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Re: C Tutorial ?



On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 13:27 +0100, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> Since I am using Debian GNU/Linux since 1999 (Slink, 2.1)
> successfuly, my four daughters (17, 14, 12 and 7years) too...
> 
> Now Laila (14) want to start coding in C and GTK and she need
> really good tutorials (with real examples).  OK, we have found
> allready "libgtk2.0-doc" which is perfectl written.

Hi Michelle,

I don't know know of any really good C tutorials for beginners. The
problem is that while the C language itself is really small and easy to
learn, there are a number of things that need to be understood before
you can start making real programs. Basically, finding the information
on your own and learning how to combine from several documents is very
important.

Languages like PHP, Tcl, Python, Perl, Java or Ruby (among many others)
come with an environment that provides many solutions out of the box.
The usage of C depends very much on the environment you're in, and many
books try to either cover only the most portable aspects of C, or they
get too involved in details about the environment (for example details
about Unix programming, how to create portable code, how to make shared
libraries, etc).

I think one way to learn C is to work through a short tutorial with
varied examples, such as this one:
http://vergil.chemistry.gatech.edu/resources/programming/c-tutorial/toc.html

After that, it would be a good idea to try to implement a new feature or
fix a bug in an existing program. This will gradually introduce the
topics that are not directly related to the C language. I also think it
is less frustrating than writing from scratch, because you can
concentrate on one thing at a time and still get a working result. (If
you write from scratch, you'll have to do a lot of work before the
result is usable.)

On the other hand, if Laila has a very specific application in mind, she
might be motivated enough to work through all those small details.

Anyway, good references are always handy, so here are two links that I
found. They describe the C language but also the Unix programming
environment:
http://www.its.strath.ac.uk/courses/c/
http://publications.gbdirect.co.uk/c_book/

Finally, there is a C and C++ -related site at
http://www.cprogramming.com/ -- it has annoying popups and the quality
of the content varies, but maybe there is some usable information,
particularly in the forums.

Good luck! :)

-- 
Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe@paniq.net>

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