Ask HN: Why are there so few good resources for learning C in 2021

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26323233

by sotrashy • 5 years ago

17 8 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Every C book I crack open reads like a reference manual that presets some syntax and then shows its usage in some toy five-line program. Rinse and repeat until every feature is covered. Why are there no books that teach you the concepts by building something somewhat substantial from scratch?

I can pick up books on Python or Go that teach you the language while building an entire REST API. C++ has books that teach you its features while building games. C seems to lack really good learning resources and I can't imagine why for a language so ubiquitous.

Does anyone know of any C resources where you learn by doing? It doesn't have to be some crazy project, just beyond the single file toy programs I keep seeing.

ironmagma• 5 years ago

To paraphrase HN user amckinlay, C does not have an actual, formal semantic model.

"Furthermore, we argue that the C standard does not allow Turing complete implementations, and that its evaluation semantics does not preserve typing. Finally, we claim that no strictly conforming programs exist. That is, there is no C program for which the standard can guarantee that it will not crash." [1]

In some sense then, C is not an actual language, so no one can give definitive information about it without being totally wrong in one or two ways. I would argue this fragmentation of both the code and the user base is part of why there is almost no secondary documentation. Not even the specs are correct or complete.

[1] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Subtleties-of-the-ANSI...

markus_zhang• 5 years ago

I think books that teach through projects is a relatively recent trend. C is too old for that, and already phased out of mainstream (in the sense of everyone's daily programming language) long before the trend picked up.

There still exist such books. C is a system programming langugage so you have to look in that direction. There is a compiler book called "Game Scripting Mastery", which was an early 200X book that holds your hand through making a working Virtual Machine of a C-like scripting language. It is written in C and has the full code for that Virtual Machine. This is definitely a "learn-by-project" book.

I think you can probably find more examples by looking in that direction. There is another trick: Browse the websites of top 20 CS universities and find all their system programming labs. You will guarantee to find many mid-size C projects.

Last but not least, here is the famous awesome-C project list. Treat yourself. Many of them are walkthrough type tutorials (e.g. write a text editor in C) and can be very fun to code.

https://github.com/oz123/awesome-c

op03• 5 years ago

Look for a courses that teaches Data Structures in C eg- https://faculty.washington.edu/jstraub/dsa/

edit: link to the book https://faculty.washington.edu/jstraub/dsa/Master_2_7a.pdf

a3n• 5 years ago

21st Century C, Ben Klemens.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=21st+century+c&t=fpas&ia=web

Helps you set up your local tooling, and covers the use of C the "modern" language.

abhijat• 5 years ago

https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Systems-Programming-Communicatio...

Has several small projects, it is not a book for complete beginners though.

There is also an old book which re-implements several Unix commands, but I cannot remember it's name and google is not helping.

mmanulis• 5 years ago

First, what are you looking to gain from knowing C? IMHO C is great for embedded programming, that's it. C isn't a great language for "web programming". It's terrible at string manipulation. It's mostly used for embedded and systems programming. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions, but we're dealing with generalities here.

If you're just looking to better understand memory or pointers or something similar, K&R + What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory are all you really need. Throw in a book on linkers and loaders, even an old one, and you'll have more than enough info to understand what most programs are doing under the hood.

I learned the language in school and at the first few jobs I had, all embedded or systems work. If I had to learn it today, I would do the following:

1. Read K&R book on C - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language - your goal here is to just learn the syntax. Build some simple programs with what you learned, like replicate echo or cat commands.

2. I like Learn The Hardway series of books for the tools he teaches. It's really hard to be effective with C without knowing how to use a debugger or some static code analyses tools. https://learncodethehardway.org/c/ You can learn make, GDB, valgrind, etc. on your own too - plenty of O'Reilly books on the topics. I do recommend learning at least make, GDB and valgrind - they will help you build your code and figure out where you screwed up with your pointer arithmetic - which you will do.

3. Decide on what kind of projects you want to work with C. I learned by rebuilding some of the standard Unix utilities (e.g. curl or wget) as well as some systems programs, like a network scanner.

4. Build something a lot more complex, like a bootloader for an Arduino board. As in, get a cheap Arduino nano and write your own little bootloader that will load a simple program that blinks an LED. Plenty of other alternatives, e.g. build a basic git implementation. Try your hand at building a JSON parser - you'll hate strings by the end though.

5a. Get a book on Linux device drivers and go through it; build a few of the drivers - it's really not that hard. The Linux kernel is just another framework. You can also just look at https://kernelnewbies.org/ to see what else you can do and find other resources.

5b. Alternatively, build your own database. Can be a clone of Dynamo or Redis or some kind of RDBMS. You can even build your own pub/sub system if you want. Whatever you're curious about.

6. If you really like working with C, go through a Data Structures course and implement all of that stuff in C. You'll hate yourself but you'll learn a lot about the language. By now, you'll have picked up a bunch of that stuff anyways, but don't let not knowing quicksort algo stop you from building something. All the sorting/searching algos are better learned once you're comfortable debugging your code and looking for pointer issues.

Personally, I love working with C. It can be incredibly frustrating, but it's the first language I learned, so it's my home. In the last 10 years, I only worked with it when doing embedded work. I'll reach for Go as a system's programming language first (haven't learned Rust yet). For web development, there are too many modern frameworks and languages that are much much better than C.

chevill• 5 years ago

C has other use cases. Reverse engineering and Exploit Development, for example.

K&R is great if you're coming to C from a different language. I was recommended that book as a beginner and many of the exercises were way too difficult if the only exposure a person has is reading the chapter that leads up to them.

poletopole• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if this answer helps the OP in any way but I actually prefer books that don't have a newfangled project that distracts from the core language. It's a good idea for readers who are learning programming for the first time but not for experienced developers.

I highly recommend checking out Udemy for a C course because their courses are typically project oriented. I believe Udemy gives a major discount for new users.

Ask HN: Why are there so few good resources for learning C in 2021

Related Stories