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Re:Ask HN: What prgramming language to learn? by redxblood on Friday August 09, 2013 @09:49AM (#6185566)
You know it's low level? How is it different?
Re:Ask HN: What prgramming language to learn? by tjr on Friday August 09, 2013 @10:15AM (#6185756)
The main difference you will probably notice pertains to addressing the computer memory, through pointers and through manual memory allocation/deallocation.

In a broad sense, Java is pretty similar to C. I think if you wanted a perspective-altering experience, learn something like Lisp or Haskell. But I agree that there is value in learning C. You should probably learn both C, and Lisp or Haskell or Scheme or whatever functional-ish language looks interesting.

(This is with the assumed goal of getting an overview of programming language styles. If you have specific application-building demands, then language choice may be more dictated by that, e.g., Objective-C for iOS.)