How to improve C skill?

[weidongtom]

Hi,

I have just finished reading some tutorials on C, I am wondering how I
could improve my skill. Is there any advice? Is reading others' codes
the best way? If so, what type of codes are suitable for novice? The
ones in fsf freed software directory? I have been reading quite a few
books on the programming language C, but when I tried to start a
project of my own, I find myself to be incompetent. What should I do?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Ian Collins]

Hi,

I have just finished reading some tutorials on C, I am wondering how I
could improve my skill. Is there any advice?
Plenty!

Is reading others' codes
the best way? If so, what type of codes are suitable for novice?

Code in this context is singular ("code" rather than "codes"). Just
reading code probably isn't a good idea. Reading source to see how
something you know works is more effective.

Try the exercises in K&R, there have been plenty of solutions posted
here to look through if you get stuck.

I have been reading quite a few
books on the programming language C, but when I tried to start a
project of my own, I find myself to be incompetent. What should I do?

Start simple!

 

[Malcolm McLean]

Hi,

I have just finished reading some tutorials on C, I am wondering how I
could improve my skill. Is there any advice? Is reading others' codes
the best way? If so, what type of codes are suitable for novice? The
ones in fsf freed software directory? I have been reading quite a few
books on the programming language C, but when I tried to start a
project of my own, I find myself to be incompetent. What should I do?
Thanks in advance.

Try writing "asteroids".
This is a game in which you manoevre a spacship between lines of asterisks,
which scroll down the console. You will need curses / conio or other
non-standard header to treat the console correctly.
It is very easy to write and will give you a sense of achievement. It you
put in levels and scores you can make quite a sophisticated game.
Start by making sure you can use your console library to position characters
at will.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

(e-mail address removed) said:

Hi,

I have just finished reading some tutorials on C, I am wondering how I
could improve my skill. Is there any advice? Is reading others' codes
the best way?

Crank up the warning level of your compiler as high as it will go, and
write lots and lots of programs. Remember that much of what your
tutorials taught you is likely to be wrong. Most C tutorials are
written by people who don't know C. Come to think of it, so is most C
code. So, whilst "reading others' code" can be helpful, get into the
habit of thinking "why is this code bad? What don't I like about it?
What diagnostic messages does it cause my compiler to emit? Do I
understand those messages? What don't I understand about the code
itself? *WHY* is the author doing such-and-such?"

I have been reading quite a few
books on the programming language C, but when I tried to start a
project of my own, I find myself to be incompetent.

Honesty will get you everywhere! Seriously, true competence (in
*any* field worth pursuing) takes about ten years of diligent study and
*practice*. Ten years to be a competent doctor, lawyer, programmer,
whatever.

Devise a project of your very own - e.g. a simple text processor - and
define N things you'd like it to do (where N is initially at least 4).
Implement those features, one at a time, learning all about diagnostic
messages as you go! When you've implemented all N features, think up
another N/4 features (rounded down), and notice how awkward it is to
fit them in. Re-factor the code to make adding the new features much
more pleasant, and now you're starting to learn about programming. Once
all 5N/4 features are implemented, let N = 5N/4 and go round again,
until you start to hit practical limits. This is feature creep with a
vengeance! But it will introduce you gently to large programs.

What should I do?

Write C programs.

 

[jaysome]

Hi,

I have just finished reading some tutorials on C, I am wondering how I
could improve my skill. Is there any advice? Is reading others' codes
the best way? If so, what type of codes are suitable for novice? The
ones in fsf freed software directory? I have been reading quite a few
books on the programming language C, but when I tried to start a
project of my own, I find myself to be incompetent. What should I do?
Thanks in advance.

Buy the book "C Programming FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions", and
read it cover to cover. This book is written by Steve Summit, who
wrote the FAQ for this newsgroup. The book is available on amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-FAQs-Frequently-Asked-Questions/dp/0201845199

Additionally, continue to read this newsgroup. There are some really
sharp people who post here, and if you lurk around here for a
reasonable amount of time, you should be able to determine who these
people are, and learn a lot from them.

