[rurban]

C with its unsafe pointers, unsafe memory management and unsafe types is the worst language to learn for the beginning. It's good to know and learn as 2nd language, but for the beginning you need to learn proper concepts, not broken concepts.

Lisp is still the best language to learn, but any proper scripting language will do also.

PS: "proper scripting language" of course excludes PHP and JavaScript. Dart is fine.

[simion314]

C is hard to create complex programs but for learning simple things pointers are much more simple to understand then say Rust or other abstractions, a programmer will have to understand what it happens under the abstractions.

I understand the point that C is not the best choice this days to do big projects but for learning it seems a good idea, even to learn what segfaults are and buffer overflows are.

[kazinator]

C for utter beginners is probably like being tossed into a tsunami for swimming lessons.

"Okay, now this is how you float on your back; but watch your head: there a protrusion of iron rebar sticking out of a broken concrete bridge support, and you're heading straight for it! We call that 'uncomfortable behavior'."