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I've got a little bit of history with programming, having gotten my start with Visual Basic. I let it slide as a hobby from a little after VB6 up until just a year or so ago when I got on the iPhone bandwagon, when I decided to take up Objective-C programming.

I now have what I feel to be an intermediate level of knowledge on the language, but I can't help but feel that there's a substantial gap in where my knowledge is, given that there seems to be a substantial bit of the language I don't feel I understand.

Would I benefit from reviewing the underlying C structure, or would I be better served from continuing to practice solely in Objective-C whilst reviewing the documentation for various features?

Edit: Though I've accepted the first answer given, more insight is always appreciated from those with supplementary or opposing views.

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  • Depends on what exactly the substantial bit of the language you don't understand is. – yannis Aug 20 '12 at 15:46
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    "what language you should learn next" type questions are discouraged per site FAQ – gnat Aug 20 '12 at 16:30
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    C is a procedural language. If you just want to learn about the procedural paradigm I would advise you to learn a cleaner language like Pascal: Pascal has been used extensively in real applications but was specifically designed for teaching (therefore Pascal is less hacker-oriented than C). However, if you need to work on some real project in an area that specifically requires C, then you can go ahead and learn C. – Giorgio Aug 20 '12 at 17:09
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    @Terrance Shaw: C has a high practical relevance because, besides being at the core of language like Objective-C and C++) it is often used as an interface between languages. E.g. AFAIK there is a C-interface for Java, Haskell, and many other languages. So even if nowadays not many people develop their applications directly in C, C is practically very important. – Giorgio Aug 20 '12 at 18:20
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    I asked a related question on SO: <stackoverflow.com/questions/10858820/learning-c-for-objective-c> – pasawaya Aug 23 '12 at 2:10
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The features of Objective-C are more or less a Superset of the features of C.

So, for me, the answer is yes.

You'll be learning the most critical concepts of Objective-C and most will find procedural programming a lot simpler and less surprising than similar solutions solved with object oriented programming.

You have a much better chance of understanding all of the concepts in C than you do in Objective-C. Assembly language is another good language with few surprises and few features.

You might have trouble solving a complex problem when you use lower level languages, but you'll actually be able to learn and understand them much easier.

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  • Great. Thank you for your very clear and concise answer. – Terrance Shaw Aug 20 '12 at 16:17
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It depends on what you don't understand about Obj-C. If you feel you have a good grip on the OO side, but struggle with things like pointers or array semantics, then by all means you want to explore the lower-level C side of things.

If you're struggling with OO concepts or message passing or the runtime, then learning C won't help you at all.

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  • I think I've got a fairly good grasp on the OO part of Objective-C, there's just some... finer nuances?... of the language that elude me. Been skimming over "The C Programming Language", and even from the beginning, it seems to be filling in some of the gaps. – Terrance Shaw Aug 20 '12 at 23:01

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