Where to start (self-)learning C, or should I learn a different language? [closed]

Answer 1

There is a university course at Indiana and Purdue Universities on C-programming. The course has video lectures that you can find at here.

If you are also interested in looking at C++, there are a bunch of lectures at the Web Lecture Archive Project called "C++ for Particle Physicists". You find those lectures here. The lectures are held by Paul Kunz from Stanford University.

For more C++ lectures, you can also check out these lectures from Reconnect Networks.

Answer 2

C is a good choice for mainstream education. However before going through books, I'd follow some IDE tutorials, so you get a hang of building projects, and makefiles, those two will be the biggest challenges you'll face initially, and they are rarely covered in any book.

Answer 3

I have to disagree with the previous two answers who recommend the famous "K&R" guide. I was completely unable to learn anything from that book; I simply gave up after reading the first third of the book about three times. Maybe I'm just dumb.

I suggest, instead, this wonderful book: C Programming: A Modern Approach (disclaimer: amazon link)

I've learned everything I need to know about C from that book, and it covers the history as much as needs to be done, while still keeping a "modern" point of view.

Caveat: I didn't come to C "for C", I passed through it on the way to my eventual goal, Objective-C and Cocoa programming for desktop applications on Apple's Mac OS X. If you really want a very deep knoweldge of C, it may not hurt to get both of the above-mentioned books, and read the K&R guide after reading Modern C

Answer 4

If you speek German I'd suggest you an open book from Galileo Computing.

Answer 5

Let us C by Yeshvant P Kanitkar

Answer 6

I believe your current approach is incorrect. C is currently a subset of C++ and does not have many of the concepts of a modern OO language. In most cases, it is relegated to legacy systems, and most new development that is not tied to legacy code is not written in C. Personally, I started with C++ (self taught), and moved to C#. Starting in C++ gives you all of the basics you need to understand object orientation and what's going on at a low level. However, for someone just starting, I would now recommend C# for the simple reason that its much easier to get off the ground and start running with it. Also, several of the concepts in c# have few analogs in the C world and make programming much more intuitive (LINQ, lambdas, etc). While memory management is important (and occasionally shows up in C#) it is painful to manage, and easier not to worry about as you're starting up. The sooner you can start an interesting project, the less likely you are to give up.