not comparable in any way whatsoever
It is, though. C is a much lower-level language that modern learner languages like Python. It's got stricter formatting requirements and it requires more knowledge to manage it correctly (you can easily mess up when you dive into memory management and file I/O).
Max, Maya and Lightwave are overkill and have about a thousand functions too many for somebody who has never used a modelling toolkit before. Hell, it took a while for me to figure out the basics of extrusion and moving composite parts around. It's really not a fun experience for a beginner without a guide.
I've never used maya, and I don't really know why it exists, but it's made by the same company, so it's probably decent too
3DS Max was originally made by a company called Discreet (you can still get a free version of Discreet's 3DS Max called GMax). Autodesk bought them out a long time ago, and rather than merge the two, they decided to keep Maya with some tools from Max incorporates, and then upgrade and tweak Max to make it better for architectural modeling/CAD.
The idea is that Max is better for modeling and Maya is better for animation, but they both roughly do a similar job if you know the skills. I still prefer the simplified interface of Maya, however, and Max's 3D view controls are garbage.
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