Which C language to learn?
 

Hello!

I've been wondring lately should I continue on path of C++ of which I know the basics, or should I pick some more advanced and powerfull programming language when it's still possible to unlearn a bit. It's been a while since I last time did any programming (ca. 4 months) because of unability to run Linux or BSD on our family computer. Now that I have my very own laptop (iBook) and a decent programming enviroment (XCode 2.1) I think I should begin coding again.

But question remains, should I stick with C++ or maybe switch to Objective C? Or maybe some other C based language? I wouldn't prefer sole C because I think it's quite outdated and clumsy. I'm considering objective C quite heavily since most of the "developement" I will be making are going to be simple desktop apps.

I'll leave my decision to you for now. All suggestions are welcome! :newbie:

Outdated and clumsy? It's a small, elegant language that works! If by "clumsy" you mean you have to write a lot of the stuff that C++ overloads you with by default, that's a different matter. People make the mistake of calling C a high-level language, but it's really a high-level assembler language, which is why it's such fun to use!

I suppose that you also think Linux, being based on an OS that was invented in the late 60s, is outdated, too.

We must learn new stuff. Because of that Objective C

Unix has developed much over course of time and to different directions, but C has remained basically the same except it's offsprings like oC, C++ and others.

So yes, C could be called a bit outdated without a doubt. :)

If you want to be an effective Linux programmer you might want to change your views on C :) Tell Linus that C is clumsy and outdated. Anyways I would say stick with C++ until you've at least learned the STL pretty well, which means you should learn almost all of the language. But of course the choice is up to you, I'm just giving my recommendation which is highly biased towards C++ :D

go with objective C then, it is the apple Mac OSX prefered programming language
with native cocoa interface

As everyone has said, C is definitely not outdated. I don't know much about Objective C, so I can't comment about it. But if you learn C and C++, you can pick up any language in the future pretty easily.

C is a good choice, because good compilers for it are available on most platforms that have something more than assembly language tools. Also, lots of operating systems have a native C API.

I like C++. The compilers are not as widespread, but there are still lots of them. Also, I find some of the more modern techniques being developed with templates to be fascinating. Finally, it is not to difficult to link C++ code to C code.

I have never had any experience with Objective C, so I can't really comment on that other than to say it doesn't appear to be as widespread.

How do I vote for "all of them?"

C is clumpsy, but its library recompensed.

You have a strange idea of clumsy. The libraries merely extend the capabilities of what you can achieve without having to write it all yourself.

Can you give an example of C's "clumsiness"?