There's also just an assload of code out there in C. Regardless of what you think of getting close to the hardware, since most of the stuff running our desktop

There's also just an assload of code out there in C. Regardless of what you think of getting close to the hardware, since most of the stuff running our desktops / servers is C / C++ / Obj-C, it's quite useful if you want to be able to dip into that world.