From: Harry Ohlsen <harryo@...>
Date: 2003-04-29T04:37:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Why I haven't learned (and don't really want to learn) C/C++ (was: Re: Generating a DLL file?)

On Mon, 28 Apr 2003 22:29, Mike Campbell wrote:
> maybe that's where we differ; I don't consider learning different languages
> "suffering".  As Hal pointed out, learning C now might be an investment in
> the past, and yet, people still do, and want to, learn lisp!  Why? 
> Certainly not for its commercial value.  No, it's because learning it can
> teach you things about your current language; new paradigms, etc.

Also, depending on the environment in which you work, knowing at least C could 
be very handy.  Not so much on Windows, but on *nix, for example, knowing 
enough C to be able to sort out any trivial problems in open source software 
you download, rather than having to wait for a new release, or having to bug 
someone else to fix it, can save you time and annoyance.

> Can C do that?  Dunno, I learned it almost 20 years ago and C++ just over
> 10 and use neither today.  Would I take it up today?  Probably; I learned a
> lot about compilers doing so, how to debug, how the computer "thinks" about
> things, etc.

Pretty much the same here.  I was just commenting the other day that in the 
last couple of months, I've written a lot of Ruby, but I've also written C 
code ... because, while REXML is fantastic, it doesn't like 300MB XML files 
very much :-) ... C++, because I wanted OO but the entire problem required 
pure speed (again related to huge XML files), Java and Javascript (not in a 
browser, but for general scripting).

All of this, apart from perhaps the Javascript, is all pretty similar stuff, 
but each was chosen for a pragmatic reason.  As the PPs say, it really is 
helpful to have more than one language in your toolkit.

C and/or C++ are worthwhile because they're the lingua franca of open source 
and can be used to get some serious speed improvements in CPU intensive bits 
of Ruby programs.

Harry O.