to explain, but you don't know what you don't know. You won't be able to see an opportunity to exploit your knowledge gained from using C
This comes back to opportunity cost. You are stating this as though C is the only avenue to gain knowledge which can be exploited at a later date. For many developers there is probably other knowledge which is going to be far more useful and exploitable.
Your story about the alternator feels like a good example of this. If I was in your shoes I would have paid the original sum and been happy. You've saved money, but you've also had to learn how an alternator works and replace them multiple times. I'm happy to pay a premium and use that time for other things.
- WalterBright 4y agoC is a small and straightforward language. It's easy to learn. It's the lingua franca of the programming languages (in that the foreign language interface of other languages is usually C). You're possibly expending more effort justifying not learning C than it would take to learn it :-) And once you learn it, as a professional programmer you'll garner a career's worth of benefit from it. Take the plunge. Learn how to swim, how to touch-type, how compound interest works, how to read a balance sheet, how to tie various knots, how to drive a stick shift, how to integrate and differentiate, how to unclog a drain, how to jump start a car, how to change a tire, how to write a program in C. As an old guy, I know these simple skills pay off in various and unexpected ways.
- Brian_K_White 4y agoThe alternator is a specific item example, a stand-in for a tax on everything in life 100 times a day every day. The arguments against learning fundamentals exist, but are weaker than the arguments for.