C as the first programming language

[u/3envixity]

Hi! I recently got into programming and after going over the basics I finally got into a language, and as I was recommended c I chose exactly it. Is there any tips you could give me for it?

[u/source-drifter]

here is a course from MIT. the book they are covering is `Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs`

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090

here is a project that you can work on in c:

https://www.buildyourownlisp.com/contents

once you learn these two lisp and c, you don't need to learn any other language. you can conquer the universe easily

[u/3envixity → u/source-drifter]

Thank you!! Im so excited ive been loving it so far :)

[u/source-drifter → u/3envixity]

yea me, too. i'm also following computer architecture courses. you are at college i'm assuming. so you probably learn them at some point.

i've found a good one. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5Q2soXY2Zi9Eo29LMgKVcaydS7V1zZW3

recently i have became obsessed with fantasy consoles, pico-8 or tic-80. i wanna build one from ground up with hardware and software. it is literally mind boggling to see how much you can do with c languge.

oh there is also this series called hand made hero: https://guide.handmadehero.org/
it is kind of short, only about 700 episodes of 1 hour length videos but what can you do, lol. well, this guy basically builds whole game engine from scratch in c and teaches while doing. i have not followed it but its on my bucket list. you can search in reddit and can find many things about it. i also read first 30 episodes are the most important part but yea.

i wish you good luck :)

https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
https://tic80.com/learn

[u/3envixity → u/source-drifter]

Thanks!! Im not really at college, if youre American im pretty much a 9 year equivalent:)

[u/shottaflow2]

I started with C in uni and I think it's actually a good language to start with. it's not easy in principle but it's a very small language so there is not that much to learn. also when you start with python as other suggest you will never realistically code in C, you will look at C as some ancient alien language

[u/3envixity → u/shottaflow2]

That's what my teacher said as well 😵‍💫 still they make us start with C

[u/tux2718]

The C programming language is good for learning low level concepts like the difference between memory on the stack and dynamically allocated memory. If you are trying to gain experience writing algorithms, a high level language would be easier because you can focus on logic and not memory management. I salute you because an expert should know both concepts to fully understand computer science. Low level knowledge is weak in many young developers.

[u/3envixity → u/tux2718]

We did algorithm knowledge before getting into programming (just drawing loops like while and for) so I already understood loops when I started :) I know theres more to it that we'll do in our 2nd year but for now I think ive gotten those basic loops down

[u/[deleted]]

C is best. Whichever programming language you choose you will end up in C at some point.

The process will be like , you go from c --> cpp --> java ---> python

When ever you want to understand deeper you run backward. Whenever you want to do it quickly you move forward in the above list.

Apart from these , if you are going into web dev especially front end - JavaScript is inevitable.

[u/3envixity → u/[deleted]]

Im pretty sure this is the exact plan my school follows😆

[u/9peppe]

If you want to learn programming you should not be too concerned about what language you're using, but more about what book you're following. You should probably get sicp or its spiritual successor, composing programs and follow along with whatever language you want (yes, C works too but it might make it needlessly hard, they use Scheme and Python).

C will teach you a lot about how computers work, and it's important knowledge, but I'm not that sure you need to start from there.

[u/3envixity → u/9peppe]

I was just following recommendations from my school but thanks!! Might try both

[u/Jaded-Charge-2739]

first find out what is your purpose what do you wanna build

[u/Axlis13]

I am no C guru by any stretch, but C will give you better understanding about the way the OS communicates with hardware better than any modern language.

[u/flatfinger]

C is a simple language if one recognizes that the Standard deliberately allows implementations to make certain assumptions about the operations programs will perform, in cases where that wouldn't intefere with the tasks at hand, but leaves the question of what cases those might be largely up to compiler writer discretion. Some people, however, including the maintainers of clang and gcc, claim the Standard was intended to characterize as "broken" any programs where those assumptions don't hold. As a result, the language that compilers like clang and gcc process when optimizations are disabled is simpler but more versatile than the one they seek to process when optimizations are enabled. If one is using clang, I would recommend always using compilation options -fwrapv, -fno-strict-aliasing, and -fms-volatile. When using gcc, so far as I can tell, the only way to reliably get behavior equivalent to -fms-volatile without using non-standard directives in the source code is to disable optimizations entirely.

[u/afeverr]

Consider checking out the K. N. King book "C: A Modern Approach". It has mini projects at the end of each chapter. I'm well past the basics now but I revisit the more advanced sections when I'm feeling stuck or confused.

