Teaching myself a bit of C because I'm helping with our university "intro to programming so you get a job" class
Looks at the tutorial description:
**squints**
Conversation
Why do we teach C?
Because its what we teach.
Gotta learn them pointers and memory management.
In case you're one of the 2% of programmers who use pointers and memory management.
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Eh, maybe more than 2%.
but .. yeah, explicit pointers. Was required to learn them in HS and college CS, proceeded to not use them at all in the next 15 years of programming.
Coulda done with *any* functional programming background, through.
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Anyway, my semester task is to figure out how to teach pointers... more nicer and more gooder than I was taught pointers.
GIF
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If anyone has insights (especially from more contemporary CS experience) of:
"The time I realized something I wish I'd know about memory and pointers, eg"
I'd be happy to hear it! Best I can do is scaffold this info so that it ends up useful *regardless* of where they go next
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A challenge! I'd start by making sure pointers are the "aspirin" to a genuine headache. They clicked for me once I was in a situation where I needed to carefully mind how much/where/when memory is allocated, e.g. a program which edits huge files or an image processing pipeline.
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Given today's beefy machines, targeting an embedded device ("let's hack on Raspberry Pi!") may help stoke the headache more rapidly.