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copied!<p>The classic example that Joel Spolsky uses is on <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000319.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">misuse of strcat and strlen</a>, and spotting "Shlemiel the painter" algorithms in general.</p> <p>It's not that you need C to solve problems that higher-level languages can't solve, it's that knowing C well gives you a perspective on what's going on underneath all those levels of languages that allows you to write better software. Because just such a perspective helps you avoid writing code which is, unknown to you, actually O(n^2), for example.</p> <p><strong>Edit:</strong> Some clarification based on comments.</p> <p>Knowing C is not a prerequisite for such knowledge, there are many ways to acquire the same knowledge.</p> <p>Knowing C is also not a guarantee of these skills. You may be proficient in C and yet still write horrible, grotty, kludgy code in every other language you touch.</p> <p>C is a low-level language, yet it still has modern control structures and functions so you aren't always getting caught up in the fiddly details. It's very difficult to become proficient at C without gaining a mastery of certain fundamentals (such as the details of memory management and pointers), mastery of which often pays rich dividends when working in any language.</p> <p><strong>It's always about the fundamentals.</strong></p> <p>This is true in many pursuits as well as software engineering. It is not secret incantations that make the best programmers the best, rather it is a greater mastery of the fundamentals. Experience has shown that knowledge of C tends to have a higher correlation to mastery of certain of those fundamentals, and that learning C tends to be one of the easier and more common routes to acquiring such knowledge.</p>

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