I learned how to first program in the early 1990s with Pascal. It never really clicked with me, despite reading multiple different beginner books, and I gave up, figured programming wasn’t for me.
Years later I was encouraged to read “The C Programming Language”, and it was revelation. And so here I am many years later with a long and successful career in tech.
C was great in the sense that K&R said hey this is a string, and this is strcpy, and oh by the way, this is how you write strcpy.
I taught myself C before doing Pascal at school, so it always felt like a toy educational language to me.
Also I never managed to get a free copy of Delphi when it was all the rage, so I later moved to VB6, then C++ on Visual Studio and then C#, all of which were easily found in the enthusiast magazines a newbie like me would buy in the 90s.
It seems Borland and later Embarcadero had massive distribution and licensing problems, and they are the cause of their demise.
Years later I was encouraged to read “The C Programming Language”, and it was revelation. And so here I am many years later with a long and successful career in tech.
C was great in the sense that K&R said hey this is a string, and this is strcpy, and oh by the way, this is how you write strcpy.