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Vent: I still think learning C first works better than starting with Python
Everyone on here pushes Python for beginners but I spent 6 months trying to learn it and got nowhere. Switched to C with The C Programming Language book from 1988 and suddenly everything clicked. I run a small web dev shop in Austin now and my junior devs who learned C first always debug faster. Has anyone else had better luck going old school first?
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robertb3010d ago
Spend an afternoon manually tracing pointer arithmetic on paper and you will thank yourself later.
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Read somewhere that the brain actually builds better mental models when you start with C because you have to think about memory and how things actually work under the hood. Python just abstracts all that away and beginners end up not knowing why their code breaks half the time. I had the same thing happen to me back in the day, Python felt like magic and I couldn't debug anything. Switched to C and everything made sense, pointers and all. It's like learning to drive a manual car first makes you a better driver overall even if you switch to automatic later. That 1988 K&R book is still gold for a reason.
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