8 best alternatives to Learn C The Hard Way as of 2018 - Slant

The C Programming Language (AKA: K&R)

Top Pro

Well known classic

This book is so well known that it's affectionately called "K & R", after the authors. It's been cited in many other books and is familiar to most, if not all, CS students. See More

Top Con

Not for beginners

Assumes familiarity not only with programming concepts but some C language specifics. See More

Top Pro

It's excerpted from the idea of its creators

This book is written by Dennis Ritchie, who was one of the main people behind the development and design of C and UNIX. See More

Top Con

Teaches bad style

The K&R style works for old Unix mainframe command-line programs that exit after a simple task and leave the cleanup to the OS; where input is only from trusted experts; and most functions are only called internally to the program. The environment is very different today. This style will get your server owned by hackers, or crash it due to a memory leak, etc. You will have to unlearn what you've learned from this book to use C correctly in the real world today. See More

Top Pro

Creative, challenging exercises

The challenges at the end of each chapter do a great job of requiring many of the skills learned up to that point. Completing the challenges is a great way of insuring you understand the material. See More

Top Con

Out of Date

Some commands and practices are out of date, so errata and googling is needed while going through the book. See More

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Hackr.io

Top Pro

Community trust

Instead of getting a recommendation from a single dev, you get recommendation from the entire programming community. See More

Top Pro

Recommendation for every programming language/framework/library

You can find Python as well as Jenkins. See More

Top Pro

Nice filters

Free, Video, Book, Beginner, Advanced, etc. See More

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SoloLearn

Top Pro

Completely free

Top Con

Only the most commonly used languages are covered.

C++, Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, SQL, PHP, Swift, Ruby, JQuery, HTML, CSS. You won't find anything less common like Haskell, Erlang, Elixir, Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, Rust, etc. See More

Top Pro

Offline learning mode for mobile apps

Allows learning while disconnected from the net. See More

Top Con

Limited usefulness for intermediate or experienced programmers

No advanced coding challenges. Look for those on other sites like hackerrank. See More

Top Pro

Easy for beginners

Anyone can get started with this. See More

Top Pro

Share and modify others' projects

Top Pro

Browser-based code playgrounds

No software installation needed, just a modern web browser. On mobile devices though the mobile apps are highly recommended. See More

Top Pro

Excellent mobile apps available

Top Pro

Gamification

XP, levels, badges, certificates, etc. See More

Specs

Languages:C++, Java, JavaScript, C#, Python, SQL, PHP, Swift, Ruby, JQuery, HTML, CSS.

Community support:Yes

Mobile apps:Yes

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C Programming: A Modern Approach

Top Pro

Challenges your way of thinking

The book really challenges you to think like a programmer by constantly asking questions that force you to solve problems, rather than telling you how to solve the problem and only asking you to write the syntax. See More

Top Con

Answers to exercises aren't provided

The exercises throughout the book don't have the exercises provided, which may be a con to beginners. See More

Top Pro

Written in a very clear, understandable way

The author breaks things down into small pieces and uses examples to explain everything in a very clear way. See More

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C++ Primer

Top Pro

Great for people who know just the very basics of programming

This book is excellent for people who have basic knowledge of programming concepts or have read an introductory book on programming or C++. See More

Top Con

No mention of threads, atomic instructions, or memory model

Top Pro

Explains C++11 extension well

5th edition adds information on C++11 additions and integrates it throughout the book so it's not just an appendix with new stuff. See More

Top Con

Poor for people with no previous programming experience

Top Pro

Covers the core of the language without omitting anything critical

The book describes core concepts of C++ programming in-depth. It covers various nuances that would otherwise be easy to misinterpret. See More

Top Con

Does not cover template metaprogramming

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CS50x - HarvardX (edX)

Top Pro

Amazing instructors

The instructors are very enthusiastic and extremely knowledgeable. The main professor uses a variety of fun examples to demonstrate points, often making for exciting and funny lectures. See More

Top Con

Large demand on time

The course is very fast-paced. Weekly suggested readings are usually a couple of chapters from two different text books, there are hours of videos each week, plus problem sets that often take a beginner many hours to complete. In order to keep up with the course, you have to be prepared to put in a lot of hours. See More

Top Pro

High quality instruction

CS50x is the actual Harvard course turned into a MOOC, with the lectures filmed from the actual Harvard course. The problem sets are all the same as well. This has resulted in the quality of the course being extremely high. See More

Top Pro

Really in-depth

The reason the time demand for the course is so great is because of how in-depth it is. CS50 has you programming in C right from the start. Computer Science concepts, such as runtime analysis and data structures, are also taught very early on and applied in projects. Along with C, this course will also introduce you to web development (JavaScript and PHP). See More

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C++

Top Pro

Huge language supports most everything

C++ is a large language with an even larger community and following. It has libraries for every kind of task that is possible to do with C++ See More

