C was very much the Python of its times, may be even bigger. Especially given the fact that it started a whole family of programming languages being derived fro

C was very much the Python of its times, may be even bigger. Especially given the fact that it started a whole family of programming languages being derived from it. C++ was very much the language of choice for larger applications till Java came along. Till date if you are writing code for embedded systems the only language you can do so in is C. Even until very recently most beginner programming courses/approaches required you learn C. Learn Pointers, recursion well enough before you could learn anything else.