{"id":20137,"date":"2023-01-26T05:48:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T05:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/pl\/?post_type=product&p=20137"},"modified":"2023-01-26T05:48:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T05:48:04","slug":"beejs-guide-to-c-programming","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/pl\/beejs-guide-to-c-programming\/","title":{"rendered":"Beej\u2019s Guide to C Programming"},"content":{"rendered":"

C<\/a> is a low-level language<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t use to be. Back in the day when people carved punch cards out of granite, C was an incredible way to be free of the drudgery of lower-level languages like assembly.<\/p>\n

But now in these modern times, current-generation languages<\/a> offer all kinds of features that didn\u2019t exist in 1972 when C was invented. This means C is a pretty basic language<\/a> with not a lot of features. It can do anything, but it can make you work for it.<\/p>\n

So why would we even use it today?<\/p>\n

\u2022 As a learning tool: not only is C a venerable piece of computing history, but it is connected to the bare metal2 in a way that present-day languages are not. When you learn C, you learn about how software interfaces with computer memory at a low level. There are no seatbelts. You\u2019ll write software that crashes, I assure you. And that\u2019s all part of the fun!<\/p>\n

\u2022 As a useful tool: C still is used for certain applications, such as building operating systems3 or in embedded systems<\/a>. (Though the Rust5 programming language is eyeing both these fields!)<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re familiar with another language, a lot of things about C are easy. C inspired many other languages, and you\u2019ll see bits of it in Go, Rust, Swift, Python, JavaScript, Java, and all kinds of other languages. Those parts will be familiar.<\/p>\n

The one thing about C that hangs people up is pointers. Virtually everything else is familiar, but pointers are the weird one. The concept behind pointers is likely one you already know, but C forces you to be explicit about it, using operators you\u2019ve likely never seen before.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s especially insidious because once you grok pointers, they\u2019re suddenly easy. But up until that moment, they\u2019re slippery eels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"