1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,060


2
00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:02,700
DAVID MALAN: --to get all the
more familiar through practice,

3
00:00:02,700 --> 00:00:04,200
and practice.

4
00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:05,610
All right, so let's actually--

5
00:00:05,610 --> 00:00:06,720
DOUG LLOYD: You know, one
of probably the biggest

6
00:00:06,720 --> 00:00:09,386
questions that we get, and we've
answered in a couple of places,

7
00:00:09,386 --> 00:00:10,740
is why do we teach C?

8
00:00:10,740 --> 00:00:12,660
DAVID MALAN: Oh my god, you're going
to ask that question, aren't you?

9
00:00:12,660 --> 00:00:14,190
DOUG LLOYD: I'm asking
you, why don't we do it?

10
00:00:14,190 --> 00:00:16,530
DAVID MALAN: No, it's a
very conscious decision,

11
00:00:16,530 --> 00:00:19,765
and I actually do think it serves us
well overall, and hopefully serves

12
00:00:19,765 --> 00:00:22,140
our students very well overall,
even though we definitely

13
00:00:22,140 --> 00:00:25,030
pay a price in complexity
sometimes, pointers in particular

14
00:00:25,030 --> 00:00:27,900
is a particularly sophisticated
subject that a lot of students

15
00:00:27,900 --> 00:00:29,400
understandably wrestle with.

16
00:00:29,400 --> 00:00:32,250
But the reality is, it's such
a relatively small language, I

17
00:00:32,250 --> 00:00:35,130
mean we use almost every
feature syntactically in logic

18
00:00:35,130 --> 00:00:39,850
and even functionally of it that comes
with the standard library at least.

19
00:00:39,850 --> 00:00:45,690
It's pretty low level without
going into assembly language,

20
00:00:45,690 --> 00:00:48,057
and there's really no magic
or not much magic at all.

21
00:00:48,057 --> 00:00:50,640
You get a little bit of help
from the compiler here and there,

22
00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:53,910
but the reality is things are not going
to be in memory unless you put them

23
00:00:53,910 --> 00:00:56,409
in memory, and something's not
going to be copied unless you

24
00:00:56,409 --> 00:00:57,860
copy every one of those bytes.

25
00:00:57,860 --> 00:01:00,570
And so there is this
deliberateness to the language

26
00:01:00,570 --> 00:01:04,035
that I think is really helpful because
there really is so little magic.

27
00:01:04,035 --> 00:01:05,910
DOUG LLOYD: Yeah, it
gives us the opportunity

28
00:01:05,910 --> 00:01:09,034
to talk about things that you can't
even talk about in a lot of more

29
00:01:09,034 --> 00:01:10,200
modern high level languages.

30
00:01:10,200 --> 00:01:13,466
And C has been around
for a really long time

31
00:01:13,466 --> 00:01:15,840
it has inspired so many of
these other languages, so even

32
00:01:15,840 --> 00:01:18,600
a language like Python that looks
really different, it sort still

33
00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:21,770
has the same flow to it,
and certainly JavaScript,

34
00:01:21,770 --> 00:01:24,360
or when we used to teach PHP.

35
00:01:24,360 --> 00:01:26,250
They can all sort of
count C as ancestors,

36
00:01:26,250 --> 00:01:29,340
and so that's another I
think good reason to use it.

37
00:01:29,340 --> 00:01:32,370
DAVID MALAN: Yeah, and I'm
so proud of our students

38
00:01:32,370 --> 00:01:34,845
honestly, like mid-semester,
by which we have already

39
00:01:34,845 --> 00:01:36,720
looked at what's going
on underneath the hood

40
00:01:36,720 --> 00:01:39,837
and they can speak to memory
management, and the stack, and the heap,

41
00:01:39,837 --> 00:01:41,670
and they really understand
functionally what

42
00:01:41,670 --> 00:01:44,753
is going on underneath the hood, what
is the runtime or the computer doing

43
00:01:44,753 --> 00:01:48,057
for you, what is the compiler doing
for you, and having that appreciation.

44
00:01:48,057 --> 00:01:50,390
So that when we do get closer
to the end of the semester

45
00:01:50,390 --> 00:01:52,348
we introduce Python, and
JavaScript, and others

46
00:01:52,348 --> 00:01:54,690
you have a much greater
appreciation for,

47
00:01:54,690 --> 00:01:58,067
and understanding of what the language
is doing for you and how it's doing it.

48
00:01:58,067 --> 00:02:00,400
DOUG LLOYD: Yeah, you can
take those things for granted,

49
00:02:00,400 --> 00:02:04,067
but you still know what
you are taking for granted.

50
00:02:04,067 --> 00:02:06,900
DAVID MALAN: Even in Python which
has good documentation to the time

51
00:02:06,900 --> 00:02:11,190
complexity or running
time of various data

52
00:02:11,190 --> 00:02:13,800
structure algorithms like lists,
and sets, and dictionaries,

53
00:02:13,800 --> 00:02:15,922
and so forth, you can
actually imagine, all right,

54
00:02:15,922 --> 00:02:18,630
well how must Python be implementing
some data structure in order

55
00:02:18,630 --> 00:02:19,920
to achieve this running time.

56
00:02:19,920 --> 00:02:22,211
And we've looked at a very
low level by having students

57
00:02:22,211 --> 00:02:24,980
build those structures themselves.

58
00:02:24,980 --> 00:02:28,520
And even the security aspects,
it's ridiculous, but to this day

59
00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:33,067
we still suffers a society from buffer
overflow attacks and various exploits

60
00:02:33,067 --> 00:02:36,150
based on that, and being able to have
a conversation and talk about what's

61
00:02:36,150 --> 00:02:40,770
going on and really demonstrating that
this is a pretty low level attack.

62
00:02:40,770 --> 00:02:42,990
But it all makes sense
if you just understand

63
00:02:42,990 --> 00:02:46,770
these basics, these first
principles on top of which we've

64
00:02:46,770 --> 00:02:48,480
been building these systems.

65
00:02:48,480 --> 00:02:51,560
Like you can infer, even from
that alone, how these attacks

66
00:02:51,560 --> 00:02:53,625
are taking advantage of systems.

67
00:02:53,625 --> 00:02:54,125