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.
Ned Batchelder /
npub18s…t83tx
2024-01-20 15:36:12
Author Public Key
npub18sd9m0yzelqj7e0khk0zs0t3h49x789g2djqvek06hy9vqmcq6cs0t83txPublished at
2024-01-20 15:36:12Event JSON
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"content": "Tired of this: \"learn C so you can understand how a computer really works.\"\n\nSo much of modern computers is not visible from C (pipelining, virtual memory, branch prediction, cache misses, etc).\n\nI guess what they mean is, \"you learn about pointers and consecutive memory locations\"? How is that helpful for programming in other languages without pointers?\n\nC teaches you an abstraction of computers based on the PDP-11. It's interesting, but it's not essential.",
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