Beginning C: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: from Novice to Professional) [Hardcover]

Ivor Horton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590597354 | ISBN-13: 978-1590597354 | Publication Date: October 20, 2006 | Edition: 4th ed.

C is the programming language of choice when speed and reliability are required. It is used for many low-level tasks, such as device drivers and operating-system programming. For example, much of Windows and Linux is based on C programming.

This updated classic from author, lecturer, and respected academic Ivor Horton, is the essential guide for anyone looking to learn the C language from the ground up. It is a highly recommended text for training courses and continuing education students, and assumes no prior working knowledge of C. Kernighan and Ritchie's The C Programming Language is the definitive text for C, but is not ideal for users new to programming because of its terseness and lack of many examples.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the reviews of the fourth edition:

"This tutorial is intended for a wide range of readers, from nonprogrammers to those with programming experience who don’t know the C language. The book’s goal is to be a comprehensive text that will lead the prospective programmer from his or her starting point all the way to a career in programming. … It also gives a good overview of the process of program creation, including a section on dealing with errors." (William Fahle, ACM Computing Reviews, Vol. 49 (4), April, 2008)

About the Author

Ivor Horton is currently self-employed in consultancy and writes programming tutorials. He worked for IBM for many years and holds a bachelor's degree, with honors, in mathematics. Ivor's experience at IBM includes programming in most languages (such as assembler and high-level languages on a variety of machines), real-time programming, and designing and implementing real-time closed loop industrial control systems.

He has extensive experience teaching programming to engineers and scientists (Fortran, PL/1, APL, etc.). Ivor is an expert in mechanical, process, and electronic CAD systems; mechanical CAM systems; and DNC/CNC systems.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 4th ed. edition (October 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590597354
• ISBN-13: 978-1590597354
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #88,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > C > Tutorials

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, January 7, 2008

By 

Weston Buckhorn - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beginning C: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: from Novice to Professional) (Hardcover)

I decided to do some WIN32 API programming and all of the old documentation and Petzold's book uses c source code so I thought a formal presentation would be the thing to do. This book gives a very good explanation of pointers using lots of small but complete programs. This book is much like a college text in that there are problems to solve at the end of each chapter. Horton makes you work but the writing is clear with appropriate detail. C is a small language but the syntax can be obscure so I appreciated the thorough and detailed treatment. Page layout and fonts are attractive and the source code is easy to follow. I plan to follow up with Horton's C++ book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars C is still an easy language!, February 1, 2011

By 

VRS Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beginning C: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: from Novice to Professional) (Hardcover)

Starting from K&R in college, have gone thru several books on C & C++ in 16 years. Only very few books fell in the category of "trash". Several books are indeed decent and serve their purpose. C is such a beautiful & structured language for learning the programming concepts. But it has to be explained in a simple way. This book is built on the same method, keep it simple but not too simple. There are not any development in the C language in the last decade as compiler writers concentrate on C++ though keeping C inside. So are books 'teching how to program in C'. May be the author had fixed some coding or typos in this fourth edition, I did not expect anything 'changed' compared to his old editions.

The content is really good and the way the book is structured is nice. There is a chapter on pointers, well written. Then the pointers are imposed on the subsequent chapters. Surprisingly the 'struct' is part of "data structures" instead of part of C language as in other books. I like the way, so the learner won't get confused. There is also a flash on linked lists, binary trees.

This is not a book on "Pointers & C" or "Algorithms & C" or "Datastructures & C" but a book on "Programming in C".

Overall, this book takes a place in the recommended book list of programming in C.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, June 24, 2010

By 

A. comjean "acomj" (boston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning C: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: from Novice to Professional) (Hardcover)

I went back to C programming after programmin in other languages for a bit. This book gives excellent and clear explanations of concepts, including pointers/strings and arrays. The book has many example programs in each chapter are well thought out and make the concepts clear.

This would be an excellent book to learn from or if your going back to C from some time away. Despite the Beginning C title it covers a lot of topic (preprocessing/# defines etc.). It mainly covers C syntax and isn't a how to design a program kind of book.

I find it makes an excellent reference as well and I reach for it more often than the other C books I have which are both decent , Kernighan and Richie book and the more advanced. "C: A Reference Manual (5th Edition)" .