[LAU] OT: C or C++?

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Josh Lawrence wrote:

> Hi list!
> 
> Sparing you a lot of useless back story here, but for fun a for
> personal amusement (NOT for serious work), I'd like to start learning
> a programming language.  If I'm gonna learn one, I might as well learn
> something that gets a lot of use in the open-source world.  So which
> one to choose?  C or C++?

Why are you limiting yourself to just those two? Do you have a
specific application where bare metal speed is important?  If
speed is not the main factor, pick Python or Ruby or Ocaml or
Haskell. Anything but those two.

If speed is a factor then you probably need C or C++. I've been
programming in both for 20 odd years. I like C for its simplicity
and small feature set. Even though I work professionally as a
programmer and the majority of my work related coding in C++ I
find C++ a pain in the neck. The language is too big, too
complicated, has too many potential traps and when working with
others, its too difficult to agree on a common subset to use.

Just my 5 cents worth.

Erik
-- 
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Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/