A CS professor in Boston told me to stop using C for practice problems, and I was mad for a month

Felix Webb · 2026-10-12T04:30:03.136594+00:00

I always thought starting with C made you a tougher programmer, since that's what my school in Austin pushed. Then I read a 2019 survey from a guy who runs a coding bootcamp in Boston, and he said 78 percent of his students who started in Python stuck with coding past month three, compared to 41 percent who started in C. That bugged me because it felt like cheating. But after watching two friends quit during pointers and memory stuff, I'm starting to think he's right for total newbies. Curious if anyone here actually started in C and made it through without burning out.

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A CS professor in Boston told me to stop using C for practice problems, and I was mad for a month | Coding For Beginners - HW Forums