Thread #108274158
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Is this book still reliable anons?
+Showing all 64 replies.
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>>108274158
probably out of date by now
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Works on my machine.
If I had one criticism, it's that it's a bit limited. There are other things the language can do that aren't discussed in this book. I remember having to find other resources when I wanted to set up a toy server with C, even though all the tools required were in the standard library.
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>he's still coding manually
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>>108274158
No. AI is superior.
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>>108274158
Read the King
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>>108274254
it isnt.
also: you drink sperm.
from various species.
out of a frosted glass, topped with a mini umbrella
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>>108274245
Nigga fuck off I'm going to learn C and not vibe code unsecure shit.
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>>108274333
Found this one pretty helpful to get me started. The notes for the standards are neat as well.
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>>108274523
>learn C and not vibe code unsecure shit.
So you're gonna code unsecure shit the regular way.
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>>108274333
This is what I use
And I use Firefox to highlight the PDF, thank you Firefox
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>>108274409
Different person, but AI is genuinely a great resource for learning a coding language.
Asking something like "Show me a minimal example of how to use X()" can be very useful.
That said, I do own and read the book in OP.
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>>108274158
yes, it's completely fine. teaches you literally everything you need to know except for some file stuff and more powerful preprocessor things and in that case you can switch to beej for that. just do the examples and you'll be fine
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>>108274158
What is the equivalent of this for C# and the Unity game engine itself.
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>>108274576
LMAO
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>>108274158
Is C a good language for a beginner?
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>>108275309
Honestly its probably the best language for beginners, you build super strong foundational skills that will carry over to every other high level language you'll use. If I was starting today I would start with C
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>>108275309
in the sense that is absurdly manual and you need to learn everything almost froms cratch? , yes
but note that c doesnt match with modern isas, it doesnt work the way x86 does, so out of pointers its not that low level
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>>108275309
i always recommend that people learn c first. its really simple and really easy to make mistakes. C teaches all of the important concepts and ideas. it is hard to build abstractions because of a lack of generics, but when learning this is not important.
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>>108274158
>still
It never was.
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>>108276582
how was it not reliable at any point? it was basically the only usable documentation for the language available when it came out
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>>108274158
As shown on the cover, it applies to ANSI C, aka C89.
There are other later revisions of the C standard: C99, C11, C23, with their benefits and drawbacks.
However C89 is the simplest of these and is easily supported by hobby compilers.
Since the later standards are all extensions of C89, you can't go wrong with this book.
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>>108276598
>it was basically the only usable documentation for the language available when it came out
Probably, but it's not a good book and C is not a good language.
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>>108274158
i'm reading it rn and i'm almost finished, at chapter 8

what should i read after this?
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>>108276654
>i'm going to do only a few, you do the rest
Why the fuck are all books so useless.
Always some "we're only going to scrape the surface", "we can't show it all", "read those other books instead" cop out.
Why isn't there one fucking book author with the courage to do it all?
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>>108276681
Start studying source code and understand what it does.
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>>108276654
what book is that from?
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>>108276703
that seems daunting but what code do you recommend i look at
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>>108276707
"Learn C the hard way" course by Zed Shaw, I had to look it up.

>>108276654
>literally who criticising the inventors of the language, who also wrote 3 operating systems in that language
>criticises textbook examples for not being production-ready
>just to shill his $30 online course
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>>108276716
a lot of the suckless programs are good for that because they are quite small
not all of them have comments though
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>>108276731
You're ignoring the damage that C and UNIX have caused. Designing a system based on 1970s hardware in a time of rapid innovation is way beyond retarded.
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>>108276792
both were already backwards back then
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>>108276792
is there a modern language that fixes this? Rust? Zig? Any other? Genuinely interested.
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>>108276654
Only bad programmers say C is a bad language, lol.
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>>108274158
yes my world renowned university is still teaching C using a deceased professors video lecture course from the early 2000s and using this book.
don't fall for redditor tier doomer talk, you wouldn't take advice from a random homeless person on the corner and anonymous posters on the internet are no different. this stuff is important to learn and know.
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>>108276792
>system based on 1970s hardware
and yet somehow in 2026 they are still faster than all other languages and OSs
curious that in >50y nobody has been able to come up with anything better
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>>108277017
the problem is that most languages nowadays derive from c instead of the better ones we had back then, rust ios probably the best, but honestly a pascal derivative would have been way way better, they are just not really used
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>>108277017
No, ZIG and Rust are incremental improvements.

