On 17/12/2013 16:59, Grant Edwards wrote:
I've always thought C was a great language for low-level, bare-metal,
embedded stuff -- but teaching it to first or second year computer
science students is just insane. C has a certain minimalist
orthogonality that I have always found pleasing. [People who smile
wistfully when they think about the PDP-11 instruction word layouts
probably know what I mean.]
I agree with you here, but wasn't there a tie-in between C and the rise
of Unix via universities, or am I barking in the wrong forest?
But, exposure to C should wait until you have a firm grasp of basic
algorithms and data structures and are proficient in assembly language
for a couple different architectures. Ideally, you should also have
written at least one functioning compiler before learning C as well.
I never had a problem with C as I'd written assembler for RCA 1802,
Ferranti F110L and DEC/VAX, plus CORAL 66. Hum, a bit of a fib there, I
recall vainly struggling with a C for loop before I finally realised I'd
effectively written a CORAL 66 one, page 50 here
http://www.xgc.com/manuals/pdf/xgc-c66-rm.pdf for (ouch!!!) anyone who's
interested. Using a Whitesmith's pre-ANSI C compiler didn't exactly
help me either. IIRC printf was spelt format and all the formatting
codes were different to what became standard C.
--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.
Mark Lawrence
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
