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To become a good C programmer (2011)

fabiensanglard.net

11–20 of 135 posts

Re: To become a good C programmer (2011)

#11

This is a great list of books - at least, I found the same ones were the most excellent. Also I really learnt a lot from 21st Century C (The author here said they wanted to stick to C89, which is fair enough.) >To read great C code will help tremendously. But then he just gives examples of games I don't know and am not really interested in. Anyone know some non-game C that is, I suppose, well-known and wonderfully-wr…

I recommend git source code which was pretty neat last time i checked.

Re: To become a good C programmer (2011)

#12
In the 90s, most seriouc C programmers knew about these books. They were the core books most devs relied on and referred to. They're all good.

I disagree with this comment: "No website is as good as a good book. And no good book is as good as a disassembly output."

There are many websites today that are excellent. And there are many websites that cover obscure topics not found in books.

Finally, I think it's important to move past C89 to at least C99. I realize in 2011 (the date of this post), that was less feasible. But today, there is little reason for most projects not use the advances found in C99.

Re: To become a good C programmer (2011)

#14

Why does everyone always suggest K&R? I really don't see the big deal. It's short, contains only trivial toy examples with no real world application, and touches almost nothing on actual project architecture or best practices. I bought it expecting to learn to write programs in C but it's really just a reference manual on syntax.

In short: It is a great starter. The book is so tiny it won't discourage people and get them going in no time.

Re: To become a good C programmer (2011)

#16

Interesting comment they made about using C89 for portability. What's the state of C99 today? I know gcc doesn't support all C99 features, but what about other compilers? Is it worthwhile to use C99 in a new project?

Visual Studio is another one: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48615184/does-visual-stu...

Re: To become a good C programmer (2011)

#17

In the 90s, most seriouc C programmers knew about these books. They were the core books most devs relied on and referred to. They're all good. I disagree with this comment: "No website is as good as a good book. And no good book is as good as a disassembly output." There are many websites today that are excellent. And there are many websites that cover obscure topics not found in books. Finally, I think it's importan…

> But today, there is little reason for most projects not use the advances found in C99.

Does visual studio support c99 yet? Last I heard MS wasn’t interested in supporting it.

Re: To become a good C programmer (2011)

#18

In the 90s, most seriouc C programmers knew about these books. They were the core books most devs relied on and referred to. They're all good. I disagree with this comment: "No website is as good as a good book. And no good book is as good as a disassembly output." There are many websites today that are excellent. And there are many websites that cover obscure topics not found in books. Finally, I think it's importan…

Personally (3 decades+ journeyman C), I find lot of the advances are often about trying to get people out of bad practices (e.g. stdint.h in C99 to fix portability issues between 32 and 64 bit).

Re: To become a good C programmer (2011)

#19
post #17

In the 90s, most seriouc C programmers knew about these books. They were the core books most devs relied on and referred to. They're all good. I disagree with this comment: "No website is as good as a good book. And no good book is as good as a disassembly output." There are many websites today that are excellent. And there are many websites that cover obscure topics not found in books. Finally, I think it's importan…

> But today, there is little reason for most projects not use the advances found in C99. Does visual studio support c99 yet? Last I heard MS wasn’t interested in supporting it.

Really? No longer an MS user but occasionally my code gets ported to Windows so would like to know more.

Re: To become a good C programmer (2011)

#20
post #18

In the 90s, most seriouc C programmers knew about these books. They were the core books most devs relied on and referred to. They're all good. I disagree with this comment: "No website is as good as a good book. And no good book is as good as a disassembly output." There are many websites today that are excellent. And there are many websites that cover obscure topics not found in books. Finally, I think it's importan…

Personally (3 decades+ journeyman C), I find lot of the advances are often about trying to get people out of bad practices (e.g. stdint.h in C99 to fix portability issues between 32 and 64 bit).

I think it's important to push forward with getting people out of bad habits. In a lot of cases, the only way to do that is to force it. I don't often agree with things Apple does, but their forcing people to use x64 is similar to this I think.
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