Learn C The Hard Way
learncodethehardway.org
Learn C The Hard Way
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Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#2I know a fair amount of C. But I am still looking forward to this book as I hear that LPTHW taught something to even intermediate level people. Besides the exercises are usually good and would like to solve them.
Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#3I look forward to the content. As a beginning C++ instructor I find there is something lacking between the truth of the language and the conventions for presenting it. Nobody, AFAIK save for the truly hardcore student, has nailed it.
Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#4I always had an idea of a 'for programmers' series of books for those who know how to program in one language (say, C++, Java or PHP) and wish to pick up a new language
eg. 'python for programmers' would not need the first half of it dedicated to explaining strings, loops etc. and could get straight into it from a programmers perspective - a bit like K&R. You could then dedicate more content to explaining philosophy, design decisions, internals, history, politics (learn all the in-jokes ;)), etc.
this would also be a good format to learn new paradigms, eg. 'functional programming in scheme, for programmers'
Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#5Do people really think C is some mysterious, inscrutable language?
"To many programmers, this makes C scary and evil."
Is this actually true for people? I find C code generally very easy and straightforward to understand; there's not any magic behind the scenes, like there is in any language that's more "high level" than C.
Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#6Having read a fair bit of LPTHW (though I had no actual interest in the language), I am really excited about this.
One of the best things about LPTHW was the context it was written in, and if LCTHW is written in the same way, it should be a really awesome read!
Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#7Having read a fair bit of LPTHW (though I had no actual interest in the language), I am really excited about this. One of the best things about LPTHW was the context it was written in, and if LCTHW is written in the same way, it should be a really awesome read!
That's the idea, although I'm going to assume you know how to use at least one programming language, and probably redirect total newbies to LPTHW if they don't. That should make it easier to ramp up in C and then do cool useful stuff with it.
Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#8Why is %d used to interpolate an integer into a format string? I don't recall seeing this done for any reason before.
I hope Zed actually covers how dangerous format strings can be if not handled properly. Format strings are still (hilariously) one of the major exploitation vectors in C-based applications today.
Edit: According to Wikipedia, %i and %d are synonymous. Sorry for the confusion.
Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#9I always had an idea of a 'for programmers' series of books for those who know how to program in one language (say, C++, Java or PHP) and wish to pick up a new language eg. 'python for programmers' would not need the first half of it dedicated to explaining strings, loops etc. and could get straight into it from a programmers perspective - a bit like K&R. You could then dedicate more content to explaining philosophy,…
Indeed, I currently get turned off by most books I pick up, simply because they start out on a too basic general level.
If you however dig a little deeper you can usually find stuff that isn't too tutorialish. Like http://www.c-faq.com/top.html which has been an extremely solid resource for me.
Re: Learn C The Hard Way
#10I look forward to the content. As a beginning C++ instructor I find there is something lacking between the truth of the language and the conventions for presenting it. Nobody, AFAIK save for the truly hardcore student, has nailed it.
Got any feedback on the things students get wrong? My experience is they fail to grasp memory management, pointers, functions as pointers, linkers or just how a program actually runs.
If you've got others I'd love to hear them.