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

Answer 1

Like the answers to many other questions in life, it depends. It depends on what your programming interests and goals are. If you want to program desktop applications, perhaps with a GUI, then C++ (and OOP) is probably a better way to go. If you're interested in hardware programming on something other than an x86 chipset, then C is often a better choice, usually for its speed. If you want to create a new media player or write a business app, I'd choose C++. If you want to do scientific simulations of galaxy collisions or fluid dynamics, behold the power of C.

Answer 2

If you decide to learn both (and as other people have mentioned, there's no explicit need to learn both), learn C first. Going from C to C++ feels like a natural progression; going the other way feels like deliberately tying one hand behind your back. :-)

Answer 3

I learned C first, and I took a course in data structures which used C, before I learned C++. This has worked well for me. A data structures course in C gave me a solid understanding of pointers and memory management. It also made obvious the benefits of the object oriented paradigm, once I had learned what it was.

On the flip side, by learning C first, I have developed some habits that initially caused me to write bad C++ code, such as excessive use of pointers (when C++ references would do) and the preprocessor.

C++ is really a very complex language with lots of features. It is not really a superset of C, though. Rather there is a subset of C++ consisting of the basic procedural programming constructs (loops, ifs, and functions), which is very similar to C. In your case, I would start with that, and then work my way up to more advanced concepts like classes and templates.

The most important thing, IMHO, is to be exposed to different programming paradigms, like procedural, object-oriented, functional, and logical, early on, before your brain freezes into one way of looking at the world. Incidentally, I would also strongly recommend that you learn a functional programming language, like Scheme. It would really expand your horizons.

Answer 4

Having observed people, who have learned Java first, struggle with the concepts of pointers and memory management in C++, I'd say that learning C first is a good idea, in order to grasp these two concepts, isolated from the complexities of other C++ features.

Answer 5

I think you should learn C first, because I learned C first. C gave me a good grasp of the syntax and gotchas with things like pointers, all of which flow into C++.

I think C++ makes it easy to wrap up all those gotchas (need an array that won't overflow when you use the [] operator and a dodgy index? Sure, make an array class that does bounds checking) but you need to know what they are and get bitten by them before you understand why things are done in certain ways.

When all is said and done, the way C++ is usually taught is "C++ is C with objects, here's the C stuff and here's how all this OO stuff works", so you're likely to learn basic C before any real C++ if you follow most texts anyway.

Answer 6

No.

It's generally more useful to learn C++ because it's closer to the most modern OO-based languages, like Eiffel or C#.

If your goal is to learn C++, learn modern, standard C++ in the first place. Leave the mallocs aside.

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But Steve Rowe has a point...