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> I'm not purposely trolling here, it is my opinion that C is a poor language to teach students. If you don't teach students C, you're denying them a deep unde

> I'm not purposely trolling here, it is my opinion that C is a poor language to teach students. If you don't teach students C, you're denying them a deep understanding of how all of the higher levels are implemented. If all you know is Python but I know Python, C, UNIX system calls, and even assembly, I'm going to run circles around you, even if we're both working 100% in Python. For example, suppose your Python program says "import foo", but it's not finding module "foo". How can you debug what is happening? I'm going to take two seconds and run strace on the program to see what files the process is trying to open. You're going to... read some docs? Post a question on a message board? Or suppose that your Python program tries to do an open("foobar", "w") but the open fails with: IOError: [Errno 26] Text file busy: 'test' I'm going to look at the manpage for open(2) to figure out what this error means. You're going to... go ask somebody who understands system software? People who don't understand system software are totally helpless compared to people who do. You may see C fading into history. What I see is every single relevant technological innovation -- 2nd-gen JavaScript interpreters, Flash, the JVM, .NET, browsers, OS's -- ALL using C or C++. I would challenge you to look around and find ANY stack of software that doesn't have C or C++ in it. It's just a matter of how deep you have to go to find it. Are you saying that we shouldn't equip students to deal with layers of software that deep? Are you saying we shouldn't equip them to understand things like trace compiling, which are the state of the art in language design and implementation? Sure, if all you want to do is web development, you can probably go a long ways without understanding system software. But you'll always be dependent on the people who understand the stack up and down.

ynniv 17y ago
> I'm going to take two seconds and run strace on the program ... > I'm going to look at the manpage for open Those are some silly arguments for teaching C. Someone with no understanding of C can just as easily read man pages. While it is useful to know C and assembly for debugging system calls via a debugger, this is rare compared to debugging via reading the documentation. Plenty of people wrote C based applications for the original Macintosh, even though the operating system was originally written in Pascal. > I would challenge you to look around and find ANY stack of software that doesn't have C or C++ in it. It's just a matter of how deep you have to go to find it. Thats a common, but baseless argument for knowing C. Most stacks are indeed written in C, but this is because most operating system interfaces are written in C, and C compilers are widely available and easy to write. Many efficient VM's have a minimal base written in C and transition to their own language early on. Amusingly, the Squeak VM from the original article is one of these. > Are you saying we shouldn't equip them to understand things like trace compiling, which are the state of the art in language design and implementation? Only students who specialize in compilers or virtual machines are going to dig that deep ... but what does that have to do with C? > Sure, if all you want to do is web development, you can probably go a long ways without understanding system software. But you'll always be dependent on the people who understand the stack up and down. That raises a good point - stop reading the web and get out there and till those fields, or you'll always be dependent on others for your basic needs. While you're out there, we'll debate the finer points of a specialized society. I'll just point out that hardware and operating systems are useless without higher level applications. Those writing them are actually always dependent on others to make the combination do something useful.
- haberman 17y ago
  > Someone with no understanding of C can just as easily read man pages. If all you know is Python, or Java, or another high level language, how would you even know that manpages that document system calls exist? How would you interpret the C function prototypes that are written there? How would you determine how high-level language constructs map to system calls? In my example, you got lucky because the open() function in Python calls the open() system call, but this is not universally true. > Thats a common, but baseless argument for knowing C. Most stacks are indeed written in C, but this is because most operating system interfaces are written in C, and C compilers are widely available and easy to write. So you acknowledge: - most software stacks are written in C - most operating system interfaces are written in C - C compilers are ubiquitous ...but also argue that we shouldn't teach students C? Are you arguing that it's not important for students to understand the system software that we both agree exists and is ubiquitous? > That raises a good point - stop reading the web and get out there and till those fields, or you'll always be dependent on others for your basic needs. Maybe you enjoy analogies, but I have direct experience in professional settings where I was able to use my knowledge of system-level software to solve problems that stumped people without this deep knowledge. Maybe the most relevant example was at a web startup I worked at two years ago. Note that I was working on a website at the application level -- not writing system software. I had to solve several problems like this one: http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/8704 http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/8704 Solving this problem required repeatedly digging down into the Ruby interpreter, C extensions, system calls, signals, etc. Note that this was in my job as a webdev. Being able to solve problems like this made me stand out among my peers (who were also good developers, but didn't have as much systems experience as I did). All I can hear you saying is that you don't think students should learn C because you personally don't like it. That's fine, but I am presenting evidence that it will make you a significantly better programmer. Don't tell aspiring programmers that knowing C won't help them, because it's simply not true.
  - ynniv 17y ago
    I think that you've misinterpreted my original comment. My argument is that C is a poor language for teaching computing theory. There will be classes where students will learn C, certainly any hardware oriented class. The question at hand is, "Do students benefit from learning concepts in languages other than C", and I think that you'll agree the answer is "yes".

