Programming in C! How encouraging for the beginner! Why not ruby?
Look, astrophysics has a word for spots on the sun. Sunspots. Meanwhile the most fundamental molecule of life is deoxyribonucleic acid. That last word is a product of the classic education system which encouraged "gentlemen" (today: "engineers") to study Latin and Greek.
Now I'm not discouraging the teaching and book-printing of rudimentary languages like C and Latin, but maybe C (and Latin) aren't meant to be learned today by beginners in a conversational manner. Students who are curious will naturally look back to ancestor-languages (I have books on C and Perl now as a ruby programmer). For Latin and Greek we have sites like etymonline.com, which are great.
What is it with you guys? Are you worried that once the newbies go ruby they'll never go back? Back where? We all need to evolve as developers. Haha soapbox I apologize. I like C syntax.