Learning C?

[***** charles]

Hi all,

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

later,
charles.....

[Ben Pfaff]

"***** charles" <sh*******@sbcg lobal.netwrites :

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

Many years ago, I read a basic tutorial. Then I bought a copy of
the standard. Then I started reading comp.lang.c.
--
"Some people *are* arrogant, and others read the FAQ."
--Chris Dollin

[Richard Heathfield]

***** charles said:

Hi all,

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

I mis-learned C on a three-month course, 35 hours a week. I then
mis-applied that mis-knowledge for a few years, and became a sort of
mis-expert. It wasn't until late 1998 that I discovered I'd been
abusing the interface spec for the entry point, for almost a decade!

In 1999, I started reading comp.lang.c on a regular basis, and it took
perhaps two or three months of daily reading-the-whole-feed and many
(sometimes rather animated) discussions to mend my misunderstandin gs.
Much kudos to Martin Ambuhl, Billy Chambless, Dann Corbit, Chris
Dollin, Lawrence Kirby, Kaz Kylheku, Mikey Lee, Joe Maun, Ben Pfaff,
Dan Pop, "Noone Really", Will Rose, Michael Rubinstein, Richard Stamp,
Steve Summit, Chris Torek, Stephan Wilms, Dik Winter, and no doubt many
others whose names temporarily escape me, for their patience over that
period.

--
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at the above domain, - www.

[***** charles]

"Richard Heathfield" <rj*@see.sig.in validwrote in message
news:fp******** *************@b t.com...

***** charles said:

Hi all,

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

I mis-learned C on a three-month course, 35 hours a week. I then
mis-applied that mis-knowledge for a few years, and became a sort of
mis-expert. It wasn't until late 1998 that I discovered I'd been
abusing the interface spec for the entry point, for almost a decade!

In 1999, I started reading comp.lang.c on a regular basis, and it took
perhaps two or three months of daily reading-the-whole-feed and many
(sometimes rather animated) discussions to mend my misunderstandin gs.
Much kudos to Martin Ambuhl, Billy Chambless, Dann Corbit, Chris
Dollin, Lawrence Kirby, Kaz Kylheku, Mikey Lee, Joe Maun, Ben Pfaff,
Dan Pop, "Noone Really", Will Rose, Michael Rubinstein, Richard Stamp,
Steve Summit, Chris Torek, Stephan Wilms, Dik Winter, and no doubt many
others whose names temporarily escape me, for their patience over that
period.

--
Richard Heathfield
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29/7/1999
http://www.cpax.org.uk
email: rjh at the above domain, - www.

What would you recomend to a person who wanted to start from scratch?
(I have writen code on other languages including asm) Just never learned C.

later.....

[Flash Gordon]

***** charles wrote, On 28/03/07 18:55:

Hi all,

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

K&R2 + a human mentor who was very much my junior. He had done C but
very little programming experience I had a lot of experience but none in C.
--
Flash Gordon

[Kenneth Brody]

Flash Gordon wrote:

>
***** charles wrote, On 28/03/07 18:55:

Hi all,

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

K&R2 + a human mentor who was very much my junior. He had done C but
very little programming experience I had a lot of experience but none
in C.

I had K&R (I suppose it could be retronymed "K&R1"), a CP/M computer,
and a floppy with a C compiler on it. I had a lot of programming
experience in several high-level languages, and a couple of assembly
languages. Later, we got a Unos-based system to get more experience
with C.

Note that, technically, it was "C plus [what was to become] POSIX".

Nothing beats hands-on experience. If you have someone who could
be a mentor, by all means do it as well.

I'm sure if you search this group's archives, you'll find numerous
references to books and websites, both good and bad. Use the good
ones, and avoid the bad ones like the plague. (For example, there
was a recent posting that quoted a book which talked about how to
pass an array by value [as opposed to by reference] that was simply
wrong, on several counts.)

Note that I find, even after 20+ years of programming in C, that I
still have things that I mis-learned. There are also things that I
have learned from reading this group which would have made my life
a lot easier if I had learned them years ago. (Mostly, it's things
that I've "worked around", not knowing that I didn't have to "work
around" them in the first place. Others are things that would have
let me write things more efficiently.)

Finally, it's much easier to learn the right things from the start
than it is to unlearn the wrong things.

--
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+
| Kenneth J. Brody | www.hvcomputer.com | #include |
| kenbrody/at\spamcop.net | www.fptech.com | <std_disclaimer .h|
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------+
Don't e-mail me at: <mailto:Th***** ********@gmail. com>

[Ian Collins]

***** charles wrote:

Hi all,

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

I don't know if the program was ever updated for C89, or even if it
still exists, but I learned C using "learn C" on a VAX. It was the
forerunner of on-line tutorials, taking the user through the exercises
in K&R.

--
Ian Collins.

[Randy Howard]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:55:20 -0500, charles wrote
(in article <l6************ **@newssvr22.ne ws.prodigy.net> ):

Hi all,

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

All of the above, plus a lot of time, energy, mistakes, debugging, more
time, more energy...

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw

[pete]

Richard Heathfield wrote:

>
***** charles said:

Hi all,

I would like to know how all of you learned C.
Was it books, Internet, human mentor, class or other?

I mis-learned C on a three-month course, 35 hours a week. I then
mis-applied that mis-knowledge for a few years, and became a sort of
mis-expert. It wasn't until late 1998 that I discovered I'd been
abusing the interface spec for the entry point, for almost a decade!

In 1999, I started reading comp.lang.c on a regular basis, and it took
perhaps two or three months of daily reading-the-whole-feed and many
(sometimes rather animated) discussions to mend my misunderstandin gs.

I learned C from a couple of Schildt books in about a month.
I didn't feel like I was straightened out
until after reading clc for about two years.

--
pete

[Gregor H.]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:57:50 -0600, "***** charles" <sh*******@sbcg lobal.net>
wrote:

>
What would you recommend to a person who wanted to start from scratch?
(I have writen code on other languages including asm) Just never learned C.

I clearly would recommend K&R's "The C Programming Language" then! It's a
classic.

"This book is meant to help the reader learn how to program in C. It contains
a tutorial introduction to get new users started as soon as possible, separate
chapters on each major feature, and a reference manual. Most of the treatment
is based on reading, writing and revising examples, rather than on mere
statements of rules. For the most part, the examples are complete, real
programs rather than isolated fragments. All examples have been tested
directly from the text, which is in machine-readable form. Besides showing how
to make effective use of the language, we have also tried where possible to
illustrate useful algorithms and principles of good style and sound design.

The book is not an introductory programming manual; it assumes some
familiarity with basic programming concepts like variables, assignment
statements, loops, and functions. Nonetheless, a novice programmer should be
able to read along and pick up the language, although access to a more
knowledgeable colleague will help."

(K&R, The C Programming Language, 2nd edition)
G. H.

--

E-mail: info<at>simple-line<Punkt>de