Where to begin when learning C? Start by making lots of errors

This situation is why there is &quot;hello world&quot;; that program seems trivial but actually has important implications; for instance, that your environment works, that you know how to feed programs to the compiler, that you can actually run the output.<p>I never took &quot;hello world&quot; seriously until I started doing embedded systems work; it&#x27;s now an extraordinarily important tool for me (I work an anomalously weird number of different environments).

I learned C by reading K and R and doing the book&#x27;s exercises . . . on paper. At the time I didn&#x27;t have access to a C compiler, so I wrote them all out in a notebook. A month later I got a job at a shop that was running Unix, and got the chance to type my programs in and try them.<p>I had a lot of things wrong. It took me a while to understand the difference between control-D and EOF, for instance (how embarrassing). But the 30 days I spent without a compiler made me <i>think</i> about program behavior.<p>I&#x27;m not saying this is a great way to learn a language, but it can be done.<p>I keep hearing people complain about K and R being &quot;a terrible book.&quot; For me it was perfect: pragmatic, succinct, with great examples and good exercises.

By making sure to <i>enable all warnings</i>, <i>enable warnings as errors</i> and use a compiler that integrates static analysis like clang.

Where to begin when learning C? Start at <a href="http://c.learncodethehardway.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;c.learncodethehardway.org&#x2F;</a>. It&#x27;s going to be tough to top Zed Shaw&#x27;s approach. The best way to learn code is by writing code.

I think I have some ingrained fear of making errors, from the days where a simple error might cause your program to chew through your whole hard drive. Actually I don&#x27;t know if that was ever the case, but that&#x27;s how I felt.<p>Anyway, the hardest step for me in learning a language is when I take some running code and make one change to see what happens. Once I get in the swing of it, it gets much easier, but that first step is still hard to do.

In order to for people to really understand C and be proficient in it very clearly, I always recommend that they learn the basics of programming (memory, basic types, looping structures and array manipulation) in a simple assembly language such as 6502. This helps immensely with understanding pointers and deciphering the many cryptic C compiler messages.

Install Valgrind. It makes error messages a lot less cryptic (my #1 problem with C... not that&#x27;s it&#x27;s limited to C). If you don&#x27;t get proper feedback, it&#x27;s not learning, just banging your head against the wall.

Currently, I&#x27;m learning Python and have been learning it for over a year now. I&#x27;ve been thinking about moving to C as my next language. Is this a good idea? I&#x27;m eventually going to want to learn C++, but I&#x27;m not going to learn Java until I have to. Also, what are some really good C learning resources? I know there&#x27;s K&amp;R and learncthehardway.org

I thinks this is a good approach. Checking most of possible exceptional cases while following regular learning course.<p>Errors = safety nets are usually the main reason to make stiff learning curve. This would be a great help for them.

As other people said earlier, reading existing code is great, when you have good sources. I&#x27;m an almost noob in C, and currently reading Ian Piumarta sources[1], I find they&#x27;re superb in presentation and design.<p><a href="http://piumarta.com/software/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;piumarta.com&#x2F;software&#x2F;</a><p>[1] mostly for maru, his lisp system, but even tty2html (ascii control -&gt; html) is very clean and elegant.

A minor point, but important to understand: the error came from the linker, not the compiler. It compiled just fine.

By the way, I would love any feedback on this approach and where I should take this further.

This all of this!

This is stupid. You should learn C properly (know how to avoid undefined behavior) or not at all. Exception if you&#x27;re doing something that can tolerate remote code execution.

You should learn go instead of C.

Actually the message quoted complains about the lack of _main not main, so the rest of this post is a huge overinterpretation. _main is IMO some windoizm connected to the use of WinMain for GUI apps.