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What are the best resources for a beginner to learn C?

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Nov 2, 2018

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7 Options Considered

Best resources for a beginner to learn C	Price	Last Updated
82 The C Programming Language (AKA: K&R)	-	May 11, 2018
-- Learn C The Hard Way	-	Dec 26, 2016
-- C Programming: A Modern Approach	-	May 8, 2018
-- CS50x - HarvardX (edX)	-	Nov 2, 2018
-- C Programming Absolute Beginner's Guide	-	Jan 15, 2018

The C Programming Language (AKA: K&R)

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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

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Not for beginners

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

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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

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Out of Date

Some commands and practices are out of date, so errata and googling is needed while going through the book.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

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

Learn C The Hard Way

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In-depth look at a variety of topics

The book is not just about C. It'll teach you to become an over-all better programmer and give you a better understanding of computer science. You'll learn about things like testing, debugging, and sorting algorithms. See More

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Not good for complete beginners

Learn C The Hard Way states in the preface that it is not for first-time programmers. If you don't have any background with programming, they suggest you start with Learn Python The Hard Way. Some readers suggest that this book is better suited for developers with at least some experience in C. See More

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Lots of challenging exercises

The book includes 52 practical projects that include everything from pointers to stacks and queues. See More

CS50x - HarvardX (edX)

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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

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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

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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

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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

C Programming for Beginners - OVERIQ.COM

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Goes into a lot of depth even though it's just a beginner tutorial

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