Re: why learn C?

Le 22-02-2007, pandit <jalaf28@xxxxxxxxx> a écrit :
i want to become a good programmer. one of my friends ( named
"arnuld", he posts here infrequently), taught me Lisp. so i am not a
programming beginner.

i have heard these 2 points. i want to know how :

1. C gives you a strong base of Procedural style of programming which
forms the basis of learning other paradigms e.g OOP

I am not sure that C gives better 'strong base' than Ada.

2. with C one will learn about pointers and algorithms.

pointers: yes
algorithms: why ?

3. /arnuld/ told me this in an email:

" i think algorithms and data-structures are more important than
learning a new programming language. Hence i prefer learning about
algorithms and data structures 1st, before i attempt a new programming
language or OOD. i think that is a better way. i said so after
searching the archives of "comp.programming", "comp.lang.c++",
"comp.lang.c" & "comp.lang.lisp" , at these places i found that
learning about programming, algorithms, data structures, abstraction,
software design and problem solving, and version control is much more
important and time consuming than simply learning a language, almost
all folks agree on that learning a programing language is a simple
task as compared to what they have described here"


/arnuld/ is not an experienced programmer, so i feel difficulty in
believing his words. i want to know the views of people here,a s much
of the post belong to C.

On algorithms: it depends what mean 'learning about algorithms'. In
every day programming, quick-sort is the most complicated algo I wrote,
ans, in all my programming life, the most complicated one was
implementing red-black tree. It is far away for beeing algorithm expert.
But some 'minimum' is needed (linked list, map, tree, sorting...).

The same, there is not a lot of every day *theoretical* structures:
array, lists, hash-map, tree...

Moreover, I do not know how to learn 'abstraction, software design and
problem solving' without any langage. Moreover, I am under the
impression that the 'good' software design is not langage-independant.

At leats, learning C is usefull because the is C, a kind of universal
programming langage known by all, a little bit like 'English' in
natural langages.


Marc Boyer
.

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