>>108277035
Quite the opposite, sir. I can't negate the pragmatic nature of C but those pragmatic hacks are also a nuisance.
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>>108277135
pascal and C are basically the same language, they only differ in ways that are irrelevant. Stop parroting shit you read online well poisoning troon.
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>>108277142
>Quite the opposite, saar

picrel summarised:
"C is terrible because it lets programmer do what they want and allows them to make really efficient simple systems."
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>>108277172
0 base count, null terminated arrays and many other shit are really bad designs
read the unix haters handbook, i though it was a joke of lispobsessed old farts until i actually started to code in c
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>>108277142
what is that article or book?
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>>108277197
An article. A Brief History of Software Engineering b.
https://mediaweb.saintleo.edu/Courses/COM430/M1Readings/A%20Brief%20History%20of%20Software%20Engineering.pdf
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>>108275309
Not really. The standard library is archaic and confusing and the need for manual memory management probably isn't the best thing to spend your time on when you're just starting out. For getting something useful done, Python is a better language. For purely learning (and thus having to build a lot of your program from scratch), Lua is probably better.
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>>108277216
thanks
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>>108277135
rust is best in absolutely nothing
it's just another mess
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>>108277194
issues that are only issues for people who shouldn't be touching C. Like learn once shit, spending 5 seconds to check for eof or null, being cognizant of n-1, page aligning, using stdint, nulling freed pointer, etc. There's plenty of other languages with type safety and gutter bumpers if you require them. It's lack of safety is it's strength, yes it comes at a cost of needing to be careful. safetyfags lose a finger on a table saw and start blaming table saws, ironic really.
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>>108275309
honestly I would suggest you learn the basic concepts in a garbage collected language first and I don't recommend java/C# for this simply because they have their own shit that you "should" learn when you use them (OOP crap)

what to use instead? maybe Go?
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>>108275375
>so out of pointers its not that low level
Explain.

Other than system calls, and excluding shit that gets swept aside by the compiler preprocessor and types, I was under the impression that a C program had a pretty straightforward mapping to assembly?
Actually curious, not trolling.

I am aware that while oldfags even older than I (88fag here) consider C to not *strictly* be a low-level, it is still for all intents and purposes extremely close to low-level (especially when put on a spectrum with Python, C++, Java, C#, Visual Basic etc.)
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>>108275309
I wouldn't say so. You'll learn a lot of bad habits which you'll have to unlearn later when moving to more modern languages. Especially if you plan on learning C++ - start with modern C++ right away, otherwise you'll be a horrible C++ programmer with the legacy C baggage and no clue you could do much better. Otherwise, Python is pretty popular as a first-time language - much simpler than C++, yet still relatively powerful.
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>>108277194
>The UNIX-HATERS Handbook, by
>Simson Garfinkel
>Daniel Weise (Microsoft employee)
>Steven Strassmann (Apple employee)
>yes goy, don't use UNIX, just go back to using Windows like a good goy

I have actually read it btw. It's drivel.
>Complain that 'rm' removes files,
>In chapter 1, complain that 'rm' doesn't ask for confirmation. In chapter 2, complain that another program (I forget which) asks for confirmation,
>Complain about locking files (which is a problem on all OSs),
>Complain about crashes (which ironically were way more common on Windows, even back then),
>Complain that man pages exist,
>Complain that error messages exist,
>Complain that the command line exists,
>Complain that programs do exactly what you tell them to,
>Complain that sometimes the only way to fix a problem is to turn it off and on again (ironically only Windows has this feature),
>Complain that root exists (even though Windows also has admin users)
>Complain about Usenet and C++, which aren't part of UNIX,
>Complain about X, which was designed at MIT, Garfinkel's alma-mater, not at Bell Labs (and ironically is faster than Windows desktop today)
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>>108277277
it maps to assembly, but the pdp11 one, not x86. x86 or arm have way more advanced shit that C natively doesnt map to
now the optimized compilers do make that c code to use a more optimized assembly, but that is exactly not being low level language, c being fast is bc of the extensive development of its compilers, not because of the language
if C was assembly like low level shit like ffpmeg wouldnt need to be 80% assembly
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>>108277390
Ah I see, much obliged
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>>108277390
you quite literally have a fundamental misunderstanding of what you're talking about.
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>>108276731
Have you read the original UNIX code? It does not hold up to today's standards
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/mkdir.c
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>>108277861
>code from 40 years ago is not le heckin like today
explain whats wrong with mkdir src.
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>>108277883
Buffer overflows
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test
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>>108277142
Man, whoever wrote that slop deserves a reality check in the form of a beat down or a bullet between the eyes.
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>>108278015
maybe you need a reality check, its a historian article, people who knows software history all concur that c is shit and fucked up the software trends. c was the first slop language
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>>108274158
For the syntax but it's outdated, maybe using flags with gcc work .
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>>108275309
It's a hard language to learn but it's the most worth learning. Besides directly writing in assembly, C is about as close to the metal as currently relevant programming languages get and you should learn it for that reason. You will actually have to learn something about how programming works without abstracting things away with library function calls that hide huge amounts of operations.
If you don't start with C, you will eventually have to come back to it so that you can understand the things that other languages hide from you.
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>>108274570
>GUYS LOOK AT ME I'M RETARDED AND UNWILLING TO BECAME BETTER AT SOMETHING, SO ARE YOU
this is how you sound
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>>108274333
hot garbage

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