It sounds to me like you haven't spent much time trying to teach a class to program. Most introductory courses these days focus on trying to teach students to understand how to solve problems (usually to some degree agnostic of language) and then how to turn their solution into code. The largest mental leap seems to be with the former, and using C as a starting language makes the latter unnecessarily difficult compared to, say, python (which is why it's gaining such popularity among intro. courses

I can understand if one is a) very motivated and b) has the right mindset to properly frame their ideas at the low level c operates at, C could be a good starting language. But this is not the case for many beginners.

>Most introductory courses these days focus on trying to teach students to understand how to solve problems (usually to some degree agnostic of language) and then how to turn their solution into code.

The "to some degree agnostic of language" part has been available for a long time in computers, initially as flowcharts and later as pseudocode.

>and b) has the right mindset to properly frame their ideas at the low level c operates at, C could be a good starting language

That requires prior knowledge and practice more than a mindset, IMO.

I agree with this sentiment. In my experience, it's hard enough for a novice to learn to reason through basic control flow (loops, functions, variable assignment).

Over a few years of working as a teaching assistant, I saw two types of students: those that had some prior knowledge and effortlessly picked up the concepts, and first-timers that had to put in serious effort to stay afloat. If you were in the former camp, it's hard to envision how the latter might feel, and why every bit of additional complexity is a menace to someone who's already struggling with frustration over internalizing the basics. If you add too much complexity, the novice becomes discouraged, gives up trying to understand, and simply tries to memorize - this is always catastrophic for them.

As an example, I'm taking about students that write code like:

  if(x == true){
      y = true 
  } 
  else if (x == false){
      y = false
  }

Learning to program is about solving problems using a computer. Any programming language allows this, however some languages make it harder than others, and C is in that category. A language like Python has very little quirks that will stump a person coding for the first time in their life; in C they'll wonder "what does int main(int argc, char argv) mean?", "why is there a & before my variable in a scanf but not in printf?", "what are 'nul-terminated' strings?", etc.

A programmer should definitely eventually learn C, but there's no reason it needs to be their first language and definitely no reason it should be their only language.

>in C they'll wonder "what does int main(int argc, char argv) mean?

They'll only wonder that if the book / course / instructor teaching them C, does NOT explain it to them. Which would be more of a reflection on said book / course / instructor than on the C language or the students.

For students who are just learning to wrestle with the programming concept, python is far superior because it lets the student focus more on what to express and when, and less on remembering silly things like curly braces and semicolons.

First, braces and semicolons are not silly. They are just a different form of syntax than indentation. (And I say that as a Pythonista of many years, who also learned and then used C a lot before learning Python.)

Second, your point may (or not) be correct, but it is at best tangentially related to the point I was replying to, or to mine.

I don't think it's tangentially related at all. The cognitive load of trying to program for the first time is quite high.

If the student doesn't have to focus on remembering whether or not you need a semicolon or a colon on switch statement cases, they can focus more on actually grokking the process of translating thoughts and algorithms to code.

>> A language like Python has very little quirks that will stump a person coding for the first time in their life

Python is great but some of the things I've come across:

  Why do some keywords use parenthesis and others don't?
  What's this Python 2/3 hubbub all about?
  What are __INIT__ and __MAIN__?
  Why do I see single, double, and triple quoted strings?
  What does the u prefix mean in u"Hello World"?

Well sure, every language has its quirks, but those last four aren't going to show up unless the person starts diving into an existing codebase, which shouldn't happen if they're still learning. The keys/parenthesis bit I will concede is a bit of a problem.

I agree it is not easy. Though I never said that it should be the only language! Emphasis was on the fact that one could build a career on C more than any other because of the additional overhead / toolchain baggage. (I quite frankly haven't met anyone who only knew C tbh and doubt such individuals exist in the industry (in a successful capacity))

>> C isn't just hard for beginners because of the language but the rest of the tool-chain.

I can agree with this, if not moreso the fact that you also have to learn the underlying system when you learn C.

For example, I 'learned' C from Greg Perry's "C Programming in 12 Easy Lessons". I was 11 or 12 years old at the time, had played around with a few other languages, but I knew C was the language video games were written in, so I wanted to learn C.

Part of the reason I wanted to buy that book was because it came with a compiler, Borland C++ 1.0. The book was also only $29.99 and was at a store in town. You'd be learning how to use functions like fscanf() but they never covered the details of 'when things go wrong'. You're missing some bytes, your file is incorrect, DOS does this while UNIX does that... You learn just enough to get you in trouble.

Sure, one book can't teach you everything, but it wasn't quite enough to give you a real good understanding of how C worked.

http://www.amazon.com/C-Programming-12-Easy-Lessons/dp/06723...

I eventually bought a game programming book and started to learn all the 'hard' stuff that I didn't even dream about when I first started. x86 interrupts, accessing joysticks and sound cards, writing to video memory...

All of this can be solved to a point by dumbing it down and using libraries. You still have to make sure you've got things like pointers down, though. You don't quite have to worry about that stuff with say, QuickBASIC or Turbo Pascal.

I think there is a bit of a "survivor's bias" in this argument (which I actually hear very often). Many people give up after they first dabble with programming because its too hard or frustrating and C is a particularly unforgiving and restrictive language (and toolchain).

The reason I think this is important to point out is that I believe programming knowledge could be more widespread than it is today but unforgiving beginning languages tend to weed out people who aren't as familiar with computers as we are.

I too think this survivor bias is kind of a key point yes. Also from my experience if I survive a steep learning curve I tend to build an elitarian view of my skills And I have seen this in most developers out their defending whatever it is they do. If you put your blood, sweat and effort into something it will stay with us. (I have seen this attitude also in others during countless flamewars on usenet when discussing the right editors, linux flavors etc, LOL ... and nobody really spends years studying something that was really hard and then gives up on it without defending it. There is just too much (self-)conditioning in the process of acquiring the skill.

In the end people will always choose the tool they're most comfortable with, whether it's the right tool for the job or not. I have no problem with this because, if there are not enough C experts in the team to maintain the project, it would be a good enough reason why a high-level language becomes the "right tool for the job".

> The argument that one "should study other languages before they're fit to learn C" is terrible IMO and somewhat condescending.

I think I agree.

> It's like saying one must learn "nedit/pico" before starting with editors like "emacs/vi".

It's very little like that. Other languages have their own strengths in a way that nedit/pico do not.