I firmly disagree with this. We're talking about learning C, not learning an arbitrary programming language. The course of study the GP comment suggests teaches

I firmly disagree with this. We're talking about learning C, not learning an arbitrary programming language. The course of study the GP comment suggests teaches syscalls, pipes, buffering, and most important, it teaches mechanical sympathy. All of which are things a C programmer needs to understand. More programming tasks than you might imagine are low-level bit banging, and C remains the language of choice for doing them. It might be Zig one day, and if so, the same sort of deep-end dive into low-level detail will remain a good way to approach such a language. Far from becoming "rapidly obsolete", learning in this style will prevent this sort of mistake for years into the future: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39766130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39766130