Why C Should be First Programming Language

Answer 1

@PRO

If artificial intelligence can for some reason only be programmed in a slow, dynamically typed, easy to write but hard to debug language that doesn’t allow you to dynamically allocate memory, explain this:
http://mlpack.org/benchmarks.html

Also, Python is a terrible language for machine learning.

• It takes a lot of processing power to simulate a neural network, and it is just going to get worse as people want more. This will likely outpace the increase in computer speed. If, in 2048, a decent AI were made in Python, it would talk like this:
You: “Hey, Siri, what’s wrong with this program?”
It: “Hmm, let me think about that...” Much longer than it would take you to debug it later, “You accidentally entered an infinite loop here because of this...”
See the problem in that?

• Python is a monstrosity for large projects. Ask any professional programmer, and they will tell you that Python is good for absolute beginners, but the moment your program passes 5000 lines, you will struggle with function return types and other problems like that even if you do flood your code with comments.

• Python is definitely very easy to read...
Well, not so fast. You would not believe how many questions I’ve seen about why this Python code isn’t working. The answer is ALWAYS either indentation or data types. I’ve never seen this many problems with any other language.

• Python should also not be used as a starting language. It shows everything about what isn’t going on under the hood and lacks the ability to even teach about how memory allocation works.

Answer 2

Wow. @PRO You are a true fan of python. But I guess it distorts your reality a bit...
It's relatively easy to prototype AI models in Python, but if you rebuild the same models in c++ you will get better results. You just don't need the performance gain in most cases.

Answer 3

@ Alex &
@Jacob...
I think it's all about u....in which language u r comfortable with...in my case...I m the most comfortable with python.... most of the developers will correspond with my thoughts...anyways...u two r more comfortable with other languages ....but its alright. ...after all the thing that matters is ability to produce good things....

Answer 4

@PRO Actually, according to the fact that the Python Interpreter is made out of the C Language, and you can build almost everything with C where you can only make some software with Python...

Answer 5

C is a good first choice because it is so basic that you need to (at least roughly) understand how your computer works, how variables of different types and precision are stored and how your computer acceses the data and so on. It gives you a thorough basic understanding.

I love python because it is easy to write down an idea in code and quick to make it work. But since the language is interpreted and not compiled I rather use C/C++ in case I need not loose any time running a code. Just think about a code which you need an answer from within 5 minutes of computation time. if C/C++ does the job and python takes 5 or 10 times longer you'll probably go for C/C++.

However, python offers precompiled code which runs very fast and python is growing very quickly and has lots of applications, e.g. in data science, image processing, linear algebra (MATLAB is rather scared of python because it has become so user friendly) ... .

Check out the programming course CS50 on edx.org . they start with SCRATCH, then C and soon after python.

Answer 6

1: C is still used for embedded systems
2: I didn't even write C, but C++

Answer 7

@Prajwal Kulkarni
c and c++ r almost the same with some additional features available in c++ ...so c and c++ can be used interchangeable to some extent...so its okkk if we sometimes use c instead of c++...

Answer 8

@PRO you said almost.. right
butt hey hold down C++ has lot more features than C

Answer 9

it should not....actually....python is much easier and useful than c... try it...

Answer 10

@PRO
@Alex
I would like to say one thing...
please add the suffix ++ after C....
{C++}
otherwise u are talking about some program made in the early 1970s...

Answer 11

but the thing which is in demand today "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE" can only be developed with python...besides c is a tougher language to learn than python....it is also in less demand than python in 2018