Thread: Not new to programming but....

I believe nowadays people are encouraged not to learn C before C++ and anyways C++ is pretty much an updated version of C

>is there really much point in learning C these days
All of the excuses for using C instead of C++ have been made obsolete recently. I use C because I prefer a language that I can remember all at once and use most features of on a regular basis. C++ is too big and clumsy IMO. However, I will admit that while I'm not likely to learn and use all of C++, there are several features that I make good use of because they are genuine improvements to C.

Also note that I don't think in OO terms, so the OO features of C++ such as inheritance and polymorphism I don't use much, if at all.

Originally posted by Prelude
>is there really much point in learning C these days
All of the excuses for using C instead of C++ have been made obsolete recently. I use C because I prefer a language that I can remember all at once and use most features of on a regular basis. C++ is too big and clumsy IMO. However, I will admit that while I'm not likely to learn and use all of C++, there are several features that I make good use of because they are genuine improvements to C.

Also note that I don't think in OO terms, so the OO features of C++ such as inheritance and polymorphism I don't use much, if at all.

The important thing to note here is "genuine improvements to C". Even those who think C is the greatest of all can still use C++ without using all of the features. And you don't have to know an entire language to use it. Most of the obscure features of C++ don't get used by the majority of programmers. I would rather they were there for me though. OOP is a better way of doing things but you may not want to. Even so, C++ has plenty of improvements aside from objects.

For the sake of argument, let's pretend that you don't want to use ANY of the new features. C++ has C in it for the most part. You can't really prefer C in that sense. Consider the following conversation:

guy++: I like math.
guy: I don't like math, I prefer algebra.

Make any sense? of course not, algebra is contained in math. You can continue using algebra just fine and be using math the whole time. But it is nice while using algebra if you can once in a while throw some trig in there. You shouldn't restrict yourself to the silly little subset known as C.

from all of my schedules and courses of study so far, i haven't even heard anything of C++, except for when somebody asks where C++ came from in class, and at best we get a brief description of the history of C...