From: Timothy Hunter <TimHunter@...>
Date: 2007-04-24T10:49:04+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby and C

smc smc wrote:
> Would it be easier to learn ruby if i knew C/C+/C++ or the other way 
> around?
>
I'm biased since I learned C in 1985, but if you don't know C (or 
better, assembler) then you really don't know what your program is 
doing. The Ruby translator is written in C, the core libraries and many 
standard libraries are written in C, and many things in Ruby (printf, 
for example) are named after the well-known C equivalents.

There are those who can argue eloquently that you don't need to know 
what your program is doing at the C level and they're very persuasive. 
At this point I can't decide if they're right or wrong. All I know is 
that when I write Ruby code I frequently think about how such-and-such 
Ruby abstraction is *really* implemented in C.

In any case you can't go wrong learning C. Somebody said that C is so 
pervasive that it's "the atmosphere in which we live."