C Programming : Visual QuickStart Guide (Visual Quickstart Guides)

Rating:
Summary: Lacks problems for the reader to tackle
Review: C is still with us. Despite the attention lavished on more recent languages, like Java and C#, knowledge of C is a de facto requirement in many programming jobs. Whether you are in a unix or Microsoft environment. Now C has scarcely changed in 20 years. But the difference between this book and C texts then is the visual programming environment. The authors talk up this aspect, to aid your programming. The book discusses using a text editor or IDE to write the code. But this book is written for the beginner. All the code examples are short. None over 100 lines, as far as I can tell. So the power of an IDE is really not needed. What would be useful is a text editor that can colour highlight keywords. Like vim, which is an enhanced version of vi.

In other words, if you want to use this book, you don't need to run out and get some fancy IDE. The real power of those arises when you want to develop large code bases.

The authors write clearly, and do supply good examples. But sadly, the book lacks problem sets. I do realise that this is true of most computer books. But for many of those, they discuss subjects that may be hard to design useful problems, because of the sheer complexity of the systems under consideration. But for a beginning book in C, it is possible and preferable to supply many problems. And also easy to do so. Essentially, simple parsing and numerical analysis problems.

The best way for the reader to learn the language is to have problems to tackle. Learn by doing. All the discussion in the book about analysing the examples is fine. But not enough. I also went to the companion URL given in the book. No problem sets there, either. Perhaps this can be rectified?

Rating:
Summary: An absolute "must" for students or professionals
Review: Co-written by Larry Ullman and Marc Liyanage (professional trainers of software engineers), Visual Quickstart Guide: C Programming is a text specifically intended for beginning to intermediate-level programmers who need to assimilate the basics of programming in C as swiftly as possible. Using a visual, picture and example-centered approach to show how to perform basic tasks, C programming eschews long-winded passages for direct results and an easy-to-follow system for immediately looking up what one most needs to know. Individual chapters expertly and accessibly address the basics of data types, control structures, creating one's own functions, managing memory, working with strings, installing and using C tools, and much more. Visual Quickstart Guide: C Programming is an absolute "must" for students or professionals who need to learn or refresh their knowledge of C and have little time to spare.


Rating:
Summary: Can't learn to program in C from this book
Review: I love the Visual QuickStart Guides (of which this is one). Their format of text on one side, screenshots on the other side works well for most applications.

But it doesn't work well for programming languages.

The QuickStart approach is show-and-see. To learn a programming language, the approach has to be show-and-do.

The author could have supplied problem sets at the end of each chapter. He supplied no problem sets. Without problem sets, the book provides no opportunity for readers to actually program. And you just can't learn to program without programming.

If you want to read about C, or if you're looking for a well-written reference about C, this book does the job.

If you want to program in C, you will not learn to do it here.


Rating:
Summary: Solid content, bad format
Review: This is a case where some good content was obscured by inappropriate style and formatting. The format of the visual quick start guide series is two have two columns on what is already a fairly thin page. One column is explanation for the screenshot on the other side. That works great for learning about Powerpoint but isn't so great for basic C, which is mainly text. The screenshots just waste space and the code in the explanation side has to be so compressed that it is very tough to follow.

As an alternative you should try O'Reilly's Practical C, or Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++.