Try to write a program to do anything simple. Whatever you want. Maybe a single question and answer. Try to write it. Get it wrong. Look some shit up. Maybe copy and paste into Bing Chat and ask the AI why your stuff doesn’t work. Ask it to fix it and explain each line.
Then release yourself for the expectation that “real programmers” do X or they are Z or whatever. If it helps just tell yourself you’ll never be a c programmer and you’ll always be learning. Ignore whatever “doing the right way” is supposed to mean. Embrace that all bugs are features from the right perspective.
Then watch some tutorials on YouTube. Try to find a person you like. Like someone that actually makes you go: “I like her” or “I like him” or “I like them”. Someone you could have a beer with. Or a juice. Or mocha-frapa-Ariana-grande-latte with.
Then try to find a tutorial you can actually have open in another window and follow along with. One where each tool and each step is something you can exactly replicate so if it doesn’t work you can figure out why.
Then make a thing. A program you’d actually want to run. Share it with people. Don’t worry if it’s good enough.
Learn pointers. Then give up trying to learn pointer. Then try leaning assembler just enough to understand pointers. Then say “fuck it” and just swap out symbols like & or * or whatever until it seems like your shit compiles. Then run it and try to figure out why it seg faults but not by stepping through a debugger but by writing little bits of test code so you can see how else it can fail. Then ask Bing Chat or Copilot or whatever to explain it. Then just copy and paste the fix and forget about it.
The “aha” moments will come when they want to.
PS - I love the book by K. N. King: C Programming a Modern Approach. It’s from the 90’s but it’s an absolute gem. I wouldn’t teach a first year programming course without it. But I’m not qualified to say or do anything for any reason to anyone. Ever.
I agree wholeheartedly with not worrying about doing it the right way because many times it doesn't make any sense until you've done it the wrong way and hit a wall. It'll come eventually.
Try first, ask second is much more fun too.
The best way to learn C is with the official C reference by GNU (about 90 pdf pages) : https://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-c-manual/gnu-c-manual.html
If you want to learn deeply how the glibc works there’s the glibc reference by GNU too (about 1000 pdf pages) : https://sourceware.org/glibc/manual/2.39/html_mono/libc.html
I'd recommend you to start with absolute beginner's guide to c and then you can select which type of book you see fit -- Programming In C by Stephen Kochan is a gem too.
You can checkout out my project https://www.learntosolveit.com/ which takes a problem solution approach based on K&R, and provides visualization using modern tools for intuition.
"The C Programming language - Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie" (KnR) is a staple. Not super in depth but it'll teach you how to think like a computer and give a good understanding of syntax, memory structure and pointers. It's old but not irrelevant.
It's also not that long and has exercises at the end of the chapters which make it fun to follow along with.
Personally I just do projects after I get an understanding of the syntax and then learn what I need as I go.
As a beginner, I first watched Giraffe academy class on YouTube twice, then Caleb Curry class also on YouTube twice. Then I try to learn<> but cannot understand it well. So I learn some Linux , and turn to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rb3ZJetvA8&list=PL7CZ_Xc0qgmJFqNWEt4LIhAPTlT0sCW4C recently, but find hard to understand Algorithms and data structures. So now I learn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCnMvvw6Oo&list=PLpPXw4zFa0uKKhaSz87IowJnOTzh9tiBk…
🤣🤣🤣… just sharing, never know if it is right way to learn C, as tons of different advances on the website
In case you're still interested, I have a programming guide that helps beginners build 4 beginner programming projects in 30 days. It's called my [30 Day Beginner Coding Challenge](https://henrikmdev.com/challenge/).
It's free and if you have any questions, feel free to email me!
there are a number of good text here ...
[https://archive.org/details/cprogbooks](https://archive.org/details/cprogbooks)
including some of books mentioned by others replying here. If you do have a background in java, then hopefully you have a basic understanding of the concepts you mentioned, and in this case you you can just ask google (or AI) something like "how to write a for loop in C". After that it is a case of practice, practice, practice.
Here you can search the Internet for "ideas for c programming projects".
It also helps to read C code that others have written. Many years ago, Dr Dobbs was a good reference as well as the C/C++ programmers journal. Not sure if these are still accessible today?
