Learning C from scratch after 14 years not using it

nikulinpi · n00b Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 37

Hi,

What is the best way to learn C from scratch? I used to code C in high school, but haven't touched for 14 years since.

Any suggestions to find anything qualifying as "from scratch" course?

Morality124 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Feb 2018 Posts: 102

EDX has a lot of free courses that are based on real university courses - not so good though if you want a "credible" citation on a resume though.

CaptainBlood · Advocate Joined: 24 Jan 2010 Posts: 3610

I learned it 30 years ago reading the standard K & R book a couple of times, and never forget it, altough I'va been programming for the last 2 decades.

EDIT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language

Online PDF: https://www.dipmat.univpm.it/~demeio/public/the_c_programming_language_2.pdf Not the latest édition though...

There must be more complete recommendation, but this could be a easy & useful first step.

There must be plenty of tutorials on uTube.

Thks 4 ur attention.

John R. Graham · Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:52 pm Post subject:

K&R is a good book, but it's somewhat concise: best for at least moderately experienced programmers. I also learned C over 30 years ago from K&R, but at the time I was writing production code in FORTRAN, PL/I, and (I swear) IBM 370 Assembly Language (and also avoiding COBOL like the plague). For a more thorough text for beginners, I'd recommend C Primer Plus by Prata. But there's something else you need to do: find something real and substantial to do with it. Working the textbook examples is a good start, but that doesn't really cause it to sink in the same way that actually using a language in practice does.

- John
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CaptainBlood · Advocate Joined: 24 Jan 2010 Posts: 3610

John, you're right saying practice remains the key, but I guess nikulinpi has a good purpose for learning C.
As I was coming from BASIC, it helped be to think closer to hardware.

Long side note: Funny you're mentionning your attitude towards COBOL as I had the same, for which I had a few regrets with all the supposed easy money to be made out of it in the late 90's.

Thks 4 ur attention, interest & support.

Irre · Guru Joined: 09 Nov 2013 Posts: 434 Location: Stockholm

My first programming language was ALGOL in school almost 50 years ago. It was a traumatic experience, but I realise now that it was a good language...
Then FORTRAN IV for some years (I liked it).
Then PL/1 (a very good language, that should have replaced both FORTRAN and COBOL), but I think IBM did some mistakes there in pricing. Customers had to buy a license just to run a compiled program, stupid. IBM also had a language for scripts REXX that looked like PL/1. (emerge dev-lang/regina-rexx

).
My last languages were C and C++. They gave me grey hair! I wrote some programs to run under unix, but I used Windows Visual C++ to write and test them. I think Visual C++ is free to use for students.

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

http://books.goalkicker.com/CBook/CNotesForProfessionals.pdf
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sao98021 · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2018 6:50 am Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067