Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!manis
From: manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Teaching myself C, and how?
Keywords: C
Message-ID: <6038@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: 20 Dec 89 19:58:55 GMT
References: <1043@ac.dal.ca>
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Reply-To: manis@cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis)
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Organization: The Invisible City of Kitezh
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As someone who has taught C for a long time, I think that there are few
worse things that an non-programmer can do to him/herself than to learn
C. The reasons are not to do with the claimed lack of elegance of the
language, but rather with the fact that you need to know a fair bit
about the underlying computer to use C effectively. 

I would strongly recommend a Pascal-like language (e.g., Turbo Pascal or
TopSpeed Modula) over C as a first language. 

--
\    Vincent Manis <manis@cs.ubc.ca>      "There is no law that vulgarity and
 \   Department of Computer Science      literary excellence cannot coexist."
 /\  University of British Columbia                        -- A. Trevor Hodge
/  \ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 (604) 228-2394