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I'd love to have time to play around with C again. I picked up C back in the late 80s when I became convinced that no matter what other programming languages I

I'd love to have time to play around with C again. I picked up C back in the late 80s when I became convinced that no matter what other programming languages I knew, I wasn't going to be a "true" professional unless I could sling code in C and C++. Fun times. I also love the idea of using a trie here. That's something else I've been wanting to play around with for a while. Although now I'd do it in a functional language. He brings up a good point: people coding in C tend to stop and think about data structures, memory usage, and clock cycles in a way people using higher languages very rarely do. It's part of the way to "think in C" Internal data structures are also much more important in FP. Interesting how different languages cause you to think in different ways. (Sapir-Worf anyone?) :)

X-Istence 14y ago
I also think it really depends on how you are taught or where you start... I started programming in C/C++ (my first book, I'll admit at age 9 was a C++ for Dummies book, it came with a compiler :P). I have learned and use a lot of higher level languages, but I still think about data structures, I still think about what the best way would be for handling the data most efficiently, mainly because I don't want to rely on the language doing the right thing. I've seen Java programmers though that then start programming in C++ or even C and never pick up the art of thinking about their data structures. I work with one co-worker now that went through the extreme trouble of implementing Java like enum's which have caused all kinds of "warts" and all kinds of issues because they are not enums and they aren't "real" classes. Watching Java developers turn C++/C developers is really interesting, they bring all kinds of "bad" practices back with them and the code is worse off because of it!

X-Istence 14y ago

I also think it really depends on how you are taught or where you start... I started programming in C/C++ (my first book, I'll admit at age 9 was a C++ for Dummies book, it came with a compiler :P). I have learned and use a lot of higher level languages, but I still think about data structures, I still think about what the best way would be for handling the data most efficiently, mainly because I don't want to rely on the language doing the right thing. I've seen Java programmers though that then start programming in C++ or even C and never pick up the art of thinking about their data structures. I work with one co-worker now that went through the extreme trouble of implementing Java like enum's which have caused all kinds of "warts" and all kinds of issues because they are not enums and they aren't "real" classes. Watching Java developers turn C++/C developers is really interesting, they bring all kinds of "bad" practices back with them and the code is worse off because of it!