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Comment by pacomerh | Hacker News Reader

May I ask why your desire to learn C?, I'd just like to know what are you targeting specifically.

Don't laugh.

My ultimate goal in life is to write software for satellites, space probes or planetary rovers. I want my code in space. It's a pretty advantageous goal, but with hard work I can do it.

There is a Canadian company that is currently hiring for my dream position: http://www.mscinc.ca/about/MS-engineer.html

I'd like to help further Canada's contribution to space science.

I'm currently taking my first year of Computer Science. Getting really good at C is something I feel like I should start now. Then I'll need to get good at embedded C and eventually start looking at the VxWorks operating system since it seems like that's what most probes or satellites use. But that's for the future.

This is a pretty reasonable goal. I suggest you also consider learning FORTRAN (starting with 77) and a solid scripting language like Python or the more niche IDL (used extensively in space research)

You can get your foot in the door with some more high level programs doing things like data processing and visualizations, and once you are there you will be able to find the opportunity to get your hands dirty with space code.

I worked in a group doing solar physics research and although my code didn't get pushed to a satellite, I did get to do a lot of awesome analysis on data sent back from the satellite.

You should browse sites like the AAS Job Register as well: http://jobregister.aas.org/

The Science Engineering and Support/Technical staff positions are often open to people without a PhD and offer a great opportunity to work on space science.

As an aside: How are you selecting your man pages? Do you have a specific group in your sights, or will you pick day by day?

Thank you for the advice, you've definitely given me some stuff to thing about, and I'm glad to hear from somebody who's worked in a field similar to what I'd like to get into.

As for the man pages, I'm starting off with 'man', then will move onto my most commonly used commands for general Linux use and server administration. After that, I'll be using a shell script to give me a random man page.

Hah, very meta, good idea to start with man's manpage, then work your way from there. Best of luck to you.

As I recall, SpaceX does their stuff with C++ on Linux with no exceptions. It the rest of their coding standards are anything like NASA's I imagine the subset of C++ that they aee using is closer to C than any normal production C++, so getting a very firm grasp on C is probably the best way to go throughout the industry.

This is some very interesting stuff you want to do there. Try to reach that goal! There's nothing better for an engineer than challenges.

Anyway, even in case you fall short of your goal, learning C can't be wrong. The language provides a very good abstract machine. Probably the best abstract Von-Neumann machine I've seen. Working with it is kind of mind expanding when it comes to understanding computers as well as problem-solving.

A quick suggestion since you said you were taking your first year of CS. Try to implement things you learn, especially algorithms and data structures. It will help you learn the material as well as coding and may give you a couple of insights.

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