ynniv 17y ago

> I'm going to take two seconds and run strace on the program ... > I'm going to look at the manpage for open Those are some silly arguments for teaching C. Someone with no understanding of C can just as easily read man pages. While it is useful to know C and assembly for debugging system calls via a debugger, this is rare compared to debugging via reading the documentation. Plenty of people wrote C based applications for the original Macintosh, even though the operating system was originally written in Pascal. > I would challenge you to look around and find ANY stack of software that doesn't have C or C++ in it. It's just a matter of how deep you have to go to find it. Thats a common, but baseless argument for knowing C. Most stacks are indeed written in C, but this is because most operating system interfaces are written in C, and C compilers are widely available and easy to write. Many efficient VM's have a minimal base written in C and transition to their own language early on. Amusingly, the Squeak VM from the original article is one of these. > Are you saying we shouldn't equip them to understand things like trace compiling, which are the state of the art in language design and implementation? Only students who specialize in compilers or virtual machines are going to dig that deep ... but what does that have to do with C? > Sure, if all you want to do is web development, you can probably go a long ways without understanding system software. But you'll always be dependent on the people who understand the stack up and down. That raises a good point - stop reading the web and get out there and till those fields, or you'll always be dependent on others for your basic needs. While you're out there, we'll debate the finer points of a specialized society. I'll just point out that hardware and operating systems are useless without higher level applications. Those writing them are actually always dependent on others to make the combination do something useful.

haberman 17y ago
> Someone with no understanding of C can just as easily read man pages. If all you know is Python, or Java, or another high level language, how would you even know that manpages that document system calls exist? How would you interpret the C function prototypes that are written there? How would you determine how high-level language constructs map to system calls? In my example, you got lucky because the open() function in Python calls the open() system call, but this is not universally true. > Thats a common, but baseless argument for knowing C. Most stacks are indeed written in C, but this is because most operating system interfaces are written in C, and C compilers are widely available and easy to write. So you acknowledge: - most software stacks are written in C - most operating system interfaces are written in C - C compilers are ubiquitous ...but also argue that we shouldn't teach students C? Are you arguing that it's not important for students to understand the system software that we both agree exists and is ubiquitous? > That raises a good point - stop reading the web and get out there and till those fields, or you'll always be dependent on others for your basic needs. Maybe you enjoy analogies, but I have direct experience in professional settings where I was able to use my knowledge of system-level software to solve problems that stumped people without this deep knowledge. Maybe the most relevant example was at a web startup I worked at two years ago. Note that I was working on a website at the application level -- not writing system software. I had to solve several problems like this one: http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/8704 http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/8704 Solving this problem required repeatedly digging down into the Ruby interpreter, C extensions, system calls, signals, etc. Note that this was in my job as a webdev. Being able to solve problems like this made me stand out among my peers (who were also good developers, but didn't have as much systems experience as I did). All I can hear you saying is that you don't think students should learn C because you personally don't like it. That's fine, but I am presenting evidence that it will make you a significantly better programmer. Don't tell aspiring programmers that knowing C won't help them, because it's simply not true.
- ynniv 17y ago
  I think that you've misinterpreted my original comment. My argument is that C is a poor language for teaching computing theory. There will be classes where students will learn C, certainly any hardware oriented class. The question at hand is, "Do students benefit from learning concepts in languages other than C", and I think that you'll agree the answer is "yes".