Should I Learn C Before Python?

Should I learn C before Python?

MIT is teaching Python in their online courses on programming. If they think Python is the best starting place, I'd start with their opinion.

I've heard of the advantages of learning C, too. You get close to the machine level in terms of logic and understanding.

I don't think you're going to be flipping switches, and you might not even be installing routers. There's no need to think at a hardware level.

C is one of the founding programming languages.

So is Lisp and Cobol, but neither gets much attention until someone is paid a fortune to migrate it to Python or C++.

If I learn C, will I pick up C++ and C# more quickly?

Perhaps, but there is C++, C#, and Objective C. Learning C is like learning Latin in the hopes that you'll understand modern day Italian and Spanish better.

A lot of programmers use it to communicate with each other.

I'd also hope the use English and e-mail. While C is closer to machine language, that also makes it closer to obsolete relative to object oriented languages like Python and Java.

Where is C used today?

It is sometimes used to handle machine hardware, but there are drivers and code libraries for that.

Then I guess I need to learn Python.

Or torture yourself with Cython. That's a Python C hybrid.

I'd rather hire someone to write a C module and embed it in my Python application using a tool like SWIG.

Then learn Python and leave C to the coders who are going obsolete.

Obsolete is a relative term. You know that Lisp and Fortran are over 40 years old and still in use somewhere.

Probably on the computers that took us to the moon that haven't been upgraded since Star Wars.

Missile defense project of the 80s or the movies?

Not much difference, they're both just as old compared to Python and Ruby on Rails.

Don't take this conversation off the rails by bringing up Ruby.