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Discussion on: When you want to learn C in 2019

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Andrew Harpin

The main issue many face when learning C is they don't understand how the computer they are programming for works.

C is powerful, but raw!

They have grown up with languages that deal with the underlying operations for them. Sometimes for simplicity, sometimes support and sometimes portability.

The ARM instruction set was created around using C to simplify the compiler.

But much of C is not simple or portable from a simplistic perspective, "int" on an 8 bit platform is not the same as it is on a 32bit platform.

But then there is understanding that an integer division operation could behave differently depending on the underlying processor ALU.

I'm not trying to dissuade people from learning C, but the learning curve is just as steep as when you learned your first language and you need a completely different set of skills to master it.