C Programming Help

j2dab

Hi All,

Just started C Programming second year college and am finding it very difficult, I just cant seem to get my head around a lot of stuff mostly the layout and how it is written. Does anybody know if there is people that offer grinds in this subject?

Thanks,

hussey

Best thing is to either

1) go to library and get a very very begineers book
2) ask a third year (or even your friends) for a grind

Webmonkey

j2dab wrote: »

Hi All,

Just started C Programming second year college and am finding it very difficult, I just cant seem to get my head around a lot of stuff mostly the layout and how it is written. Does anybody know if there is people that offer grinds in this subject?

Thanks,

What exactly are you finding difficult. What programming language you do in 1st year?

It is important to have a firm understanding of C if you want to become a good programmer. No doubt it looks scary at first but it isn't so bad especially once you get your head around pointers. I guess thats where you are stuck at the moment? - Seems to be quite a few C pointers/linked list questions coming up in this forum around now

Tobias Greeshman

WebMonkey wrote:

Seems to be quite a few C pointers/linked list questions coming up in this forum around now

Christmas exams are a coming me thinks!!

carveone

silas wrote: »

Christmas exams are a coming me thinks!!

Sigh. Whatever happened to dossing until April and then cramming until the summer exams. And in my case, the autumn exams too

Anyone given grinds before? I'm wondering is it worthwhile or a big pain. I didn't know that students still did C in college (as opposed to the ubiquitous Java). Might be interesting to teach a C course!

Conor.

Webmonkey

Its still quite common and to be honest it should be mandatary to have such a language like C to get an understand of computer organisation/architecture etc. Java should be thought last and in OOP style. C should come first to get firm understanding of what exactly is going on underneath.

markf909

Webmonkey wrote: »

Its still quite common and to be honest it should be mandatary to have such a language like C to get an understand of computer organisation/architecture etc. Java should be thought last and in OOP style. C should come first to get firm understanding of what exactly is going on underneath.

Then they get completely lost doing OOP after learning lots of imperative programming!

sobriquet

j2dab wrote: »

very difficult [...] mostly the layout and how it is written

Don't quite know where you're coming from on this, and I wouldn't like to comment in case I end up confusing you. C is pretty unforgiving. As others here have said, get a good beginners book and work through it. That means work through it. Don't skip any exercises, even the ones that do simple arithmetic.

markf909 wrote:

Then they get completely lost doing OOP after learning lots of imperative programming!

You're right, but moving from imperative to object oriented (and to functional and declarative) programming styles is non-trivial. You're effectively relearning to program, at least in the sense of how to think about and solve problems in a certain way, and treating it as anything less leads to headaches. To a large extent, starting with OOP only means people learn to program imperatively in an OOP language.

markf909

sobriquet wrote: »

You're right, but moving from imperative to object oriented (and to functional and declarative) programming styles is non-trivial.

Hehe, i'm having great fun slipping Functional programming into the new C# 3.0 features, it'll be interesting to see how many of my colleagues will tolerate that when they go to review it

monkey tennis

markf909 wrote: »

Then they get completely lost doing OOP after learning lots of imperative programming!

I think it's a better idea to start off with C (despite the fact that it fits a different programming paradigm) in order to learn the basics in a simpler environment (plus, of course, to learn about relatively low-level concepts). When they get their head around the basics, then they can migrate this knowledge to an object-oriented language (particularly with C++ or Java for obvious reasons).

Throwing people into the deep end of an OO language, particularly fully OO like Java, runs the risk of people floundering by thinking procedurally in an OO language, as sobriquet brought up. I think most people learn by starting at basic concepts and working up from that; I don't think you can expect people to 'get' OO right off the bat, as some lecturers would have you believe (those that push Java as the only taught language). On the other hand, if you move from procedural to OO, you get a view of the benefits of OO through contrast. I don't buy this whole idea of people being befuddled by OO when they're used to procedural, unless they've been coding in procedural languages for 10 years and their brains have become used to this type of thought.

Whoops, off-topic...

OP, the best way to learn programming is to program. There are tons of C primers out there, and a few websites that will go through the basics with exercises. The exercises are very important.

mach1982

Try cprogramming.org or com can't remember which pretty good tutorials.

Genghiz Cohen

cplusplus.com <- really helped me out in first year.