Should you learn C to “learn how the computer works”?

Re:Should you learn C to “learn how the computer works”? by temac on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @04:02PM (#18125204)

> No, because in reality those are handled by different computational units. Integers are handled by the ALU, and pointers are handled by the loader. They are distinct things to the CPU.

I strongly disagree. Yes some execution units are more let's say "dedicated" to pointers than other, and obviously ultimately you will dereference your pointers, so you will load/store, but compilers happily emit lea to do e.g. Ax9+B and in the other direction, add or sub on pointers. Some ISA even have almost no pointer "oriented" register (and even x64 has very few)

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Re:Should you learn C to “learn how the computer works”? by arcticbull on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @04:32PM (#18125458)

Exactly, this will vary wildly between architectures. I would accept the statement on, for instance, a Harvard architecture but the world is a lot more nuanced in the much more common von Neumann architecture.

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