Also, get yourself a cheap PC ($100 U.S.) at a garage sell or on your
local classifieds and install a free Linux distribution like Ubuntu:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Linux distributions will provide you with the gcc compiler, which is
arguably one of the best available, free or not. Just make sure to
write a lot of programs and crank up the compiler warning level. For
example, with gcc, this is a good start:

gcc -Wall -W -ansi -pedantic

Finally, if you have any questions about standard C, don't hesitate to
ask in this newsgroup.

Best regards

 

[Laurent Deniau]

Buy the book "C Programming FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions", and
read it cover to cover. This book is written by Steve Summit, who
wrote the FAQ for this newsgroup. The book is available on amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-FAQs-Frequently-Asked-Questions/dp/0201845199

Additionally, continue to read this newsgroup. There are some really
sharp people who post here, and if you lurk around here for a
reasonable amount of time, you should be able to determine who these
people are, and learn a lot from them.

Also, get yourself a cheap PC ($100 U.S.) at a garage sell or on your
local classifieds and install a free Linux distribution like Ubuntu:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Linux distributions will provide you with the gcc compiler, which is
arguably one of the best available, free or not. Just make sure to
write a lot of programs and crank up the compiler warning level. For
example, with gcc, this is a good start:

gcc -Wall -W -ansi -pedantic

Since beginners are often satisfied when the compilation ends without
errors but with many warnings, I would add -Werror ;-)

a+, ld.

 

[Pietro Cerutti]

Buy the book "C Programming FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions", and
read it cover to cover. This book is written by Steve Summit, who
wrote the FAQ for this newsgroup. The book is available on amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-FAQs-Frequently-Asked-Questions/dp/0201845199

Additionally, continue to read this newsgroup. There are some really
sharp people who post here, and if you lurk around here for a
reasonable amount of time, you should be able to determine who these
people are, and learn a lot from them.

Also, get yourself a cheap PC ($100 U.S.) at a garage sell or on your
local classifieds and install a free Linux distribution like Ubuntu:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Linux distributions will provide you with the gcc compiler, which is
arguably one of the best available, free or not. Just make sure to
write a lot of programs and crank up the compiler warning level. For
example, with gcc, this is a good start:

gcc -Wall -W -ansi -pedantic

Why would you use -ansi instead of -c99?

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Pietro Cerutti said:

jaysome wrote:

Why would you use -ansi instead of -c99?

Most compilers don't conform to C99 (including gcc, despite the switch).

 

[Pietro Cerutti]

Pietro Cerutti said:


Most compilers don't conform to C99 (including gcc, despite the switch).

Yes, I know. But still, I don't see the point to completely avoid C99
features just because some of them are not implemented (yet).
The "Status of C99 features in GCC" [1] explicitly says what you can use
safely and what you can't.
So why not start using the useful features which we have at disposal
now, and wait for the remaining ones to come, instead of just snobbing
the whole C99 set of changes?

[1] http://gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Pietro Cerutti said:

Yes, I know. But still, I don't see the point to completely avoid C99
features just because some of them are not implemented (yet).

It depends on your requirements.

If you are only using one compiler, ever, and don't need your code to
work with any other compiler, there is no point even in sticking to
C99. You can use any feature of the implementation that you like!

But if your code has to work with many implementations (i.e. more than
one), it may be necessary to restrict yourself to the features that are
available in all your implementations. And, in some cases, you do not
know at the time of writing the code which implementation(s) it will
eventually be required to work with. In such cases, it makes sense to
write code that conforms to the common subset of C90 and C99.

 

[Bill Pursell]

Yes, I know. But still, I don't see the point to completely avoid C99

A few months back, I had a program that ran approximately 60% slower
when compiled under gcc with -std=c99 as opposed to -std=c89. I
didn't spend a lot of time tracking down the issue: I just rewrote
the (fortunately few) sections of code that were using c99 features.

