Learning from Java to C... ...What is the biggest challenge?

Question

I had experience on Java, because of some results, I need to code in C, is it difficult to switch from Java to C? And what is the biggest different between these two languages?

Answer 1

Without question, first and foremost, it's the manual memory management.

Second is that C has no objects so C code will tend to be structured very differently to Java code.

Edit: a little anecdote: back 15 or so years ago when it was common to log on to your local ISP on a UNIX command prompt when PPP was still pretty new and when university campuses still had an abundance of dumb terminals to UNIX servers, many had a program called fortune that would run when we logged on and output a random geeky platitude. I literally laughed out loud one day when I logged in an read:

C -- a programming language that combines the power of assembly language with the flexibility of assembly language.

It's funny because it's true: C is the assembly language of modern computing. That's not a criticism, merely an observation.

Answer 2

Perhaps the most difficult concept is learning how to handle pointers and memory management yourself. Java substantially abstracts many concepts related to pointers, but in C, you'll have to understand how pointers are related to one another, and to the other concepts in the language.