Type and Learn C (Type & Learn Programming)

Rating:
Summary: worth twice the price
Review: I enrolled in community colleges classes and studied C for a year and did not cover the range of topics in this book. The chapter on file processing is the most sensible explanation that I have found. I have previously bought about 10 books searching for as lucid an explanation as is presented here. This is the ONE book to buy on the subject. The companion diskette is a real time saver. The introduction to the Borland debugger is the best (simplest) that I have ever had.

Rating:
Summary: poor
Review: The only good thing about this book is the Turbo C++ compiler that comes with it. The book itself is a mess. To know a subject is one thing; to put it across is quite a different matter. The author, like 99.9% of authors on programming languages, uses poor methodology : he starts the book by showing a full program so that the beginner can have a feel of the language. What the beginner really has is a feeling of discouragement upon facing a page of "Classical Greek"! The he keeps moving in circles and leads the poor beginner ( those who are stoic enough to bear with him ) into a C "mumble-jumble." This book might be useful only if you know the language, but then why would you be reading it in the first place?

Rating:
Summary: Could be much, much better.
Review: This book is quite good until he gets to the pointers chapter. He does not explain how pointers work very well. I felt confused looking at the next chapters since all he used were pointers, and I had no understanding of them. I liked the fact that the later chapters were almost just like a reference to the different header files with several examples. Some many not like that since he doesn't go into much depth explaining each function. This book wasn't too expensive and came with TCLITE (Borland C++ 1.0) so you could start programming immediately.

This book was a fair book. Not the best in the world, however. I felt this book could have been better, especially in the pointers section. I did not fully understand pointers until I bought K&R2 (ISBN 0-13-110362-8), which is the absolute must have if you are wanting to learn C. Type and Learn C still makes a nice reference with all the function listings in the back, however.