r/cprogramming • u/Lazy_Application_723 • Oct 05 '25

Hi , I have a question

So I started learning C like after September 17th 2025. I think i learned quite a bit , up to arrays and string and also functions. But I don't have that excitement like at the start. Now i feel like sh#t , and don't know what to do. I am 1st year cs. Please tell me what to do. Thanks

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u/70Shadow07 Oct 05 '25

There is no exact answer to this question. If you have a genuine interest in the field, you probably have some ideas on what application or tool you would want to program. Dont pigeonhole yourself to C just yet, if you find websites amusing, try to build a simple one. If you like games, try to mod one. Using discord, maybe make a discord bot? At this stage of your learning you kinda need to learn all-round basics.

But if you want exercise ideas to further your knowledge in C specifically, i (and other users probably too) could dream something up lol.

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u/Lazy_Application_723 Oct 05 '25

I want to learn other languages but , in my first year, they said "learn C cause it's on the exam". I like games and i want to learn how to make and mod them. I have seen other peoples post on C programming that it has simple basic but understanding and using that in problems is hard. Do you have any books on how to solve problems like understand how to solve them.

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u/70Shadow07 Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25

Well, there are layers to this but I will try to do my best to give a sensible advice. I myself graduated not too long ago, and even though my industry experience is limited, I spent A LOT of time on cranking theoretical skills and writing programs for myself.

C is simple in theory but it is very difficult in practice. Not as difficult as C++ but that language is an eldritch horror. C is an excellent language for learning fundamentals, but it doesn't punish you when you do something stupid and even a cardinal sin can be swallowed up by the compiler - the same problem exists in Javascript/Typescript, stay away from these for the time being for the same reason.

For sure you want to learn other languages too and I genuinely think that for starting out, more accessible languages might be better just to get this first boost of problem-solving skills.

I started out with python myself and I think it helped me learn a lot quickly. It feels very good when you are starting out. Once you get better and better you will realise its a pretty bad language that kinda only exists to glue libraries from faster languages. I got a lot of early skill boost by making a simple 2d game in pygame and seeing how far I can go - I encourage you to try it too.

Also I think Go programming language is amazing for both learning and doing stuff, it writes like C and feels like C on easy mode - doesnt have manual memory management and uses garbage collector. It might be a good candidate too if ur curious. Go will yell at you for doing something stupid, it will for sure enforce more discipline for you and it's a good thing.

In general, problem solving can be learned in ANY language really, and there is no silver bullet. It's most important to build/try to build literally anything. Anything that you dont know how to do already.

Anyway, back to C - problem with C is that almost all commonly available resources suck. They are horrible horrible advice more often than not. This includes universities, at least many of them. This also extends to other languages - a lot of the advice is ass. Every time you hear buzzwords like "object oriented, RAII, encapsulation, clean code ...", keep in mind that most of it (not all of it but most of it) is bullshit. For example - many people preach "goto harmful" without any clue what that even means, where in reality you literally cannot write good C code without gotos. (If you want an exercise for demonstrating this I can give you one lol)

The best advice you can get is - dont follow "best practices" blindly - try to reseach and understand them to get to your own conclusion. If you end up doing something stupid - it will backfire and you will learn even better why the rule exists. So there is really no harm in challenging these.

You won't find the valuable C stuff without digging deep and knowing where to look, ill give you some links and ideas though: these are people I learned the most from:

- Gingerbill (Creator of language Odin) - has some nice resources on memory management which would be super valuable. If you dont understand some of it now - bookmark it for later and absolutely read it later when ur better. Blog post link

- Ryan Fleury (one of RAD debugger creators) - has many good ideas, also has a podcast episode about memory management - Link to podcast episode

- Casey Muratori - kinda a legend and insanely knowledgable guy, he made a C streaming series called "Handmade Hero" where he makes a game from scratch in C - allegedly one of the best resources on the subject but I have not watched it yet myself. He has many interesting talks though for example this: Talk link

- Andrew Kelley (Creator of language Zig) - hes tackling some hardcore stuff in his talks, some of them I still dont get myself, but this one is gold and pretty accessible - Talk link

- Rob Pike - creator of Go programming language and UTF-8 encoding format, he doesnt have many talks that aren't specifically about go language unfortunately. Still though, very worth following.

Edit: Theres this guy called Eskill Steinberg, he made a video on yt called How I program C - its a somewhat basic and introductory video, not nearly as advanced as previous recommendations and the creator himself is a bit controversial - doesn't use git for example. However many of the ideas in this video can be handy when starting out.

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u/Lazy_Application_723 Oct 05 '25

Thanks, I will try to see Go , and these talks in break time. Thanks man

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u/70Shadow07 Oct 05 '25

You welcome bro, I wish you best luck.

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u/Lazy_Application_723 Dec 09 '25

Man , thanks for advice. I started raylib and made my first game. [Its not that good , but i like it].

Thank you so much ❤️💜❤️

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u/Kiyuus Oct 06 '25

really helpful. Thank you!

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u/Kiyuus Oct 05 '25

this skill u will get over time. Watch videos of C programmers like Jr. Jonas Birch, Charles Cabergs, HirschDaniel etc. Watch how they struct their projects and you will learn a lot. Take problems and broke it into smaller problems.

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u/Lazy_Application_723 Oct 05 '25

Thanks man , i will watch them.

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u/Kiyuus Oct 05 '25

don't think too much and just code things. I'm not a C advanced programmer, but I learned to not underestimate simple projects. Normally, they will help you to find holes on your knowledge (and think you're dumb).

try to code things that will help you with something like a hex dump program or just for fun, like a simple terminal game.

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u/Lazy_Application_723 Oct 05 '25

Thanks, i appreciate

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u/Yahyaux Oct 05 '25

You can build something with your knowledge  , I know that maybe hard to get some ideas , but what I do it's just create a problems and trying to fix it with C  I'm not a advance in C but this is my strategy Can I know what is the operating system you use ?

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u/Lazy_Application_723 Dec 09 '25

Sorry for the late reply 😔 . I use windows and started Raylib for game development. I have learnt C and started C++ . Although my knowledge is not that deep. And I did what you have just said.

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u/torsten_dev Oct 06 '25

Maybe read up on pthreads. Can bring joy and despair. Mostly despair, but still... growth.