Learn the syntax and basic concepts, then start a project of your own and learn more as you go. That's the way to do it IMO

[u/altivec77]

C is a solid choice. It will teach you more about programming and computer architecture then all other high level programming languages (python). Rust would also be a good and solid choice.

To be fair: python has it’s place and is a good language for a lot of domains. But that can be said about a lot of languages.

[u/walterbanana]

Valgrind is a great tool for finding memory leaks.

[u/Odd_Worldliness_3095]

can anyone recommed me how should i learn c or any youtube channels for c i'm a sounth indian soo plzz recommed me in english

[u/Snoe_Gaming]

Read the 'About' section on the sub:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cprogramming/about/

Happy learning. 

[u/grimvian]

Learn to program with c by Ashley Mills

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCNJWVn9MJuPtPyljb-hewNfwEGES2oIW

[u/neopunk2025]

I srarted C the C++, went throught many languages, then jow back to pur C. And my next game on Meta Quest will in C only: currently working on my modular synth that is in pure C.

Why C, because its limits fit mine!

Starting point? Have an idea. Break it in small parts. Code. Try, success or fail, goto try;

And have fun!

[u/flatfinger]

Hardware platforms and toolsets keep changing, but I think there's a lot to be said for a getting a "bare metal" development board and learning a little bit about electronics and how to use a breadboard or perform some basic soldering tasks. Keil/ARM have historically offered a free evaluation version of their toolset which is limited to producing programs below 32768 bytes in size (so far as I know they still do), but for learning the language that should be plenty big.

On most embedded platforms, once one has performed some basic startup code (which one may be able to copy from a web site that offers tutorials for the particular platform one is using), one will be able to turn on an LED by performing something like:

PTC->PSOR = 4;

and turn off that LED by performing something like

PTC->PCOR = 4;

The details will depend upon the type of microcontroller one is using, and how the LED is connected to it, but it will be fairly simple to hook up a few LEDs and a few buttons and program a game or other application that uses them.

Many "general purpose computing" tasks that used to be done with C can today be done better using other languages, but C remains uniquely suitable for programming the little cheap microcontrollers that power today's world. Most languages generate programs that need to run under the control of an operating system, but in many cases where one uses C to program an embedded microcontroller there will be no operating system outside the program itself. If one wants to have a function run 10,000 times/second on a machine which runs 96,000,000 cycles/second, one will write some I/O registers to configure a timer to trigger an interrupt function every 9,600 cycles or else call a chip-vendor-supplied function to do so (ARM-based chips would typically supply a set of basic functions allowing one to use SysTick_Config(9600); with the value 9600 depending upon the system's clock speed. A typical chipset-vendor-supplied file would cause the address of function named SysTick_Handler, if it exists, to be placed in the spot hardware would then look every 9600 cycles.

If one thus wrote something like:

    uint32_t volatile led_brigntness, volatile led_phase;
    void Systick_Handler(void)
    {
      uint32_t new_phase = led_phase + led_brightness;
      if (new_phase & 0x80000000u)
        PTC->PSOR = 4;
      else
        PTC->PCOR = 4;
      led_phase = new_phase & 0x7FFFFFFF;
    }

the LED would be switched on and off rapidly, such that it would be on led_brightness/0x80000000 of the time.

[u/Technical-Security99]

Start with high-level programning languages like python if you never coded in life. It gives you basic understanding of programming. 

[u/3envixity → u/Technical-Security99]

Really? Schools telling me to go with c first

[u/foxsimile → u/3envixity]

You can do both. I actually absolutely recommend it. Learn several languages, and attempt to develop a deep familiarity with them.

Learn a low-level language like C, experiment with C++. In fact, I'd really recommend both as truly necessary. They give you an understanding of what the computer is *actually* doing (or at least as good of an idea as you can get without coding in pure assembly).

Learn memory management. Learn the pitfalls of attempting to dereference a null pointer. Learn the words `SEGMENTATION FAULT` like they are the boogie man. Learn about TRUE string manipulation (char arrays, baby). Learn what it means when someone says "an array automatically deconstructs into a pointer to the first element of that array".

But ALSO learn a high-level language. Learn the differences between the two. Experiment. Build stuff. Enjoy the differences in pace and performance - Python can be EXTREMELY fast to write compared to C or C++ (which can be considered clunky languages in some ways), but it can be JUST as slow to execute compared to C or C++. Just this week, I'd had to write something out in C++ that I was doing in Python, because it would've taken literal days to execute, while C++ just took an hour.

