I first started programming in C, about twenty years ago. I pretty regularly call myself a grumpy old man – I always thought that describing myself as “grumpy” was legit, but that the “old” was a joke.

It turns out that twenty years is a long time. 

I’ve got my copy of K&R (if you don’t what K&R is [like Laine didn’t, who is apparently neither grumpy NOR old…], sigh/get off my lawn, look up the authors), and it’s still my favorite programming book. I still love the simplicity of the C language. I’ve written in languages that do garbage collection and languages that don’t even bother to mention that they do garbage collection for you. I’ve seen so many different kinds of inheritance it makes me mildly disturbed to think about it.

I’ve learned JEE, Spring, and Spring Boot, and I’ve wandered around other people’s Python code. But I still have my love for C. It’s easy for me to read, easy for me to follow, and unless you’re doing something dumb with pointers, it’s pretty easy to figure out what you’re doing, and what you’re doing wrong.

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