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   Ned Batchelder (nedbat@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 21-Jan-2024 01:13:14 JST Ned Batchelder

   Tired of this: "learn C so you can understand how a computer really works."

   So much of modern computers is not visible from C (pipelining, virtual memory, branch prediction, cache misses, etc).

   I guess what they mean is, "you learn about pointers and consecutive memory locations"? How is that helpful for programming in other languages without pointers?

   C teaches you an abstraction of computers based on the PDP-11. It's interesting, but it's not essential.

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: repeated this.
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     Drew DeVault (drewdevault@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 25-Jan-2024 00:13:33 JST Drew DeVault

     in reply to

     @nedbat you should learn C because virtually al software depends on numerous foundational components of the software ecosystem which are written in C, and if you want to understand your system, or patch it, you have to know C.