 

[Default User]

Hi,

I have just finished reading some tutorials on C, I am wondering how I
could improve my skill. Is there any advice?

To improve you must write programs.

Is reading others' codes the best way?

No, not in my opinion. Reading code teaches you the allied skill of
reading code. It's important for a career as a programmer, but not much
help in learning to write code. One major reason is that you don't yet
have the skill level to tell good code from bad.

My advice is to think of a moderately complex project that interests
you. Things that you find interesting in and of themselves are more
pleasurable to work on. And it will be work. It will be slow and
frustrating in the beginning.

I used a text-adventure game as my training project. This had a number
of advantages. First, I was interested in the subject. Secondly, these
sorts of games cover many aspects of programming, including text
processing, file management, changeable state, data structures, and
algorithms galore.

Most of the tasks were applicable to learning standard C, without
getting off into platform-specific stuff like graphics.




Brian

 

[Dave Hansen]

Hi,

I have just finished reading some tutorials on C, I am wondering how I
could improve my skill. Is there any advice? Is reading others' codes
the best way? If so, what type of codes are suitable for novice? The
ones in fsf freed software directory? I have been reading quite a few
books on the programming language C, but when I tried to start a
project of my own, I find myself to be incompetent. What should I do?
Thanks in advance.

1) Read some _good_ books. K&R, of course, if you haven't already.
It's fairly old now, but Peter van der Linden's "Expert C Programming:
Deep C Secrets" is highly readable and contains some good (if somewhat
Unix-centric) info. It's worth it for the chapter on understanding
complex declarations all by itself. SAMS C Unleashed also has some
very good stuff, though it's more specifically directed at solving
specific problems.

2) Write more code. The only way to get better at writing C code is
to practice. The exercises in K&R have been mentioned, and van der
Linden's book has some good non-trivial exercises in it as well.

3) Invest in Gimpel's PC-lint, _learn_ how to use it, _run_ all your
code through it, and _understand_ what it tells you (i.e., fix the
code, not the error). Awesome tool, and the error descriptions are
very instructive. www.gimpel.com

Regards,

-=Dave

 

[Chris Torek]

... I don't see the point to completely avoid C99
features just because some of them are not implemented (yet).
The "Status of C99 features in GCC" [1] explicitly says what you can use
safely and what you can't.
So why not start using the useful features which we have at disposal
now, and wait for the remaining ones to come ...

The big problem here is that the set of "C99-isms" that are
implemented not-at-all, incompletely, or incorrectly varies from
one compiler to the next (even one gcc to the next, in some
cases, although actually running into this is much rarer).

As always, one must make engineering tradeoffs. If some feature
is sufficiently valuable, you might want to tie yourself to "we'll
only ever use Zog C version 3.14159265". Just be sure you can
afford to go down with it if it sinks like the Titanic.

 

[Peter Nilsson]

A few months back, I had a program that ran approximately
60% slower when compiled under gcc with -std=c99 as
opposed to -std=c89. I didn't spend a lot of time
tracking down the issue: I just rewrote the (fortunately
few) sections of code that were using c99 features.

If it compiled using -std=c89, then what c99 features
_needed_ rewriting?

 

[jaysome]

On May 9, 9:57 pm, "(e-mail address removed)" <[email protected]>
wrote:
[snip]

3) Invest in Gimpel's PC-lint, _learn_ how to use it, _run_ all your
code through it, and _understand_ what it tells you (i.e., fix the
code, not the error). Awesome tool, and the error descriptions are
very instructive. www.gimpel.com

Excellent advice.

I've used PC-lint on C and C++ code and have found it invaluable. The
number of different target platforms/compilers I've used it for is in
the double-digit range, and I've never come across any
platforms/compilers where it didn't flag something of concern, and in
almost all cases flagged one or more plain and simple bugs.

PC-lint teaches you to become a better programmer, on top of finding
bugs at compile-time that would hopefully, but not necessarily, be
found at run-time. Its -w4 option is like a gcc -pedantic option on
steroids.

Best regards