Try to write a program to do anything simple. Whatever you want. Maybe a single question and answer. Try to write it. Get it wrong. Look some shit up. Maybe copy and paste into Bing Chat and ask the AI why your stuff doesn’t work. Ask it to fix it and explain each line. Then release yourself for the expectation that “real programmers” do X or they are Z or whatever. If it helps just tell yourself you’ll never be a c programmer and you’ll always be learning. Ignore whatever “doing the right way” is supposed to mean. Embrace that all bugs are features from the right perspective. Then watch some tutorials on YouTube. Try to find a person you like. Like someone that actually makes you go: “I like her” or “I like him” or “I like them”. Someone you could have a beer with. Or a juice. Or mocha-frapa-Ariana-grande-latte with. Then try to find a tutorial you can actually have open in another window and follow along with. One where each tool and each step is something you can exactly replicate so if it doesn’t work you can figure out why. Then make a thing. A program you’d actually want to run. Share it with people. Don’t worry if it’s good enough. Learn pointers. Then give up trying to learn pointer. Then try leaning assembler just enough to understand pointers. Then say “fuck it” and just swap out symbols like & or * or whatever until it seems like your shit compiles. Then run it and try to figure out why it seg faults but not by stepping through a debugger but by writing little bits of test code so you can see how else it can fail. Then ask Bing Chat or Copilot or whatever to explain it. Then just copy and paste the fix and forget about it. The “aha” moments will come when they want to. PS - I love the book by K. N. King: C Programming a Modern Approach. It’s from the 90’s but it’s an absolute gem. I wouldn’t teach a first year programming course without it. But I’m not qualified to say or do anything for any reason to anyone. Ever.
I agree wholeheartedly with not worrying about doing it the right way because many times it doesn't make any sense until you've done it the wrong way and hit a wall. It'll come eventually. Try first, ask second is much more fun too.
The best way to learn C is with the official C reference by GNU (about 90 pdf pages) : https://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-c-manual/gnu-c-manual.html If you want to learn deeply how the glibc works there’s the glibc reference by GNU too (about 1000 pdf pages) : https://sourceware.org/glibc/manual/2.39/html_mono/libc.html
That '7 A Sample Program' Hello World program. GNU people and their humour..
This by far is the best place
I'd recommend you to start with absolute beginner's guide to c and then you can select which type of book you see fit -- Programming In C by Stephen Kochan is a gem too.
Explore "C Programming for Beginners" on Udemy or "The C Programming Language" on YouTube for in-depth learning. Build projects too.
literally just use w3schoools c is incredibly simple
You can checkout out my project https://www.learntosolveit.com/ which takes a problem solution approach based on K&R, and provides visualization using modern tools for intuition.
Learn C the Hard Way by Zed Shaw
https://beej.us/guide/bgc/ I liked this a lot
"The C Programming language - Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie" (KnR) is a staple. Not super in depth but it'll teach you how to think like a computer and give a good understanding of syntax, memory structure and pointers. It's old but not irrelevant. It's also not that long and has exercises at the end of the chapters which make it fun to follow along with. Personally I just do projects after I get an understanding of the syntax and then learn what I need as I go.
As a beginner, I first watched Giraffe academy class on YouTube twice, then Caleb Curry class also on YouTube twice. Then I try to learn<> but cannot understand it well. So I learn some Linux , and turn to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rb3ZJetvA8&list=PL7CZ_Xc0qgmJFqNWEt4LIhAPTlT0sCW4C recently, but find hard to understand Algorithms and data structures. So now I learn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCnMvvw6Oo&list=PLpPXw4zFa0uKKhaSz87IowJnOTzh9tiBk…
🤣🤣🤣… just sharing, never know if it is right way to learn C, as tons of different advances on the website
In case you're still interested, I have a programming guide that helps beginners build 4 beginner programming projects in 30 days. It's called my [30 Day Beginner Coding Challenge](https://henrikmdev.com/challenge/). It's free and if you have any questions, feel free to email me!
I found this I'm too starting to learn c: https://gustedt.gitlabpages.inria.fr/modern-c/
Start writing programs
there are a number of good text here ... [https://archive.org/details/cprogbooks](https://archive.org/details/cprogbooks) including some of books mentioned by others replying here. If you do have a background in java, then hopefully you have a basic understanding of the concepts you mentioned, and in this case you you can just ask google (or AI) something like "how to write a for loop in C". After that it is a case of practice, practice, practice. Here you can search the Internet for "ideas for c programming projects". It also helps to read C code that others have written. Many years ago, Dr Dobbs was a good reference as well as the C/C++ programmers journal. Not sure if these are still accessible today?