Hi, What a long thread and jam packed with tons of opinions, advice and arguments! Very nice! What I would like to add to this is, no matter what language you choose, what operating system and which development environment / system, it is always going to be hard to learn something new. My advice to any new programmer out there, or any one wanting to learn a new language is to take it easy. Start with the most basic of basic programs; Hello World for example, and then move on one step at a time. A good introductory book is for sure the best way to go. If you start with this very complex problem you are trying to solve in a language you only have a few hours of experience with, then it is obviously going to frustrate the you to the point of wanting to give up. It's really hard to do this, to take it easy and to write many silly, useless programs while on the learning path. What I find particularly hard is to stick to the pace of the book / tutorial. I tend to skim by, and in my mind tell myself; "yeah, that is obvious, I get this, I get that" while in reality I don't really get it yet :-) Especially when listening to the book / tutorial via a screen reader, you really miss a lot and you don't realise how much you miss until you try and do something. The sad truth is that learning something useful takes a long, long time. The best way to think about it is to enjoy the learning process as well, else you'll never be a satisfied programmer for when is a program really ever finished or complete? And lastly, I believe no matter what language you learn today, tomorrow there will be a new, or previously unknown to you, language that can solve a particular problem X in a more elegant way, with more APIs. That's life, and it should never prevent you from starting somewhere. Obviously some languages require you to master a lot of theory before you could even start writing the most basic of programs. Don't start learning programming with one of those ones -- I'm talking about assembler for example. Never forget to employ a scientific approach of experimentation and cause and effect. Keep well, and keep on coding! On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 6:51 AM, Bill Gallik <BillGallik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote: > Jim, > > I think you've stumbled on the point buddy. Machine manipulation is the > problem solution in a variety of circumstances, telecommunications being one > of these. Another example of such "solutions" would software to > manage/control various medical equipment/devices. > > The idea of C being able to get cozy with registers, memory and addressing > is that is what may be called for in such projects. > > I agree that many projects have no need for such control and you're correct > in presuming so. > > ---- > Holland's Person, Bill > E-Mail: BillGallik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx > - The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese! > __________ > View the list's information and change your settings at > //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind > > -- Kerneels Roos Cell/SMS: +27 (0)82 309 1998 Skype: cornelis.roos The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!