Re: C Tutorial ?
Hi Fabian (and Michelle too! :-)
On 3/18/06, Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe@paniq.net> wrote:
> 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.
Funny, I'm also in the language-learning binge too, and I know for
sure that C is not quite the language for beginners. But, judging
from what Michelle says, I think Laila can do a lot with a good C book
that not just describes the language, but the common idioms and
algorithms of that language as well. In my case, I'm pretty much
content with the source (K&R2,) although I also take a peek in `Data
Structures and Program Design in C' by Kruse, Leung, and Tondo, and
`Practical C Programming' by Steve Oualline. Google Books can show
you more ;)
> 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).
From what I'm going through right now, I'm (re)learning both C (from
K&R2, now grokking the stdlib) and Perl in parallel (especially since
I just got a copy of The Camel from the local used books shop,) as
well as mixing in some Autobook stuff for dealing with portability.
After this, I'm planning to use my refreshed knowledge to do some
cleaning up with my own maintained C program packages, and get down
into the source, becoming some amorphous sort of upstream/downstream
:P
> 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.)
And since Michelle said Laila is now wanting to do the same work her
mother is doing, I think it would be nice to show her some of the bugs
for C program packages in Debian, though I fear that _that_ might be
too far off...
Anyhow, I wish the best of luck to Laila (and Michelle too!)
Cheers,
Zakame
--
Zak B. Elep || http://zakame.spunge.org
zakame@ubuntu.com || zakame@spunge.org
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