Should I learn C before learning C++? [closed]

Answer 1

My two cents:

I suggest to learn C first, because :

• it is a fundamental language - a lot of languages descended from C
• more platforms supports C compiler than C++,- be it embedded systems, GPU chips, etc.
• according to TIOBE index C is still about 2 times more popular than C++.

Answer 2

There is no need to learn C before learning C++.

They are different languages. It is a common misconception that C++ is in some way dependent on C and not a fully specified language on its own.

Just because C++ shares a lot of the same syntax and a lot of the same semantics, does not mean you need to learn C first.

If you learn C++ you will eventually learn most of C with some differences between the languages that you will learn over time. In fact its a very hard thing to write proper C++ because intermediate C++ programmers tend to write C/C++.That is true whether or not you started with C or started with C++.

If you know C first, then that is good plus to learning C++. You will start with knowing a chunk of the language. If you do not know C first then there is no point focusing on a different language. There are plenty of good books and tutorials available that start you from knowing nothing and will cover anything you would learn from C which applies to C++ as well.

Please see further reasoning in this answer.

Answer 3

i think c is a really nice programming language, it's compact and somewhat easy to learn. but if you only want to learn c++ start with c++. but i suggest you to learn both. and if you want to do that; i think it's better to start with c. as said before: it's small and somewhat easy to learn. might be a nice step-up to a more complex programming language as c++. (since c provides you with some basics)

good luck.

Answer 4

Learning C forces you to think harder about some issues such as explicit and implicit memory management or storage sizes of basic data types at the time you write your code.

Once you have reached a point where you feel comfortable around C's features and misfeatures, you will probably have less trouble learning and writing in C++.

It is entirely possible that the C++ code you have seen did not look much different from standard C, but that may well be because it was not object oriented and did not use exceptions, object-orientation, templates or other advanced features.

Answer 5

I think learning C first is a good idea.

There's a reason comp sci courses still use C.

In my opinion its to avoid all the "crowding" of the subject matter the obligation to require OOP carries.

I think that procedural programming is the most natural way to first learn programming. I think that's true because at the end of the day its what you have: lines of code executing one after the other.

Many texts today are pushing an "objects first" approach and start talking about cars and gearshifts before they introduce arrays.

Answer 6

I love this question - it's like asking "what should I learn first, snowboarding or skiing"? I think it depends if you want to snowboard or to ski. If you want to do both, you have to learn both.

In both sports, you slide down a hill on snow using devices that are sufficiently similar to provoke this question. However, they are also sufficiently different so that learning one does not help you much with the other. Same thing with C and C++. While they appear to be languages sufficiently similar in syntax, the mind set that you need for writing OO code vs procedural code is sufficiently different so that you pretty much have to start from the beginning, whatever language you learn second.