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Learning C
53 posts, Page 2 of 6
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Learning C
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Question Guy
Question Guy
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 9:12 AM
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I'll be honest. I took C. It wasn't very useful. I program in .NET and SQL so much different than C, that there really wasn't any carry over whatsoever.
Post #1345330
TravisDBA
TravisDBA
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 9:24 AM
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Question Guy (8/15/2012)
I'll be honest. I took C.
\
Learning and using C on the job, and taking the class are two different things entirely..
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...
"
Post #1345339
Eric M Russell
Eric M Russell
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 9:40 AM
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If I had to teach all college graduates one language, it would be SQL. It's more practical than C. Most all developers these days write at least some SQL, and most do it badly.
If we teach non-programmers, folks like salespeople, managers, or scientists how to write their own queries against a database, without handing off their requests to IT, they can immediately start benefitting from that knowledge. It's empowering.
If you teach them C, they'll spend weeks learning how print "Hello World" on a console, will never use it, and will forget everything three months.
"Winter Is Coming"
Post #1345357
TravisDBA
TravisDBA
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 9:47 AM
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Eric M Russell (8/15/2012)
If you teach them C, they'll spend weeks learning how print "Hello World" on a console, will never use it, and will forget everything three months.
My point exactly.
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...
"
Post #1345360
Mike Dougherty-384281
Mike Dougherty-384281
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:21 AM
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Eric M Russell (8/15/2012)
If I had to teach all college graduates one language, it would be SQL. It's more practical than C. Most all developers these days write at least some SQL, and most do it badly.
If we teach non-programmers, folks like salespeople, managers, or scientists how to write their own queries against a database, without handing off their requests to IT, they can immediately start benefitting from that knowledge. It's empowering.
If you teach them C, they'll spend weeks learning how print "Hello World" on a console, will never use it, and will forget everything three months.
Can we also teach them how to request information from IT? If the average consumer provided the basics like a URL (isn't everything served via http?), what they have, and what they want (deltas from what they have) - we might be able to start providing solutions right away. Mostly now we have a session of 20 questions to qualify that they have no idea what they are asking for.
Coding "to the hardware" in a cloud makes no sense. I'm not sure we should want our customers writing queries/code. However, I agree that having some appreciation for process would make everybody more effective & efficient at work. Not sure how you teach that to those who don't already possess the skill.
Post #1345382
Steve Jones - SSC Editor
Steve Jones - SSC Editor
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:25 AM
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Question Guy (8/15/2012)
I'll be honest. I took C. It wasn't very useful. I program in .NET and SQL so much different than C, that there really wasn't any carry over whatsoever.
I bet that's not true. I suspect you don't see the fundamentals that you take from C and move into more practical languages.
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Post #1345384
Steve Jones - SSC Editor
Steve Jones - SSC Editor
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:26 AM
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Eric M Russell (8/15/2012)
If I had to teach all college graduates one language, it would be SQL. It's more practical than C. Most all developers these days write at least some SQL, and most do it badly.
[\quote]
I'd agree here if you are querying data. Maybe everyone should have that.
[quote]
If you teach them C, they'll spend weeks learning how print "Hello World" on a console, will never use it, and will forget everything three months.
I disagree. The basic concepts of programming will stick with them, even if they don't use them directly. All the stuff I saw in C still exists in C#, Java, Python, etc.
Follow me on Twitter:
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Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
Post #1345385
Chris Harshman
Chris Harshman
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:29 AM
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GSquared (8/15/2012)
...Make everyone learn Malboge (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge
)...
Ouch! Why did I click that link? Why?
Personally I fall in the anti-C group. I did take a C class in college, but most of the classes were in pascal variants. C variants always felt like a way to force everything into a function even if it's unnatural. Programing languages are supposed to be for people to understand, but C requires the people to think like a machine to understand them.
Post #1345386
Tobar
Tobar
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:34 AM
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Took C in college, spent 15+ years programming in it, much better programmer for it. I have seen many SQL only programmers create code that is unstructured and hence hard to maintain. Not saying you can't be good SQL only, but perhaps it is you do not know what you do not know.
<><
Livin' down on the cube farm. Left, left, then a right.
Post #1345387
Lynn Pettis
Lynn Pettis
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:47 AM
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I have had c# training, but never had the opportunity to put it to use. Starting in high school I learned BASIC, COBOL, ALGOL, Focal, FORTRAN. Moving on to college I learned Pascal, Modula-2, Ada, VAX and PDP-11 Assembler, and more COBOL. In the real world, the only language I used directly that I learned in school was COBOL. Learned and used several reporting tools, scripted several Spreadsheet applications, and did a lot of command line scripting for several OS's.
Is learning C necessary, I don't thnik so. Learning to convert algorithms into working code, yes.
Learning to write well performing code, that comes with experience and mentoring. Not really sure that can be taught in school.
Lynn Pettis
For better assistance in answering your questions, click here
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For more about Cross Tabs and Pivots, click here
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(My Mirror Blog)
Post #1345395
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