Teach Yourself C in 21 Days

Despite all the hype for C# and C++, if you know and understand C, you could probably write those other languages. C can get very complex (as far as numerous functions and libraries) but the basics are covered pretty well in this book. I haven't read the latest edition (mind has no edition # on the outside and has a mail order form to get the source code on floppies, heh) but the authors are solid writers and this was the first book I read to learn C. It covers the essentials, but does skip (at least in the edition I read) the more extraneous things that most authors skip, such as function pointers and sometimes unions. It also does not explain the common programming ideas, like hash tables and linked lists, however, I would highly recommend this book if you're just starting out. You might wanna grab a book on more advanced programming or a C algorithms book and then maybe a special interest book like SDL or OpenGL, but this is a great introduction to the language itself.

Let's make things clear: This book teaches the ANSI C Programming Language. It does not teach any of the following... * Windows Programming * Algorithm design * Object Oriented Programming * C++ * Advanced Programming In 1996, when I first began to learn programming, I bought the first edition of this, along with about 5 books. Very quickly I had set all the rest aside. In 5 years, it is the best book on pure C programming I had found, and I still refer to it on occasion. It does not burden the reader with unnecessary abstract explanations. Nor does it gloss over features. This is not a Dummies Book. A novice may need to pore over certain sections repeatedly before some of the more complex concepts "click". But by dilligently compiling the examples, and attempting the practice exercises, the reader can gain a thorough understanding of C. Thanks in part to this book I am now pursuing a successful career in software engineering. End of story.

I think this book does a great job of teaching the C language. And I am going to be frank about those people who gave it low reviews: They simply lack the necessary pre-requisite knowledge to understand programming.If you don't know what a program is, etc, you are not ready to learn programming. You need to learn the basics of how computers work first.Second, to the person who said "I couldn't get anything to work". Obviously, you were doing something wrong as most of the examples work fine with no modifications on a wide varity of platforms and compilers.Yes I did find some errors in the included code samples. But although I have not yet completed the book, it appears to me that by the time a reader gets to the sample code with errors, they should already have enough knowledge from reading the material to find the errors and fix them.For example, listing 5.5 fails to pass an argument when it calls a function. However, by the time you get to this section of the chapter, if you were paying attention, you should already know enough about functions to see that this program is obviously not going to work unless an argument is passed to the function being called. And you should also already know enough to figure out what argument you need to pass. If you don't catch the problem while entering the code, you should certainly see what the problem is when the compiler generates an error message when you try to build the program.There are also a few programs that although they work under most compilers, would work better under some with a few modifications.I use the Type & Run 2 example, which is a number guessing game. The book uses variable type "int" to store the number you have to guess.Well, my FreeBSD box is a 32bit system instead of a 16 bit system. As such, variable type int is 4 bits long instead of 2 like on DOS compilers. This makes for a number guessing game with over 2 billion possible numbers. A pretty futile number guessing game in my opinion. However, once again by this time, if you are paying attention, you should know the variable type sizes of your system. And you should also be able to figure out a way to fix this program if you were paying attention. It is a simple matter of using a different variable type to store the number you have to guess. By this point in the chapter, you should know how to do this if you were paying attention.All in all, I think this book does a great job, and the few examples that do contain errors or need modifications to work well on particular systems all come after you should already have enough knowledge to fix them.

I never thought I'd see the day when I was comfortable with C again (having been out of it for almost 10 years), but that day is here and it's arrived because I read this book. It's neither an easy read nor a quick one, but it's well worth the effort. Take the time to go through the examples (with or without a debugger), and do the exercises at the end of each chapter. You won't be sorry!

Hi, i recommend this book to everyone. Listen, I'm 14 years old, and with this book, i can say that I now am a C programmer, really, it's a really great way to learn C... a lot of examples, step by step explanations, and everything is covered in this book, from memory management to pointers.