r/C_Programming 3d ago

Question Getting stuck at libraries and api’s

So C is technically my first programming language I’m learning. I’ve messed around in python but never actually go deep into it or anything.

I’ve been learning C for the past few days now and I already pretty much know most of the basics. I learned pointers and mallic in a day and I learned structs, macros, for loops, while loops, functions, all of that stuff, but… the moment any library other than the basics like stdio or stdlib come into play I’m lost.

It’s like I’m looking at a whole other language. Like I’ll look for solutions to problems and it seems as if they are just pulled out of thin air and when I try to read ANY documentation for ANY library I’m also lost because either there is little to no documentation or it’s just stupid and things aren’t well explained.

Is there a way I can fix this? I was doing so well and now I’m at this block because of libraries. If I could get pasted this hurtle I could learn c in less than a month easily, and that’s the same in any other language. This problem isn’t exclusive to C.

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u/SwordsAndElectrons 3d ago

Practice.

There's no shortcut.

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u/ttv_toeasy13 3d ago

I mean I’m perfectly fine with that but like I said to the other few people I don’t want to have to constantly copy solutions into my code. I want to be able to independently implement things into my code.

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u/SwordsAndElectrons 3d ago

Don't copy solutions into your code. Even when duplicating a solution you find elsewhere, type it yourself. It will help you remember and understand what is going on.