[yard2010]

Working with c/cpp in uni exploded my mind. It's such a specific humbling experience that has a bit of anything I love - engineering, history, culture, linguistics, etc.

It made me think that anyone should know and try every possible language (programming or otherwise) - "thinking" in a language is such a unique experience. The different contexts make everything feel different, even though it's more of the same. The perspective change, and changes the subjective experience.

For example - to really understand the nature of linux or git, you have to speak its language and understand the nuances that are usually lost in translation. Tangibly, to understand the true subjective meaning of the word "forest" in russian one has to speak and understand russian.

The context changes the perspective, so sometimes it changes everything.

[ryandrake]

It’s kind of sad how C has gotten the reputation as this dangerous and scary dark art that only wizards can successfully wield. C was my first love, it’s what we used throughout university, it’s what our operating systems and basic tools are all written in... If you go to your favorite language and step down into the actual implementation of, for example, your network calls, you’re eventually going to get to poll() and write() written in C. It’s useful to know and be fluent in regardless of whether you intend to work on large projects in C.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

But if the dy/dx gradient is that experts can develop faster in safe languages, and novices make fewer mistakes in safe languages, then C isn't useful day-to-day.

It occupies an ever-shrinking ecological niche on the Pareto frontier.

[pdp11ty]

Some of the worst software I've ever used, and also some of the worst software I've ever seen developed, was done by novices in safe languages. You can't escape how the computer works, you can only plug your ears and yell "LALALALALA!" really loud. But that doesn't change reality. If you aren't a good developer, you won't make good software, in any language. That's not the language's fault. If you don't understand pointers, that's on you. Computers use indirection; it's a fact of the craft. It doesn't matter if your fancy runtime hides them from you, they're still in there, and you should know how they work; not only because they're simply important, but because they'll make it easier for you to reason about things when something goes wrong. Otherwise, you'll sit there helpless and come running to someone like me with screenshots of stack traces that tell you exactly what's wrong. (Yes, this happens to me all the time.)

[zppln]

What are you on about? C is more useful day-to-day than the vast majority of languages. Learning it is hardly a waste of time.

[the_gorilla]

C is one of the worst designed programming languages still in use. It's a ridiculous, cruel joke on anyone looking to learn unless your actual goal is to learn what a programming language designed 70s computers looks like.

[tuveson]

I think C is a simple well-designed systems language. It has some warts, but many of the things people complain about are matters of preference – or due to a lack of understanding of the problems that C is good at solving.

The only major challengers to C in the last 50 years are C++ and Rust. I think that’s a testament to the quality of the language.

[theideaofcoffee]

Same, it was my first language that I got real fluent in. And I feel the same when the prevailing sentiment now is that you're 100% guaranteed to shoot your foot off and make your dog sick if you even look at some C code. I think it's harmful, because wielded responsibly it's super powerful. We shouldn't be discouraging something because it's hard to master, we should be encouraging discretion. And that discretion may take you to a memory-safe language, you may stick with C or something similarly low-level, it all depends.

[ggliv]

This is a neat perspective. I’ve heard conversation on how working with different programming languages affects how you code (“learn Haskell, it’ll make you think more functionally!”) but for some reason I never connected it to the linguistic side of things.

I remember learning about the effects of language on cognition in a psychology course I took a while ago, it’s interesting to think about how that could apply more broadly.