What is an example in which knowing C will make me write better code in any other language?

Question

In the Stack Overflow podcasts, Joel Spolsky constantly harps on Jeff Atwood about Jeff not knowing how to write code in C. His statement is that \"knowing C helps you write bet

Answer 1

As someone who knows a little C, but loves to write code in perl and other high-level languages, I have never once come across a problem that I was able to solve by writing C.

I am looking for examples of real-world situations where knowing C would be useful while writing a project in a high-level/dynamic language like perl or python.

It's easy to start writing high level code and then wonder we it's running slow. The truth is there are many ways to write perl or python code, and some are better (as in more efficient) than the others. If you know the low level details of how your code is executed in perl or python (both of which are written in C) you can code around several inefficiencies --like knowing which looping construct is faster, how memory is retained/released, etc.

Also, when writing a project in perl or python you sometimes hit a performance wall. The creators of the language (Guido, at least) advocate that you implement that part in C, as a language extension. To do that, well, you'll have to know C.

So, there.