C Programming for the Absolute Beginner

Rating:
Summary: For anyone wanting to learn C Programming from scratch
Review: Deftly written by software engineer and applications developer Michael Vine, C Programming For The Absolute Beginner truly lives up to its title. No previous familiarity with the art of computer programming is required to understand and learn from the lessons provided, all of which revolve around simple game creation in a learn-through-doing process. Basic C Programming tasks such as initializing variables, creating two-dimensional arrays, manipulating strings, and using compound if structures, are among the many core building block abilities taught by this superbly written and presented introductory guide. An accompanying CD contains a gcc C compiler and the Cygwin free UNIX shell makes Michael Vine's C Programming For The Absolute Beginner and absolute "must" for anyone wanting to learn C Programming from scratch.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Well Done
Review: I think C Programming for the absolute beginner is fairly well written and contains some good examples. The challenges aren't all games, and some of them will probably be uninteresting to the reader. It is the best book I've read so far for learning C, and would certainly recommend it to others who want to learn it as well.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to use, but not technically correct
Review: The book is easy to follow, and can help a non-programmer pick up the basics. The problem is in the code examples. The code examples in this book all compile, and the binaries run, but if you enable warnings on your ANSI-compliant compiler before compiling any of this code, you will see a whole host of warnings and error messages. Don't think that you will learn C from this book and then go get a job somewhere as a C programmer. Your code will be as non-ANSI compliant as it could possibly be while still working. This makes it even more difficult if you progress to a more advanced C text after this, as you will likely have to go back and relearn quite a bit. I give it 5 stars for ease of use, but it loses 3 stars for not "teaching good programming practices" as it claims to on the cover.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to use, but not technically correct
Review: The book is easy to follow, and can help a non-programmer pick up the basics. The problem is in the code examples. The code examples in this book all compile, and the binaries run, but if you enable warnings on your ANSI-compliant compiler before compiling any of this code, you will see a whole host of warnings and error messages. Don't think that you will learn C from this book and then go get a job somewhere as a C programmer. Your code will be as non-ANSI compliant as it could possibly be while still working. This makes it even more difficult if you progress to a more advanced C text after this, as you will likely have to go back and relearn quite a bit. I give it 5 stars for ease of use, but it loses 3 stars for not "teaching good programming practices" as it claims to on the cover.