C Programming: A Modern Approach

C Programming: A Modern Approach (K N King) that I recently finished, has been great. Prior to that, JavaScript the Definitive Guide. Also cracked into Crafting Interpreters (was great) but got sidetracked.

When I studied C in college everyone recommended the K&R C book. I found it the be of no value to me for learning the language. Instead I found King's C Programming: A Modern Approach much more enlightening. I know K&R is widely well-regarded, so I found it interesting how difficult it was for me to learn from it.

This is my favorite of the bunch. I remember picking it up as a long time C dev hoping to learn a new, modern approaches. It helped hammer home that you can only modernize a 50 year old language so much. I didn't come away with from it with a lot of new tricks or techniques. It's just a dated language that has a very specific time and place and when using it, you have to deal with its age.

+1. King’s is amazing, IMO. Very didactic and covers C in depth.

I needed to re-learn C programming for a mid-career change. This book was a life saver. I will never forget how details the explaination was about printf. That book is incredibly thorough.

King is good, also Seacord’s books: Effective C and Secure Coding .. Just ignore suggestions (parroting really) for K&R. It’s probably the worst introduction to C when it comes to good habits, undefined behavior and writing secure code, since it doesn’t even attempt to cover any of these but presents a total facade regarding what programming in C is like. K&R has created generations of people who call themselves C programmers but are essentially clueless when it comes to deep understanding of the language. Anyone that recommends K&R today is someone you want to avoid taking any advice on programming from.

C Programming: A Modern Approach by King Edit: I just saw your post history - if you don't mind me asking what approach/resources did you take with self-teaching yourself?

If that's what your looking for, I find books that are adopted as university textbooks are best. i.e. C Programming Modern Approach by KN King, Object Pascal Handbook by Marco Cantu. Generally I'm staying away from O'Reilly, No Starch Press etc.. They all feel like books created by pasting a bunch of blog posts together. University texts are usually twice the price, but IMHO worth it - they are made for teaching knowledge, not just sharing it.

Have you tried C Programming: A Modern Approach? It is very good with C99 but there is no C11. My only problem is that it spends too much time for people who are new to C.