[coldtea]

>Why do young students no longer learn C?

Who said they don't? This project is about porting existing stuff, for interoperability, etc. Not as a way to "avoid learning C".

>Don't you want to be closer to the underlying OS?

No, why would I want to do that unless I have a specific need for that?

[vezzy-fnord]

No, why would I want to do that unless I have a specific need for that?

At least if you're using a Unix-like system, then understanding POSIX is essential for knowing how things work starting on an intermediate level.

[tormeh]

And why would I want to understand how things work down in the OS?

Anyway, C is a horrible language. Between Fortran and Ada it's unclear to me why C should be chosen for anything, inertia and herdthink aside.

[vezzy-fnord]

Because it intersects with most of what you're doing. Why is that process supervisor I'm using crashing? Oh, it's still using select(2) instead of a modern I/O multiplexing mechanism, and exceeding its FD_SETSIZE limit. What do all these calls mean in my tracing output?

All the infrastructure you're using goes through C/POSIX in one way or another. When things go haywire, you can only get by fixing it on the higher levels or just blindly restarting for so long.

[TorKlingberg]

Have you used Fortran or Ada?

[tormeh]

Have used Fortran. It's pretty nice, actually. I mean, it does have unstructured programming, but its structured alternatives feel pretty natural. Fortran code, like C code, feels a bit fragile but unlike C, Fortran doesn't seem to be actively malevolent. I only know Ada by its (excellent) reputation.

EDIT: Only true if you use the implicit-none flag when compiling Fortran.