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wycats's profile
Yehuda Katz 🥨
Yehuda Katz 🥨
Yehuda Katz  🥨
Verified account
@wycats

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Yehuda Katz  🥨Verified account

@wycats

Tilde Co-Founder, OSS enthusiast and world traveler.

Portland, OR
yehudakatz.com
Joined August 2007

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    Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 29 Nov 2017

    After playing a little bit with QBasic when I was a kid, I was given a K&R C book. My takeaway: programming is not for me. I didn't look at programming seriously again until I was 23. This article is terrible advice.https://www.zeroequalsfalse.press/2017/11/29/c/ 

    8:38 AM - 29 Nov 2017
    • 194 Retweets
    • 995 Likes
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    128 replies 194 retweets 995 likes
      1. Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 29 Nov 2017

        Incidentally, a relative who was really interested in programming went to college and her first course was in C++. It was too much too fast and she quit (and never became a programmer). Unless we're actively trying to reduce the number of programmers, don't start with C or C++.

        37 replies 46 retweets 200 likes
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      1. New conversation
      2. Luke Wright‏ @luke_h_wright 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats

        Been writing a lot of C the past year. My thoughts: terrible intro to programming, absolutely valuable as a growing software engineer. I would have run from programming if it was my first exposure but think it’s the best thing I’ve learned since.

        3 replies 1 retweet 28 likes
      3. Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @luke_h_wright

        Right. Totally agree.

        0 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
      4. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Max Chernyak‏ @hakunin 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats

        Another terrible advice I hear often is to learn [language] before learning [framework]. Because we all love sticking to contrived examples in a console, and waiting patiently until "we are ready" to see anything actually relatable.

        4 replies 0 retweets 21 likes
      3. Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @hakunin

        Yep! Build something you can use and share first.

        1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
      4. 1 more reply
      1. New conversation
      2. Francisco Lopes‏ @pepper_chico 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats

        Both positions are equally bad, it's not C that makes programming good, notmr is it that makes it bad too! You may have not enjoyed K&R, but others do can! It's not an universal truth.

        2 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
      3. Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @pepper_chico

        I didn't say nobody can enjoy K&R. I'm pushing back on the closing line: "So, if you’re interested in programming, C is a great place to start." For a lot of people, C will be the beginning and end of their experience.

        4 replies 0 retweets 18 likes
      4. Francisco Lopes‏ @pepper_chico 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats

        I agree. And for others, as they are commenting, it was indeed a great place to start, so... IMO, basically a matter of taste, or how it happened.

        0 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
      5. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Kelly Sutton‏ @KellySutton 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats

        My alma mater has switched to JS for the first language because it’s high leverage. Easy to get folks interested when they see something more than just printing strings. Sophomore year is when they begin to mix in C.

        4 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
      3. Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @KellySutton

        They should check to see whether people are bouncing hard in year 2. If not, this sounds much better. Of course, I'm partial, but I really wish more schools mixed in Rust as their "low level" thing. Having a standard pkgmgr is gold.

        5 replies 1 retweet 9 likes
      4. Kelly Sutton‏ @KellySutton 30 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats

        Definitely. I believe @rtoal and @zugzugglug would be able to provide more insight there.

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      5. Ray Toal‏ @rtoal 30 Nov 2017
        Replying to @KellySutton @wycats @zugzugglug

        Here's a history/manifesto and reasons we went this route: https://gist.github.com/rtoal/046c7be95aa077a832fcd87f5b024446 … Second semester is Java, so no hard bounce when C is introduced in semester 4.

        0 replies 1 retweet 2 likes
      6. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Nathan Broadbent‏ @ndbroadbent 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats

        I had a very similar experience with a C++ book when I was a kid. I think I just ignored it and kept going with QBasic, then Delphi and Visual Basic. And a scripting thing called “AutoIt 3”.

        4 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
      3. Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @ndbroadbent

        I basically had no access to anything. This was the late 80s so the internet couldn't tell me I should just ignore C (BBSes I was on didn't have the right people), and I didn't have enough $ to try a lot out, so when people gave me a new thing to try it was a big deal.

        2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
      4. 1 more reply
      1. New conversation
      2. Beth‏ @bethcodes 1 Dec 2017
        Replying to @wycats

        (I wrote a while ago about what I care about in an introductory language: http://blog.bethcodes.com/1189539  C has... maybe one of these things. If I'm being generous.)

        1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
      3. Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 1 Dec 2017
        Replying to @bethcodes

        fwiw I think I completely agree with your heuristics :)

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
      4. End of conversation
      1. New conversation
      2. Graydon Hoare‏ @graydon_pub 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats @selfawaresoup

        Agreed. People referring me to K&R, and encouraging me to start with C in general, set teenage-programmer me back many years. It’s often meaningless to a beginner.

        1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
      3. Felipe O. Carvalho‏ @_Felipe 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @graydon_pub @wycats @selfawaresoup

        I read K&R when I was in high school and I liked it so much that I was upset people didn't recommend it before. Short book with all that I needed to learn C.

        1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
      4. Felipe O. Carvalho‏ @_Felipe 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @_Felipe @graydon_pub and

        I wasn't a total beginner, though.

        1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
      5. Yehuda Katz  🥨‏Verified account @wycats 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @_Felipe @graydon_pub @selfawaresoup

        I think C is a great language for an intermediate developer with enough skills to get stuff done already. Learning how to write a Ruby C extensions felt so good to me. But I already knew how to get shit done in Ruby.

        1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
      6. Graydon Hoare‏ @graydon_pub 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @wycats @_Felipe @selfawaresoup

        Yes. I think one ought to learn C and a bit of asm eventually, they represent the hw/sw interface as seen at the lower levels of system dev, and C is ubiquitous in the world. But like .. maybe as language 3 or 4? It's very fussy and awkward, easy to lose motivation when new.

        1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
      7. Graydon Hoare‏ @graydon_pub 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @graydon_pub @wycats and

        Anything beyond scalars quickly gets lost in the weeds of memory management APIs and pointers that, while necessary for full understanding of the implementation, obscures early problem-level reasoning, exhausts a learner's patience.

        1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
      8. Felipe O. Carvalho‏ @_Felipe 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @graydon_pub @wycats @selfawaresoup

        I think beginners should be exposed to many different languages so they quickly understand the most important thing about programming: there are many ways to do it.

        1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
      9. Felipe O. Carvalho‏ @_Felipe 29 Nov 2017
        Replying to @_Felipe @graydon_pub and

        After learning that they will pick a language to study deeply. They will focus on a language without mistakenly believing that what they're doing is how everyone else programs.

        0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
      10. End of conversation

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