Re: [MLUG] Resources for intro to C programming

[Mark Haidekker <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon February 6 2006 20:59, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>
> Go with the 2nd edition (because it is more up to date).  This book does
> a really good job teaching C, but I don't recall that it actually taught
> "how to program."  But if you already know Visual Basic, you will
> probably find this book fine.  Used copies seem to be about $15 on
> amazon.com, so it is surely worth a try.

There is one book I would recommend (I learned C/C++ myself by going over that 
book's examples), "Learning C++" by Tom Swan. The first 5 chapters are C, 
then he moves into C++. Therefore anybody interested in C only could stop at 
Chapter 5.


> I was so impressed by this book, that when I decided to learn C++ I also
> tried out the "original."  But the book on C++ by Stroustrup was a
> disappointment.  I still haven't found a decent primer on C++, and I
> don't know C++ at all well.
>
> For scientific programing, my impression is that C++ gives little or no
> advantage over C.

I would second that. C++ was developed for a special purpose - simulation. It 
certainly has advantages in simulation and gaming projects. For scientific 
programming C does as well.

> Many scientific programmers still use Fortran.  I think that part of the
> reason is that a lot of effort was put into making Fortran compilers
> produce extremely efficient code.  However if you are using gcc on
> Linux, C should be just as good as Fortran (since the first thing the
> Fortran compiler does is to convert the code into C).

Maybe efficient code, but I did a few F77 projects a while ago and found that 
the language itself just sucks. My personal opinion, of course.

Mark

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