Top Con

Huge language gets in the way of learning

C++ is such an atrociously over-complicated language that its learning curve may get in the way of learning fundamentals. Learning C++ well is a ten-year project, and even experts are frequently surprised by the language. See More

Top Pro

Powerful memory management

Allows puting large arrays on the "heap" to avoid "stack overflow". See More

Top Con

Module system is not great

C++ uses the #include mechanism provided by C. Which unfortunately is a poor way of accessing the API of a library. Some of the reasons why the module system is weak are: Compile time scalability: The compiler must preprocess every header included in a file, and every header included in those headers. This process must be repeated for every translation unit in the program. As can be imagined, this doesn't scale very well. For each header added you are increasing the compilation time exponentially. Fragile: modules included are treated as textual imports by the compiler. This causes all sorts of problems since they are subject to any macro definitions in the time of the inclusion. If any of these macro definitions collide with a name in the library it can break the library API . See More

Top Pro

Teaches fundamental OOP

Teaches you to leverage object oriented programming. See More

Top Con

Undefined behavior

Subtle errors can render the entire program "undefined" by the complicated C++ standard. The standard imposes no requirements in such cases. Thus C++ compiler writers are free to ignore the existence of such cases and Bad Things are prone to happen instead. Even experts can't reliably avoid undefined cases in C++, so how can beginners be expected to do so? See More

Top Pro

Excellent compiler optimization

Both open source compilers (such as Clang and GCC), and proprietary ones (like Intel's and Microsoft's) are very good at analyzing program flow and program optimization. This is mostly due to the widespread usage of C/C++ applications running everything from mobile/desktop/server Operating Systems, to search engines and webserver software, and the demand for performance. See More

Top Con

No two programmers can agree on which 10% subset of C++ to use

C++ is such a huge and complicated language, that programmers have to learn a disciplined subset of it to reliably get anything done. The problem is, no-one can agree on which subset to use and they can't understand each other. See More

Top Pro

Teaches problem solving

The great STL is the most powerful Data Structure and Algorithms Library. It would benefit you very much in problem solving, your main main way to love programming. The code is much compact compared to Java and C#. No unnecessary classes are in your way; yet when you need classes they are available unlike C. The code runs very fast. See More

Top Con

Retains nearly all bad habits of C

Top Pro

Teaches low-level programming, but doesn't have as many pitfalls as C

Teaches data types, low-level program flow and the so common C-style syntax while not being as much of a pain as C itself. See More

Top Con

Tough to learn as the first language

Many of the concepts are hard to grasp if you have no prior programming experience. See More

Top Pro

STD is often updated

The functionalities keep growing throughout the years. C++11 gave us a soft type of garbage collecting with the smart pointers. See More

Top Con

Bugs easily corrupt the memory you need to find them

You can usually get a core dump, but often the call stack gets completely overwritten. Compilers are not even consistent in how they map the binary objects to code. See More

Top Pro

C code can be used in C++ code

Most C code will work as C++. See More

Top Con

Painfully slow compilation

Beginners need fast feedback See More

Top Pro

Best way to understand algorithms

Top Con

No reflection

C++ objects are frustratingly opaque. This makes debugging especially difficult, something beginners have to do a lot. See More

Top Con

No way to locate definitions

No modules, just files, and no way to tell where anything came from. See More

Top Con

Complicated types

Top Con

Undefined behaviors and weak limited type safety

Undefined behavior in a program can cause unexpected results, making it hard to debug. With UB, program behavior may vary wildly depending on optimization settings. There are many cases that invoke UB, such as signed overflow, invalid dereferences, large integer shifts, uninitialized variables, etc. C++ allows for non-type safe operations such as logic errors, wild pointers, buffer overflow, etc. UB and type safety issues create a large number of bugs and security vulnerabilities. See More

Top Con

Standard library missing important features

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Arcane binding rules

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Incomprehensible operator overloading resoution

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Exceptions incompatible with C++ manual memory management

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Duplicates C features in incompatible ways

Arrays, strings, pointers, etc. have both C and C++ versions. Sometimes the C++ versions are worse. This is more useless trivia beginners have to sort through. See More

Specs

Price:Depends on Implementation

Engine:UE4 , Cocos-2d-x

Standard: ISO/IEC 14882 or C++17

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The New Boston C Course

Top Pro

Video tutorials

Tutorials are presented as videos, making them easy to follow / see what's going on at each step. Many people find this format less daunting and easier to take in than traditional text based tutorials. See More

Top Pro

Setup instructions included

The first video explains how to set up everything you need to get started on your machine. A lot of tutorials tell you about the language but leave you in the dark on how to get it up and running, creating a stumbling block before the first post. See More

Top Pro

Suitable for beginners

No assumptions are made about prior knowledge, meaning anyone can start watching and pick up the basics of the language fairly quickly. See More

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