C by Discovery - Emphasizing Ansi C

I read and wrote a review on this book several years ago in undergrad. Since then I've become an Oracle DBA (IT) and have worked in the field for several years at major corporations. This book is extremely straight forward! But you need to spend the time with it. Computer science is not a subject where you can glance over a chapter and answer some questions at the end. If you are looking for that, then this is the wrong area for you. But if you put the time into it and really learn the material in the chapter BEFORE trying to do the problems; then you will really enjoy this book! And if you continue in the field, as I did, you will find there are very few programming books written this well. -gb

I am using an older edition (I think the 1st) to teach myself C. So far, (along with the mingw32 compiler) I have been able to write several small matrix programs and a small statistical package, soley from using the resources in the text. I started on page 1 with no previous study of C or C-like languages.I have one complaint. The coverage of fread, fwrite, etc could be more thorough, with more examples. The example given actually doesn't work with my compiler. I had to come up with my own examples to discover how to use these functions.

I highly recommend this book. When asked by friends or coworkers to recommend a C book, I always recommend this one.I used to know assembly language. When I got a C programming project, I used this book to study. Within one month, I finished my C programming project.For every C concepts, this book has a good example (short C code) to demonstrate the concept. Some people might say that this book requires some programming background. But a friend (who has no programming experience in C, assembly, or any other language) also used this book to study and said she enjoy it and truly appreciate the clarity of this book.This book is also fun to read.

I highly recommend this book. When asked by friends or coworkers to recommend a C book, I always recommend this one.I used to know assembly language. When I got a C programming project, I used this book to study. Within one month, I finished my C programming project.For every C concept, this book has a good example (short C code) to demonstrate it. Some people might say that this book requires some programming background. But a friend (who has no programming experience in C, assembly, or any other language) also bought this book to study and said she enjoyes it and truly appreciates the clarity that this book in explaining C concepts.This book is also fun to read.

[email protected] Professor L.S.Foster, I am sending you this note to express to you my profound appreciation and gratitude for your benevolent and unique approach in teaching language C as shown in the wonderful book "C by Discovery" which came into my possession recently.""I am a Computer Science student at New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ, but I prefer to teach myself in my free time the most important field-programming using quality textbooks. Out of all the other ones I tried first before coming across your book title (in an on-line book review) I found yours to stand out with its clarity, vision and ability to present the material in a way that makes the student an active part of the understanding and learning process. While I had some basis in C from other beginner manuals (from SAMS, and including Herb Schildt's drill-texts)--it all beautifully came together through the study of your book. The students across the country who are not fortunate to have this book are missing-out on the beauty of learning C language the pleasant way." Alexander Ljubenkovic-Shah