Hey, I'm currently learning Java in a programming course at my school. However, it seems to me that most real programs are written in C. I was wondering how difficult it would be for me to learn C after learning Java. I'm doing pretty well at writing programs in Java, but I'm afraid that C will be very different.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by real programs? How do you define a real program? I make money off of Java programs that I write.. does that mean they are not real?

C is exactly the same as Java, meaning you have variables, data structures, conditional statements, etc. The way that they are implemented is completely different though. There are already enough threads that describe the differences, so I won't go into them.

There are a couple of differences between C and Java that immediately come to mind. None of them should make learning C any more difficult, though.

- Java does garbage collecting, C does not
- Java is Object-Oriented, C is not
- Generally, there is more abstracting in Java, I think.
- Consequently, though, C tends to do things faster.