C Learning enviroment

limnam wrote: »

I'm looking to teach myself C. I was wanted to build a Linux or BSD based learning environment. I was wondering if anyone can recommend OS's/ tools/ books to setup such that would be helpful for someone trying to self teach and any other useful tips

Any Linux environment should be straightforward to set up, but Ubuntu and Mint come recommended in many places. In terms of IDE, etc. you can build C programs with a text editor and the GCC compiler, but if you want an IDE or similar, then CodeBlocks is a decent one that will pick up GCC and can also pick up MS compilers on Windows.

If you're going to be learning C, I think I'd recommend you skip using an IDE and just use a text editor and gcc. It'll be the easiest way to start up and unlike languages with more of a runtime environment or twelve terabytes of standard libraries, you don't really need an IDE for the kind of helloworld.c files you'll be writing initially (and you'll learn more).

As to environment, the easiest linuxes to install and maintain for a new user on their own PC would be Ubuntu, Mint and Debian, probably in that order. I prefer Debian but that's because it's the one I started off with (under the hood, you'll learn eventually that they're all the same thing essentially, with only minor differences).

You'll want to install an editor you like (if you haven't used one on unix before, try pico - vi and emacs are the best ones but the learning curve of those plus the learning curve of unix plus the learning curve of C add up to a learning overhanging-wall...), gcc itself, and later on gdb (or a variant like cgdb or something more graphical like ddd).

There's a list of recommended books in another thread; for C, I'd start and end with K&R's original C book (make sure to get a recent copy, you want at least the second edition); for how you write C programs specifically in Unix there's The Unix Programming Environment and Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment.

Lastly, remember that google is your friend (and stackoverflow). Seriously, every wierd compiler error message, every glitch you come across when you start learning, someone's already hit it before and just feeding the message into google will usually give you either the full story of why you hit it; or at least give you a good idea of where to start digging.

Good luck!

That's a paddlin'!

http://www.sublimetext.com/

Sublime Text is a cross platform editor that supports build environments too so you can add one for C.

It's much better than codeblocks imo.