Hacker News Reader

Comment by doom2 | Hacker News Reader

I want to learn two languages in 2026:

* CW (also known as Morse code) - I'm not able to have an amateur radio station at home, so I have to work portable/QRP. Given current band conditions, CW is one easy option to make contacts

* Learn a "low level" programming language, likely C - I never had any kind of formal CS education and kind of fell into the field, initially doing web development and then data engineering. Most of my career has been dominated by Python with a smattering of Java and Scala. Maybe this year will be the year I learn something a little lower down the stack!

View on HN

I'm in the same boat regarding the CS education and the desire to learn C. I find the videos recorded by Antirez (the creator of Redis) that make up something you could call a C course quite interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjXBXBgfKyk&list=PLrEMgOSrS_... . He starts from the basics, but the pace is good and he quickly gets to nitty and gritty. The videos are in Italian, though the automated translations do the job. I think he releases one episode a week.

I am also not a professional programmer, but learned enough C to do some programming on hobby projects a few years back. I started with Ashley Mills' videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCNJWVn9MJuPtPyljb-he...

If you've already programmed in Python you'll know enough to recognize that he makes a few logical leaps in the later videos (where you have to read up on topics to fill in the gaps), but overall I thought they were really good.

I also liked NASA's "The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code" and their C style guide from 1994, both of which helped me achieve the simplicity and clarity I was after.

I always wanted a reason to learn C, but couldn't figure out a good project for it. I ended up learning TempleOS' HolyC as my introduction to low-level programming, funnily enough.

If you're familiar with web programming and data engineering, WebAssembly might be a good way to get into low-level programming. I've written a few web extensions in Rust, compiled down to WASM, and lots of low-level languages have WASM targets now.

The project I keep wanting to pair learning C with is an extremely simple IRC client in the terminal. It'd give me the chance to learn the language and the protocol at the same time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com