The C Programming Language

Hello everyone. It's been quite a long time since I last posted; which obviously means I wasn't able to keep my up with my daily log idea. Heck, I didn't even log for a single day. But let's not waste this post on my failure and hope I can post more often from now on. Today I want to review 'The C Programming Language' by Dennis M. Ritchie and Brian K. Kernighan. So, Let's dive in.

So, I wanted to learn/Revisit C (more on this in next post) and I was looking for the books available. I googled, looked in blogs, asked in forums and most of them seemed to be recommending 'The C Programming Language' by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie as the first book to go for. I thought Why would I want to learn a programming language from a book almost 28 years old (even-though co-written by it's creator)? I mean, it's 2016 and this book should be way outdated. I have to say, I was terribly wrong.

The book is really well written and engaging. The book takes an practical approach and you get your hands dirty in no time. The language features are divided into chapters, arranged in coherent manner. Every topic is explained clearly in a very concise manner The examples are short, useful and fun. And code, It's... it's beautiful, elegant, logical, short and well commented. I have programmed before and I never understood what it means to write good quality code until I read this book. It teaches you how to divide your program into small functions which does one task, but does it perfectly well. It teaches you how to think in a procedural way which I believe is quite important. Even though the book is bit outdated and there are new language features available, this book is a solid read and I highly recommend it to anyone who want to learn C. You will not just learn C, you will learn to write good code.
 

Tl;Dr The book is short, complete, engaging; examples are short, fun, useful; code is short, concise, elegant.
 
Note: This book assumes you have a prior programming experience. Although you can fairly catch up quickly.


- 0xelectron