Slant community chat on Discourse| 6 Recommended Products | Recommendations | Price | Last Updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 The C Programming Language (AKA: K&R)· · · | 17 | 4 | – | Jun 9, 2017 |
| #2 Learn C The Hard Way· · · | 8 | 0 | – | Dec 26, 2016 |
| #3 C Programming: A Modern Approach· · · | 6 | 0 | – | Dec 15, 2015 |
| #4 CS50x - HarvardX (edX)· · · | 3 | 0 | – | Jun 22, 2017 |
| #5 C Programming Absolute Beginner's Guide· · · | 1 | 0 | – | Dec 15, 2015 |
| #6 C Programming for Beginners - OVERIQ.COM· · · | 0 | 0 | – | Feb 6, 2017 |
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.
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.
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.
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 y...
Con Out of Date
Some commands and practices are out of date, so errata and googling is needed while going through the book.
Con Not for beginners
Assumes familiarity not only with programming concepts but some C language specifics.
Pro 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.
Pro Lots of challenging exercises
The book includes 52 practical projects that include everything from pointers to stacks and queues.
Con 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Pro Short chapters
There are 32 chapters in the book, which is 352 pages long. The short chapters make it extremely easy to use this book as a reference, and breaks everything down into small pieces that are easy to digest.
Con Slow for someone with prior experience
This book, as the title suggests, is really aimed at people with no prior programming experience. Fundamentals are gone through in detail (such as loops, variables etc.), which would be quite a slow review for someone with experience in another language.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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