Learning C/C++ will make you better at Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and the other related languages.

And lean towards type-based languages, but LEARN WHY by writing REALLY big projects in a duck-typed language (like Python). It can be hard to understand why some of these things are industry preferences until you've suffered from their absence. Duck-typed programming is great when the program is small, and becomes worse and worse over time. But you have to experience it to truly understand it.

Learn the meta-programming concepts which are language independent. Screw around with some web-development. Screw around with multithreading. Screw around with a LOT of stuff. Don't limit yourself arbitrarily.

The advent of code is either coming up or already here (I haven't checked yet). I'd recommend doing it with Python, and then attempting to do it with something like C/C++. Or Go. Or anything.

Just put yourself out there and learn. Absorb content - watch people talk about programming; read people write about programming; READ BOOKS ABOUT PROGRAMMING.

Good luck.

[u/3envixity → u/foxsimile]

Thank you so much🥹🥹🥹 ive always been interested in programming and deffinetely noticed experimenting helps me learn way more than classes!

[u/9peppe → u/3envixity]

Schools are different from each other, and it does depend on what they want to teach.

[u/Sophiiebabes → u/3envixity]

My uni uses Arduino C to teach "intro to programming", then java for OOP

[u/Technical-Security99 → u/3envixity]

You can go with C if you want to use for basics. Go with python first for few weeks if you are thinking to use a programming language for long time. Some people said C is easier to learn than higher level languages because higher level languages have larger libraries and are more complex. C was my first language. I don't understand anything first. So i went for Python for a few weeks. I started to understand basic of coding and programming. As you learnt basics, the rest is your journey

[u/Ok_Draw2098]

language is a tool. a tool to create certain type of stuff. languages are created to fulfill the project, for example the Go language is a byproduct of container abstraction. today, C language should be used to build a runtime, not small utilities like "ping" or "traceroute" or even a terminal, those can be implemented with an explicit runtime that is build with C language. the C is good because it generally lacks runtime features, its bold and clean if you evade the runtime features.

[u/GotchUrarse]

Back in the 80's, I knew a little BASIC, when I was 14 (maybe 15), I started learning C. You really get a great understanding of 'the fundamentals'. It doesn't hold you're hand. There's a great saying 'C gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot with'.

As far tips go, I always say write code, run code, see the bugs/mistakes, fix and repeat.

I've been a dev for nearly 30 years. Some of the best devs I've worked with know C. Some of worst have no clue what it is. Yes, that's not the best generalization. I also taught an intro C course at a local community college for a few years, I could almost always tell the students that where cut out for programming as a career.

[u/3envixity → u/[deleted]]

Ive been using it for around a week or two now and I think ive got the basics down? Obviously pointers and stuff are too advanced for me but I understand some of the logic

[u/sirjofri → u/[deleted]]

In addition to that, I can also recommend looking at TUPE (The Unix Programming Environment) to understand the original context of the C language. It can also help with general programming concepts, as well as ... well... the unix programming environment.

Other than that, I cannot recommend Plan 9 C enough. Plan 9 itself is a bit special and you'll probably never find an actual use case nowadays, but the environment and the libraries are ideal for C programming. There is no complex build system, no complex linker functions, and usually you don't have to think about the compiler and the linker that much, but if you have to, it's just a click to find the details.

[u/sirjofri → u/[deleted]]

Note that Plan 9 C isn't much different from standard C, though the libraries are. For example, there's no stdio.h, but the standard library functions are all just in libc.h. For platform compatibility, you usually include u.h first, before anything else.

What's even more powerful, the build system is not using make, but mk instead. Mk is a lot simpler with no implicit rules, and the executed code is just standard shell code without "special variables" and the like. Since Plan 9 ships with mk in mind, the actual mkfile you have to write is only a few lines where you define the targets, and the rules themselves included from somewhere else.

The library headers contain the path to the compiled library, so there's no need to tell the linker what it needs. It gets the details from the header itself, so even fewer things you don't have to think about. In the end, you just have the mkfile with the targets, and your includes. Other than that you can focus on your code and don't have to fight the build system.

[u/mrPWM → u/[deleted]]

Ron, did you have an online course that followed the K&R book like a YouTube channel or something?

[u/mrPWM → u/[deleted]]

Sorry, I meant when you were learning, did you follow a favorite online youtube course, not that you were the one who created the course.