James Britt wrote:
> Ola Bini wrote:
> 
>>
>> One, Rite seems to be what you're looking for, and it will come in 
>> time.  C is the best solution until then.
> 
> 
>>
>> Btw, C have mostly never been teached at universities, since the point 
>> of learning programming languages at Uni's is to take a look at 
>> concepts of programming, not learn something that can be used 
>> professionally. The reasons that C isn't used to teach programming 
>> concepts is the same reason that makes it efficient enough to be 
>> really fast.
> 
> C was taught at my college as part of a general program related to 
> operating systems.  It was the second programming language I learned, 
> and while I do no C coding now, being able to read C is very helpful if 
> you want to understand Ruby mechanics.   This can help you write faster 
> Ruby code.
> 
> The reasons for, and value of, learning C have nothing to do with what 
> goes on at universities; I would think that the rise in emphasis on Java 
> and .Net would suggest that many schools are more interested in 
> vocational training than computer science education.
> 
> I understand why someone might not want to learn C and why they would 
> prefer to do all coding in Ruby or some other language that offers 
> higher abstractions.   On the other hand, one should maybe know at least 
> enough about C so as not to mistakenly call it a strongly-typed language.
> 
> I Rite, like Ruby, is written in C, so one way or another C will make 
> Ruby faster.  Who actually writes that C code is another matter.  Maybe 
> that's another reason to learn C: to help with Rite.
> 
> 

I'm sorry to say that I don't understand half of what you're saying, 
since most of your text is self contradictory with your latest postings.

Further, I never said C is strongly typed, I was referring to this 
statement from you "If I were to invest in the hundreds of hours to 
become facile in a strongly
typed language...". C is my mother tongue and probably the language I'm 
best at, but that doesn't mean I like doing construction work with a 
tooth pick (to paraphrase very good song). Sometimes a tooth pick is 
necessary, mostly it's not.

Regarding programming at universities, you tend to use the words school, 
college and university referring to the same entity, which at least 
where I come from (Sweden) is really not the same things at all. 
Teaching programming in C doesn't really have a place in the curriculum 
at a respectably CS University.

Anywhat.	

-- 
  Ola Bini (http://ola-bini.blogspot.com)
  JvYAML, RbYAML, JRuby and Jatha contributor
  System Developer, Karolinska Institutet (http://www.ki.se)
  OLogix Consulting (http://www.ologix.com)

  "Yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined.