Let’s say you decide to learn programming. You have two options. Either use the education system (college or courses) or become self-taught. In the first case, you will learn the programming languages that are imposed on you. The education system (universities, colleges, courses) uses the “modern” development stack. Because what matters to them is what can later bring income to companies and you in life, and taxes to the state. They are part of the system and that’s how it works. Or because they want to get certificates from industry giants and use everything in their implementation - from development tools to ideology. Only a very few colleges and courses specializing in a very narrow field, such as embedded devices, can teach you the C language.
If you choose to learn programming on your own, the first thing you will do is go to the Internet to determine where to start and what you need to learn today. Naturally, you will find there a lot of articles and posts on the topic of “what programming language to learn in X year”. And they will contain a detailed or not very detailed comparison of “modern” languages. But you are unlikely to find the C language among them. Moreover, almost all of these languages will have the intention of being “C replacements”. Naturally, you will choose a new, powerful, and promising language that will replace the “dying C”, while you “look to the future”. You will never find phrases like “Rust is a replacement for Zig” or vice versa, they will all be “replacements for C”. And by doing this they are trying to hide the C language. We have seen why the C programming language is hidden.
But suddenly one wonderful day you came across a post with the words “give C language a try”, or, if you are over 40, you remembered where you started learning programming as a child before you started writing all this “SaaS garbage”. And you thought “well, okay, what if there is something, here is nothing to lose anyway”. And you started learning C, simultaneously integrating into the C community. And then you discover, to your surprise, that the C language is simple and effective, applicable everywhere, and continues to develop. And the community is kind, not pompous, without hype, and buzzing with interesting projects. You realized that the C language is not dying and is not going to die, as the “gurus” on youtube taught you and representatives of the “modern” language communities argued with foam at the mouth. And that it is unlikely that C will be able to replace anything in the near future. It’s as if you have found “your home” again, something you have been looking for a long time, but could not express in words. You have returned to the roots. And this is why the C language is gold.
Look for your “gold”, never give up. When you find it, you will know for sure that this is it. Thanks for reading!
I thought the title of this post was a joke. How is C a Hidden Gem (or Gold)? C won’t die, its like the portable Assembler of the entire computing and programming languages. Newer languages can do some things easier and better, and more secure (yes I’m talking about Rust). Or if you do not need low level access and just want to create a simple application, nothing is wrong by using a more high level and garbage collected language too. In such cases its better than C for the specific person.
Use the right tool for the right job.
Don’t think in terms of replacements, but in terms of additional tools to have. In example in the Linux Kernel Rust won’t replace C, but is added as an additional way to program. Especially if we talk about C, as it is the backbone of everything. That’s exactly how you should look at it in my opinion. For literally any other language, you can make arguments of “replacing” it, because none else is the backbone of everything. And I’m not even a C programmer and prefer Rust and Python.