How long to learn C?

Asked 2009-07-21T12:15:07.447

I'm a C# programmer and I'm sold on the benefits of learning C. I want to deepen my knowledge of the underlying OS and CPU, understand the pain of memory management that garbage collection encapsulates away and generally improve my high-level programs thanks to an appreciation of the low-level issues that the compiler is dealing with on my behalf.

My question is how long can I expect to spend learning the C language in order to gain these benefits?

Is a couple of weekends spent reading the K&R book from cover to cover sufficient, or do I need to schedule time to cut some code? Do I need to spend time delving into any libraries, or is an understanding of the first-order concepts in the language enough to improve my C# code?

To be clear, I don't intend to write any significant programs in C. My goal is more to learn from the language than to become an expert in the language.

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2 Answers

I'm not sure how long it takes to learn a language - it probably comes down to the individual. But I'm pretty confident you can't learn one without writing and debugging code in it.

answered 2009-07-21T12:17:41.303

It will take a lot lot longer if you just sit around asking abstract questions and not actually diving in and doing it. Do you have a deadline or something? How long will it take me to learn the piano? Who cares, I just wanna make some noise. That's how kids learn so fast. They don't care about becoming an expert, or even good. They just like to play.

In any case, if you want to learn some interesting things, try some assembler as well. A lot of people really hate it, but that's just because they don't like spending countless hours not accomplishing much. I like it just fine.

answered 2009-07-21T13:09:30.897

How long to learn C?

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