Is it necessary for Java programmers to learn some C/System programming?

Question

I've read a blog(in Chinese only) in which the author had jeered at Java programmers who know little about C and system programming.

The author illustrated how he had found the deep reason of a Java NIO Selector exception using his knownledge of C and Windows/Linux system API. The IOException is thrown with message "Unable to establish loopback connection" when calling java.nio.channels.Selector.open() too many times. What he had found was that for each opening of Selector, a pair of TCP connections were created in Windows and a pair of pipes were created in Linux. In another blog, he also mentioned that GNU Java compiler was a clever implementation than Sun Java.

What he said seems completely new and interesting to me. But I am not sure if C/system knowledge is the only way to figure out such problems quickly. Is it really worth spending much time on learning those knowledges for Java programmers?

Answer 1

I would say yes, quite emphatically in fact. I wish there was some way to ensure that anyone without knowledge of system programming, including at least a passing familiarity with assembly, would never get anywhere near the source for any serious project.

Why? Because I don't just write computer programs; I also use them, and a lot of the ones I use are crap because they were written by people who didn't know what they were doing. There are a lot of important issues in computer programming that simply don't make any sense without a knowledge of how things work at the bits-and-bytes level, and the less incompetent coders out there cluelessly writing bad code, the better the experience will be for all of us.

Answer 2

No, it isn't. But you know what they say, the more you know the better.

Answer 3

Knowledge of C, or any other language, is not a requirement to learning Java. Yes I certainly believe it helps to know a variety of languages in different paradigms. But not knowing C in particular doesn't prevent you from being a good programmer.

Note: It is necessary to understand C in order to do Java RMI. But that is a small subset of Java.

Answer 4

Deep knowledge of the underlying operating system can be very helpful in application development. Every great software engineer that I know can program down to the bare metal.

Answer 5

If you don't know anything about how the underlying system works, then you are limited to whatever the Java environment gives you. That's fine, as far as it goes, but eventually something outside the Java environment is going to impinge upon you and make your environment behave in an unexpected manner. When that happens, if you don't know anything beyond your environment then you'll be stuck.

It's the problem that Joel Spolsky calls 'Leaky Abstractions' - in this case the Java environment is the abstraction in question, and when it gets leaky, then you're going to run into trouble.

Answer 6

The first two years of development I did was entirely in machine code and machine language and I have worked for a number of hardware manufactures. You can always learn a lower level of the system.

What is most valuable however is good commercial experience, learning from your mistakes, trying new things to meet a business requirement will further your career more.

Answer 7

As it was previously mentioned, it is isn't necessary but it certainly doesn't hurt.

At school, we were showed C first because it helped us understand the basics of coding. Also, most languages are inspired from C so it gives a you a great foundation to start learning other languages.

Answer 8

It's not strictly necessary, but learning C can be a rewarding experience. It gives you freedom in every detail of your program. You may miss your high-level features to begin with, I know I did, but you'll grow to enjoy it's extreme simplicity.