To become a good C programmer (2011)

As much as C is fantastic to work with, as the general idea of a low&#x2F;high level language whose compilers are easy to implement, its pain points are annoying.<p>Integer conversions, literals, unhygienic macros, inconsistent library, overflows, zero-ended strings are all very very fastidious to work with.<p>I really hope that Zig will grow up because it seems the best promising alternative to C right now. In 20 years or so it might even get a significant market share... Then it will be the turn of POSIX and by 2100 low level system programming will be fixed

I also used to religiously target C89 for &quot;maximum compatibility&quot; (`-ansi -pedantic`). But the problem with this approach is that it&#x27;s 2021, and C89 doesn&#x27;t have a concurrency model.<p>FFS, use C11 or newer. Even if you&#x27;re writing for consoles and weird microcontrollers, the compilers have mostly caught up.

This is a really great list for learning C89&#x2F;C99! I have to double recommend &quot;Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets&quot;, such a fascinating and fun book (albeit showing some age).

K&amp;R is full of gems, cannot recommend that enough for C. Great not only as reference but initial learning. It’s also so humbling that something 40+ years old (published ‘78) is still used so frequently today.