Programming in C! How encouraging for the beginner! Why not ruby?<p>Look, astrophysics has a word for spots on the sun. Sunspots. Meanwhile the most fundamental molecule of life is deoxyribonucleic acid. That last word is a product of the classic education system which encouraged "gentlemen" (today: "engineers") to study Latin and Greek.<p>Now I'm not discouraging the teaching and book-printing of rudimentary languages like C and Latin, but maybe C (and Latin) aren't meant to be learned today by beginners in a conversational manner. Students who are curious will naturally look back to ancestor-languages (I have books on C and Perl now as a ruby programmer). For Latin and Greek we have sites like etymonline.com, which are great.<p>What is it with you guys? Are you worried that once the newbies go ruby they'll never go back? Back where? We all need to evolve as developers. Haha soapbox I apologize. I like C syntax.